About This Episode
Welcome to Episode 9 of the PHW Podcast! In this episode, Dr. Davis speaks with Daniel and Robyn King of Jako Farm about their family's journey from conventional farming to regenerative agriculture. The Kings share how their practices prioritize soil health, animal welfare, and community connection, highlighting the profound link between healthy soil and human health. They discuss the challenges of resisting industrial farming trends, the benefits of rotational grazing and pasture-raised livestock, and the importance of educating consumers to foster trust in local, sustainable food systems. This inspiring conversation underscores how small-scale regenerative farming can transform health, land, and communities.
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Episode Transcript
Auto-generated from the episode audio — may contain minor transcription errors.
I still go back to that night, that is somewhat magical, um, how many years ago was that, Robin, do you remember? That was 2019. So was 2019, and you had invited me to the barn, what was it — what I remember about that is, there were just — the barn felt packed, mhm, um, and it was, you know, there's a campfire outside where kids are roasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate, and then there's all of us, back in here, really talking about this intersection of what I felt was happening, was this intersection of human health and soil health. Mhm, and so um, we almost felt like we were a bunch of revolutionaries, like meeting under, you know, cover of night, and talking about these important things that are affecting the whole food system, and I don't know, I felt like I got brought into this world — obviously this is the world you guys live in — but for me it's been an amazing, it's been an amazing journey of understanding how profound soil health is for human health, in fact I would argue it's probably our nation's most precious resource.
Welcome to the PHW podcast, my name is Dr. Jeffrey Davis, and I'm very excited to have two dear friends on the podcast today, Daniel and Robin King. Um, I thought about trying to explain what you guys do, but I really want everybody to hear it from your mouths, because I just think it would be so difficult for me to give a bio that encapsulates everything that you guys are about, so tell us about where — who you are, what JAKOB is, how you became part of JAKOB, and then we'll dive in from there.
All right, well, I think Daniel should start, because, uh, I came in later. That's true. So JAKOB is the family farm that I was born into, I'm the fourth generation, and growing up it was a conventional grain farm. And for people who aren't in the farming community, tell us what you — when you say it was a conventional grain farm, what would that mean? Sure, so we would have raised wheat and milo and alfalfa for hay, we would have harvested them as cash crops and hauled them to the elevator, and you know, wave goodbye, and they would have gone on their way to wherever they go, and we would just plant the next crop and keep going.
Gotcha, um, and of course, I was born into that, and so I watched, from an early age, my parents running that, and it's always a struggle, um, about every three years they made a major farm change, um, for financial reasons, trying to keep the farm afloat, trying to keep it going, looking for the next thing. Is this something that your dad was — was he born on that farm as well, how did he come about to have the farm? Yeah, so my dad was born on the farm, um, grew up there as well, um, came back after college, um, to farm, to raise his family there. So his parents had been conventional farmers as well? Yes, grain farming. Okay, yep, his parents and his grandparents. So multigenerational, right. The Kings bought the farm in 1921, I believe, yeah, um, so just lots of years of struggle.
Yeah, um, and in 1991, my dad attended Allan Savory's Holistic Resource Management class, um, it's a weeklong class, in 1991, okay, yeah, um, and that was really the start of the transition, and really what changed JAKOB, what JAKOB grew into, um, and that focuses a lot on, like, the holistic approach to life, really, and business, um, and business is important, but quality of life is important, and the ecology is important, like ecosystem, um, you know, we're part of a whole, we're not an isolated bit, producing grain, selling it, and ignoring the rest, right, we have to work within a system.
Um, and so that — really my dad's always been an out-of-the-box thinker, um, unconventional in every way, and that just kind of launched him to making changes on the farm. Yeah, um, and so we started looking at things more holistically, and the cows started grazing grass instead of being kept in a pen and fed grain, um, we quit feeding them grain, because the grain was creating problems, inflammation, um, it wasn't — it was costing, it wasn't economical to feed them grain, mhm, started changing at the same time, um, my siblings and I, when we were 12 and 13, started raising chickens, mhm, um, backyard chickens, just like you're doing, you know, and just selling to friends and family, okay, um, you have to know that the business name was Fit For A King, I just think that's hilarious, and there was a video that we still have, it's advertising the chickens, um, well, the chickens, and Ken actually manufactured the chicken processing equipment that you've used, that they used to manufacture, and so there was a video that they made that was promoting that as well, so it's pretty epic, Fit For A King, yeah, I love it.
So so your dad — so you started dabbling in doing what he had learned through Allan Savory's course, talk a little bit about Allan Savory, because he's really — would you say he's sort of a pivotal character in this regenerative farming movement, I mean he wasn't always holistic, from what I understand, right, he wasn't always holistic in his story, in his journey, um, but yes, he would be the pivotal person for a holistic view of agriculture. Okay, he was ahead of his time, was way ahead of "regen ag." Gotcha, okay, um, so no, I mean at the time it was a summer job for us, um, and you know, it was food, so you guys were eating from the farm at that time when you were growing up, yeah, most of the things that you ate — did you produce on the farm a lot of it? You know, our beef, our meat, and our milk, and of course a big garden.
Well, so so if — so conventional farmers back then, would they have had their conventional cash crop that they sell, but then they would be raising their own food, was that a common thing, or is that something that even maybe was uncommon when you were growing up? Yeah, okay, even to the point of, like, most dairy farmers that had milk wouldn't drink their own milk really, because, you know, it would — it's sold to the dairy, and they would buy it back pasteurized from the store. Gotcha, um, okay, so take me forward, you're in high school, you're raising chickens, you're selling those to friends and family — yeah, so we're working more towards a holistic goal, um, but in 2002 we had that, like, that crux moment, where everybody has, like, are you going to — like, which way are you going to go, fork in the road, financial fork in the road, financial fork in the road, yeah, and it was imposed by an outside force on us, um, we had, you know, half of the farm was being sold, rented ground, and it's like, do we keep going the way we have been, or do we pivot and go the other way, um, and my dad Ken decided, like, yep, we're going a different direction, and so he lost half the farm, sold it, sold 75% of the cows, and started direct marketing everything, made all of our milk into butter, everything went to butter, everything went to butter for the first, like, three years, and we had chest freezers of butter.
Really, we had mountains of butter, um, so then all you're drinking is buttermilk at that point? Oh yeah, lots and lots of buttermilk. Yeah, but that was kind of the pivotal point of, like, you know what, we're not — we don't just want to sell a cash crop, um, take the price that they're willing to pay, we're going to make — we're going to sell a product, right, and sell food. So losing that large chunk of land meant that you really weren't able to operate on the economy of scale necessary to continue doing the grain selling, the grain, milo, wheat, corn. Okay, yeah, and even at that point we had stopped raising grain crops, and we were all-in grass, feeding it to cattle.
Okay, but we were milking 120 head of cattle, and we were still shipping, you know, thousands of gallons of milk daily to the dairy, yeah, um, because in conventional ag, you're only paid on quantity. Okay, like the more you produce, the more you make, there's no market, there's no incentive for quality. Yeah, um, it's — it was fascinating, actually, one of the Fuller Field Schools, I think it was one that Charles Eisenstein was at, somebody was talking about how they went and asked a farmer if they could make the food more nutritious, and the farmer was an old farmer, and he was like, never in my life have I ever thought about whether the food I was growing was nutritious. Yeah, and it just blows my mind, right, that we didn't think about that from the beginning.
Right, but you're right, it doesn't matter how healthy the milk is, right, it's how many gallons you're getting out. Yeah, and so when that is the measure of success, you do everything — you're focused on the wrong goal, you know, you're focused on quantity, mhm, and quality keeps dropping, because every decision you make to increase quantity generally knocks down quality just a little bit more, and a little bit more. And you know, yeah, like, uh, Thomas Sowell, a famous economist, has a saying, he says, there are no solutions, only trade-offs, and so that's a trade-off, right, exactly, if you're going to increase the quantity of milk, you're probably going to have a lower quality of milk, so right, okay, and so partly in switching to direct-to-consumer, mhm, now you care — when you were producing food, mhm, you directly care about quality.
Yeah, um, especially — I mean our motto has always been, we raise food for ourselves and we sell the excess, yeah, you know, so it's like, well, you give me a choice of what I want to eat, I'm always going for, you know, the higher quality, right. Yeah, so so massive amounts of butter was where it started, yep, so you've actually bought — what's interesting about this butter, I think, is when people who've never had, uh, grass-fed, uh, butter from a raw dairy, they think the color is weird, right, and you get that complaint probably a lot, like, what's wrong with your butter, and it's like, actually, this is what butter is supposed to look like, right, it's yellow, approaching orange, right, and the butter we get in the store doesn't look like that, and I remember the first time I experienced that with farm fresh eggs, mhm, I was like, what's wrong with these eggs, these yolks are super dark, right, and well, then you realize, oh, there's nothing wrong with these eggs, there's something wrong with every other egg I've eaten in my life, right.
Do you know there's actually a color fan for yolk color? No, doesn't surprise me though. And of course, there are — there's several additives you can add to feed to change yolk color — molds — really, oh, so you can — not in an artificial way, but you can — sort of, totally artificial, completely artificial, so that orange yolk that you're getting from a certain — yeah, anyway, I'm not going to say brand names right now, but it's not — they, outside — yeah, there is a particular brand name that I heard is kind of getting in hot water here lately, I didn't dive into that, but maybe that's why. So they're actually trying to make it seem like they're raising chickens like you. Well yeah, what does the consumer know when they crack that in the pan, right, they're like, oh, it's beautiful, look at that, uh-huh, orange yolk — with marigold, marigold, yep. Do chickens eat a lot of marigold? I mean, well, not at the scale that you — they scale it in their feed and they have to eat it. That's a good point, yeah, there's nothing else for them to eat, right.
