Regenerative Ag Stories on the Grazing Grass Podcast

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NOTE: There were 3 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.

0:00:00 - Cal
Tyler and Justin, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.

0:00:06 - Tyler
Thanks for having us. I'm glad we could do this. Yeah, I put it off a little bit. We got really busy and glad we were finally able to pull this together.

0:00:16 - Cal
Yeah, farming cattle, livestock. It's like that At times you can't catch your tail and other times you may have a little bit more time. I find a lot of times I'm too busy and I don't get to everything, but that's me. To get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and your operation? You go ahead.

0:00:36 - Justin
Drew Stetson. Well, we're basically second generation. Our dad started it back in the early nineties. He's pretty much semi-retired now. Tyler and I run the everyday stuff. It's a pretty even split somewhat. I run the farming end of things mostly and Tyler oversees more of the livestock side of things. We come together and help on quite a bit of stuff though, of course, and discuss and talk about how we can make both of these things really integrate real well, but that's the day to day stuff. I'm run the farm inside of it and Tyler runs the livestock side of it.

0:01:17 - Tyler
Yeah, and, and. So now my second oldest son came back to the farm last spring.

0:01:24 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:01:24 - Tyler
The third generation's on the farm, and then he just had a little baby boy. So now the fourth generation's on the farm. So our grandfather started farming in the valley here, but he never was able to get a go of it on his own.

Twice he broke out on his own and natural disasters wiped him out, which is funny, because the one crop he lost was to a hailstorm and that's the only time we've had a hailstorm that came in at that time of the year and wiped crops out in the valley. So, wow, he tried it, but he just ended up being a farm waver in his whole life, and then my dad was able to get going on it.

0:02:05 - Cal
Yeah, very good. Not that this is about me, but I was talking to my dad the other day about my great-great-grandfather and he went into the Depression and the Dust Bowl years with 40 sections of land out in West Texas and he had a lot of stock in the market and he finished it with 10 sections and so he took a major hit and then he passed away and he had 10 kids. So everything gets divided up. You know how it works, but yeah, yeah, those 75% of the family farm.

0:02:43 - Justin
Yeah, yeah.

0:02:45 - Tyler
Wow, that's just. It's interesting you bring that up an old, the farmer that my grandpa ended up working for the most time of the years. I remember visiting with him a couple years ago and he was really young during the depression. Oh yes, but he said that this valley was never hurting because the irrigation never stopped and they grew a lot of spuds oh, they said they shipped spuds actually all over the world.

He said they were shipping spuds into france, helping to support the french resistance, and they sent back a special box car that was dedicated to the farmers of the valley. That used to be on display here.

0:03:25 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:03:26 - Tyler
But he said it was because of the irrigation. He said that the valley never stopped taking.

0:03:32 - Cal
Oh, interesting. And that brings up a great question when are you all located?

0:03:38 - Tyler
Yakima Valley. We're central Washington, yakima Valley. Yeah, south, central South central.

0:03:44 - Justin
Okay.

0:03:44 - Cal
Well, I was about to ask. I'm not familiar with Washington. I was going to say, is that East or West? But I know West is rough land over there. Not too much farming going on over there is my belief. Now I'm very I have not been to Washington.

0:04:02 - Justin
So so the Cascade mountains split the state in half. So you got the west side, which is evergreens and lots of rain. In Seattle, the west side is more of the coastal, and then you have us on the east side, which is more of a desert. Oh yes, we have an annual rainfall of about seven inches, seven and a half inches, right in there. Oh, yes, so without the irrigation project, this valley would dry up and blow away. There wouldn't be anything.

0:04:27 - Tyler
Actually it's actually annual precipitation.

0:04:29 - Justin
Yes, Right.

0:04:31 - Tyler
Annual precipitation A generation of snow and rain. Oh yes, and so it is funny, because we can drive about an hour and a half and there'll be 40 inches of rain. Oh wow, over there in Seattle there's one area that is actually what they call a protected rainforest. It's so much rain.

0:04:49 - Justin
Yeah, oh, yeah, I didn't know.

0:04:51 - Cal
That's very interesting. So you all mentioned your dad got started in the early 90s. Was he focused on the farming side?

0:05:02 - Tyler
Yes, yeah, yeah he was. We started with 18 acres of an old alfalfa field oh yeah and we picked up a pto pump. And was that an h, an old h tractor, that a hand crank on the front?

an old farm, all yes and and hand line out there and my brother and I we were out there changing this. Uh, it's just one 32 joint three inch aluminum hand line and that's the first summer. That's what we started with, and my grandpa he would, and that tractor was dual purpose, so it ran the pump and then we would unhook from it and hook up to the pipe trailer and then pick up the hand line to take it back to the beginning of the field and lay it out and my grandpa would drive that tractor while Justin and I loaded it and unloaded it, laid it up and irrigated across.

And so yeah, that's what we first started with.

0:05:50 - Justin
That first summer I didn't have a driver's license yet. I'm the older brother, I'm two and a half years older than Tyler, so grandpa would, would drive us out to the field and we changed the hand line. And then my dad also picked up some custom work a little bit of. We just had an old swather, a baler and a harrow bed and that's what he started with. Yeah, yeah, I don't, wouldn't be possible today. There's no way you would start anywhere farming like that now. 40 years ago, almost 40 years ago, you could do that still 35, 33 years.

0:06:23 - Cal
It's crazy when you start figuring how many years ago that was Now one thing that I think is interesting. So you both were back there working on your dad's farm helping him. I grew up on a dairy. I have two siblings and as soon as they could get away from the dairy, they took off running, and I don't think they've looked back yet. I left and came back, so I wasn't the smartest one. Or I don't think they've looked back yet. I left and came back, so I wasn't the smartest one, or I don't know. You can decide that. Why are you all there now? Did you all stay the whole time? Did you always know you wanted to be there?

0:06:58 - Tyler
No, we didn't. Justin left. I was still the summer, I was 15. He left and he worked some other places, and then I left right a couple months before I turned 18. I left and he came back. He was just gone.

0:07:16 - Justin
Two winters, two different winters yeah, probably about two years.

0:07:18 - Tyler
Yeah, and so I come back till I was one and then left again when I was 29 to work on some other ranches in in Montana for a couple of years too. So yeah, we've had stints outside of the farm.

0:07:34 - Justin
Not really much outside of agriculture, though.

0:07:38 - Cal
Well, that was my next question, justin, was it all in ag?

0:07:40 - Tyler
Yeah, Now, now I spent a few years off and on in welding shops, fabricating shops, machine shops, running some manual lathe manual mills for a couple years, um, and then when I was in montana, in mile city montana, I worked the winter there in a farm weld shop too. Oh yeah, a lot of well fabricating stuff like that. Yeah, but it ends up correlating.

0:08:07 - Cal
Justin, good job on getting Tyler get that welding experience.

0:08:10 - Justin
That means he has the welding to fix stuff, absolutely. Yeah, I can make two pieces of metal stick together, but that's about as far as I would call it.

