Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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0:00:00 - Cal
Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, Episode 117.

0:00:06 - Will
I think keeping those little projects little at first, until you can learn from them and see how can you expand on that is really important.

0:00:15 - Cal
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 n-o-b-l-e dot org. Forward slash grazing.

On today's episode we have William Vogel of Vogel Homestead. We discuss his journey, his operation, how he's grazing sheep on his land, as well as land of his neighbors, using very small acreage. Then, for the overgrazing section, we dive more into composting that he's doing to improve his land. And then for the bonus segment that's over available for the Grazing Grass Insiders, we talk about his great pumpkin rescue. It's a wonderful episode for our 10 seconds about my farm.

I really don't have too much to add. We had a family vacation last week, went down to Hot Springs, arkansas, stayed down there for a few days with most of my parents' family, so we got my brother's family, my sister's family. We had a big crowd there. It was really nice, really beautiful down there. The cattle, the sheep all got put in bigger paddocks so I didn't have to do anything and it went really well. Like all trips, I'm glad to be home. Ten seconds on the podcast. We have some really exciting podcasts coming up in the future, so stay tuned for that, as well as some other things in the works that we'll be letting you know in the future. But I think that's all. Let's go talk to Will William. We want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.

0:03:15 - Will
Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here and talk about what we're going to talk about.

0:03:21 - Cal
William, to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation?

0:03:25 - Will
Yeah, so my name is. Will I us a little bit about yourself and your operation? Yeah, so my name is, will. I have a farm here in Colorado Springs, colorado, called the Fowl Homestead Farm. We primarily raise sheep, grass-fed for meat. We raise white dork or St Croix crosses and then we also have a small market garden where largely we do rhubarb and some other long season annuals and perennials, garlic and stuff. A lot of it's what does well here. We found that a lot of stuff doesn't do well because we're at 7,200 feet elevation as well. We're not in the mountains, we're in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains here, but we get a range of weather, everything from what's typical of the plains to some severe stuff coming out of the Rocky mountains here. But, uh, we get a range of weather. You know, everything from uh, what's typical of the plans to some severe stuff coming out of the mountains. So, um, and then, uh, we do a few other things.

Um, we raise uh or we use our sheep now for uh pasture and uh understory, forest mitigation and prescribed grazing operations that we started this year, and then we also we lease a bunch of the properties that are heavily treed and need thinned out, so we're finding ways to utilize those as well as a part of our operation, like right now, we dig up small ponderosa trees and we sell those to people as conservation trees or windbreaks and stuff, and then we're hoping to get a sawmill up and running later this year as well.

0:04:47 - Cal
Oh yes. So what it sounds like to me is you don't have enough to do.

0:04:52 - Will
It's funny you say that, because I also work full time as a firefighter and I got two kids and a wife and everything and all my copious amounts of free time. I'm always looking for something else to add in there.

0:05:03 - Cal
Right, of course I completely understand. Yes, will. How long have you been raising sheep? What got you into it?

0:05:14 - Will
So I grew up around ranching my folks they used to have Red Angus cattle in this area, and so I grew up doing forage and being around that cattle in this area, and so I grew up doing forage and being around that. And back in 2000, when the big, huge drought hit the whole West, their operation basically ground into a stop. It just came to an end because we didn't get hardly any rain at all. They started having to feed. Hay. Prices went through the roof by the time. They started destocking. Everything was pennies on the dollar. That effectively ended their ranching operation. They started destocking. Everything was pennies on the dollar. That effectively ended their ranching operation.

And at that point I was about 10 or so, maybe 11. And I didn't fully comprehend how much that would influence me now. But I ended up graduating, went to college, became a firefighter and then we bought seven acres that we live on now and started doing the homestead thing and first started a garden. Then I got eight chickens and I got more chickens and I got more chickens. And it was about this time I had a co-worker that was like hey, have you heard this guy that has these portable chicken coops? I think his name's joel salative.

And so I looked into that and that was like the beginning into regenerative agriculture for me, and for solid four years I really just threw myself into learning everything I could from anyone and started learning about the different styles of rotational grazing and especially soil health. That was the one that really resonated with me the most here, because we are a fairly dry atmosphere we're not technically desert, but we're definitely semi-arid here and realizing how much soil health and having the capture in that natural precipitation and that water cycle play a part with each other really opened my eyes up. And then I started being able to draw upon my experiences as a kid and, watching my parents' operation do what it did, started connecting some dots and stuff and whatnot. One of our biggest challenges here is the fact that we are in a very expensive area land-wise.

You can't get land to be productive at all for the actual land price Like right now. Land price right now anywhere from 14 to 60 000 an acre unimproved and I shouldn't complain here well.

So what it did is it a lot of it's. It gets turned into the what I call the rural suburbia. It's the five acre lots that everyone moves out of the city for, and so I started leasing land from my neighbors and stuff, and obviously five acres at a time. That's not real suitable for bigger animals. You can only have a few. But sheep made sense to me so I started getting into the, doing some research on them and then somebody had a flock that they were selling.

The husband gotten a new job all the way across the country and they needed to sell it to move, and so I got a screaming deal on these white Dorpers and I if the rest is history I started using them and realizing real fast that they seem to be a lot better fit here in our environment than cows are in general, especially once we started leasing some of these forested lots, because in our area we have this really heavy ponderosa forest. It's a pretty much a monoculture forest but the very quick history of it is it back in the 1800s they logged it pretty extensively for lumber because it was easier to haul it from here and on rail to denver and colorado springs and all the cities around here.

then it was to pull it out of the mountains. So what happened was, after they logged it, it regrew in this unnatural way of just being overgrown, and a lot of that was.

we removed the fire element from nature, managing it as well, as by this point we'd removed all the large herds of animals, obviously, and in this region this probably would have been more the huge herds of elk than it was the bison they would have both come through this area and had a huge impact on the forest health, and so we started running our sheep through these areas and realizing that the understory, and especially where we do some thinning and whatnot, the forest health really rebounds dramatically and we start to get in a healthy understory. The grasses start growing where they didn't before because of the pine needles are getting trampled up and we're starting to see natural fruit bushes that typically grow in the understory, like choke cherries and currants, coming oh yeah, and stuff.

And then, of course, the wildlife is uh loving. Wherever we move the sheep especially turkeys, I've noticed we'll move them through an area where they trample everything up, and then I'll notice 50 turkeys come through within a month or two later.