So massive amounts of butter was where this started, it — butter and chicken and direct marketing. Um, yeah, and so, you know, we already had our customer list from all the days of selling chickens, yeah, um, and so then, as we're adding butter, it's like, well, did you — do you have milk too, do you have ground beef too, and so we just started listening to consumers, right, because that is our new market, right. Um, and so then, yeah, we've just — we slowly started looking at, like, oh, what — what do we have, you know, if you have, you know, obviously you're getting butter from milk, so we have milk, we have cream, because it takes cream to make butter, you know, we can make yogurt.
Um, and so so from that point on, in about '04, when we opened the store, JAKOB just has slowly evolved as, um, kind of at customer demand, but um, as the family has changed too. So you have to make note that in '04, that's when you decided to come back and work at the farm after college, so in '04, then they started — you started raising layer chickens, and you started having pigs as well, so that was a big — and sheep, and sheep, and yeah, and that's when the store officially opened. I mean, okay, so you came back from college, you went where to school? I went to Hesston College. Okay, so studied agriculture — no, um, it's a private liberal arts college, two-year college, um, I took classes that interested me and kind of filled in the gaps in my knowledge base that I didn't have, so I took accounting, um, marketing, in business, web design.
That's really cool, you know. Yeah, um, the college I went to is not an agriculture college, right, um, so you went purposefully because you had planned on coming back and working on the farm, was that — was that your goal, was that the reason at the time? I don't know, I would have said, I plan — I have a plan to, but it was kind of, probably kind of what I felt, but I don't know that I would have vocalized it at the time. Um, I honestly wish more colleges did that, where they said, like, what are your goals, where are your knowledge gaps, and let's find a course — literally your course through the college — to get you those things, because the way we run it now, it's like, you got to put four years of seat time in, right, right, and then you get your degree, and it's like, well, I mean, because what if a kid could figure out, they're like, I already know all this stuff, I'm not going to need this, you know, and you might have an advisor who goes, well, I think you don't need this, but you're going to need a little bit of this, yeah, well, it's — it's 18, it's pick a track, right, like, here's your focus, here's where you're — yeah, you sort of get locked on that.
Yep, so okay, so really at that point you didn't really feel like you needed to study — it's probably good that you didn't go to K-State and enter into the conventional ag, where you're learning about — yeah, so my dad Ken actually went to K-State — has meant nothing against K-State — he has an agronomy degree from K-State, okay, um, and thanks them for teaching him what not to do, yeah, cause he went in a totally opposite direction. Yeah, you know, he bucked the system in every way.
Well, you know, it's interesting, as an outsider — you know, it's funny, my mom tells me that I come from a very rich heritage of farmers going back to great-great-great-grandparents, um, I haven't had any farmers in my family for years, um, but I've always been drawn to the farm, in fact, when I was in grade school, really good friend of mine, um, he invited me to a sleepover, and he said, it's going to be at our family's farm — they had a place in town, and then they had the family farm that was out of town — and to me it was like you had opened up this world that had no boundaries, all of a sudden, I mean, we were running around on four-wheelers with BB guns, you know, back then, like, where we spent our Saturdays was — what is it — the Army Navy store, buying, you know, camo fatigues, I mean, all the leftover stuff from, I don't know, I guess Vietnam, and that was what we played with, right, we really just dressed up and went out in the woods, and I was like, this is the life, like, I loved it, you know, and they had their own animals there, and it was just amazing.
So I was drawn sort of back to that life, and then, you know, dragged my wife along, which I still want to get the story, how you got dragged into this — but but, I've often said, like, what I see, what I saw happening in medicine was, you know, we were being taught, in roundabout ways, by the larger forces at play, which is the Big Pharma, you know, and we say Big Pharma controls everything, and it — and they do — but in ways you don't always stand — you know, until you've worked your way through the system. But you know, I had a professor in medical school who made the claim that one day we will fix all problems with medicines, I mean, he just believed that, he was an internist, and he believed that strongly, that we'll — we won't even need surgeons at some point, like, we'll just be able to fix it with drugs, and I remember thinking, back then, I go, well, that's a really bold claim, but, well, let's see how that plays out, and boy, have we sure tried, right, didn't really work out.
So so we have physicians that are being brought up in the system and being taught that, you know, at least that mindset of, you have a problem, you need a pill, and then, as I was talking to farmers, I would hear farmers talking about, well, they got problems in their fields, and they need to spray this chemical, and then that chemical, and then they got to sometimes combine those two chemicals, and for me it was a very clear picture of, oh, the same thing's happening, these farmers are being told the same thing our doctors are being told, you need a pill for a problem, you need a chemical for a problem, and you know, you would even — I remember I was talking to somebody in a Starbucks, and we were having this conversation, and some random guy overhears us, and he's like, you can't feed the world if you don't raise corn with glyphosate, and I was like, I don't even know who this guy is, but he was mad that I was saying that, hey, there might be a problem with spraying this stuff.
And so, you know, that concept of, we won't be able to treat people if we don't have these drugs, we won't be able to raise food if we don't have things like Roundup and glyphosate, mhm, so it's fascinating that your dad saw that in the system and was a contrarian, really, and came out of that. Yeah, yeah, that's a tough — that's a tough trend to buck, I bet, right, yeah, and how many people called him crazy? Everybody that we know of. I mean, at the time it was all the neighbors, yeah, um, yeah, it was a small, lonely little world for a while. Yeah, right, I mean, you know, but at the same time, like, all the contrarians somehow find each other, yeah, you know, and you find these random weird little groups of people, like, sprinkled about, um, yeah, that are doing something different.
Well, you and — you guys really have made an amazing community, I still go back to that night, that is somewhat magical, um, how many years ago was that, Robin, do you remember? That was 2019. So was 2019, and you had invited me to the barn, mhm, and we had — who all was there? It was Nicole Ragland, right, and you, and Gail Fuller, on the panel. Yeah, and Jessica Nadeau was the moderator, right. So Nicole was the director of the film "Farmer's Footprint," right. And Gail was — a part — Gail was in that film, right? Was he featured in that film? I don't think so, no, I think I just had him as the farmer. Gotcha, yeah, to be speaking.
And so what — what I remember about that is, there were just — the barn felt packed, mhm, um, and it was, you know, there's a campfire outside where kids are roasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate, and then there's all of us, back in here, really talking about this intersection of what I felt was happening, was this intersection of human health and soil health, and so um, we almost felt like we were a bunch of revolutionaries, like meeting under, you know, cover of night, and talking about these important things that are affecting the whole food system, and I don't know, I feel like I got brought into this world, obviously this is the world you guys live in, but for me it's been an amazing, it's been an amazing journey of understanding how profound soil health is for human health, in fact I would argue it's probably our nation's most precious resource.
Totally, our first — want to get into how — how did Robin enter into this story? I don't know, she just showed up one day. Yeah, right, right. So I grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, okay, an ostrich farm. Ostrich farm. I did. My dad was trying to find a way to make the small family farm work, right, so it was the same era, I mean farming was hard, and you were just trying to find your niche, find anything that will — so ostrich, you would be producing the meat, ostrich meat, mhm, uh, eggs, I assume, that wasn't something we sold, I mean it was, and then we sold breeding stock and whatnot, but that was my childhood, I mean when I was really little we did grains and cattle, but then ostrich, ostrich, um, so yeah, I was familiar with living on a farm.
Um, Daniel and I — well, I should back up — my entire life I knew I wanted to be a nurse, because I wanted to help people, um, so I began the health care journey when I was 16, my first job was working as a nurse's assistant in a nursing home, right, you know, started — that's a tough place to start up as a 16-year-old — that was my first job when I was 16, um, and then yeah, I got my associate's in nursing by the time I was 20, and then I went on and got my bachelor's, but yeah, so I started my first career in health care, and I quickly got burnt out, because I like to solve problems, and I didn't get to solve problems.
And that was nursing — what field of nursing were you in at that time? Yeah, I did a number of things, uh, I did cardiology, I did, um, inpatient oncology, I did public health, I did a lot of things. Yeah, none of those are about solving problems, like, especially public health, I'll just be honest, that was my last, that was my final straw, and then anyway, um, that's a brutal path to take through medicine, had, starting in a nursing home, and had good hours — public health, public health would be great hours, working backwards from nursing home to public health — pediatrics and public health, um, and I did a stint overseas too, but anyway, um, so I was quickly burned out, and just felt like, I'm just giving a pill, I don't get to be part of a system that I can change anything, and I don't like that.
So Daniel and I, we actually went to Hesston College together, but then reconnected later through a friend, and so in 2012 we got married, and I continued to work for a few years as a nurse, but I was thrilled to stop working as a nurse and come work at the farm, um, as the farm was growing, there was just space for me there. Well, space, but also you could help people in a very tangible way. Yeah, you know, arguably you've touched more lives through farming completely, cause I mean, the number of stories — you know, when I first found out about JAKOB, was actually from a family who lived here in Wichita, who they were a touch point for people to come pick up food in Wichita, and you know, that's the first time I'd heard of raw dairy, and I thought, well, wait a minute, I mean, Louis Pasteur — I — he's kind of, this seems like old technology, we're going backwards here a little bit, you know.
So it's — okay, so you come onto the farm, you guys are married, right, so I really enjoyed meeting with the customers and showing them around, because a lot of them were coming to us because they had health issues, and so, because I was a nurse, I could relate to them, and I didn't grow up eating this way either, I mean, we had a garden and things like that too, but um, in the first year, the first few months we were married, I watched a documentary, uh, that rocked my world, uh, it was "Genetic Roulette," and so I went through the cupboard and was like, wow, I didn't know canola oil was bad for me, you know, so I went through that, like, throwing out all the things.