0:08:21 - Cal
Well, that's, that's about my ability. I can stick them together and I guarantee it. When it breaks, I'll weld it again. So when did y'all were farming? Y'all came home, had the farm expanded at that time, so there was room for you all.

0:08:36 - Justin
I think it was in the process of expanding. Um, yeah, it was. When I moved by, the Harry's place was first. I was a tier, uncle Edwin was working here and Uncle Ben we had two uncles working here.

0:08:52 - Tyler
Well, it's hard to nail all that down because my dad is a visionary. Oh yes, Always looking at it.

0:09:00 - Justin
Yeah.

0:09:00 - Tyler
Whether it's plausible or not. At times we've passed up on some deals that we probably shouldn't have, took some deals that we didn't know.

0:09:08 - Justin
Maybe you know, we're still floating.

0:09:11 - Tyler
Thanks be to the Lord. But so there's always been different types of expansion. Like we just expanded the sheet block Um, so we're up to 800 years right now. So there's always some form of expanding, whether it's looking into different crops, different rotations, livestock endeavors. We did some of those wonderful pastured hogs one summer.

I thought I would listen to the advice of all these great regenerative guys that are diehard no-tillers. Boy, we don't till that soil. Anybody who does, they're a demon. But they run pigs, so that shouldn't be a big deal, right? They run a bunch of pasture pigs. Well, man, oh man, they can till up faster than a big John Deere tractor in a plow. Always, oh, that were crazy Good eating.

0:10:01 - Justin
Oh yeah.

0:10:01 - Tyler
That might not be the expansion we want right now.

0:10:08 - Cal
Right, eating, but oh yeah, not be the expansion we want right now, right? Yeah, I've said this for years on the podcast. I keep thinking I'm gonna get a few hogs just to play with it, see how it is, but just keep thinking that just keep thinking that and keep it there yeah, you know we're funny, though.

0:10:18 - Tyler
my kid, all of my kids, have been heavily integrated, whether they wanted to or not. Oh yeah, right, all the animals. We've had miniature goats and sheep and chicken and guineas, and ducks and swans, whatever, and they come and go, the pigs have been their favorite.

0:10:34 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:10:35 - Tyler
They're so funny. They have such a cute little personality. I hate saying that, but they do. They love to be scratched. Oh yeah, they come running over and they're like in your business. They have a very interesting character about those pigs man. They are a hoot. And then they start running your guard dogs off from their dog food and you hear the squalling going on out there and they figure out where the dog food is. They are entertaining.

0:11:03 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, for me, the, the goats. I love the personality of goats and having them. I've just got a handful because I need to figure out how to make more money with them, but yeah, I love the goat's personality. Yeah, when did you all, or when did your dad add livestock to the operation Dingy?

0:11:23 - Justin
man, that's a good question.

0:11:27 - Tyler
I remember the cows we. He bought those cows from. Was it from Dale Meshke? Dale Meshke, yep.

0:11:32 - Justin
So one of the farms. It's actually where we first started farming, where we expanded, where we expanded Our first expansion. I was 17 when we started on the Yellow House. That was the first farm that we actually 200 and some acres. An older gentleman was retiring and when we started farming his ground I think he kept the cows for maybe another year or two and then we bought his cows. It was I don't know 40, 40 cows or something. Back in the day up here in our valley all the farmers had cows. Oh yeah, if you farmed you had cattle. If you drive around this valley, everywhere you see old little feedlots, old corrals, and I mean they're everywhere. You find, yeah, little feedlots of cow. Guy would have 40, 50 cows, 100 cows, 150. And they'd have a little silage and we'd put up hay and that was just the thing Harvest the corn, put the cows on the corn stalks. But yeah, time went on and I think I don't know the different types of farming. That kind of went by the wayside.

0:12:38 - Tyler
But we didn't have as much residue left over. The sugar beets were huge in this valley. At one time there was over 10,000, was it 10,000 to 14,000? Sheep wintered in this valley too. Superior Farms had a big kill plant right here, 20 miles from our house, and then north of us. They had one about 40 miles north of us.

0:13:00 - Justin
Up there on Ellsberg.

0:13:02 - Tyler
But the beets and our winters are generally mild. Oh yeah, compared to all around us, you can winter out pretty carefully. We could graze hands down, without a doubt, year round in this valley through the snow whatever. Every now and then you'll run into a hiccup. The problem is when you're dealing with irrigated ground.

0:13:21 - Cal
It's expensive, and you're trying to pull a cash crop and a cash value out of it while still grazing it some, and so you're constantly just running into that whole dynamic yeah, yeah, we're going, just as a precursor for our listeners, we're going to dive more into that grazing and irrigation I can't think of the right word, but that balance there more in the over-grazing section, just a little bit. So your dad had or actually the whole area really had more livestock long time ago. You all kept up with the cattle. What are you all running now for cattle?

0:14:00 - Tyler
Well, we should actually probably go back a little bit, because when dad bought those first.

0:14:04 - Justin
Oh, okay yeah.

0:14:05 - Tyler
Dad. Okay, Dad, he started spending more time down at the sale yard. Oh yeah, my dad has a serious bug for auctions.

0:14:14 - Justin
Oh man, oh man.

0:14:15 - Cal
Does he love bargains?

0:14:18 - Justin
What he thinks are bargains. Well, let's clarify what a bargain is. There's times he gets bargains and other times he brings hold a bargain someone that may be similar to him.

0:14:30 - Cal
We sold out the dairy, and dad loves auctions and the stuff he would bring in and he'd be like well, in fact it's still a few years ago we did stockers, just a handful. We'd never done stock before, so we were going to do it. And of course dad wants to buy them. So he goes up there and he says he buys this keff, that it's black with a little white on it, so it's crossed up a little bit, but it had no ears and he paid I don't know 20 cents for it. We put it out there and it actually does pretty good. And we bought heifers because we hadn't done stalkers before and we wanted a second out. We could breed them and sell them as bread.

And we got to the point we decided it was time to sell those. Well, we didn't want to sell her with the group because we thought they'd just pull her off and knock her so hard.

So we kept her and then along that time of course she got bred and I was expanding my herd. So dad convinced me a buyer and as I think back, I didn't get much of a break on that heifer's price. I still have her in my herd and actually she does a great job, but that bargain actually worked out. But we've got plenty of other stories that they didn't.

0:15:50 - Tyler
Those are the ones they always remember. But my dad, so one of his feels were when we were putting up a lot of hay and we're stacking hay bottom bales, top bales and then we would cover the top stacks with little two string straw bales. So you have all this straw bales that we would throw off, and then if it damaged the top layer and the bottom layer of the little bale, the dairy didn't want it. So you would buy these broken mouth cows and feed up this hay. And so you're feeding them all this borderline moldy hay. Yes, this hay, yeah, and so you're feeding them all this borderline moldy hay. And and I look back now and I just remember running around all and you'd start calving in january, yeah, so it's a mud hole here yeah, I'm looking around, I think back, like it was just a norm.