They're digging through those pine needles looking for anything that they like to eat and whatnot. So and then you know, within usually a season or two, especially along the forest edge areas, we'll start seeing that grass grow three, four, five times better than it did before. And then you know, we'll give it a long rest period. Here. That rest period, here, that rest period's oftentimes the whole year. I've had very few areas I've had luck with being able to re-graze twice in a season, just because of our arid climate Is that for the tree areas as well as any?

0:10:17 - Cal
It's everything honestly.

0:10:19 - Will
Yeah, a lot of our grasslands here have been overgrazed over the last 150 years, so we've lost a lot of our topsoil here, just like a lot of places and and a lot of our stuff. Here is cool season too. We do have some warm seasons, like big bluestem and stuff, but a lot of the predominant grass where we're at is usually if it's out in the open or in forest edges. It's smooth brome and stuff which is a great forage for the sheep. They love it. It's probably their favorite grass.

But it does have a hard time regrowing after it's been grazed in a lot of these areas. So now we've had a lot of luck lately with some of what we're doing on our farm for restoring the soil and whatnot, but I imagine we'll talk on that later. But as far as most areas it's a one and done type grazing system, so I have to have enough land to keep continually move our sheep around. Oh yeah, not have them come back through areas before they're fully recovered, and we see a lot of improvement over just a few years doing that so before we talk a little bit more about the management of your sheep and how you're doing that, let's talk about your breed.

0:11:26 - Cal
You started with white dorpers. How familiar were you with sheep when you got them?

0:11:31 - Will
very little. I we'd had a sheep when I was a kid and the sheep, uh, it's just a funny story is uh? We never sheared it. It was a some kind of wool breed. I couldn't tell you oh yeah, we never sheared that thing, and so that poor sheep was enormous.

Uh, it looked like those pictures of the sheep that come out of the woods after they've been gone for years and I used to, you know, get teased because I get on the school bus and they'd be like is there a moving rock in your pasture? And it's no, that's woolly wool. That was their name, woolly wool, so very suiting. But that was my experience with sheep, honestly. So when I was getting into the idea of looking at sheep in general, I knew I wanted a hair sheep. I wanted something that was lower maintenance, as far as not needing sheep and all that.

And in this area, a few years before I even got into all this, we had a huge boom of alpaca people and so that really flooded any bit of the fiber market that we might have had in this area. So the wool side of it didn't appeal to me at all. So I just wanted to do for the meat, which is what I'm most familiar with anyway, and I knew I wanted something along the traditional kind of breeds that a lot of regenerative farms are using, like katahdins or something like that, and and then once I saw these for sale, I was talking to them and then I actually got a hold of their breeder, who's also here in colorado, and I talked to him for a good while.

I really liked what they were all telling me about how they do here and whatnot, and the guy that'd been breeding them been breeding them for like 20 years here with not needing to use any worrers or anything like that, and even on irrigated land and stuff. So that was what I was looking for is a resilient breed that had been acclimated to this climate more than anything and whatnot oh yeah, and of course, once we got them I joke.

so we got them on saint patrick's day, which is probably the most irish thing I could have done on saint patrick's day was buy a flock of sheep, and there was a learning curve after that of what to do and what not. I've largely learned. You got to keep them happy, because our primary fencing system is electric. We lease a lot of lands that don't have adequate fencing or any in a lot of times. I got to make sure my fencing system is on par. But I got to make sure they're happy too, because especially the females they'll start testing the fence and when they decide that they're ready to move and if they decide that they want to move, they're going to move. But I learned too that a lot of the stereotypes that I was worried about, like the fact that if the wind blows the wrong way they die I found that not to be really the case at all, but they are.

I had a predator issue for a few years. That was a learning curve, and so now we got some colorado mountain dogs that live with the sheep as well, and whatnot. It's been a long learning journey. Every bit of it I've enjoyed and I'm glad I went with the sheep, because to me that seems to be just a better fit for us than anything I think a lot of times when people start to, they're like I want to get some livestock and start doing something regenerative.

0:14:28 - Cal
They've been bitten by the bug. Cattle's, their first thought. But so often when you're working with smaller acreage sheep are a much better animal to get started with and see how it goes. Oh, absolutely.

0:14:41 - Will
We learned really quickly too that all the larger properties, once you get a little further out but are in our area, they're largely traditional people and they've been leased to the same cattle people forever. So I quickly learned to talking to people that finding some of those properties was just going to be out of the question for a year, even though I got the advantage of being from this area and I didn't move very far from where I grew up and whatnot, and even with that, just trying to get a leg in wasn't going to work. And then of course I got sheep and, much to my dad's dismay at the time, his grandfather was a big cattle guy up in Montana back during the time of cattlemen versus shepherds.

And he always joked that I bought a bunch of prairie cockroaches and eventually he came around enough that his property was one of the ones that we lease now too, but at the beginning he was giving me a lot of crap, for it Happens, yeah, especially that paradigm shift from being cattle till here we have some sheep.

0:15:38 - Cal
So you got your sheep and you hadn't really been around them. But you did some research, you talked to some people. Was there something that really surprised you about them once you did some research? You talked to some people. Was there something that really surprised you about them once you had them?

0:15:49 - Will
one of them was the ease of managing them. Honestly, having cattle and you realize obviously they're big animals and you got to be careful around them in a lot of ways, and sheep are just so much easier in that sense like you don't have to worry for the most part about them trampling you or doing that stuff or you get a protective mama. It's not really an issue, whereas before that was totally something we had to do. When we're oh yeah, and then on top of that there are a lot, they're really easy to move in my mind. So when we had cows, as when I was a kid, my parents had two very different styles of moving cattle, like completely opposite. My dad was the maniac driving through the field trying to chase him with the truck.

And my mom was the one that was out there with the feedback, hey come on, follow me. You know and I I learned as a kid. I was like I liked the feedback trick way more than that one Cause it's stressful and you learn quickly.

Sheep are very easy to manage that way they're very food motivated and it's gotten to a point where we lease a lot of small properties real close to each other and it's nice because I can literally just walk them property to property, even if it's I gotta go a quarter mile down the road or something, and oh yeah, it's to the point where I can be out there with just a flake of alfalfa or an empty box, even because we work for the local food bank on bringing in food scraps and they get a lot of produce scraps that way, so that I can just go out there with an empty box and they're just like oh, treat time, you know.