Um, and that was — what year was that? So we got married in 2012, in May of 2012, and this was probably August of 2012, and when I learn something I get really passionate about it, and I want everybody else around me to know about it, and so, like, I go down to his parents' house and I'm like, did you know that canola oil is bad for you, I mean, I had no idea, and so I've asked farmers, do you know how to make corn oil, farmers that raise corn, and they go, no, I have no idea how to make corn oil, right, they have no idea.
Yeah, yeah, um, so so I changed a lot of things and started learning a lot, um, kind of had to untrain my brain that had, um, learned the medical model, you know, I'd been a public health nurse, so I mean, there's a lot of untraining that goes into that, I mean, you know, here now they're actually having — EPA is having to go back and relook at fluoride, which I remember when I was a resident, the city of Wichita was, uh, looking at a ballot initiative to bring fluoridation to Wichita, cause we still aren't fluoridated here, and all of my faculty were — they were like, this is the most important public health measure, right, and I remember thinking, I mean, it's kind of a drug, and we're just going to put it in the water, and I remember asking them, I go, what dose of fluoride should we be getting, and they just were like, what dose, I'm like, well, how much fluoride should you put in the water, and how many glasses of water a day should you drink, I mean, you guys are teaching us this medical system where we prescribe, and you know, in doses, and we then monitor — it's like, oh no, we don't look at how much they're drinking, we don't monitor how much they're drinking, we actually have no way of knowing how much fluoride someone's getting, and that for me was like, why are we doing this then, right, that made no sense.
I mean, if a kid has a cavity, and you want to put fluoride on his teeth, fine, that's a treatment, but to put it in the public water, right, and that is still seen today as one of the pillars of public health, was accomplishing water fluoridation, which we now know leads to lower IQ, right, right, that's terrifying, right, right, I mean, we look at the Romans and think, how dumb were they to build their aqueducts out of lead, as we're pouring fluoride in our water, right, right, yeah, the unintended consequences of everything we do is huge, and we'll find the same thing — well, we're already finding it now from glyphosate, from other things, but yeah, you know, 30 years from now we're still going to be doing the same thing, going, yeah, that's probably not really smart, but we're going to keep — it's the way we do it, yeah, it's like, yeah, that's a good point.
So the unlearning — the unlearning process is painful, I've had to go through that, and still find myself having to try to unlearn, you know, there's things I still feel like, in my own career, that are monosynaptic, just a reflex, and it's like, I got to get that reflex trained out, and it's tough, mhm, it's really tough. So got the seed oils out of the family larder, right, right, um, were you guys using tallow and lard at that point? At that point, okay, even though you were raising pigs, raising cows — raising pigs, raising cows — where was the lard and tallow going? We — I think you probably just sold the fat, but we weren't rendering it at that point. Yeah, a lot of things, you know, really come from necessity, you know, like once you get rid of all of your seed oil, well then what, of course we still had freezers of butter, but yeah, then you know, you have fat sitting around, okay, yeah, if we render that down for lard, and then you start learning about lard, and go, hey, when it's actually raised correctly on grass, you know, amazing benefits.
Yes, and here again, unlearning what you've heard about, you know, lard and all the, you know, the bad fats, right, yeah, I feel like we could have an entire podcast just on fat, um, and how — I mean, you know, we teach our patients the three macronutrients being protein, fat, and carbohydrates, carbohydrates are actually the one that we don't necessarily need, right, fat and protein we can't live without, the majority of Americans' calories — not even Americans — but just the majority of calories, right now in the Standard American Diet, SAD, mhm, is from seed oils. Wow, that is shocking to think about, how many calories are in seed oils, and a seed oil, you know, for people who don't know, I really divide — we have animal fats, we have the fruit oils, which would be, for me, olive oil, avocado oil, and then seed oils would be like your corn oil, your canola, which is the same as rapeseed oil, I think, um, soybean oil, soybean oil, which is what most, probably, commercial kitchens use, when they cook those oils, are prior to, I think, the 1960s, correct me if I'm wrong, they were really machinist's oils, right, they were used to lubricate machinery, right, and then they figured out a process using hexane and other — there's some nasty chemicals in there.
Well it's crazy, yeah, so I actually — I love using large language models to do research now, so I use ChatGPT and Grok a lot, and so I was — you know, people were saying, like, hey, canola oil is healthy for you because of this omega-6 thing, and I was like, let's just talk about how canola oil is made, and I, you know, said, give me the process, ChatGPT, of how it's made, you know, and it starts with, oh, it's harvested and then it's cleaned, and I'm like, no, no, give me the chemical process, and there's multiple steps to get that, even to the point where it smells edible, right, I mean, because you have to use hexane, which is a terrible solvent, carcinogen, then somehow you got to get the hexane out, because you don't want to kill people right away with your oil, right, slow death is better, slow death is better, right, you get some customers you do it that way.
Um, and then I was like, okay, how do you make lard, you heat animal fat, strain it, and then it cools, right, that's it, right, so I feel like there's so many ways that we could simply fix, um, human health, and the food that we're eating, by just saying, why don't we go back to whatever is simplest is probably best, right, yeah, I mean, that's — to me, I'm always trying to kind of tell people, what's — you know, instead of trying to remember the dizzying things that are out there, because they're going to invent a new oil, I mean, well, if you can make it in your kitchen versus you need a laboratory and 10 different chemicals, you need a science lab to make it, right, it's probably not something I want to eat, probably not something you should eat, right, if there's an ingredient on that label that you don't have in your kitchen, that's probably not food, yeah, right, that's something I always try to tell my patients, cause we have to do a lot of education with people, come in and say, you need food from a farm, not from a factory, and most of our food comes from factories at this point.
So what other things did — what did you see as your role, as it grew from being an educator, helping people with health, when you said, people who come to you with health problems, I'm assuming there were probably dairy allergies that were part of that, sure, was that one of the more common ones you see, or what were some of the more common things that you saw? Um, a lot of autoimmune things, and that just keeps increasing as the years go by, um, but yeah, people trying to get their inflammation down, but also a lot of people that couldn't do dairy, um, so yeah, dairy is a big part of our — do I want to talk about dairy now? Yeah, I love talking about dairy, I don't think I could do my diet without dairy, I've tried, it's not very fun, yeah, dairy's awesome, yeah, it is amazing, it's an amazing product, right, right.
Yeah, tell me about there, because I think one thing that really — what I learned from you guys early on is that you were transitioning your cattle — going back to the genetics, you were transitioning your cows to A2 cattle, so tell me a little bit about what that means, what is an A2 cow, right, and how is it different from a conventional cow? Right, so the A2 or A1 is a protein that the cow has, and the A2, um, they have done studies that it's more easy to digest, so uh, we did test all of our cows, and so, um, cows have two genes, so you can be A2A2, or you can be A1A2, or A1A1, so yeah, we've been working, I think, the last seven years now, to be A2A2, and because our cows live a long life, that's taking longer than we anticipated, but we figured out ways to get just the A2A2, um, we milk into separate tanks and whatnot.
But um, I think that is an important thing, uh, some people really do say, you know, I've tried other grass-fed raw dairy, and I still can't do it, yours I just do way better on, because it's A2, but I think the bigger thing to talk about, when we're talking about raw dairy, is what a cow eats, so cows need to eat grass, the milk that you're drinking in the grocery store, I always tell our customers that come, they have inflammation, and so they're passing that on to you. Yeah, you know, because Daniel talked earlier about, uh, the quality versus quantity thing, on our farm we're going for quality, so our cows are milked once a day, they live on grass their entire life, they're just eating grass, they never get grains, um, and we're all about — yeah, we milk them once a day, because we want the quality, it's better for them, it's better for us the farmer, and then we're also seasonal, so in Kansas we have green grass from April until October or November, so we milk our cows in the summer months so they can truly be grass fed, and then we figured out how to flash freeze milk, so that we have milk available in the winter, and you're getting that yellow butter in the winter, right, instead of having cows that are eating hay, right, because that would be considered grass-fed too, um, but so when people are drinking — so that would be the ideal way to have cows.
Now if we want to talk about grocery store milk, those cows are living in confinement, so they're living in a barn, and they sit down in their own poop, right, and so you know, you think about where milk comes from on a cow, well, that's a little concerning that they're sitting down in their own filth, yeah, um, they're milked two or three times a day, they're eating grains, and cows weren't meant to eat grains, they were meant to eat grass, so they get inflamed, right, um, and I think our average cow gives maybe four gallons of milk a day, mhm, whereas a commodity cow could be giving eight gallons of milk per milking, right, so you're talking about a quantity that's three to four times what you guys are producing, right, and we have found — is that a genetic thing with an A1A1 cow, do — are they — is that how that happened, that we changed, we modified our cows over time because we recognized A1s produce more, is that partly — partly part of it, we did not — we have noticed our A2A2 cows do give less milk than our A1A2 cows, or A1A1, did, but it's more — there's breed and stuff in there, I mean, we have smaller frame Jersey cows versus a big Holstein, gives just a lot more milk.
Okay, so the — so the Holstein is going to be your conventional dairy, and I've seen videos of some of these places, and I mean, I think they're trying to be as clean as they can, and they care about animal health, obviously, but literally this one barn had a rotating — it was like a turntable for cows, and the cows were getting on them, and they were just rotating around, and just getting milked robotically, hooking on these things, and it was crazy, like, there wasn't hardly even any humans involved in this, right, right, yeah, so and that milk, obviously, if that's coming from an inflamed cow that maybe has some bacteria on their underside, right, then that's getting into the milk, so to make that milk drinkable, it's sent out for — so it's collected raw on the dairy, and then sent in a large truck — would, what, come every day and pick it up?