I just accepted as a fact like, hey, calving time, scouring time, yeah, hey, doesn't everybody have an old cow that prolapses? Oh yeah, I thought this is a normal thing to grow up with. And when I left and worked off some other ranches and I realized no, there was a word called culling and they cull and sell them at the sale yard and guys like my dad buy them.

0:16:59 - Cal
Yeah, yeah, so they can find out what problems there. Yeah.

0:17:02 - Justin
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe they try to ignore you.

0:17:05 - Tyler
Yeah, it worked in a way, though I kept complaining Well, what else are you going to do when there's 16, 17, 18 year old kid? Yeah, keeping busy.

0:17:15 - Justin
Yeah, actually also, I just remembered that we really started in the cattle business Dale Holstein bull calves.

0:17:26 - Cal
Oh man.

0:17:29 - Justin
We raised a bunch of them. They weren't huge in it. We had probably 40 or 50 at a time.

0:17:33 - Cal
That's enough to keep you busy yeah.

0:17:35 - Tyler
That's true. I forgot about that, yeah.

0:17:37 - Justin
Getting all those from wheelers and my mom from Jay and my mom, she was a workhorse man.

0:17:43 - Tyler
Oh, she is.

0:17:44 - Justin
North Dakota farm girl. She grew up. You just did it. Whatever it was, you just went out and did it, yep. Yep, absolutely.

0:17:51 - Cal
No, Cal, you're going to get a lot more reminiscing here than actually what we're doing, but I think it's great, just as I think about. We had a dairy, so we always had calves and then I bottle fed calves but hosting steers, that's what I grew up on, that's what we ate all the time, and those bargaining cows. I can remember I'd come in from work I was working off the farm at the time I'd come into the crell see what dad bought that day. So because I needed to ear notch them and tag them and get them ready, Yep, yeah, yeah, we did bummer lambs at one point too, when we were way back when 13, 12, 13.

0:18:25 - Justin
Yeah, we had a bunch of little bummer lambs, bottlestead lambs and raised them up too.

0:18:31 - Tyler
Got that one big suffix man. Oh, he was mean. Yeah, oh man don't turn an eye away from him. He whoop you.

0:18:40 - Cal
Have you always ran multiple species or dabbled in different species?

0:18:47 - Justin
Not really. No, sheep and cattle are pretty much it, but we haven't, definitely have not run them at the same time a lot. It's just recently that we've been doing it quite a bit Because we were into the sheep. I was telling you about raising the bummer lambs. That didn't last very long, just two like two summers about two summers we had an old neighbor, Bella, that was about retired.

He still had a small band of sheep and we'd help him and run our sheep with him through the winter and then he passed away and that, I think, that kind of ended. I think that at that point is when we started raising bottle calves and they got into the cow thing and that, like moved, yeah, so we and we didn't start doing sheep again. Until when did you buy sheep? When did you start that?

0:19:34 - Tyler
seven years ago. No, it was sin. I went down. Well, I bought three, about three, and set a triplet black cotton land.

0:19:45 - Cal
Oh yes.

0:19:46 - Tyler
And only one ended up surviving out of the deal and I'm not sure why that didn't give me a warning. But from there then I started building it and I got about 540 ewes. Then it peaked the prices and it's like you know what. I could cull way down to about 230, 250 and pay off all the note. So I culled, sold them all, put them in chunks and the views were hot and that was October, november, december in those areas Just really did it, paid them all off. They were free and clear, and then I was doing that on the side-ish Everything.

We just got to talk and all of us. You can't do stuff on the side anymore. In a way. You want your business to flourish and to really come together right, and you've got to bring everything under the same umbrella. So I integrated my sheep into the farm and we just went through and started integrating things and figure you know what, we're going to make it float. We're going to make it float together or not. So now we're actually running the sheep and cattle together in different settings, like replacement heifers with the sheep.

And the next part, I believe where we're set up, we're probably going to run all the mother cows and all the main flock together and then run replacement ewes and replacement heifers together. I think we might end up doing oh yeah, we're sitting there about 330 mother cows, 800 ewes and then farming corn, wheat, barley beans, like not soybeans but like black beans.

0:21:28 - Justin
Edibles. You can't grow soybeans in our country. The weather is not conducive for it. They've tried several times, but soybeans just they don't grow up here.

0:21:36 - Cal
Huh, yeah, do you know why that is?

0:21:40 - Justin
I don't know if it's the humidity, but we don't have the humidity that they like in the Midwest.

0:21:44 - Tyler
Colder nights generally. Yep, oh yeah the humidity, but they we don't have the humidity that they like in the midwest, colder nights generally.

0:21:47 - Justin
Yeah, oh yeah, um, we had a neighbor just try it again here, I think last year a little five acre spot and it just, and I don't know if they could possibly develop being for this area, but there's not enough interest and not enough oh yeah yeah, and then where you have to go with it.

0:22:03 - Tyler
That's the one thing that we did with that part of it is tried to get cover crop. We played around a lot with no tilling and things like that and then find the crop that we can actually oh, you know, canola, the peas, any of these other things to get out of. Some of that rotations were in then you don't, where do you take it? Well, the, we don't have the locations that a market.

0:22:30 - Cal
Right, you've got to have a market for it, yeah.

0:22:33 - Justin
Yeah.

0:22:33 - Cal
Too far away.

0:22:36 - Tyler
Yeah.

0:22:36 - Cal
That's so with the cattle and the sheep. I've got this generic question I love to ask. You mentioned Katahdins while ago. Is that the breed you're continuing with sheep, or what are you doing there? What are you doing with cattle?

0:22:51 - Tyler
Both of them. We have been working on composites. Katahdin no, I don't care for the Katahdin as much. In a way there is some influence. So ours are going to have actually a bit texel and chevit in their background because being irrigated so so you're playing around with these false environments and so you go from will dry out really fast and then we can be really wet and trying not to graze when it's too wet, but there's not, you can't get around it half the time.

But feet feet are always an issue and so Texel and Chevitz have exceptional feet, really good feet, chevitz in hands down probably the best feet I have ever seen in any flock. So I had a foot rock, brought it in from that sail yard for just a lot of bunch of use from a guy that wanted dispersed to a sail yard, so I had to buy in that way. Well, I brought in foot rock and I probably ended up. I I've never dealt with it like that. So foot baths and all of this and I'm just doctoring. I probably doctored close to 70 of the sheep sheep that fall.

Oh yeah, and I'm sitting at about 340 ewes. I had 45 chevettes and I only doctored one out of all of them Only one oh yeah, borderline, and so they're really hardy. They have really good parasite resistance. Taxos are similar, and so I use that as some of our base.

0:24:24 - Justin
And leading.