And so I was really pleasantly surprised by that fact. On the other side, like I said, they're really intelligent, especially use, and uh, if you don't account for that and in your moves, they'll let you know that you fucked up or you messed up. They'll let you know real fast the um, that was a learning curve as well as they show up and all of a sudden you notice your fences down and you're like anyone seen a bunch of sheep anywhere.

So I've gotten really good at that over the years. Is making sure got everything dialed in, especially with my schedule as a firefighter, because I'm not always able to check on them every day. That was a really big learning curve was making sure everything was pretty much bulletproof and they still escape every once in a while. But gotten to the point now where I'm like I'll show up and I'll know exactly where they went, even if I can't see where they went, because I've worked with them long enough now I know how their minds think and I'm like they want to go uphill. They want to go that way, it and you. I can usually track them pretty quickly and whatnot, and even when they're loose and stuff I can. Usually me and one other person can move them wherever I need to.

0:18:09 - Cal
For the most part, it's not that big of an issue. One thing I find very curious about the sheep if I've got a bucket or something that I'm trying to get them to come up with, not a problem. But I have some goats and for the goats they're of me, so it's they have to be. I have to show them the inside of a bucket for them to follow me, and they have to know there's actually in there, yeah yes, yeah.

Now the sheep. I just show them a bucket and we're good to go. But the goats, they're much more. Show us the inside. What's in there?

0:18:44 - Will
yeah, I know I haven't gotten into goats yet. I've resisted that because I had bad experience with basically raising my brother's 4-h goat when I was a kid. But oh yeah as we're doing more and more of the, the prescribed grazing stuff and whatnot, I'm realizing, obviously, that they would bring a big benefit to that too. So at some point yeah we're gonna have to bring a couple in and that's gonna be a whole new learning curve.

0:19:05 - Cal
Obviously you know because, yeah, there are different animals than sheep. You started with white dorpers. Have you stuck with white dorpers as your primary?

0:19:14 - Will
yeah, so our core herd is all from interior genetics for the most part. We ended up buying a few or expanding our flock a few years ago, but it was all from the original breeder of our original flock, yeah, and so he wanted to get out of it and retire from raising sheep. I went down and basically bought out the rest of his flock and we grew ours with that, and at that point he had a ram that was much more saint croix than it was dorper. Um, you know, oh yeah, genetically. So you know we they've always been across. They've never been pure white dwarf, but they're definitely a lot more of a mix now. And I don't know, those two breeds seem to complement each other pretty well as far as their characteristics and stuff, but I'm at a point now too, where I'm like what other breeds could I bring in here?

oh yeah the traits I could really kind of fine-tune our flock into really what's going to be most adaptable for here.

0:20:05 - Cal
Because at the end of the day that's what I really care about.

0:20:08 - Will
I'm not looking to have a registered sheep or anything like that, so I want to have what's adequate for here, what works for our context, because that's ultimately what's going to benefit us and land the best yeah, my sheep flocks predominantly katahdins.

0:20:23 - Cal
A little bit bit of other mixed in there, but not much. But I've thrown around the idea of getting a Dorper ram and trying that. My concerns are I'm quite a bit wetter than you are. I don't know about parasites. That's one thing. I don't want to bring in any parasite problems.

0:20:41 - Will
Yeah, that's one of those unfair advantages I think we have here is parasites in general just aren't much of an issue at all unless you're basically feedlotting them for right a better term but if you're moving them at all, you can. You can raise it to the dirt if you wanted to, and you're probably not going to have much in the way of parasite issues just because it's so wet here oh, there might be a few exceptions, like irrigated pastures and maybe some riparian areas and whatnot that might be a different case around here, but for the most part it's all dry land and parasites just aren't much of an issue, especially once you start rotating them.

I've just never noticed any sort of anything to concern with. But obviously you get into a much wetter climate and I imagine that's a very different context in a lot of ways.

0:21:25 - Cal
Yeah, and I've always heard, with goats like boar goats west of I-35, it's dry enough, parasites aren't going to be a problem, but you're east of I-35, which I'm east of I-35. Boar goats struggle a little bit more. I wonder if the same thing would be true with Dorpers, since they originated in South Africa as well. However, I don't know. But actually, before we got on, you got online here. I was looking at some dorper rams because I mentioned to buy one and try that cross. Yeah, just for a breeding season.

0:21:57 - Will
And see how it goes I know I've heard from other producers that have had crosses where, as long as you have one of those parasite resistant crosses, it seems to pass on a lot of those uh traits, because the saint croix's are, they were developed from the katahdin breed and so they have a lot of that same parasite resistant capability and and whatnot too. But obviously I think a lot of it comes down to management too.

0:22:21 - Cal
That's just right where you're at now. You're grazing your sheep on a on some leased land, and you mentioned earlier electric fencing. Walk us through what you're using to contain the sheep to an area so it largely depends on which group, because I don't.

0:22:40 - Will
We keep all of our rams intact, so we end up having a what I call the bachelor group, and then the all the females and and then the all the females.

And, like I mentioned before, the females are way smarter, so for them I almost have to use the netting exclusively. Yeah, when it comes to just normal polywire they are way too smart. Now I've noticed every generation that we've been really good about not letting them escape a lot. The younger ones are always more wary of the fence. So hopefully, oh, over some time maybe we can make them capable of being a lot more suitable for regular poly wire. But right now I especially on some of these properties that were running in areas where people got dogs and stuff I feel most comfortable using the netting with them. Now the rams are a group. I can use two strands of poly wire and they're more than happy.

And then, as far as energizers go, I try to stick with at least a six joule. Energizer will form, especially here because it is dry, having that stronger energizer makes a big difference.

Typically, with the portable setup, I can get away with one ground rod unless it's really dry, and that works out well anyway, because I can just put a ground rod unless it's really dry, and that works out well anyway, because I can just put a ground rod wherever I need it, and and then I just set up the energizer a centralized location and I'll run polywired any setup I have on the property within a reasonable distance and be able to keep moving them through the summer and whatnot.

Most of our properties we have electric access because most of them have houses, people, people are living on those properties, so most of the time I can plug into the wall somewhere and run a few extension cords and that works out really well, especially since the energizers really have a measurable draw of power on them. But some of these bigger remote properties we're using the same type of energizers properties. We're using the same type of energizers, usually like the speed right ones that can switch between plug-in and uh, battery operated and oh yeah and whatnot. So we're starting to do more with uh, with that and uh. You know, working on building my first solar powered yeah, one, but a lot of times too, since it's with my schedule, it works out doing a three-day check for them anyway. Worst case is I just bring a new battery every three to six days and swap them out.