Oh, multiple, I mean, they'd have multiple trucks a day, multiple trucks a day, coming, offloading the milk, taking it to a central plant, to a bottler, where it gets processed, where it gets pasteurized, and pasteurization is heating it, heating it, um, to how many degrees, depends on the process, but generally above 145, and when do proteins denature, I mean, when do some enzymes denature, above 100, in some cases, right, right, I'm not sure on proteins, cause it's 145 for 30 seconds, or 160°, for like 5 seconds. Okay, so there's different — there's different processes to it, okay, um, so that kills all the bacteria, yeah, right, good and bad, right, um, which even the concept of good bacteria was fairly — right, like, I, growing up, I didn't know about beneficial bacteria, I just felt like all bacteria were bad, right.
But probably — and this is maybe not — more controversial — but homogenization is probably even a bigger issue for a lot of people than pasteurization is, and that's where they take the fat molecule and break it down, um, so that you don't have cream rising to the top, in non-homogenized milk you'll get a cream line on top, like the cream will rise and separate, you have to shake the gallon, um, we view that as a good thing, oh, it's amazing, but it's inconvenient for a lot of people, you're — I wouldn't call it a cream line, I would call it like a cream band, right, like it's the top third of the jug is a cream, and it tastes amazing, yeah, right, but then when you drink that milk, if you drink homogenized milk, your body doesn't recognize it, it's saying, I'm drinking this — this inflammation causing stuff with foreign bodies in it, cause I don't recognize this cream molecule as a fat.
Ah, so the process incorporates the cream into the milk, right, and so it's just fragments of cream, your body's going, I don't recognize this fat, this is a foreign substance to me, yeah, let's get it out, right. Oh interesting, and so a lot of people, whether they're lactose intolerant or don't tolerate milk well, yeah, oftentimes it's their body saying, this isn't a substance I recognize, you know. Yeah, most people who say they're lactose — and they've actually never tested to see what their lactase enzyme is, they just say, milk makes me feel bad, right, I've heard other people who are lactose intolerant, can't drink milk, I must be lactose intolerant. We see the same thing with gluten, people say, well, I think I have celiac disease because I can't eat bread, and I'm like, well, might be that you just don't like bread soaked in glyphosate, right, right, your body might not like that.
So and here again, yeah, your body's saying, there's some foreign stuff in here, let's get it out. Okay, but when you heat the milk too, like we were kind of talking about, it kills off the beneficial enzymes, it kills — helps you digest milk, helps it digest the milk, it also kills off a lot of the minerals and things like that, it's wild how much is killed off when you pasteurize it. So a lot of people come to our farm, and they have, you know, one kid that's on almond milk, or one that's on lactose free, and then, what do you know, all of a sudden they can all drink the same milk. Yeah, um, so and I always, you know, tell people too, like, it's not going to cure everybody, you know, it is a magical thing, but some people do have issues and they just can't do it, but it's amazing what grass-fed raw milk can do for people.
Well, and I think it also probably depends on what else that kid's been eating, you know, again, if they're getting the standard American diet with seed oil, I mean, just almond milk itself, you know, which most almond milks have seed oils in them, and then have these gellans and gums and other stuff, to try — what they're trying to do is make it taste like milk, right, because you know, last time I looked at an almond, there's no little — right — things to get the milk out of an almond. Um, but yeah, it is pretty amazing how different your product tastes, and what I find interesting about it is that different years will taste different, right, because it's going to change based on what's growing in the pasture, you know, and you talked about, uh, when we were at the last little demonstration that Jonathan Lundgren was at, you were saying, like, how your pastures have really changed over the past decade, I mean, they're different things there than were there before, and I would think that — well, I don't — it'd be interesting to see if drinking regional milk had a bigger effect than, you know, somebody buying milk from four states over, like, you know, as humans, I don't know that we were meant to be traveling to opposite ends of the earth and back, I mean, our — maybe our gut bacteria, or just something about our biome, is probably should be adapted for the region we're in.
So yeah, well, one thing that we found, I found interesting over the years, is there's a lot of foods that are celebrated for their uniqueness, or their distinction, you know, like you take wines, and you go, oh, this region over here, or this year was really dry, this vintage is really good, you celebrate all of those little nuances. Yes, and in food, you want everything to be as uniform as possible. That is such a good point. Um, and so, and you know, when — for us, obviously it's what we do — but we see changes in milk, like not weekly, but seasonally, like spring milk to summer milk to fall milk, it's a totally different product. Wow, and it's really, for me, it's really fun to see that, and be like, wow, you know, I can connect it to how the land and the grass and the cows are changing.
Yeah, but I feel like as consumers we also need to be aware of, and hopefully even tapping into, those things that — well, you started the conversation by saying, we're way more — we're way more connected than we know, right, and so again, I think that brings back this idea of regional — I mean, if there's a region going through a drought, and the animals are stressed in a certain way, I wonder if we are eating those animals, or milk product from those animals, might we actually benefit from this stress they're getting that prepares us for maybe some stress, right, right, because we have all these adaptive things that happen in our bodies, those same adaptations are happening in the animals, and now those adaptations, we know, are happening in the soil, under the soil, in the mycorrhizae, and you know, it's fascinating to think how interconnected it is, right, yeah, and totally, and I think if we can tap into that, you know, and embrace that, then, you know, our gut microbiome will change too, yeah, to mimic that, and whatever, you know, whatever nature is telling us to prepare for.
Yeah, something we've talked about in our clinic, we have kind of these boulders that are seemingly immovable objects that we would want — we want to try to work on, you know, slowly over time, you can get a boulder to move if you just keep chipping away at it, and I said one of the boulders that we've been working on is, how do we make food a more local phenomenon, and that is a gigantic boulder, like, I mean, we've been chipping and chipping and trying to figure out, you know, how do we do that, and so part of the purpose of having conversations with you, and other farmers that I want to have in, is I want local people to understand, there are great local farms where they can go out and get this kind of food, and hopefully begin to heal their bodies, but man, it's a slow, slow journey.
It is, so in thinking about where the regenerative movement — which I feel like you guys were moving down the path of this regenerative farming movement, and the movement just sort of came around you, and we've even talked about ways that you feel like it's not going in the right way, it's maybe there's a lot of greenwashing going on, and you have these companies that actually name their — they put words like "pasture" and "vital" on their eggs, and you think, this is going to be great, this is regenerative eggs — so what are some of the pitfalls that maybe we don't know about when it comes to the greenwashing that might be going on in the regenerative movement? Well, I mean, okay, so we can — you know, right now we're picking on regenerative, but it's happened to organic, it's happened to grass-fed, it's happened to every buzzword, yeah, um, everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon.
Um, well, do you think it's driven by the consumer? I mean, the consumer hears organic, and they go, God, that sounds good, I mean, it's not sprayed with these chemicals, so I want to start eating more organic food, so I'm assuming the customer starts driving that conversation, and then the producers are seeing their sales go down, and so they're like, well, we need to figure out how to be more organic, how can we get the label, you know, is that — does it happen because of customer demand ultimately? I'm not sure, yeah, it's a bit of a mystery, I have a darker side that thinks it's more driven by the larger corporations that are seeing dollar signs, that it's — yeah, um, yeah, I mean, it's a bigger problem, I think, in our food system, is that there's very — there's just a few companies at the top of, you know, hundreds of thousands of brands, and even the brands that you think are like the crunchy organic, it's really — Kraft is at the top of that, or you know, right, or Nestlé, or a lot of it comes down to, like, you can follow the letter of the law, or the spirit of the law, yeah, and there's a wide range in between, because people ask me, oh, is JAKOB organic, and I said, proudly, no, cause you're not — you're not an organic farm, but you know, one of the things I really love about JAKOB, and when I send people to JAKOB, I say, you have to go visit the farm, and they think, I mean, like, oh, you got to go do it, and I go, no, no, no, you literally have to go before you buy food from them, cause they want you to see how things are done.
So those are the farm visits that you guys do, right, right, why is that so important, why do you want — why don't you want JAKOB milk sold at QuikTrip? Wow, you could sell so much more milk. I know, I've had this conversation with you, but I love your answer to it, but I want everybody else to hear why. It's all about quality, not quantity, and we just don't want to get huge, I don't want to sell my soul, yeah, um, and that's what I have seen with the big companies, even the small farms that start off as a family farm, and I've seen them grow and grow, and they get the big infrastructure, and then they have to pay the bills, and then they have to start sacrificing their standards, the compromises start, yeah, the compromises start.
Yeah, um, I love that about you guys, because I — part of me sees it, like, oh, make JAKOB bigger, so more people can get the food, but I think one thing I've observed, at least, is that you guys are really not just about stewarding your own land, but actually about stewarding other farmers, to the point you now have a couple living on your farm who are learning how to do this, I assume, so hopefully, hopefully, yeah, they are, yeah, I mean, people who want to learn about how to regeneratively graze, or how to transition, and you've been a great help to numerous people who've wanted to get into this, and I think that's really neat to me, that's about building community, not about building your business, um, you would love more competitors, essentially, absolutely.
And I think one big thing that Ken — I mean, we're here today because of Ken, you know, he was willing to be the weird guy and change things, still is a little bit of a weird guy, right, right, it's funny, yeah, he — I used — I'm the one that answers the phone, and so we used to get all these phone calls from his friends, and some of them were really weird, you know, they'd be like, this guy called and he was really weird, anyway, now I'm the one that's getting the weird friend phone calls, and I'm like, I love it, you know, uh, I never thought this is where I would be, but here I am. Um, but I think Ken instilled the idea that — and this came from Allan Savory's thing — it's about quality of life, yeah, and so it's about quality of life for us, it's about quality of life for the animals, for the land, you know, for the plants, for everything.