0:24:24 - Tyler
But yeah they have a nice thick compact and so we use that as some of our base and leading. But yeah, they have a nice thick compact and we sell into that they're. They're a smaller, moderate friend sheet. So, they go into the ethnic markets really well. So crossing those with door, first have a little bit of white Royal influence um little white door brewery influence, Did that? Oh, actually one of our really nice crosses. I ran a Barbados ram on some of my Texel influenced Jews and I have a really nice set of ewe lambs out of that.

And I ran a ram lamb out of him, a couple of ram lambs but a section. So right now we've got a. We're going to be set up this winter with our replacement youth law for Rams. Really that's the one mostly, and then we'll have our commercial, more or less our commercial ones. But really trying to hone in feet to me Beat is one of the biggest things.

0:25:20 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:25:21 - Tyler
And of course parasites resisted that's not that hard to develop in our in a flaw. And of course parasites resisted that's not that hard to develop in our in a flaw. And with the fowls too, we've done a composite with our cattle.

0:25:31 - Cal
But before we jump to cattle, let's talk just a little bit more about your sheep. You're crossing textile in there, and I know you just said it.

0:25:38 - Tyler
Yes.

0:25:40 - Cal
So are you getting ewes that carry much wool, or are you able to breed that out you?

0:25:45 - Tyler
can breed that out pretty easily, especially depending on on how woolly they are. Some of them are really strong, bare pointed some of them, and that made a difference. I run a group of some different ram lambs, multiple times in the beginning, and so even the half bloods. I made a huge mistake at a really nice white dorper u that I'm set of twins. One was a ram lamb that was out shove it, and if mary had a nap of maybe a half inch wool across the back and that was it, I only ran in two years. I should have kept that guy till he died. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was an exceptional ram. He was everything you wanted. Really good you, but it just varies. I've got a couple half-blood chevette ewes out there that are six years old. I sheared them once when we were back here and I haven't sheared them since. They'll have about two inch nap across the body and that's it.

Oh, yeah, and so they're going to go into the replacement flock this year and I'm hoping to have probably about 60, 80 news that are strictly for replacement Rams, if they go and use those well, yeah, yeah.

0:26:57 - Cal
So you've mentioned replacement flock and your other flock, so you're using your replacement flock to raise your next generation?

0:27:04 - Tyler
Yes, Correct and theams are the things that is most important for me and where making sure you have a good round, because those things, oh man, you miss. You miss cutting one of those ram lambs by the time they're three months old, they've bred 70 years, it's well now I'm exaggerating.

0:27:23 - Cal
But not by much. I had accidental lambing this year. I had 50 head of ewes lamb, because I missed a ram lamb.

0:27:32 - Justin
It's crazy how fast, and I don't think we've had a spring yet, that we haven't had something pop up. Lambing in January, lambing in December. What's going on? That one guy, it's crazy. How prolific that one, oh, we, just that one guy. It's crazy how prolific those little turtles are. Oh, they are.

0:27:50 - Cal
I try and run them through the alley multiple times and I've got spray paint I'm marking them. Yeah, it's harder than you think it would be.

0:27:58 - Justin
Yeah, it's crazy, it is.

0:27:59 - Cal
I pulled in driveway. We kept five ram lambs. I pulled in driveway, I don't know, just a couple of days ago and there's only four out there.

I called dad, I'm like hey, we're missing a ram lamb. Well, we found him. He'd found the ewes. It's a pretty good fence. I still don't know where he got out and got out there, but we got him back where he's supposed to be, but it was on us. We're in a little bit of a drought right now and our water sources we're watering out of ponds. We have some troughs set up to water that's feeding out of a pond, but they've actually quit feeding because the pond's gotten so low and so we can only water in a few certain ponds. So I have way too many gates open and animals going too far. You know, I like to keep them in one pasture and let pasture rest. Right now I'm not doing a great job, so no one come visit my farm right now. But those ewes got across. They didn't get across. I opened the gate and let them across from the rams. That's my fault. I should never let them across one fence.

0:29:03 - Tyler
Yeah, drought, that's one of those topics. We went through one this summer. They put us on, we were put on a 30% cut. We were on six days of rotation and six days on three days off. Yeah, yeah, so 65% Yep. So it was a little bit challenging. It worked out Pretty good. We have good neighbors. Oh, yeah. We generally get away from them, yeah, but yeah, that's something that you can get around, even with irrigation sometimes. Yeah.

0:29:33 - Cal
Yeah, just one of those things mother nature likes to throw at us. See if we can make it through, yeah, so let's jump back to your cattle. What are you running with cattle and how are you doing that?

0:29:47 - Justin
Well, there we go here we go.

0:29:49 - Tyler
Yeah, when I left the farm we were running about 300 cows, 330 cows, 300 cows. When I left and I was 29, I moved out from off-hannon and Justin was really dealing with a lot of that and buying bulls and we were buying. We had actually a tad bit of the Simahangus.

0:30:11 - Justin
Oh yeah, I didn't know that, I didn't know that it didn't doubt on where we were.

0:30:19 - Tyler
The irrigated ground, suvied ground, a lot of flood irrigation in some of the areas too, or feet, oh yeah, so but most of our cows, like we were saying, my dad would buy and sell and trade and so the core of our calvert is coming from sale barn it's a trader, it's a trader. And so we didn't keep heifers. No, didn't keep heifers.

0:30:39 - Justin
Bought replacements from wherever.

0:30:41 - Tyler
The year or two I came back. I was 30, more on 32, something like that. That was 15 years ago and they had started retaining heifers and so, and then we built up. At one point we were at we had about 540 cows. That we built up really quick too. And I came back and you were talking about expanding. My dad saw oh this is right, you gotta have enough cows now. And so there's another guy working full-time with the cattle bent too, and so it was predominantly angus. We were running some corner. I don't love the charlotte bulls, oh yes, and I don't want to bash on anybody at all, but where we're at, just with what we're doing, pink eye, we are always dealing with eyes, and so any of those crosses man or you always knew you're gonna have one, one cow killer that came out of the big calf and it just but what we were doing.

We were going all back to just straight straight angus bulls oh, yeah, and then my brother has been really kind to allow my mind to always wander, but what happened was we lost a bunch of acreage, leased acreage. Within three months we had about 900 acres gone, 800 acres, and it was just chunk after chunk within like a three-month period, right before calving. So we ended up calving out like 500 cows and 80 acres and then pairing them out trying to find pasture we we had to figure out we had to do something different.

That's when we started converting our farm grant. Well, when you go into these areas that you no longer have eight bodies of water, big old shade trees, old barns, old lean twos for them to get out there in the heat, and we've hit triple digits for 14, 15 days in a row. I mean that's not unheard of for us here.

0:32:37 - Justin
Now that is a little extreme, but our summers are not At least upper 90s, mid-upper 90s?

0:32:41 - Tyler
Oh yeah, so you start moving these cows into this irrigated ground where no shade whatsoever, and you start seeing that angus are not conducive to your region at all yeah. Or how you're able to run them. So that's when I started, man, I was Barzones alcohol. I started doing all this research, trying to find how something that is going to be more heat, tolerant Bremen, nope, thank you.

