Grassfed Life

Let's assume you have a fallow field or a meadow. How do you convert that to pasture? That's what this episode is all about. Assume that the fictional field is in the Midwest, it's 20 acres, and mostly herbaceous species.

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Today I am talking to a grazer, John Phelan, who's been farming for over 40 years and lived on his farm for the better part of 60 years. During that time period politics changed, farming methods changed, the land changed and evolved with the methods, a family was raised, and disaster has struck. Over the last 40 years John's seen it all including watching his land burn to the ground. It's been a long road, but one that's been worth it. It's a look back at a life of grazing with John Phelan.

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Running a profitable pastured poultry enterprise on just 1 acre, is it possible, and if so, what is possible? What's that operation going to look like, what are the trade-offs and the costs? It's an operation which could bring some nice cash flow into a homestead or diversify a farms revenue streams, and the time inputs and profits will surprise you. Because a lot is possible on just one acre.

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One advantage of farming in a place where there's winter is winter. For many farmers winter means forced downtime, or at least, yeah it's cold and I'm tired. Given that many farmers take the winter off. Depending on your farm maybe that's totally off or maybe, that's just off with a dramatically reduced workload. It's downtime you can use for a variety of purposes... to rest, to relax, to get ahead on other projects, to do repairs or build out infrastructure, to take a trip, or to work.... for someone else. What, go to work for someone else off farm during your downtime? Yep. It is something which can give some optionality to your life and farm. You are trading some downtime for dollars; dollars which you can use to expand the farm, buy more animals, install more fence, go on a vacation or simply build up the savings account. All reasons why Darby spent his winter months commuting M-F to an office to do engineering work. In this episode, you'll hear why, and why it might actually be a good option for you and your farm.

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If you're raising cattle then you're likely holding them over at least one winter. For most of the country winter means no grass, so you're either stock piling forage over the summer or your feeding hay. Given these two choices, the choice for most people is feeding hay. Given that, where will your hay come from? Is it hay you are growing and producing on the farm, or are you buying it and bringing it on property? Depending on where you live, how much land you have access to, what equipment you own, and what type of friends you might have in the community - it depends. For Darby, he had the land and a friend with the equipment, so he decided to make his own hay on farm. It's a move which took some acreage out of row crops and put it into perennial pasture, something which the NRCS helped Darby to pay for. In this episode we'll get into how much the conversion costs, what the return has been like so far, and why and how did he did it.

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What if you didn't have to wake up early every Saturday and load up and lug down to the farmers market. What if instead you could sleep in, at least till 5 versus 3. What would that be like? And what would sales, specifically your market streams have to look like to make that happen? You would have to be delivering your product off the farm to the customers or you could have the product deliver itself by having the customer come to you. That's how farmer Michael Kovach of Walnut Hill Farm sells 95% of his product. He does in a 20ft by 10ft shed, ie the on farm store. It's a model that's worked really well for him despite his location, which isn't exactly close to a major city at an hour away. Despite the distance customer come out once a week, usually to buy him out of his stock. How's does it all work? Stay tuned to find out in this episode of Grass Fed Life with Micahel Kovach of Walnut Hill Farm.

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In this episode Darby talks about several new market streams he is adding to his farm business on top of the several market streams he already has. He isn't adding these market streams because he wants to, he's adding them because he has to. He is seeing his existing market streams start to top out, so if he wants to grow the farm he has to start selling his product to more customers versus selling more products to his existing customers. You'll learn about why he is doing this, and how he is approaching each of these market streams. This episode will help show that you probably shouldn't expect to find one market stream and just ride it. Instead it's likely going to take a variety of market streams to make you farm business work.

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What if you want to raise pastured poultry, but you don't have any grass? You have pasture, but it's not green, or the pasture is just an area outside. In many cases if it was cattle, you are feeding hay. But what do you do for poultry, because poultry don't eat hay. You use fodder. Or at least, that's one option. An option that my guest today, Tim Bork of the Brush Arbor Farmstead is a big fan of. Tim lives in Northern California and there are times of year when the grass instead green and parts of his property that are too shady to grow grass, so he grows his own, every 6 days, in the form of fodder. It's a feed supply that makes sense in Tim's context - it's green when pasture grass isn't, it's portable, nutrient dense, and it's cheaper than feed. In this episode Tim's going to talk about the numbers of fodder, call them fodder economics - what are the cost, what are the yields, and how much time is involved. He will also talk about why fodder. But before we get there we'll start with how Tim got started in farming and some of the challenges that he faced early on, especially around developing a customer base and accurately trying to predict and produce enough for that customer base. There was a lot of trial and error that went into it, and led him to develop a farmshare sales model, which is just as unique as his fodder system. His sales model's interesting, and his struggles are very real, and likely very common to many people listening to this show. Despite those struggles, the farming journey continues, and here's what it looks like today.

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About a year ago we published an episode titled - When Farming Sucks. In that intro to that episode I said... Farming 200 years ago and 2000 years ago was hard, just like it is today. Sure technology and innovation has made parts of the job easier, but at the core farmers today still worry about the same things farmers did 2000 years ago. Some things, and days are just going to suck. There's no way to avoid it. There's going to be hard times. Often we don't think about those hard times that might lay ahead when we decided to start down a certain path. Instead we just focus on what we want to focus on, and usually that's the pretty vision of the future... Something Darby cautioned against: If you have this idealistic utopian view of what farming is going to be in your head, reality is going to set in, and it's not going to live up to what you paint it to be in your head, and then you have a lot further to fall. It's been a year since Darby put out that warning, and a year later, the ever present suck factor of farming is still very real. Once again, if you romanticized farming before, well this episode is going to take that romantic vision and drag it through the mud a bit. While the farming lifestyle can be great, and while there are many more good days than bad days, the bad days, can be really bad. Today, we'll take a look at some of those bad days happening on the farm right now. The goal isn't to discourage you from wanting to do any of this. It is just to make sure that you think about what you are getting into, and show that while there are stormy days (literally), there's light after the storm.

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Last week Darby and I talked about fencing basics, think - How should you think about fencing in your context? Given that, depending on you and your situation, the best option might be to use portable electric fencing. If that's the case, then this episode is for you because today it's all about portable electric fence. Stephanie Sexton, Product Manager at Premier 1 Supplies, joins me to talk about the ins and outs of electric fence for three specific farming scenarios - poultry, pigs, and market gardening. Stephanie has had years of experience working with product and helping farmers just like you select the right fence for their situation. Over that time, she's seen it all and her knowledge of the product is amazing. In this episode she talks about things like: How to select the right fence? Should you go with a temporary or semi-permanent setup? How to choose the correct energizer? How do you deal with vegetation and very dry or very wet condition? If you have questions about electro-net, then this is the episode for you. As we get into this episode you will realize there's a lot of details and specifics in this episode. Given that, don't worry about taking notes, because you can download a summary of the whole conversation in the show notes for Episode 58.

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