And that's what JAKOB is, right, we are about building life, um, and that's for all of us on the farm, and so for us that means we're not going to get huge, but yeah, we would love to share knowledge with the right people. Yeah, um, yeah, it's building community. Um, yeah, and so your work-life balance, you don't have to get a job off farm to raise your family, right, and that's something that commonly happens, people have to hold down two jobs to keep the farm — right, working — right, I grew up with that, my mom worked, and that's got to be a difficult balance to strike, um, but again, you're also about raising kids that, you know, aren't having to see what conventional farming stress looks like, right.
Yeah, uh, yes, um, but anytime you get more intensive on something, um, and the more — you know, we went from just being a producer, you know, you grow it, you ship it, you're done, you know, repeat — well now we're going from grower to direct-to-consumer, so we get to be the processor, the handler, marketing, we get to do all the steps of the process, instead of farming all those different pieces out to different people, yeah, and so um, it creates a lot more opportunities on a farm for more people, um, so more of a vertical integration is what it really essentially — in a very small scale, yeah.
So so the store you have now, talk a little bit about the store and how that came about. Well, yeah, the store, uh, came about back in 2004, when it officially was there, uh, it's definitely evolved over the years, um, but now we meet with every customer before they start purchasing, so we set up an appointment, they come and they meet with me, and so I get to explain the products, why they're different than in the grocery store, and then they get time to ask questions, and I say please ask me questions, we intentionally do not have certifications, we're not certified organic, or grass-fed, or certified regenerative, none of those things, we don't want those things, um, we want you to certify us, so please ask us questions, and we're totally transparent, and we feel like we go beyond what those labels are, but we want you to have the transparency, and to ask those questions.
So yeah, once I've met with you, um, then we have very flexible shopping hours, for people can come and shop in the farm store. And your customers, how far do your customers drive, because I was there once buying yogurt, and I think there was someone from Texas that was loading up giant coolers on their way back home, I guess, right, do you know how far away your customers — what's the farthest customer away you have? Oh, that's a hard one, because we have so many that they used to live here, and so they'll come stock up when they're visiting and stuff like that, but the average customer does drive at least an hour, um, and so a lot of people do come and stock up, we have the frozen milk, and so that works for people, and our meats and things are frozen, so yeah, we're convenient in that way, we're not convenient like Amazon, and we're not going to be, and so that's part of what sets us apart, you know, you have to do some of the work to come to the farm, but then you get to talk to your farmer, you get to ask those questions, and then we do have events, um, we have one big event every year where we have, um, a meal, and we have a hayride into the pasture, and that's the time when you get to see those animals and spend time on the land where your food is raised.
And when you're having that conversation with people about that, you're not certified, is that a difficult conversation for people to have, I mean I doubt that's a showstopper for anybody once they've learned why those certifications aren't important to JAKOB, right? Yeah, no, everybody's always like, oh, I hear it's lots of money, and that's not it, for us it's that there are so many loopholes within those certifications that we just don't want to be a part of that, and we're grateful that we have people that are willing to do the work to come out to the farm and ask those questions, and the whole business operates on trust, um, because of that, which is a really beautiful thing that Ken started.
Labels are a really great way to differentiate your product in a grocery store, when you have a whole row of things, I'm going, how do I choose, you know, brand A, brand B, brand C, you know, well, then labels are a way to convey how it was raised to a consumer, mhm, it's a middle step, and it's a disconnect, um, where we're really trying to bridge that gap and say, no, you need to come see, um, you need to come see how your food is raised. Yeah, you know, your connection to a farmer is as important as your connection is to, hopefully, your doctor, or other important people in your life. Yeah, right, because food is life, way more important than relationship with your doctor, you — I mean, yeah, um, but people don't realize that.
No, I mean, I think I remember listening to — I think it was Will Harris that was on a podcast, and he was talking about — or no, no, Joel Salatin, and he was talking about just the insanity of some of the ways that we produce food, like, we're — massive chicken farms, and then what they would do is they were shipping these chickens over to China to be processed, yeah, put on styrofoam plates, wrapped in plastic, and then shipped back, and that was economically better than processing them here in the United States, which just, yeah, blows your mind, like, how is that possible.
Mhm, right, um, so a lot of people don't know, I mean, with your chickens, again, the way you guys are raising them, talk a little bit about what makes a JAKOB chicken different than the chicken they're going to go in and get at the grocery store. Sure, so we get chicks in as day-old chicks, mhm, um, you know, raise them in a brooder house, keep them warm, um, you know, take care of all their needs in there till they're about three weeks of age, and then they go out on pasture, um, and they are in movable shelters with no floor, so they have free range on the ground, they can scratch for bugs and eat bugs, get grass, fresh air, sunshine, and they get moved daily, mhm, um, so they're always in a clean environment, um, they essentially get to be chickens, yeah, right, they get to run around, scratch, play, do whatever they want, um, and then we do supplement them with, um, here again, to not use labels, but a grain diet that we source and mill ourselves, yeah, um, trying to find the highest, the best quality grain we can, um, and that keeps changing as we learn more and change, um, and part of that's, you know, so we keep trying to work our food healthier and healthier, and change, like the omega-3 to 6 ratios, we're changing ingredients, mhm, um, as we meet new farmers that are farming with better practices, you know, we can — we keep trying to improve our grain.
Yeah, um, but yeah, it does not have any chemicals or anything on it, so a lot of it is — or certified organic grain, but not all of it is, but it has not been sprayed, we're very careful about that. Yeah, I mean, you go to great lengths to source this stuff, right, bring it in, you're custom milling it, right, you sell your grain also. We do sell some, so if people want to raise backyard chickens they can come out, we can — I mean, here again, finding clean grain to feed your chickens or your livestock is getting really hard, right, um, it's about as hard as finding food is. Yeah, um, yeah, so but it's not only the type of food and the way you're raising your chickens, but your chickens are different than your typical chicken you're getting in the grocery store, right, it's a different breed.
True, so tell a little bit about what the conventional chicken looks like, how it's different from what JAKOB's raising. So the conventional chicken would be a Cornish Cross, so it is a white bird that has been bred to get big fast, really fast, very fast, I like — eight weeks, it's shorter now, they have — isn't it, I think in six and a half weeks you can now have a chicken, so that's going from little chick — yep — fluffy, fluffy yellow chick straight out of an egg to a four-pound chicken, nice plump, um, dressed weight — four pounds — four pound dressed weight, plump, double-breasted, fat chicken on your plate, right, right, and they just like to eat and poop, like they just sit next to the feeder.
We used to raise that breed, not — not the ones that are ready in six weeks, yeah, um, we did 8 weeks, and it was a different breed, we did the best we could, but yes, in the last couple years we have transitioned to raising a Red Ranger, so these chickens — I'm not going to call them a heritage breed, cause they're not completely — but they are more of a chicken, so it takes — we raise them for 12 weeks, they know how to forage better, they can tolerate the heat, so an issue with the Cornish Cross is, yes, we could raise them on pasture, but sometimes they would have heart attacks if we were trying to raise them in July or early August, guess when there's a lot of humidity and heat, and that's rough, that's rough for everybody.
Um, so we have transitioned, but a traditional chicken that you're buying in the store, um, it is raised in a barn, it never sees sunlight, it just sits there and eats grain. Well, this is even where I've learned, like, the labels are misleading, cause they'll say, this is a free-range chicken, and that means that they open the barn door for an hour out of the day, and probably coordinated the door opening with when the feed was coming, so of course the chicken's not going anywhere. And when I've raised these, uh, Cornish Cross — we did that last year — and you're right, they just sit, and I had one day where my water — I'd crimped the hose, and so they didn't get water, mhm, I lost 30% of the flock.
Yeah, and so this year we went with the same, uh, Red Ranger, and you're right, they were moving around, were, you know, out there playing with each other, fighting, and totally kind of — I'd say Cornish Cross almost gets more, like, obese, yeah, versus more of like an athlete. Well, in a — in a Cornish Cross, can't — you couldn't buy a Cornish Cross and then get eggs from a Cornish Cross and then raise those as Cornish Crosses, like, it takes a fair amount of genetic manipulation to get the Cornish Cross, and it's not one that then can reproduce on its own.
Yeah, so with heritage birds, once you get heritage birds, they breed with other heritage birds, they stay heritage birds. The Red Ranger is still a cross, but it's a cross of more going back to what maybe our ancestors would have had, more normal chickens. Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, it is remarkable, and the taste — what surprised me is the taste, cause our chickens got the same feed last year, the Cornish Cross as the Red Rangers, and the taste of the chicken is completely different. Totally different, yeah, the shape of the breasts and stuff too, isn't that wild, it looks so different.
Yeah, but yeah, and it's again, it's something I don't think the normal consumer would probably appreciate, um, right, so these chickens are raised in a much less stressful environment, and I've always thought, you know, if you're raising a stressed-out animal, where do the stress hormones go when you slaughter it, and they don't just disappear, right, I mean, they're still in there, I don't know if cooking destroys the stress hormone or what it does, but I wonder if that affects humans in some way, right, so the chickens, um, eggs, do you guys sell eggs as well?
We do, okay, so you've got your layers, right, and that's really special too, in the last, I guess, two years ago, we started hatching our own layer chicks, so we have Barred Rock chicks that we hatch, we had some incubators left from my family when we had ostriches, oh, that's right, yeah, I remember, we did some retrofitting, um, from the ostrich egg to the chicken egg, and so yeah, now we're hatching our own — or Daniel is hatching our own — um, layers, which is really cool that, you know, they have those genetics now that have just been on pasture, because before, you're ordering them from some chicken house, right, we would have done that in the past, but now our eggs are from chickens that were born, you know, on the property.