And that's when I came across Jaime Elizondo. Oh yeah, I tell you, if you ever have a chance, he is one of the most enjoyable, nice, kind, humble guys I have ever had the pleasure of learning from getting to know. Spend time with Great guy, but the Michonas so the original guy that had him in New Mexico Weaver I got to visiting with him missed the sight of those cows by like a few months and we ended up bringing up a Mishona bull. After I went down to Texas I brought one up from Oklahoma from Hopping Brothers oh yeah, down the road from Hopping Brothers, oh yeah, down the road from me.

Yep, oh yeah, yep, aleyard guys right there, right, yeah, I see one. Yeah, and actually I got a Ram Lam from them too at the same time, oh yes. So that's where we started our influence and at first we thought we just wanted a quarter blood and we chased that around a little bit and, looking back, we should have gone a little more aggressive to a higher percentage oh yeah or more trying to find the animal that hides that influence enough right, yet still was very marketable.

And that's the trouble.

0:34:24 - Justin
Yeah, in the Northwest, especially up here, that anything was a little bit of ear or swiftness or anything like that gets beat up really badly.

0:34:33 - Tyler
Oh yeah.

0:34:33 - Justin
Where you get down in the Southern area that's pretty much of a norm.

0:34:37 - Tyler
Well, I think part of that too is now, the more I think about it is they automatically assume it has a Holstein Jersey influence because it is so prevalent up here to have that kind of a cross, so automatically it's got something or anything with horns automatically has Corriani.

0:34:56 - Justin
It's all rope and steers and a lot of the Mexicans up there, the Hispanic people, there's a lot of Corriani. So up here you're going to see, those are what people will assume it is. Yeah.

0:35:11 - Tyler
Yeah, but we have kind of cornered quite nicely, I think. Finally we've held some half blood bulls, quarter blood bulls. We have a lot of influence. We've rotated a few. We have one bull blood Michonne bull left right now. That is really exceptional, really nice bull or heifers. We didn't breed very many because we brought in some. We incorporated the rest of my dad's cows so we're like we don't really need to breed heifers, so we sold really the heart of them. We had 15 left and so it's like let's throw them out. The bull for 33 days and we had 95% breed up. Oh, very good, yeah, mouth and bowl for 33 days and we had 95% read up.

0:35:47 - Cal
Oh, very good yeah.

0:35:48 - Tyler
And all of those are. All of those are a percentage, michona. Oh yes, they definitely the the heat. They handle the heat above and beyond I. It is pretty impressive, even at corporate blood, their body condition. They've done well and then we sell. We've been selling direct now and expanding our that's our website is Caspian Sheet and Cattle Company and so we are selling direct sheep and lamb and beef, yep lamb and beef.

You find those, michellas dress out pretty good tender. They are tender, they have good marbling, they have a nice dark meat. We just butchered out three animals and they had them cut up and those guys. There's a lot of grass-fed people that are doing all sorts of different things around here and he's made the comment more than once that ours are finished. They're marbled.

0:36:39 - Cal
Those three are finished.

0:36:40 - Tyler
Yeah, and that's the hard thing to do is to get a good marbling and getting that good fat pocket on those tail heads and to notice that and see that and no, they marble out good and they do. They taste good, so does that air sheet. Oh man oh yeah, Absolutely yeah.

0:37:05 - Cal
Now you mentioned the marbling on the or the fat on the tail, head and stuff on a calf how do?

0:37:08 - Tyler
you know, your lambs are ready. Oh that it's. That's that it's a nice struggle with, so I hope you have an answer. No, it's a little difficult on some of them that have a little bit more of a wool net oh yeah I think a lot of that is.

I've been doing it long enough to where. Now I just wait for them to just get big enough. Oh yeah, they're just a size and I know they hit six to eight months old anywhere in there. Seven, eight months old they're pretty good because also the breed in there I know they're not too tall, so they're already stopped growing and they're just filling. And on some of those lambs, like they don't have a lot of wool on them and they're they got a nice shorter hair. You can see that when they walk you can see the sides of them back to their loin area. It starts to jiggle and move and I and I know they're getting a nice layer on.

0:38:01 - Cal
Oh yeah, you know, I have the same problem when I look at myself in the mirror. I hope I'm not finished yet. It's been great talking to you all, but we better go ahead and move on to the overgrazing section sponsored by Redmond. For the overgrazing section, let's dive a little bit more into grazing and irrigated property. So how are you all handling that? First, on your irrigation we talked a little bit about it, but what's your irrigation look like now?

0:38:33 - Justin
Well, most all of our irrigation is in some way sprinklers. It's either hand line wheel lines or actually any more of the vast majority of our irrigation is under pivot. Oh yeah, yeah, that's pivot irrigation, but we still have a little bit of flood irrigation, a couple of pastures that we've got gated pipe or dams and open ditches that kind of thing, but mostly the irrigation is done with pumps and pivot swivel line type thing.

0:39:01 - Cal
Oh yes, and what does? How does that? Well, maybe, before I ask that question, let's just talk about what grazing looks like on your irrigated land, because you're also farming too, so you're not grazing everything. There are certain times stuff's farmed, so let's just talk about how that looks for grazing and for your farming.

0:39:23 - Tyler
So some of that? Well, one thing also. So none of ours is none of our irrigation is well. Well, we have a little tiny bit. Everything is an open ditch and it's runoff, snow runoff from the mountains, the Cascade Mountains oh yes, it comes out of there, runs down through the river diversion.

0:39:40 - Justin
Big reservoirs.

0:39:41 - Tyler
Yeah, and then big reservoirs that they'll open up halfway through the year at different stages. So we're not pumping out of out of agriculture wells, no, yeah, which I don't know if it really mattered. I just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone listening. So, because it does change it, because with an iridescent value, you you're on your own schedule. Right, water comes in and then goes out your window of irrigation with the system we're on. And then, as for grazing practice, when we moved into this I had already got. What's funny is we were doing a rotational grazing originally and with our main herd of cows, which is just about 300, and we had a big flat, big giant flat, and I started cutting it up with electric fence. We move in. Almost all of it was flood irrigated down there.

So you would flood irrigate it, you would shut it off. Got to where we figured you need about five, seven days where you want about that much to dry up, make sure you dry up. Pretty good, you didn't walk them in your irrigation. It just says 300 cows will destroy. What irrigation?

0:40:47 - Cal
Oh, I imagine, so yeah.

0:40:50 - Tyler
And so we started cutting it up and figuring if I could have those cows in there five to eight-ish days, nine days, get it as much of it grazed as possible, and then move them on to the next one, then fire up the irrigation. So that was the rotation we were doing and at that time I didn't realize it was working really well. And the last summer we had all of that, the guy there was three of us that were incorporating it with other stuff, but two of us were really handling most of it and the grass was really good. And what I realized I'd be doing at the time not until years later was really a very strong, a total grazing principle. Oh yeah.