And that works just as fine.

0:24:54 - Cal
One thing you mentioned there about netting that I'd ask you about containment of your sheep and you mentioned the netting works good because you're in close proximity to houses and dogs, so it's not only keeping the sheep in, it's keeping the other animals out, exactly, and and sometimes we forget that, but that's really.

0:25:13 - Will
Yeah, in most places the netting works really well, even for coyotes and stuff, and our biggest predators are coyotes. Here are, I guess, potentially people's dogs, if they're oh yeah, really paying attention to them, but and we have some other predators, but they've never been any concern and a lot of these places I think there's too many people like anyway, we get black bears and cougars and stuff too, and and that's you know something. I think the netting works well, especially on canine and feline breeds, you know just oh yeah they connect to the ground bears.

It kind of does the same thing if they stuck their nose in the fence, you know, yeah, so yeah, um, but yeah, that's been a big part of it. We've got a couple properties that were further out there, were way more rural, and those are where I've always had the predator issues and those coyotes definitely got smart and figured out the fencing. So that's why oh, yeah, the dogs that live with them now in those areas and that's been that second layer of protection for them. That was really made a difference.

But and you mentioned, you have colorado mountain dogs yeah, they're uh, for lack of better term, they're a cross of great pyrenees and a bunch of other, oh yes, guardian breeds. They look great pyrenees, which is usually the bulk of the breed, but they're trying to develop basically a livestock guardian breed that's designed for smaller homesteads and stuff is ultimately what they're trying to do. We found a local breeder that we really liked, and their dogs have been great so I hadn't heard of them, so I'm glad you expanded upon that.

0:26:42 - Cal
Now you talked about your remote properties. They work really good there. When you bring your flock in closer to homes, you're keeping your dogs with them there too. They're just in the netting.

0:26:53 - Will
Yeah, and we have a fully portable setup. So I've got a little dog house that I can drag around and whatnot, and we have a feeder that is designed for letting the dogs be able to slip underneath and get in there, but the sheep have a really hard time unless they're little getting in there, so oh yeah, out of the food and so they have. It's like a gravity feeder in there and they have access to that 24 7 and you mentioned that they crawl under it.

0:27:19 - Cal
So on one side you have a raised bar that they're able to get under.

0:27:22 - Will
Yeah, it's it's mostly just cattle panels, honestly. And then I just have an adjustable wooden two by four on the front, so if I need to raise it up or lower it a little bit, oh yeah but even our big boy, he's 130 pounds and he'll slip through a foot and a half of that thing, so you can have that thing pretty narrow and there's.

As long as they were trained to get in there at a younger age, they seemed to have no problem getting in there. We've tried doing it with an older dog once and he was like, nah, that's too much work. But as long as they learned it, I think, as a puppy, that setup works really well and whatnot. The only time I see the sheep ever get in there is usually we get some little one that's figured it out. But we also let him get a little territorial with that. So he's not like overly aggressive, but he'll run them off if he thinks they're going to try to eat his food. So he protects it and whatnot, if he thinks he needs to and otherwise he thinks he's a sheep. But it's pretty funny, we'll throw a hay out there and he'll run up to the bales and stick his nose in there and act like he's eating it.

0:28:22 - Cal
Yeah so for my livestock guardian dogs. They'll go under something like you're talking about really good. But I saw a plan from osu for a four by four portable pen that had an opening I guess about two foot up in the air. They go over in the in and so I had local ag chapter build me one and I thought this is the greatest thing. I love it. It's got a gate on the side. I've got a couple feeders in there. My two dogs refuse to go up and over that so right now I have it outside the sheep pen in my almost my yard in my driveway with the gate open. So they'll go in there and eat and I'm like I know you all will do this. I've locked them in there. I've seen them go through gates up high. I know they know how to do it but they are refusing thus far it's funny how dogs will be like that.

0:29:18 - Will
They'll get set in their ways and they're like no, I'm not doing that yeah, and I think it'd be the same with anything. I think once they figure out a system, that's the way for most of them. But like I said, if I think, if you get them as puppies and you can kind of train, you know, still learn everything, then they more adaptable.

0:29:35 - Cal
Oh, yeah, I think you're probably right. I've closed the gate on it and thought they will go in there when they get hungry and I end up feeling bad and opening it before they. They do it. Yeah, I went on that tangent with that. We were talking about the netting in those colorado mountain dogs which I'm not familiar or wasn't familiar with. One thing you've started this year is your prescribed grazing. How is that going for you? How are you marketing that and getting that out to people so they know, yeah, it came when we started leasing some of these small properties.

0:30:13 - Will
The idea came to me because there's a few people that do it with goats in this area. Oh yeah, it's a growing thing in this area, but a lot of people know we see people out there either doing their own lawn five acre lawn or they hire it out a lot of the time and you'll see people out there with their tractors and stuff on property.

Property and a lot of it is where we're at. It's just a lot of people from the city move out here and they get the land and then they don't realize right away that they probably need to do something with it. A lot of them don't want the animals, but they really like having the animals there.

They don't want to be a responsibility of them, though what we've learned is a lot of people just love having animals there.

That's ultimately what it is, and then I get a chance to talk to them about it and say, hey, these are the benefits of what we're doing, and it's actually slowly build up your pasture and actually improve it, and especially knowing more of the history of this, and be like this was a cattle ranch or whatever, that at one point was pretty heavily overgrazed just because of our fragile environment and I can point out the indicators of that and becomes an educational thing too, and a lot of people, oh yeah, they really like that. And then I start getting a lot of word of mouth, so I'll get into a neighborhood and one person will do it, and then, all of a sudden, I'll have three more coming up to me and be like, oh yeah, bring them over here now. But and then and then, if I, if I'm looking for more, usually there's a couple local facebook groups or next door, that's usually adequate oh yeah, to put it out there because I'm not looking to go very far.

I want to keep them right within a five or ten mile range of our farm, just for the ease of it, because we do lease land.