Yeah, well, and the epigenetics of where that egg was laid, I mean, those get transmitted too. Yeah, right, and so — makes sense, right, right, cause whatever the mama was eating when it laid the egg is going to matter for the chick that hatches, right, and so you're controlling even that. Is there ever a plan to do that same kind of thing on the meat bird side, or is that difficult? We've talked about it, it's a little bit more difficult, um, with cross-breeding and stuff, you have to, um, maybe when we don't have young kids, there's lots of potential, or one of our kids can take that on, time for that to happen. It's one of those, like, there is no perfect, you know, like, we're doing the best we can now, there's always room to improve, sure, even when you're bumping up to the top, yeah, you can always find a little bit more, so we'll see, I mean, I won't say no, but yeah.
Um, yeah, yeah, so the beef that you're raising is the dairy cows, is that, or do you have a separate herd for beef? Separate beef herd. So a separate beef herd from your milkers, yeah. You've got pigs still, yes, right, and so those are also grazed on pasture, they — yep — they're out on the land, um, they rotate between the pasture and the wood lots, um, so wood lot in the winter time, um, actually more wood lots in the summertime. Okay, um, it's kind of, yeah, funny, pigs are monogastric, so they're not really designed to eat lots of grass like cows are, um, we're monogastric too, right, yeah, so we — you know, they need access to it, and they do eat some, but it's not a big part of their diet.
Yeah, um, and so they're out on grass, um, but they're also rooting for, you know, seeds and roots and for whatever a pig finds that they want to eat, and they'll eat almost anything, they really will, it's pretty crazy. We're raising two pigs now, and I always tell the kids, I'm like, don't throw that away, we'll turn it into bacon, right, right, yeah, right, so um, and it's really fun, because you know, yeah, diversity, like all those little things add to the flavor and change it. Yeah, I've been throwing all the apples that have fallen on the ground — throwing those, right — pigs don't seem to be bothered by the fact that there's wormholes in them.
Oh no, yeah, my kids won't eat them, but pigs really struggle with the heat, and so in Kansas, for us, it's generally easier to put them in the shade in the trees, try to keep them cool. Okay, um, and yeah, I think there's a lot of grass-fed beef out there, I mean, our grass-fed beef is really wonderful, but the pork is just so different, that's one thing that grocery — you cannot get anything like our pork in the grocery store, I mean organic pork in the grocery store, those pigs are still raised in confinement. Yeah, you know, it — I just feel so sorry for pigs, they just, cause when you say confinement, I mean they're in pens that are 10 by 10, maybe 30x30, I mean, the conventional would be, yeah, 10 by 10, I mean, there's of course there's a wide range too, but they're on plastic slats typically, so that they can wash them easily, right, it's a completely artificial environment, right, no sunlight, right, right, right, I mean, and it would be similar to how a chicken is raised, you know, but I just, uh, pork is one of those that it's just really sad, and I feel like a lot of — well, in China, I think they're even, like, they have high-rises built that are to process pigs, like, they farm the pigs, and then they bring them up on conveyors or something, I mean, like, it's literally like a vertical pig tower, you get to the top, and slaughter them, and then it goes back down and starts over again, yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, yeah, what industry has done to animal husbandry, yeah, is really just cruel and appalling in some ways. Yeah, I mean, I get it when people, you know, when people say, oh, I'm vegan or vegetarian cause I don't like the way animals are treated, I get it, I mean, uh, you know, you look at a conventional feed lot, you know, this concentrated feeding lot, where these cows are on dirt all day long, and um, they're being fed a diet that's not at all adapted to what cows normally are eating, and everything is about how much weight you can get on that cow before, what, 380 days, I think, is where they're trying to get them to — really fast, yeah, they basically, when they hit the feed lot — I mean, the thing is, every cow in the United States is grass-fed at some point, but they're finished on concentrated feeding lots, where, you know, then the cows, that lot then has to decide, okay, well, we've got to figure out how to get rid of the toxic waste we have, which is manure and urine, right, and toxic waste on JAKOB's farm is not toxic, it's actually fertilizer, right.
So um, there's this quote that Gabe Brown says, he says, healthy soil is the real key to human health, wealth, and the future of our planet, and hit that — that concept of, um, the way I heard somebody describe it is, if you're a regenerative farmer raising beef, really, meat is the byproduct of making better soil. Yeah, and that concept kind of blew my mind, like, your cow is really there as a soil builder, a diversity builder, a part of the environment, like, when people say, oh, cows are bad for the environment, I always say, cows are the environment, like, I — you can't have fields without animals grazing those fields.
Yeah, cows are actually a really inefficient design, that 80% of what a cow takes in goes right back out, um, as fertilizer, but what they do is they can take, um, the starchy grasses that are hard to break down, um, just on their own, mhm, and they're a walking compost pile, yeah, a bioreactor, yes, and they ferment it, they digest it, and they break it down to usable nutrients in, like, a day, right, less than a day, 18 hours, yeah, and it's coming back out the other end available, in fact, you could make the argument that cows don't actually eat grass, cows eat bacterial byproducts from grass, true, right, they're eating the fermentation byproduct, and then that grass is going through them, for the most part. Um, so so cows really are the only way that we can build soil naturally, I mean, they're the fastest way to turn grass into healthy soil, and to really just jump-start the system and get it going.
Um, so you introduced me to Jonathan Lundgren, yes, um, a scientist who is passionate about soil health, and I would say passionate just about biology in general, I mean, insect health, right, all of that, we were on the farm a couple months ago with him and his team, and they were doing these soil samples, and it was remarkable, to take — you know, they have this soil probe that is hollow, it's like a hollow knife essentially, and just like 15 feet over on your neighbor's pasture, he's drilling down and getting a soil sample, and the dark black part of the soil was like millimeters, maybe half an inch, yeah, and then just over on JAKOB's land, it was night and day difference, I mean, massive amount of organic material, um, it's just — until you see that, I don't think you can understand what it means to be making soil, right, I mean, you literally are making top soil, right, and it's getting deeper and more organic material, so it means you're holding more water.
We're holding more water, we um — we actually have life in our soil, bacteria, um, fungi, you know, nematodes, bugs, beetles, gophers, you know, um, we actually have life in our soil that are helping to break down the grass on top, that are making nutrients in the soil more available to the plants, yeah, um, the mycorrhizal fungi in the soil are scavenging minerals and trading them to the plant for food, right, so we have this whole, like, underground network trading — literal network, literal network — um, that you know, if a plant says, hey, I need some phosphorus, they go and get it, we don't have to apply it, yeah, right, so we have this whole ecosystem within our soil, right, you know, let alone on top of the ground, and with the plants and the livestock.
Yeah, um, so so the soil is building — is almost building itself, um, so you've learned, you know, whereas, uh, you know, a farmer who sees grasshoppers, they think, got to kill them all, right, right, um, JAKOB sees the grasshopper and says, what — well, I mean, this year — there were a lot of grasshoppers this year, it was a grasshopper year, but you know what, chickens love grasshoppers, oh my gosh, they do, it was so fun to watch chickens chase grasshoppers, yeah, and we would move them extra just to watch them chase grasshoppers, I don't know if that's kind of sadistic towards grasshoppers or not, but I often wonder, do they get more calories than they've been — chasing that grasshopper, cause I mean, when they see a grasshopper, they go all out — but grasshoppers are, man, they're a mail protein, right.
Um, yeah, um, you know, it's really been a big mindset shift, because part of me is like, ah yeah, we have grasshoppers, right, but then at the same time, like, they didn't really do noticeable damage to the pastures, yeah, um, you know, we had so much grass, it's like, yeah, they ate their part, um, but it comes out of the grasshopper, right, and the grasshopper dies, and goes back, so that probably benefits something else going on in the soil, right, I mean, the more we've learned, um, you know, it's all about life, and it's all about diversity, yeah, and so — well, it's hard to be like, ah, grasshoppers, it's really — it's more life, you know, there's — so when you have grasshoppers, well then you get more birds coming to eat the grasshoppers, and we have more birds here, you know, and the birds are bringing in maybe native seeds that you didn't have there before, right.
Um, and I think, going back to Jonathan Lundgren, and insects, for every pest insect there is, there's 1,700 insects that are prey for that insect. Wow, you know, that's crazy, but if we kill — if we spray that pest insect — we kill them all, yeah, there's not a targeted grasshopper spray, right, right, but what we've done, in a lot of cases, is we've destroyed all the habitat, yeah, you know, um, and so all the places where all those beneficial insects would live, yeah, and so when you can get over, you know, nice clean fields and straight roads and everything, it'd be like, you know what, I've got more diversity in my field, more habitat, um, in habitat, not only for birds and animals, gophers, insects, but also insects, yes, yeah, and pollinators, and right, yeah.
So so really, the regenerative farming really is a way of — I would say, if you had to summarize regenerative farming, the way I think of it, the way I've seen it at least, is it's working with the land instead of against the land. Yeah, and oftentimes it's reinterpreting what we might see as a problem, and going, yeah, we'll see, maybe it's not a problem, maybe — yeah, no, you're right, I think it's, you know, I think you have to view the land, or view your farm, as a whole ecosystem, um, and anytime you pull out one part, you know, whatever it is, you say, ah, this is bad, this isn't right, well, you know, it's hurting the ecosystem, yeah, but when you get the whole ecosystem working together, um, you know, then it can — then it needs itself, you know, it's — so in talking about your own ecosystem, talk a little bit about one of the big changes that you guys are making, is with lambs, right, with the sheep.