We took anything and very non-selected. And so the regrows that we'd always come back into was extremely, even extreme high leaf to stem ratio, lush grass, boom, you hit it and you move on. And then when we had to go in and convert our farm ground pivots and all of that, I thought, hey, I need to treat this better. And that's when we started getting into our rotational of like, be careful, take cap, boom, boom, half it did not work. Oh yes, it didn't work, and what you end up happening was more and more was like our plant spacings started getting a little bit bigger, your residue starts covering up growing points and the cows are eating more leaves. So you end up up with a little bit.

0:42:26 - Justin
You end up with more stem left over A lot more stem.

0:42:29 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:42:29 - Tyler
Whatever grass and if you don't-, or legumes yeah, it's a clover, you're not really generating as much photosynthesis as you'd like because you have a lot of stem. And so trying to figure out what's that happy and that good happy medium. You get a good graze, get a good return, get a proper rest, and that's when we started realizing we needed to incorporate, at least sometime in the year, a very total grazing. Take everything that we could, even everything back out, clear it up and expose anything we needed to growing points.

0:43:06 - Cal
Oh, wow.

0:43:07 - Tyler
And so that was one of the biggest shifts and changes. We plateaued really on what we were able to run per acre per acre on our irrigated ground and diminished a little bit until we got into that.

0:43:24 - Cal
So would you say you do non-selective or total grazing 75% of the time, 60% of the time?

0:43:33 - Tyler
Yeah, I would say 60 to 70, 60 to 70, depending on the year. There's quite a bit of our farm ground that we don't graze during the growing season. We'll graze it with crop residue or stock pile something. Oh yeah, you had rules, we'll stock pile some of that. Or the last two years we had gone in and got some winter triticale, winter rye like that, planted in the fall and up where we were able to do some grazing on it in the spring. Oh yeah, and then print the cash prop into that. Yeah.

0:44:09 - Cal
So does it end up that you're grazing every acre and farming some of it, or is there still some that's just farmed?

0:44:20 - Tyler
There's still some that is just farmed in a. In a way, it's like trying to get something incorporated into it over a couple of year periods. Some of them are more conducive because of the location of the water where we can use it in a growing season. There's a couple of our pieces that that's where we're doing the. We'll be planting hopefully some more winter triticale and winter rye really soon here, where then we can graze through that and then we'll end up disking that regrowth in and probably planting corn or or something.

0:44:55 - Justin
Yeah, honestly, though, I don't think there's any acreage that we farm that doesn't at some point have cattle across it oh, okay we're in a one year, even in in the year at least every other year, at least every

other year yeah, at least yeah, because, like you say, either some crop residue or a cover crop type setting that will graze on in the fall or early spring. But yeah, there's pretty much at one point about the only thing that we don't graze hard on, or at least every year would be, uh like a permanent alfalfa field. Oh okay, everything else we have is either going to be a residue that we can graze on or we'll plant something at some point that it'll probably get grazed through.

0:45:45 - Cal
Well, so, justin, I I think you mentioned earlier that a lot of the farms they mentioned earlier that, or at least somewhat, and now they're, and you guys are dive far. If you think about a farmer that's out there just growing crops, how would you approach them about introducing livestock, or should they introduce livestock?

0:46:08 - Justin
Yeah, I think everybody should introduce livestock. I think it's going to improve your soil health. It's going to it's another avenue for an income stream, whether as a farmer, you own the cattle or you have somebody bring the cattle in and you graze your residues or you plant something or allow them to plant something to graze in the spring. A lot of it is logistics. A big huge thing is water. It's access to water. That that is big, because the fencing deal is easy putting up a temporary fence and, yeah, we see it, we do it here in the Valley and we see it a lot. You see it around a lot that people put up temp fences all over.

There's a lot of corn stalks get grazed in this country. That is a pretty standard thing. Some farmers don't care for it because they talk about either. Compaction is a big thing and that is somewhat of an issue in our country just because of the winters that we have. If they're wet and mild, you're going to have a lot of pocking, a lot of, and I guess when I say pocking it's hugging the where they're yeah, so that that that is definitely just something that you deal with.

The other thing is, if you have enough cattle or at certain places, then a farmer says hey, you can have this piece, but you got 45 days. I need them out by first of december, or whatever.

You get your cattle in, get it grazed and get it off oh yeah, but yeah, I guess that's what I would say is that you can generally find somebody who's looking for some grazing. Even if you don't want to own the cattle, you can make money off of renting your residue or whatever off to somebody and still get the benefits of having an animal come across your ground and still have a revenue streams.

0:47:59 - Cal
Yeah, Excellent there. I'm not familiar with irrigated ground, we just don't have it in our area but I think it's akin to sheep, because I see all these beef cattle running here and I'm like everyone that's running beef cattle. I'll have some sheep in there too.

0:48:15 - Justin
Yeah actually I agree.

0:48:17 - Cal
Yeah.

0:48:17 - Justin
And if you have any issues with compaction, get sheep, because then you won't.

0:48:22 - Tyler
Oh, yeah, well, if you have issues with water too, yeah, oh yeah. I think you can probably water 15 or 20 ewes to one cow during the winter. It's crazy. I've had them when we have decent snow.

0:48:34 - Justin
Or there's no water.

0:48:36 - Tyler
I have not come into a water peak for three and four days and I started getting worried. And yeah, but to each his own. Every little thing has its up and down Grazing and irrigated ground. There's so many different challenges with it and like a couple of them that you run into is fencing, you're rolling your fence over your fence, or you're rolling your wheel line or your irrigation over a fence and putting it back up. There's so many different things out there. We have drive over fences or pivots that have springs in them. Oh yeah, we actually put the first one of Gallagher rather than the United States, and we got the first one in as a trial basis for their show that was coming up and I was really good friends with their rep in the Northwest and so we put it in. He's like okay, what's like it works, and he went to the show to sell it. We put a few of those in. They work really nice.

The biggest challenge I see with irrigated ground is the irrigated ground is very similar to the really high quality Midwestern ground. Because you have good enough rainfall, everybody can grow a really exceptional crop and they just pay more for it. So you're in that situation here dry land out around us is almost worthless. It's like, oh yeah, nothing, you're gonna pay quadruple the price for irrigated ground here in lease. Then you have your pump. I don't know. I think the other day we were figuring there's what $280 an acre fixed cost.

0:50:09 - Cal
I think it was what was we were thinking.

0:50:11 - Justin
Well, depending on yeah, between $280 to $350.

0:50:15 - Tyler
Yeah, oh wow, fixed cost per acre. So when you start looking at that and you start figuring that's one of the reasons too we expanded the sheet Per acre. If you're willing to do the work, you can gross a lot of money per acre. Oh, with sheet um, and we bought some sheet that didn't lamb out right. So we turned out rams and we changed them to fall winter lammers on purpose.

So now, when we have the escaped ram, we don't really feel that bad because we planned it right, oh yeah yeah, it hitting some of those specific light lands in that specific market in the ramadan, the easter, the path over the two easters, that's the big money one right there oh yeah yeah, so the what we have been.