My furthest property that I lease right now is an emergency backup property is how I view it Just to have more in case of a drought. But that one's a good 45 minutes away from us and obviously that's not convenient to use, but we have that as well. But I try to keep them in within a hub is what I call them. I got an area around us that I try to keep properties that I can run and then, close to my family's property, I'm starting to develop one there of larger properties.

But same thing it's a lot of people that get the land and they don't do anything with it and then they like what they see and so it makes it really convenient where you can just move each group in these separate areas and they're not close enough that I have to worry about them detecting each other and the rams getting out and all that, oh yeah, and that works out really well.

0:32:32 - Cal
Now, in this prescribed grazing, are you doing it free of charge? Are you paying some for the grass, or are they paying you to maintain the grass, or is it just a service?

0:32:44 - Will
So it's a mix. We started doing it for free in these, like I said, those little hubs and those, generally speaking, are like. We have one area that's about it's probably 12 for 13 properties.

Now most of them are five acre properties, but we got a couple of larger ones as well and I can literally just walk on property to property, so I don't mind picking up another property over there for free, just because there's more land and then, if I, especially the slightly larger ones, I can start talking to them about longer term leases, which is something I need to boost more, because a lot of these are just year to year and those are simple, very simple leases.

I come in, I graze, I leave, and then I reach out to them the next year and, hey, I'm looking at this these months, you good, if I come by and most of them are like, yeah, absolutely. And then the longer term leases, I can usually start looking at inercius grants and stuff, and especially for, like, forestry management and stuff and a lot of people are into that, because fire mitigation is extremely expensive around here it's a good way to bridge that and extremely expensive around here. That's a good way to bridge that. And I have this unique ability of having the firefighter knowledge and then the farming knowledge and put those together in a way that really complement each other.

0:33:50 - Cal
Yeah, as you're talking about that, I'm thinking yeah, and you're a firefighter, you have more knowledge in this area.

0:33:56 - Will
So I'm able to not just throw the regurgitated things that we tell people from the firefighter side of this is the spacing, and this is why I'm able to actually come from an ecological standpoint now and be like, oh yeah, hey, this is why you want these trees spaced out. They used to be more of that savannah environment where you had a lot of forest and meadow kind of combo. And especially, I was lucky enough to find some settler journal accounts of what they found when they came here and they described this area as park-like. They had five-foot diameter trees, which I haven't found one that's more than three feet in diameter yet. So I can point this out and be like this was the spacing.

This is why nature had that spacing before we came in and messed it all up and I don't blame anyone for messing it up because we didn't know better at the time. But now that we have a lot more of that knowledge and understanding, we can utilize that and try to put things back in balance and people really appreciate that mindset going into it versus just looking at it only as a job or like a lot of fire mitigation companies have people resonate with that? Well, I think learning, learning that context for anyone of what's natural and being able to talk to people about that makes a big difference.

0:35:10 - Cal
Oh, I agree, I think you're on to something there.

0:35:13 - Will
But to answer the other part of that, I just realized I went on a tangent. We did start charging people in areas that aren't connected to that as well and around here I started basing it off of what people were charging to mow per acre around $55 to $65 an acre is what I started charging and most people like that too and, like I said, they get the benefit. It's longer but they get the benefit of having the animals there and not having to take care of them and to them. A lot of people just enjoy that being in the country.

0:35:47 - Cal
They don't want the animals themselves. Yeah, now do you find on those properties where they're paying for the service and you go in and graze it and then pull the sheep off? Is that manicured enough for the landowner and they're happy with that, or do do some of them want even you to go in mechanically, straighten it all up or anything?

0:36:05 - Will
so far, because that part is fairly new for our operation, so I haven't run into a lot of people that are really looking for that mode. Look oh good, I do explain it really clearly in the beginning is hey, running the sheep here does not have the same look, it's gonna look a little messier, that's normal. I can push them a little harder if they want, but I usually have to. The caveat look, it's gonna look a little messier, that's normal. I can push them a little harder if they want, but I usually have to. The caveat is that's gonna. I have to charge a little more because I have to bring in hay to do that now what?

I've been able to do with one property so far that this is one that we've is in that area that I just do it for free anyway where they had a it's a new build and they had their leach field needing some assistance in the grass regrowing. So I was like what we can do is, if you want to buy the hay, next time I bring them through here, we'll put all that hay down and it'll build up a nice cover on top of that while it's still trying to reestablish.

0:36:55 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:36:55 - Will
That should help it, and a lot of people like that idea as well. Something like that idea as well, something I'm going to look more into as well. But if they got areas they want manicured, that's going to be probably the best way I can approach it, and if they don't want that, then either they can go back and clean it up after or it's just not going to be a good fit at the end of the day and that's really where I lean.

0:37:15 - Cal
If they're wanting that manicured, look, it's probably not a good fit, because you're doing something much more ecologically sound and they're getting the benefit of the fertilizer being left by the sheep and they're getting the enjoyment of seeing the sheep out there. So there's some definite positives out there. And when they thinking about it and if you explain it, I'm thinking they'll they're either going to be like I don't want all that, so I need it mowed. Or they're going to be like oh yeah, don't want all that, so I need it mowed. Or they're going to be like oh yeah, that is fine, I'm helping, I'm leaving the land in better condition and they're willing to deal with. That is my assumption.

0:37:51 - Will
Yeah, that's essentially the whole mindset behind what I do.

0:37:55 - Cal
And.

0:37:55 - Will
I don't take it personal and I'm pretty friendly with people. I throw that ball in their court and I let them make that decision. And I let throw that in that ball in their court and let them make that decision and I let them know. I'm like, if that's not what you want, then I would look at mowing.

That's what some people do want, and there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone can choose to do what they want with their property, but I'm just another option that they can choose from. At the end of the day, and that's what I try to explain to people, and people are very receptive to that, even if if they aren't into the look that maybe the sheep will have afterwards, right?

0:38:23 - Cal
yeah, Now how are you marketing your sheep?

0:38:28 - Will
So when we sell them for mate, I do it all direct to a consumer and it has only been through like Facebook and Nextdoor, and I have had no issue selling out every single time, and usually we do it through a state inspected processor, so it's usually a whole land.

0:38:46 - Cal
I used to do.

0:38:47 - Will
When I first started I was doing the USDA by the cut thing and the amount of work. That was just not justifying it for my time of what.