Yes, so talk about — where — because I find that line of thinking still fascinating, and would love to dive into that. Sure, because lambs have been there for 20 years, yeah, probably about 20 years, and that's — this has been a line that you all have raised, yeah, we've — you've been self-sufficient, we've selected for, and you know, um, it's a breed of heritage sheep, but yeah, we've worked on our essentially breed, yeah, on our genetics, um, so we've always looked for enterprises we can add to the farm that compliment other enterprises, that don't take resources, you know, time and labor, land, whatever — sheep have fit that really well, um, in that, like, our sheep run with the cattle herd, mhm, they lamb on the pasture with the cows, they eat the same forage, the same fences work, the sheep grow up thinking they're cows, yeah, um, to the point where they come up to the barn with the cows and stand there waiting to be milked, and we've even had lambs that have grafted onto cows and will nurse, like, they'll be in the barn milking the cow, the lamb is nursing.
Um, and yeah, that's interesting, right, it's been a fun journey, and there's a lot of other benefits, you know, sheep and cows are dead-end parasite hosts for each other, so they help, you know, take care of the worms for the other one, yeah, and they prefer different things. And so — okay, so you guys don't — you're not worming your animals? Not in the conventional sense, yeah. And that — and some of that is because the sheep, when you say they terminate their parasite, that a lamb could get, that will die in a cow's stomach, and vice versa, right, okay, um, that's fascinating to think, you know, that that's the way biology is supposed to work, that's how parasites are kept in check, is with diversity, right, right, diversity, and mineral balance, or imbalance.
Yes, um, yeah, and so providing the right minerals and enough of them, um, honestly just trying to keep them healthy, yeah, right, trying to give them everything they need, um, but yeah, so sheep have been part of it for a lot of years, and they've been great, um, the past couple years we've switched up our grazing for the cows, mhm, um, and we're giving the pastures a lot longer rest time, and then we're taking the cows in a lot smaller paddock into the grass to eat, so they're more mobbed up, more of, like, how the buffalo would have grazed the prairie, yeah, kind of a big mob that just steamrolls the countryside, and then doesn't come back for a year.
So so that's one thing we haven't touched on, is your grazing program, um, would be considered — yes — but I think when some people think rotational, they think, we're going to have them in this paddock for spring, right, we're going to have them in this paddock for summer, with — you're rotating four or five times — we're rotating four to six times right now — and when I say rotating, I mean you're moving them onto new grass, right, so very intensive, um, and that's an effort, I assume, to sort of mimic what buffalo might have done, when there were millions of buffalo, getting that animal impact to hit that earth, but then giving that — when you say rest, how long before you come back and regraze?
I mean, our goal is, you know, six months, wow, minimum, yeah, um, there's been several areas that have been over a year, yeah, um, that we haven't been back, um, you know, to put it simply, like, you know, when you eat three meals a day, mhm, well, every meal you expect a new plate of food, mhm, you don't want, for lunch, you don't want your breakfast plate that you picked over, and then for supper it's even more picked over, right, yeah, and now you left your napkin on there, you know, and it's sad — all day you want a new plate every day.
Yeah, but then if your mom taught you well, you clean your plate, right, you eat everything on your plate, right, you don't just get to eat the mashed potatoes and the sweet corn and leave your broccoli and your, you know, brussels sprouts, right, yeah, you know, because you need the fiber, you need, you know, you need everything there, and so we're essentially mimicking that with the cows, we're saying, we're going to give you a little bit of new grass, but you have to eat it all before you get more, and once you eat it all, we'll give you more, and they probably have to compete with each other a little bit more.
They do, you know, like when your kids are getting bigger, and it's — you say amen, and everybody's diving into the middle of the table, cause they're like, oh, there's only four rolls and I want one of them, right. So that's one thing I've noticed, is that moving animals — I only move them once a day — but like the sheep, they tear into the pasture like they're the first ones in, and the cows are like, oh boy, we better get up and start moving, or they're going to eat it all, right, and then they come in and they'll — a bunch of sheep knock out of the way, yeah.
Um, yeah, so just, you know, I think partly retraining our cows how to eat, um, I think, you know, in a lot of ways we've pampered our animals for too long, you know, we've made it — you know, animals survived for thousands of years without us, without help, without shelter, right, we didn't — we weren't pulling calves, we weren't — yeah, right — weren't hand feeding them, you know, easily processed, you know, grains and stuff, and um, so yeah, so in some ways we're going back, trying to mimic nature, right, um, but in doing that, the sheep have not appreciated that change, yeah, they're less happy — as what you said, and I think back to what you said earlier, well, we're farming for the grass, right, you know, we're doing what's best for the grass, yeah, and yes, the milk is a byproduct — if we were, or the sheep are a byproduct, if we were raising sheep, we wouldn't be grazing this way, yeah, but because we're farming grass, we've changed how we're grazing, and the sheep don't appreciate that change.
Um, and so we've kind of hit a point where it's like, they're not really happy with what we're asking them to eat, and we're not happy with what they're doing, and it's just not a compatible fit right now. Yeah, so so so then the sheep will move off farm, sounds like — yes, okay, that's a really hard one — so I could tell, when you said it, I was just like, jaw hit the ground, cause I thought — yeah, cause there's a ton of people who've never even had lamb before, they don't know what the taste is like, or maybe they've had it on Easter, and all they've had is the lamb chop, right, but lamb is an amazing animal, I mean, the taste is fantastic, the fat content is fantastic, um, great flavor, right.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and they really are, I mean, they're intelligent, um, they're easy to raise, they're — I mean, they're fun, yeah, um, they can't kill you, right, they're easy to handle, especially, you know, starting out, yeah, newbie, um, yeah, yeah, so stay tuned with that, I — you're not letting go of it. It's really hard, I mean, the person that we're selling some to, we — I said, just, we will sell them as long as you agree that if, when I want them back, I can have some — they'll sell some back, yeah, so I think — I mean, my lambs are from your part, from your flock, and then part from — well — from Ken. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I got them from Mark, but he got them from you guys, so yeah, yeah, my biggest complaint is that both the flocks they came from, they're fantastic at eating, uh, poison ivy — and on my property they don't eat it, which I'm like — and even the goats now aren't eating it, and I'm like, that's the whole reason you guys are here, so if you don't get after it, there's going to be a change on my property.
So you're giving your kids too much candy and not making them clean up their plate. Yeah, we definitely need to — I need to work on that. So yeah, but again, it's always a process, a journey, and you know, you've made huge changes in the past 3 years — oh yeah — from when you started with one horse roaming the place — totally, yeah, it's been a fascinating journey, and I mean, you know, when I sat down, and I love the way you started our conversation, you were like, tell me what your goals are, and I was like, God, that's a really good question, and you know, where — on my own property — what I was seeing is that I was going out and mowing pastures, you know, twice a year, spending money on diesel, getting a sunburn, and what I was looking at is my pastures were looking pretty bad, I mean, there's stuff growing there that I hadn't seen growing before, that didn't look good.
Um, so part of what my goal was, was that I wanted to be more connected to the land, be more connected to a daily rhythm of being out, you know, early in the morning, in the evening, with the animals, it's been great for my own health, um, byproduct of it would be feeding friends and family, yeah, um, but really wanted to see improvement in the pasture, improvement in the land around us, and it's been really fun, we're seeing more mushrooms popping up than I've ever seen before, um, yeah, but it's cool how, you know, the goats and the sheep and the cows and even the horse, they all kind of have a different role in that environment, um, yeah, it's been really fun to watch that.
And so I would encourage anybody who wants to learn, you guys have been phenomenal, uh, source of just knowledge, and every time I think I'm having a problem, you usually redirect me to, like, well, that's maybe not the problem that you think it is, and um, so that's been really fun. Yeah, it's been a journey too, of trying to, you know, not just stick with what we've done, what we know, but continue to listen to the land, and um, cause what works on your property isn't necessarily going to work with what I'm doing, maybe, right, but even on our property, like, as we've changed grazing and management, well, then the grass responds differently, and then we have to, you know, adapt the species that are coming to it, you know, with the sheep not being part of it, or, you know, um, you know, and years of drought, different, you know, you always — seasons always favor different grasses, and so some years, you know, you have a lot more brome, and next year we're like, where'd the brome go, it's all fescue, you know, right, um, constantly changing, and I think we have to be in tune to that to keep up.
Yeah, there's no — there's nothing static in nature, right, and really, when you say drought, I mean, we've been through now a decade officially of drought, or more — we've been in three years of severe drought, but yeah, I think overall it's nine to 10 years — yeah, and it felt like we got a little bit of a reprieve this summer, yeah, um, some moisture, but obviously that changes the farming practices, changes everything, I mean, water, yeah, is the next most important thing after soil, it's pretty tough to make things work without water. Yeah, um, so where do you guys see, uh, JAKOB going, what's the future look like, um, are you wanting to embrace more of what's happening in the regenerative space, or do you feel like you guys have got a really nice established plan, and you're going to let regenerative do whatever it does, JAKOB is going to keep carving out its nice little niche, what's the plan going forward, what are the challenges you see?
Well, I mean, I think in general, we're going to let the regen ag movement go wherever the regen ag movement wants to go, um, we're going to keep doing what the land gives us, you know, and just keep following those directions, um, I think for us — and we have talked about this a little bit — um, the future is a lot more small people, you can't do what we do on a large scale, mhm, you know, not even a mega scale, but you know, like, it'd be really hard to even do it with, like, 500 cows, which is still a small dairy farm — anymore, it really comes down to, we need lots of smaller farms, yeah, and not even, you know, just one cow, two cows, but, you know, enough for a family to survive on, yeah, um, you know, and you need to be feeding your neighbors, if everybody's connected to a farmer, you know, how many farmers we need, a lot, yeah, yeah, even just, like, the Prairie Health crowd, right, couldn't do it, we'd have to have 200 farmers, yeah, you know, raising food, and it'd be awesome if you said, all right, you 50 people go to this farmer, and you 50 to that farmer, yeah, um, yeah, ultimately, we do have to teach people to try to be more connected to their communities, try to find the farmers in their — like the young couple that's on your land right now, when they move off, you know, the best thing we can do is try to connect people in that area to them, so that they begin building their customer base, finding out what their customer wants, and right, figure out what works for them.