Well, it's a thought, my brother, let me toy with my thoughts. The thought that I had for the last few years is how can we take and we ran stoppers one summer that actually it worked out well? We just didn't expect the weight to be what it is, but they grazed well and we saw the regrowth on our pasture the next spring was very different because we hay it a lot. So how do you take stockers and lambs and make them a crop rotation? So where we're at, with irrigated ground, we don't have much of a market for legumes, except for alfalfa, really.

0:51:41 - Justin
Oh okay, yeah, that's not a true legume.

0:51:44 - Tyler
But it is. But you're out five years. Yeah, but you're not really doing your soil all day.

You're not breaking this cycle depending on the development, like the nematodes or the wire worm. Right, that would break that cycle of our wire worm. So, uh, we can't piece beans, we're back into a little bit. We don't have cannoli, corn, wheat, rotation or alpha. You're stuck in these three things, so you're out five years. Well, if we can grow a very high clover, vetch, pea mix with some wheat, grasses ripe and you graze that for a whole summer with some stoppers in your sheet or your whole sheet, the cash crop that breaks your cycle. Put the ton of nutrients back in.

0:52:29 - Cal
Oh yeah.

0:52:30 - Tyler
Or we've grazed the sorghum sudans and then we've also incorporated warm-season perennials into some of our pieces that they take hold. But we're dealing with kind of a false environment, those we dry up and burn up. Pretty much by May, june 1st, this valley looks yellow from the heat.

The grass just burned up. When you add irrigation and our heat, we should be growing warm season perennials, but they're not really native here. You're always playing around with this false environment. It's like what do we do? How do we incorporate this? How do we utilize all of this growing season that we can't graze? But it's expensive ground? You don't want to just dump a bunch of cows on it and still utilize a cash crop that isn't livestock. So it's this constant kind of a movie picture, sometimes trying to figure it out.

0:53:30 - Cal
Yeah, it goes back to logistics just the amount of what crop you're growing, when does it go in? When does it come off on pasture? Now that brings me to the opposite of the question or to converse of what I'd asked earlier. I said are you all grazing every acre, even the acres you farm? Are you farming every acre, or do you have some that's just put into permanent pasture?

0:53:55 - Justin
yeah, there's absolutely permanent pasture we've got yeah at least two, at least 300 acres, not more, this permanent pasture that there is no crop taking off of it. There's cattle 100% or sheep.

0:54:13 - Cal
I hope. Yeah, yeah, yep, yeah. Gentlemen, it's getting close. We need to move to the famous four, but before we move there, is there anything that we didn't cover today? That you're like hey, I would like to have said that, but Cal just didn't ask it.

0:54:27 - Tyler
So, man, actually there's so many things that we've chased down over the years. I don't know if I could hit on all of them.

0:54:34 - Cal
Yeah.

0:54:34 - Tyler
Different soil amendments we played around with on pasture and farm ground. Biochar we use a lot of biochar right now in a mix, a sea salt biochar with a little soy meal and cracked corn. But now I'm going to go to crushed barley and you have enough salt in there, where they're just constantly getting a nice bit of that diet through the winter and it really has made a huge difference for our cats oh yes yeah, and the sheep actually been running on the sheep, and then we're gonna probably put a 50-50 blend up for the cows this winter, heavier on salt.

Make sure they're backed off enough and the bile char.

0:55:10 - Cal
Where are you getting that?

0:55:11 - Tyler
so so I get that through a char. Uh, phil Blom, he's actually down in your neck of the woods, I think he's in Missouri.

0:55:18 - Cal
Oh, but he has.

0:55:19 - Tyler
he has co-ops all over the place, so down south in. Oregon. He has a place that produces the biochar for him and we've got it up in in tote sacks from him.

0:55:28 - Cal
Yeah Well, let's transition to our famous four questions sponsored by Kenco Farm Fence. They're the same four questions we ask of all of our guests.

0:55:46 - Tyler
Our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? That would be me, man. I'm going to throw out a really hard read that started me down a path of frustrations, and that is by Andrew Boyson. Andre Boyson the soil can't oil cancer.

0:56:04 - Cal
Oh what is the third. I know what book you're talking about, because I was just looking at it other day.

0:56:10 - Tyler
I tell you that's a hard read to struggle through. Some of it Soil, grass and cancer. There it is. That started me on this whole debacle research. I think I got that 10, 12 years ago. The other book and it's not even about that that I spend a lot of time on is leads of the west oh, you know that uh big book and all the pictures. Man, I spent a lot of time in there like what is, what is this? Oh, you gotta be kiddly. We got that here now.

Yeah, those are the hails teams yeah, those two I and and I did, I think, one that I really enjoyed my brother he read a little bit of it, watched some of the time, but the Johann Zeitzman's. That was a pretty interesting book. There's a lot of other ones. I've hit here on and this and that and they just didn't strike me as much. I probably haven't read as many of them as I should have. I've gone to a lot of conferences over the years. Nicole Master from New Zealand we had her out on the years.

0:57:12 - Justin
Well, nicole Master from New Zealand, we had her out on the property. Yeah, she was out here for three days.

0:57:17 - Tyler
Zealand, oh yes, she was here and consulted on the property, actually knew her quite, actually knew her quite well. They were with some close friends in Montana and it was one of her main hubs, wow. But yeah, I used to make sure to go to at least one conference every year, if not more.

0:57:38 - Cal
Um, but yeah, anyways, those would be two boats. Those are great resources there and conferences are always wonderful, and then getting nicole masters there, that's just icing on top of it all. Our second question and this one you both can answer and we'll see how your answers compare. What is your favorite tool for the farm?

0:57:59 - Tyler
Wow, Well, I know what I would say the one we have, I wish it was three times its size. Our brush hog.

0:58:09 - Justin
Oh yeah.

0:58:10 - Tyler
But, man, there's times when it's nice to just let those cows or sheep selectively graze a little bit, pick up something and give yourself a break, and then just come behind them and mow some of that thistle or Russian olives that's starting to peak up around here. You just mow it off, let it fall down on the ground and return to the ground where it belongs. But I would probably say that's probably my favorite tool. If I wasn't working here, it would be a horse and a rope and down and down.

I would rather be in a ramming pen than anything else yeah well, my favorite tool is a combine.

0:58:46 - Justin
It's a combine, my favorite it's a combine. Sorry, doesn't sound very grazing grassy, but mine is a combine. Why, though?

0:58:58 - Tyler
Why Okay?

0:58:58 - Justin
So we came from a very predominant earlier alfalfa. That's when we started farming. It was alfalfa and at one point we were running 1200 acres of irrigated alfalfa.

0:59:10 - Tyler
Hell yes.

0:59:11 - Justin
Four and five times a year. So you're running three swathers, two rakes, two balers, a stacker, multiple work, lots of labor, and we've cut way back on that now.