I had available, so we started doing the, especially after COVID when everyone booked up so much. The processor that we were using is about three hours away and I loved the cuts they did. They've been the best processor I've ever used. For the aesthetics of what we got back as a product, oh yeah. But they were to the point where they were booking out over two years in advance and they're like you got to book these spots. I'm like this is like a season before the season. I'm going to have the lambs.

0:39:23 - Cal
That's not going to work.

0:39:25 - Will
At that point I started really considering what's going to work, and there's a bunch of state inspected options we have locally. Plus we just found one that will actually potentially even come out to our farm and do the slaughter part here, which I really like because I'm trying to always close those loops and recycle as much as we can.

That's a big part of our job is bringing in waste, waste products that the community doesn't use, but I can use for sure. So we end up bringing in all sorts of stuff. We we do a pumpkin drive in the fall where we recycle jack-o'-lanterns and pumpkins that people would throw away.

We do leaves. We have a neighbor that brings us all their grass clippings from their lawn care business. We have a few people that bring all their horse and cow manure to here for us to compost. So that's been always a big goal of mine is to recycle as much as we can out of the landfill waste streams and be able to use those as resources, and so one of those has been trying to close the loop on the butcher side as well, you know, because to date we haven't been able to get a good system where we can save the hides. You know, that's something I'd like to get into doing is finding a way to save those and tan them. Um, I have a uh my sister-in-law. She's big into doing the carry-on beetles now for cleaning like skulls and stuff.

So I'm going to look at, maybe even if we can do it on farm, maybe even saving the skulls and seeing if we can't find a way to market those.

If we're doing it on farm, I can save the offal for our own dogs, if that would normally be a waste product that most places won't save for you and then anything else that's not going to the landfill, we can put it right into our compost and bring that fertility right back onto our land. So at the end of the day, that's something I really want to pursue. More is doing that. But yeah, as of right now, we're just doing the direct-to-market consumers around us and we have the unfair advantage of being within about 70, an hour of about 70% of Colorado's population. So we're only about 30 to 45 minutes from most of Colorado Springs, an hour from downtown Denver and an hour and a half from Fort Collins, which is on the far north side of the state. So that's basically the core of Colorado's population center and we got a lot of clients that A, there's got a lot of clients that hey, there's not a lot of people that sell sheep and lamb around here?

so we do have some especially ethnic customers, though they really like the fact that we keep everyone intact and all that and whatnot. We have a few that'll actually we let it come out on farm and do their own butchering, even for the same reasons. Usually they're looking for a whole one for doing some kind of spit roast thing with their family and all that.

And that works out really well. And then we just have a lot of other people that they're looking for other options besides beef and pork and something that's maybe a little more eco-friendly so to speak?

0:42:16 - Cal
How are you getting the word out that you have sheep available?

0:42:20 - Will
We have our Facebook page, and that's usually the first place I do it, and then, like I said, I share that to local, various local groups that I know or people that are looking, and that's the bulk of them if I, if that isn't working for some reason, because we usually butcher about 10 at a time, so which is a pretty manageable number of them- oh yeah and then yeah, but if that's not working, then I can go next door, jump on there, and usually that does it.

That's something. It's going to be a learning curve as we continue to grow the farm though, because at some point that's gonna that market's like marketing techniques not gonna work out as well as it has. We're small enough. It does right now at some point I'll look at other options, maybe some of the barn, todoor or whatever options and stuff like that too, but we haven't gotten to the point where I need to worry about shipping it or anything like that.

0:43:06 - Cal
Yeah, very good, and you mentioned something a little bit earlier, will that we're going to circle back to about for our overgrazing section, and you were talking about bringing materials in composting, so we're going to dive deeper into that for our overgrazing section. So tell us a little bit more about your composting and what you're doing. Yeah, so on our home site.

0:43:30 - Will
Here I have an area that we produce probably close to 100 to 150 yards of compost a year and most of that is manure from we got here in our neighborhood we have some friends that have a horse rescue and they bring us all their horse manure.

And then we have a few other people that will bring their manure to us. But then we have, like I mentioned, the neighbor that brings us lawn clippings from his lawn care business and leaves and all sorts of stuff. We do the pumpkin recycling in the fall. We work on a very small scale with a local food bank that gives us all their waste produce and products that they can't give to people anymore, so we're able to utilize that. We try to use it as a food source first, obviously, because that's the most beneficial.

But anything that's not suitable for even the sheep, or when we had chickens, if we could give it to them, then that goes in there and so we are able to make this compost, that's. It's pretty rough as far as like it's not screened or anything like that, but we're using 100 of it for ourselves, and so what we'll do is after, especially after we graze through and we get that grass down a little bit, what I'll do is I'll go around and I'll spread that and our goal is somewhere around a half inch to an inch of compost on the soil and what we found, I.

So the way I learned I decided to do this was when, before we really got into the sheep, we were doing chickens a lot more and we were doing the syskovich chicken trackers and whatnot. And, oh yeah, I I had a stint of days at work where I wasn't able to move them. And I came home and was finally able to move them and I was panicking because it was a drought year and I'm looking at the ground that's just absolutely destroyed under these things and I was like I've got to do something. And we had some leftover compost from our garden area so I started moving a bunch over there and putting it down and a couple weeks later we got some relief with the rain finally, and that grass area under those chicken tractors grew better than anything in the pasture that hadn't been touched that year.

0:45:33 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:45:34 - Will
This was like in August and September. So for some of these like grasses that are supposedly don't come back after they're grazed down and whatnot seeing that was like really eye-opening to me, and so I started paying attention to those areas. And the next spring I noticed those areas started to grow a little earlier and the grass was way richer and greener than everything around it. And so I started doing that as a standard practice behind the shipping tractors. And then we got out of the chickens because processing was a real nightmare, and at that point we were starting to build more, grow a lot of our own compost here, and I was like what else could I do with it? And around that same time I was noticing that the garden we have, uh, that smooth brome grass that acts.

It's a spreading grass, so acts a lot like a mead of grass or whatever, and I was like that stuff's going crazy in my garden areas, much to my dismay, but I was thinking more about it. I'm like what if I did this to my pasture, though? It's loving that compost and mulch combo. So what I started doing first was just spreading compost in areas that we grazed, and we noticed a dramatic increase of biomass immediately after that. Oh yeah, as soon as we get a dramatic increase of biomass immediately, after that, oh yeah.