So that's, you know, again, we kind of talked off camera about where things are going in our country, and I still maintain — I'm an optimist at heart — but you know, we've got a lot of work to do to fix the broken food system, you know, and we need — you know, I think the Joel Salatins of the world, the Wendell Berrys — I mean, it takes all of these pioneers, and I'd put Ken King right in there with all of them, he's not famous like they are, but he's been plotting that path for a long time, and has been very successful in doing that. But you're right, we need to raise a generation of farmers who get that same value and benefit from working with the land rather than against it, and we're seeing a lot more interest in that, um, and I forget the quote, but you know, you can't change a broken system, build a better system that makes the old one obsolete, right, and so when people get, you know, worked up about, how do we change the food system, I'm like, I don't really care, you know, what I mean, the big industrial food system, right, we're raising food and feeding people on a small scale, yeah, you know, it works, we just keep doing it.
Well, you know, one of the things that's happening in Washington right now, you know, they had four hours of testimony to the Senate about how broken our food system is, we need to now pivot to say, what needs to happen, you know, from a government standpoint, to make this easier to happen, and I always say, probably the answer is just get rid of the government, right, I mean, honestly, I don't know that government solves problems. Yeah, right, so but you know, we have — right now the government is the largest employer in the United States by a wide margin, I think if you add the next six largest companies in the US, still the US government's the largest employer, which is crazy to think about, so you know, some of the challenges we're working through right now is, it's illegal to sell raw dairy, uh, unless people come to the farm to get it, right, which for you guys, that's worked well, cause you're okay with that.
That should — been a benefit for us — a benefit, but you know, I think Joel Salatin wrote a book about, everything he wants to do is illegal, right, and then, you know, we've even thought about, you know, I mean, like, if I slaughter a lamb, Jill was like, oh, we should be able to sell that to our neighbors, like, yeah, that's totally illegal, oh yeah, can't do that, right, you know, but yet you can sell a chicken, I guess, it's not — yeah, like, so some of it, I guess, I just would love to see Washington go, you know what, we feel like Americans are fairly resourceful, why don't we just remove all these restrictions, that common sense rule, yeah, like this Amish family that's being arrested because they're selling raw milk, and people are saying, you know, oh, raw milk, like, who would — you know, that's so dangerous to eat, yet most of the food-borne illnesses come from conventionally raised crops, like spinach — spinach, right — spinach is the — one of the biggest sources of food-borne illnesses, and people completely ignoring that fact, right.
Um, yeah, I don't know how you fix the broken system, you probably just scrap the system and let a new one come up and take its place. Yeah, which — yeah, I don't know how, how do you do that? Are you guys involved at all on a greater level of trying to push for legislation, has that been something that's ever been of interest to you, to take the fight to Washington? Uh, no, no desire to do that, that has not been our thing, and I'll say, like, I was really excited about the regen movement when that started happening in, like, 2018, I remember going to the Kansas Soil Health conference, and like, that was the new buzzword that everybody was learning, and I'm like, this is going to change things, I was so optimistic, and then I just slowly watched as regen — regen — [laughter] — like, just became bought out by big corporations, and all the greenwashing, and then the people fighting against each other within the regen circle, and I mean, I shed so many tears over all of that, because I hosted that big event, you know, I was all about, regen, this is going to be the change, you know, we can change this big system, and it's been a really hard thing to just say, you know what, we're really not — I love a lot of those people, I think a lot of people have great intentions within that movement, but we're going to keep trying to build our own community, our own food system, and just on a smaller level, and I think big things can happen on a smaller level, you know, I can't change that big system.
I mean, I would say I definitely understand that frustration, um, because we see it in medicine too, right, um, you know, people go from not using a pill for a problem, but then they use a bunch of supplements to try to fix the problem, rather than going towards the root cause of what exactly is broken here, and in many cases I tell patients, look, if you're not eating good food, don't even worry about supplementing something else, like, fix that. Um, but I think there is a — I think there's a consciousness maybe that's developing, where people are starting to hear, what does regenerative mean, and how — you know, learning about how animals work with the land, and the story is getting told, you may not see it because you guys are so invested in that world right now, and change just appears glacial, but I think at least what I'm seeing from looking on the outside is there does appear to be some subtle shifts, um, that I think people are going to want to start to think about food differently, and some of that, I think the pandemic produced, I mean, I'm sure your customer base grew, you know, when people went to the stores and they found out that Walmart actually can run out of chicken, right, right, that was an eye-opener for people, I mean, it wasn't just the toilet paper people were freaking out about, right.
Um, so unfortunately, I think maybe it might take something in our country happening that really forces us to look inward more, to our local community, find out who our neighbor is, you know, get to know them, find out how we can be more self-sufficient, I mean, everybody could start with a garden, that would be a really simple way, but — and I would agree that on the consumer end, I feel like there is a lot more awareness happening, so on that end of the regen movement, I guess I do see the changes continually happening, and it's positive stuff, but I think maybe on the farmer side, you're seeing less of that, it's just harder to see how really big change can happen from that side.
I think I'd rather come at it from the consumers, and changing the community, of, like, where they're shopping and stuff like that, I don't think we can change that big corporation, like Daniel talked about earlier, like, let's try to change it more on, like, a grassroots level, of where people are shopping, and you telling your patients, you can actually buy from a farmer, you know, they don't even have that awareness, I think change definitely can happen there, and it starts with education, right, yeah, I mean, it honestly goes back to what you're passionate about, was helping people with their health, right, right, and you know, we look at how broken the American food system is, and the health is right there with it, I mean, we spend three times our military's budget on chronic disease management in the United States, and we spend a lot of money on our military, right, yeah, right, and so you know, if you go back to the 1950s, 1960s, we didn't spend any money on chronic disease, there really weren't any medications to manage chronic disease.
So you know, I've been super appreciative of the regenerative community that I've met, because it's given me tools to point patients to, and you know, the frustrating thing is, for every 10 that I know are going to benefit, need to be pushed in that direction, maybe only one goes, but that one is going to hopefully raise a family that just thinks differently about food, from the ground up, right, so literally from the ground up, right, so right, right. Well, so if people want to learn more about JAKOB, website is jakob.com, jakobfarm.com, J-A-K-O-B, and we should clarify, JAKOB stands for Judith Ann and Kenneth Oliver, which are Daniel's parents, that's where that came from, yeah, yeah.
And we are membership based, yes, or we are, I guess, members only, yeah, um, so you do have to go to the website and fill out an application, okay, um, and then Robin will be in contact about setting up an appointment to come to the farm and visit. So talk about the different membership levels that you have, the tiers, right. Yeah, so we have bronze, silver, and gold, so bronze is free, and that means that you've met with me, and you have access to shop in the main area of our farm store, because we are a seasonal farm, and we are not growing everything year round, sometimes we do run out of products, so our paid members get priority when we run low on certain products, so that can vary from year to year, so that's kind of hard for people, cause they're like, well, what are you going to run out of, and it's hard to say, some years it's butter, some years it's milk, sometimes it's chicken breasts, it varies, right, um, but they get priority for that, and then, um, gold, we will — yeah — reserve products, some staple items for you, and you get some more farm tours and things like that, um, if you have a paid membership.
Yeah, gold, we basically say, we're your deep freeze, if you value food as medicine, and this food — if you say, I can't live without my gallon of milk a week, and if you run out, I'm in big trouble, right, um, gold is where there's food security, for the most part, we're putting this much milk aside in our freezer with your name on it, yeah, so that you get your food. Okay, yeah, yeah, I think that's great, um, I yeah, I love — we obviously we love the membership program, it keeps your customer invested, um, you know, we get to also see who values what we do, right, because you get to see those numbers and hear pretty directly from your customer.
So um, so yeah, and I would encourage everybody who listens to this, um, even if you're not in the area, and you just kind of want to learn what does a regenerative farm look like, um, and again, not regen from the greenwash, but from the local community — the local community, it's been beautiful, it's been beautiful to see you develop a passion for farming, and all the community that has grown because of your interest, I mean, it's been amazing, I mean, and I will say absolutely that I'm so full of hope to see all of these farmers and different people that are — you guys have your little chat group, I've kind of stepped back from that, but sometimes our chat group gets a little too political, yeah, but there's a lot of life in that chat group, like in different avenues, we've hit all sorts of topics, to me it kind of reminds me of, you know, when I was out in Western Kansas, I'd go pheasant hunting, you'd go by the local coffee shop, you know, before the sun was up, and all the old guys would be sitting in there chatting, and it's like, you know, we don't do that anymore, I wish we would, but the signal group has kind of been a way for us to all come together on a daily basis and share articles, or fun stuff that's happening, you know, little animals that are being born, so I'm sure people are tired of me taking pictures of every calf that's born on my property, but I still think it's pretty amazing, it's amazing to share that, you — like, it's the miracle of life, and you're still celebrating it and in awe of it.
Right, totally in awe, yeah, like just the other day I walked out and I've got one cow separated from everybody else, I'm like, what's going on, she's just acting kind of weird, and I walk up to her, and I'm like, oh, you got a calf here, like freshly out of the womb, steam rising off of him, and he's just got this look in his eyes, like, where am I, and I'm like, welcome to the farm, buddy. Yeah, um, yeah, it's unbelievable, um, I think, yeah, the more we get people connected to biology, the more we get people connected to the earth, literally, it's like feet, hands in the dirt, right, um, yeah, I think that's again where — where soil health goes, human health will follow.
Yeah, so I really appreciate what you guys are doing, to rejuvenate your community, take care of your people, take care of your community, and also to take care of the land around you, so thank you so much for being here today. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you.