0:59:26 - Tyler
But not enough labor actually at the time, so we oh, just running ragged oh we were running from may to october in this irrigated that time period.

0:59:36 - Justin
In the last 25 years we have probably gone through a million dollars worth of haying equipment, buying it, using it up, replacing it multiple piece of equipment in that same time period. We still have the same combine, same grain head and same corn head that we purchased at an auction 25 years ago for about $50,000. So that same piece of equipment has combined thousands of acres of corn wheat we actually combined some peas with it years ago. Sunflowers we did some sunflowers a few years. So for the amount of input that combine is so far and above anchor itself then the haying side of equipment.

So yeah, that's, I guess, when it comes to cash profit, combine hands down.

1:00:33 - Cal
Well, you will not find hay and equipment very high on my list, so no, yeah, I agree. Very good answers. Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started?

1:00:48 - Justin
Oh, in in farming or in cattle, in grazing, in all of it. If you're trying to do it full time, I guess it depends on where you're at. If you're just going to get started, I'd tell you, really, think about it really hard, because our area is definitely different. The competition we're in this valley, with the irrigation and with the climate You've got trees, you've got fruit, you've got grapes, you've got wine grapes, you've got hops are huge in this valley. Oh yes, so the competition for ground and the inputs are so astronomical. The competition for ground and the inputs are so astronomical that starting into it in our area is basically non-existent.

1:01:40 - Cal
Oh yeah.

1:01:41 - Justin
So different areas, you're going to have different avenues of being able to start, but here it's really tough. Yeah, trying to make a go of it right now, just starting into it. If it's a hobby and you have a good paying job, that's a big game. Start you need to ask you. Or if you're that type of, if you're smart enough to have married your wife is smarter than you and makes more money then you could do that. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, is it financially feasible? I don't know.

1:02:17 - Cal
Yeah, the cost to get started is just so great If you're doing any kind of farming or equipment. Heavy yeah Something. Yeah yeah, tylan, what's your?

1:02:28 - Tyler
advice, I would tell them to go work for somebody for a year that's doing what? Exactly what they think they want to do.

oh, yeah that is the one thing in this old during you know really nobody like it's whatever it is. In all the years you talk to people, you meet them, you hear what they state they're doing, and then you go and you realize number one well, you're predominantly a consultant. You don't even really do this at home. You're not pulling a paycheck from all these things that you're recommending. How am I supposed to incorporate this? You're talking $200, an acre of input you just recommended me. It's like oh yeah.

What am I supposed to do with this? Throw that out the window.

Well, maybe you didn't, like I was told one time. I said so. If I do some of this, what you're telling me is if I may do some of this process, but I'm going to have something more stem involved than we lead to stem ratio and that's going to lower my quality of feed. If you're trying to take a little hay, and as you're, it's get ahead so you cut it and they're responsible as, oh, your stems will be more nutritious. And I said, oh great, can I see that? Like right? Oh no, it hasn't, but it will. That's what will happen.

Well, great, like so, where's your test light site? Two, three, four? Well, no, but I'm just saying that's what will happen. Well, great, like so where's your test site? Two, three, four? Well, no, but I'm just saying that's what will happen as you're so like, well, that's a lot of blind faith, oh yeah. And so there's a lot of things that I've come to find after I was instructor or told something. I'm like oh, we can incorporate this. You start incorporating it and you realize, man, I'm running into this and this, and you talk to them and you get into conversations, then you find out oh you're having the same problems.

Well right, yeah, I would have been nice. Why did you tell me about this after you figured it all out? Yeah, instead of or go work with somebody or spend your weekends with somebody for a year and see, is it really panning out kind of pastured pigs? I wish I'd gone somewhere and saw those guys, because I know that there's some tillage going on there.

1:04:39 - Cal
Beloved no till areas. Yeah, yeah, I think that's excellent advice spending a year there so you get to see all the seasons and, yeah, people selling you stuff or trying to convince you of stuff. What's not being said?

1:04:54 - Justin
being shown what's in the back, shown what's on that back 40 that you're not, uh, makers in the way back, that you're doing things, that you're to make the ranch pay or the farm pay, oh yeah because your little project is up front, where everybody can see it yeah, exactly, and I've already told you don't come visit me right now, because now because.

1:05:13 - Cal
I've got cattle open everywhere because of water issues, but then again I try and be a little transparent about it, so everyone knows what I'm doing.

1:05:22 - Justin
But yeah, no, I completely agree.

1:05:25 - Cal
Excellent advice there on both sides. So no brother can go home and say I gave better advice than than the other. We're just keeping that fair there. Our last question where can others find out more about you?

1:05:38 - Tyler
oh uh. Cascade sheep and cattle company is our website where we sell our grass-fed meats. Yeah, there is my wife that's updating our cascade sheep and cattle yeah, that's where you could go and look at, and that's it.

1:05:53 - Justin
There's an email and phone numbers on that. If they were, yeah, interested in any questions or want to talk to either one of us, that's definitely a way of finding us.

1:06:02 - Tyler
I know, and either of us are pretty candid about our failures neither one of us look to hide any of our debacles at all, because honestly, I think that's the sad case on many of these situations is that stuff is hidden or not talked enough about it. That's where we learn the most. What's truly where we learn the most is our frustrating failures. Yeah.

1:06:26 - Justin
Well, that's what Gabe Brown did, right? Oh yeah, you need to fail at something every year.

1:06:32 - Tyler
Well, the truth is is, I don't think, enough of them. Here his original story about oh yeah, failures of working outside the farm, and look at all of the failure, failed crops that started a process that was out of his control oh yeah, his soil like he didn't even. He wasn even, literally wasn't even making the plan to try to go into this cover cropping. The hail and all the storms made him do it. Oh yeah, and so it is really important to remember those things.

1:07:03 - Cal
Every year about the end of May. I think I'm a great grazer. So you got to run into some problems so you can get better.

Yeah, that's the only way, don't listen to someone who's just been grazing in May. That's right, that's right. I told this on the podcast some episode ago. There's a guy next to me on some lease property I have that he just bought the land and I had a heifer get over on him, which was just odd across the road and typically I don't have cattle that like to go to other pastures, cause I don't like getting them out of other pastures. And so I go over and I meet with him. I'm talking he's got like six cows out there and he's got like a dozen in his corral and he's like, yeah, just bought these and we're. He says I'm leaving them in the corral for a couple of days to get them used to it and I'll turn them out. He's like how many more cows should I buy?

And I said let's stop right here and see what your grass does over here. I said it's, I think, is late April. It may have been early May. I said this is the best it's going to look all year. So let's graze what you have, don't buy any more. I think you got plenty. And let's see how it responds. Yeah, got to be careful about that, what it looks like in May. Oh man, no worries about the truth.

Yeah Well, Tyler and. Justin, I really appreciate you all coming on and sharing today. I've enjoyed the conversation. I think our listeners will enjoy it.

1:08:37 - Justin
Thanks, you bet Thanks, cal Enjoyed it.

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