As soon as we get a nice soaking rain, essentially I'll notice the grass grow tremendously better than it ever has, since we own the property and we have areas that have been doing this for a few years now and it's a one-and-done treatment. I've got a lot of areas I'm still trying to treat, so I'll go through, I'll spread the compost and then we'll just let it regrow, and I usually, within a year I'll see two to three times the amount of forage growing on that area.

Most of that is simply because it's holding that moisture there. And so I got to thinking again, because we get a lot of wood chips brought to us from a local tree company as well, and to the point where I had, like this mountain of them, probably a few hundred yards. I was like the grass is loving the mulch in my garden, so what if I spread mulch on it? And what I started seeing was our, even our cool season grasses are just growing all year round now, non-stop. Oh yeah, and obviously part of that's because that the wood chips are cooling down the soil surface a little bit. It's not heating up as much, because that was one thing I noticed with compost is if it's bare on the soil a it's prone to erosion, especially with wind, until it gets really wet.

And it can settle into the grass, but also it gets really warm on the soil surface because it's black and you know that sun starts to warm it up, and so we started spreading about an inch of mulch on top. I didn't want to go any deeper than that, because at that point you start sending the grass back, but just a thin layer, enough to protect the compost, was the goal initially, and then I realized in those areas that even when we get copious amounts of rain, like we did last year, those areas still are growing dramatically better and richer and way taller than the other areas in our pasture.

so we've just made that into a standard practice now, where we make the compost and as soon as I have a stack ready to go, I'll spread it when it makes sense to, whether it's in the winter time or after we graze, and and then, well, what we do, and especially in the growing season, is I'll spread the compost, I'll let it sit for a while, let the grass regrow through it, so we're not just totally stifling it.

0:48:51 - Cal
And then after it grows a few inches.

0:48:53 - Will
I'll come back through with the mulch and I'll put that on top of that. Basically, it's a mix of infusing a ton of carbon into the soil system, which obviously is hugely beneficial to the soil, and all the microbes and fungi and everything there, but it's really locking into that precipitation that we get and just holding it there. And that's really the big goal here, because that's our limiting factor by several factors.

0:49:20 - Cal
So yeah, above anything else.

0:49:24 - Will
It's a naturally low nitrogen environment, so we don't need a lot of nitrogen. Obviously, the compost, as it breaks down further, it'll provide some of that and release some of the nitrogen that's bound up in it. But we don't need to worry about fertilizers or any of that anyway, because it's just. Everything grows well without it. But water is such a limiting resource here on growth and but that was really the big goal and it. What I'm noticing now too is in dry years these still grow.

They might not grow as well as they do in wet years, obviously, but oh, we're seeing that resiliency to drought that really wanted to have, especially having those experiences as a kid, watching my parents is ranch, just fall apart once we got hit with a bad drought. Ultimately, my goal is just to capture as much of that precipitation as we can, because where we're at we don't have irrigation. Water around here is a real tricky thing. Especially Colorado has some crazy water laws in general, oh yeah, like you're limited on how much water you can capture off your rooftop and what your well can be used for, and commercial wells are hard to get around here anyway. And then there's just no surface water irrigation at all. We're at the head of both the Platte and Arkansas River watersheds, oh yeah. So there's just we don't have surface water here. Everything's tiny little creeks and stuff and they're not really anything substantial.

0:50:41 - Cal
So there's we have to work with what's falling from the sky pretty much exclusively, yeah, and so capture as much as possible.

0:50:50 - Will
Exactly this is a good way to capture that and hold it there, and we're noticing a difference now, after doing it for about three, four years so you're getting this, the different items brought in.

0:51:00 - Cal
How long are you composting it before you spread it out on your pastures?

0:51:04 - Will
Largely depends on my time. So the way we mix it and turn it is I have a tractor that's about 47 horsepower and I just bucket spread it. I don't have one row machine or anything like that. So every time I turn a pile it takes me about an hour, hour and a half.

So I got to have enough time to be able to do that and if you know, if I'm getting overwhelmed at work or we got other projects, those piles might sit there a little longer than normal and obviously if you're not turning it more often, it just takes longer.

Usually it's anywhere from six months to a year and I have a very about three or four piles at any given point in various stages of decomposition, so to speak. But once I get to a point where I feel like the consistency is getting pretty close and we're not, I'll turn it one last time, put it off to the side somewhere and I'll let it sit for two or three months and just let it mellow out for a bit, oh, and then at that point we'll spread it out and since we don't have any way to screen it, typically I gotta go back through and after we spread it and look for any little bits of debris and trash that might have slipped through. Usually it's in the form of like twine or something from the oh yeah but every so often too, because we will compost anything.

So if I have a mortality or something we'll throw those in there. I've had somebody local that brought us a dead young elk. They got stuck in their fence and tangled up and died we threw that in there.

If people don't want predator issues with deer and stuff after they find a dead one, they'll bring them, you know so every so often I'll find like a leg bone or something, and I'll pick those up and throw them back in whenever active pile, like I have, and compost them more. But um you know, since it's going on our pasture, it it could be pretty rough too, and it's fine. And there'll be little chunks of wood and stuff and at the end of the day that's not a big deal right.

0:52:47 - Cal
Yeah. Well, it's been a great conversation thus far, but it's time for us to transition to our famous four questions, sponsored by kin cove farm fence. Kin cove farm fence is a proud supporter of the grazing grass podcasts and grazers everywhere. At Ken Cove Farm Fence, they believe there is true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow proper management and monitoring can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant.

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0:54:19 - Will
I could go so many ways with that one. I've read so many books from a whole bunch of people. Honestly, I'd say I actually have two right now. One of them is Gabe Brown's Dirt Soil. Yeah, I really like that. Part of that's because his environmental context is similar to us. He's further north but he's a lower elevation and they get a very similar amount of rain to what we have.

0:54:41 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:54:41 - Will
The snowfall is fairly similar. I think they get a little more than we do.

But, context-wise, out of everyone that's doing regenerative agriculture, that's probably the one that I've resonated most with, because it's so close to our context, whereas I love a lot of the other ones from like Greg Judy and Joel Salatin and all that, but they're such a different climate to us oh, they are that I have to really take it with a grain of salt and figure out okay, what can I utilize from that knowledge and what do I need to tweak to make sense here? Because if you get 40 or more inches of rain versus our 15 to 18, there's going to be some differences that I have to do no matter what. But that's one. And then the other one I just finished reading, or I guess I finished listening to the Audible, but it was the one from White Oak Pastures.

0:55:30 - Cal
Oh, yes, yeah with Will.

0:55:32 - Will
Harrison Bold Return to Giving a Damn, and I just really enjoyed that one, especially because the audible version is him. He's the one that reads it. I really enjoyed that one and listened to more of their story as well.

0:55:45 - Cal
Excellent selections there. I've got Will Harris' book here and someone told me that I think it was on the podcast. They told me that Will Harris read that for the audio version which I keep planning on. It's on my list, but I'm going through some other audio books first. I love it on audio books when the author reads.

0:56:05 - Will
Oh, absolutely. I think that needs to happen more.

0:56:08 - Cal
Yeah, it just brings so much to it. Yes, I fully agree Excellent resources. There Will Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm?

0:56:20 - Will
I so. I know a lot of people are like don't put money into machinery and metal, but the tractor that we have has been a lifesaver for me in so many ways. The you know little backstory, so my dad passed away earlier this year, but I've watched my whole life him work hard and break his body down.

And that was something that's always been important to me is taking better care of myself after watching him have issues with that, and that tractor to me was an investment in my health more than anything, protecting my back and making sure that I'm not broken down in in my fifties and 60s. So having that has been so useful in so many ways, and not just agriculture, because ours is pretty small. It's not necessarily big enough for a lot of agricultural applications, it's more of a subcompact tractor. But I can use that thing in a lot of ways and get it in places where I need a little more muscle and stuff and do all sorts of things with it that would otherwise require a lot of back-breaking stuff. And we have a saying in the fire service smarter, not harder. So I've used that as my version of that on the farm. That thing makes everything a little simpler. It does get me into trouble more because it makes me want to do more projects, though.

0:57:32 - Cal
So I have to bounce that out a bit. Yeah, I totally get that. Yeah, and I have to agree that's a great way to look at that expenditure, that it's helping your health, because, yeah, without the tractor or if I don't have access to the tractor for some reason, I end up doing something a little bit more dumb than I probably should. Oh, absolutely.

0:57:59 - Will
It's so easy to get into a situation where you're like, oh, I can do that myself. And then you get into it and you're like that was really stupid.

0:58:07 - Cal
Oh yeah, I sometimes forget I'm not 20. Our third question Will, what would you tell someone just getting started?

0:58:16 - Will
So I thought about this and there's a couple of them I wanted I was thinking about but I hit on. One of them was taking care of yourself and well, yeah, take it forward right. Because, especially when we're younger, like we all think we can conquer the world like we do, we're like we can do everything. I could raise chickens and sheep and cows and have a huge garden and sell it all by myself, like we all have that grand plan. And then we realized that no, that's not practical at all.

And you run yourself into the ground and you know, thinking about your mental health and all that and being ambitious, but also thinking of what's realistic and what I think is really important. And I think it's fine to try things on small scales. That's what a lot of what I do on our farm is. I'll try something on something that only takes me a day to do, or it takes very little of my time, and I'll see what happens. And if it works out really well, then I might expand on that and if it's not giving me the result I liked, maybe I tweak it or maybe I go. Okay, that's not going to work.

And I think keeping those little projects little at first until you can learn from them and see how can you expand on. That is really important because I see a lot of people, especially around us, where they'll start up a farm. They'll go just full out, go big or go home and then they burn themselves out so fast, oh yeah, within a few seasons, and then they're not farming anymore and that's not helping them and their desires to do it. It takes the fun out of it. It's not helping the local community by having something grown there locally and potentially a really healthy way for people in the environment, and it just doesn't do any good in the long run if you know, if you're burning yourself out for your family, either one. So I think having just playing around with stuff and not being afraid to experiment, but keeping those little experiments small to begin with and taking your time into learning what's working there because that's ultimately what we're all trying to figure out is what is our context?

what makes sense here with my land and my lifestyle and everything else, and, uh, that's the big reason why I've been fortunate to have my full-time job as well as doing this is it's allowed me to do that but play around with things and really have a lot of fun doing it. And that's been it basically has turned this into not just what I want to end up doing eventually full-time, but also it's my therapy in too, because I have a lot of fun doing it.

1:00:39 - Cal
Yeah, excellent advice there. And physical and mental health is so important. Yeah, when I was working off the farm come in A lot of times my wife wanted me to go visit the cows before I came into the house very long so I could decompress. Cows were wonderful for that. But that mental health and the thing that I've added lately I'm not very good about it, but I'm getting a lot better. Maybe I'm just lazy.

It's just I try not to do something every day of the week. I try and pick a day on the weekend and just do what I have to. I try and pick a day on the weekend and just do what I have to. I may have to go move cows, or, like last weekend we had a holiday, all the family got together, so I gave the cows two days worth so I didn't even have to mess with them that day. The sheep were the same way. They had two days, so I could just focus on family and not worry about everything. And my wife's always on me to. You don't have to go do stuff all the time. And I think that gets into what you're talking about with your physical and mental health.

1:01:49 - Will
Yeah, it's so very important and I know to build on that whenever we always try to have some family vacations, some of them are set Like we're here soon I'm going to have my sister's wedding and whatnot. We had one last year for my other sister and trying to make time for those is obviously difficult, always with the way you have a rancher and being okay with hey planning that out instead of doing the daily. Or for us, like I said, it's about every three days moves and stuff and being diehard on that.

Maybe you do open it up and say hey, I'm going to give them this huge, massive pasture for two weeks because I need a break or I want to set time for a vacation or whatnot, and it's okay to have a neighbor or somebody, come in and take care of them for you. If you need to Give yourself some time to take a break, give yourself that vacation, whether it's at home or somewhere else.

1:02:37 - Cal
Yeah, I completely agree and Will. Lastly, where can others find out more about you?

1:02:44 - Will
Yeah, we don't have a website yet. That's on my ever-growing to-do list for this year. But our primary place is on Facebook. That's the Vogel Homestead. We also have a TikTok, but I don't really do much on there as well under the same name. But yeah, vogel Homestead on Facebook is our biggest thing and then on there I usually share a lot of what we're doing and I treat it like my blog. Obviously, a lot of times I'll go into some of the stuff we're doing and I'll go do a deep dive into it and explain it and show pictures and whatever I can Very good Will show pictures and whatever I can.

1:03:13 - Cal
Very good Will. We appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today.

1:03:17 - Will
Absolutely.

1:03:18 - Cal
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