Tyler Schake is the owner of T&T Mobile Washing. Growing up farming, Tyler always took pride in, and got very good at washing the farm equipment. In his mid-20's he came to the realization that he wanted to go out on his own, and working on the family farm was no longer the right fit for him. At about the same time Tyler and his wife had their first son, and he knew that his responsibilities in life were increasing.

It was at this point that Tyler took the thing that he had developed a passion for on the farm, washing equipment, and turned it into a business. Starting with just a pickup, box trailer and pressure washer Tyler is now running three trucks, 7 full time employees and serving an area with a radius of about 275 miles. He is cleaning combines and other farm equipment for dealerships and farmers, and he is doing fleet cleaning for trucking companies.

In today's interview Tyler talks a lot about what he experienced when he decided to start his own business. Also, he educates me quite a bit on the reasons why a mobile washing business like his is so valuable to trucking companies. We talk a lot about entrepreneurship and a lot about this great business.

On tomorrow's ag business episode I am speaking with an agricultural entrepreneur who has taken "cleaning" to a whole new level. I thought this interview with Sean Westergaard from 2016 about his gutter cleaning business was the perfect lead in.

Adam Johnson is the chapter president of the Sleepy Eye FFA Chapter in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. He is also the 2022 Minnesota State Proficiency winner in the category of poultry production and a 2022 National Silver Award winner.

During his time in high school Adam has been raising meat chickens during the summer for his supervised agricultural experience. He has been using the pastured poultry model and chicken tractor model taught by Joel Salatin, with a twist. Adam and his family do all of the butchering of the birds, and they use a cylindrical chicken plucker to remove the feathers. However, they found that there were still small feathers to be pulled and pin feathers to be burnt off of the birds, even after doing that. That is a very time consuming process.

To remedy this extra time that is needed, Adam and his family started skinning the birds to circumvent the need for this process. Of course, there will be customers who want the skin on the birds. So, they have shifted their business model to finding customers who want the birds skinned. This has worked, and now they have altered their operation so it serves everyone equally.

In today's episode I have a short farm update and some thoughts about why having a horrible job as a teenager is so valuable. I'll even tell you a story from a job I had when I was 14 years old.

Plus, and update on the growth of my community. Here is the link to the article that I read:

https://www.ktvb.com/mobile/article/news/local/growing-idaho/kuna-population-explosion-mayor-joe-stear-growth-schools-fire-services/277-096af5b1-6b53-4125-946d-d65a4027f071

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Lillie Cagle is the newly elected Tennessee FFA State Sentinel, and former East Tennessee Regional FFA President. She is also the chapter president of the Bledsoe County FFA and a senior in high school.

Lillie has a very unique story of how she came to be involved in the FFA. From the age of 12 -14 Lillie had some major responsibilities in her family, and even though her family raises cattle and she lives in an agricultural community she had not given any thought to the FFA or even knew what it stood for. However, around the beginning of her freshman year of high school those family responsibilities came to an end, and she was left kind of wondering what to do with her newly discovered free time. That is when the then president of the Bledsoe FFA Chapter invited her to an FFA meeting and told her that he thought it would be good for her. Nothing has been the same since.

Lillie has started an agricultural education project called "Ag Across The Board" aimed at teaching elementary students across the State Of Tennessee about agriculture. She has even run a summer camp to teach about agriculture and received upwards of $15,000 in donations to purchase a trailer and be a mobile agricultural education resource. Lillie is making a huge difference in the world of agriculture, and after hearing this interview you will think so too!

The Agricultural College Episode is designed to profile agricultural trade schools, junior colleges, colleges and universities around the U.S. This episode is an effort to replicate the conversation that prospective students, parents and ag teachers might have with agricultural schools at trade show like the National FFA Convention.

Caitlin Alba, Recruitment Specialist with the Univeristy Of Wisconsin Stevens Point, joins me on the show today. Stevens Point, Wisconsin is located right in the middle of the state, and I have interviewed multiple students from Wisconsin and surrounding states who have chose this university to study forestry, fisheries and natural resources. I have been excited to profile them since I started this episode, and today we finally get to do so.

More Places You Can Listen to Off-Farm Income And Matt Brechwald:

Tip Of The Week

If You Are Armed, Be Responsible And Learn How To Handle Fear - a new tactic for animal right's activists is spreading, and this does not mean that you can just start shooting.

Rural Crime In The U.S.

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/crime/police-urge-local-farmers-to-be-alert-for-suspicious-activity-on-farms-animals/71-e3b58ab1-a6a7-425a-bb6d-9a348416a9ff

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/man-charged-with-assault-during-horses-medical-procedure-at-ohio-state/

https://www.facebook.com/100041702812369/posts/pfbid0EtTAimhczPhRaQKYpjq9iHDGZu8jQNKAxaTPYt7sfNf9gjynzZ9CNnvweE2V5AGZl/?mibextid=cr9u03

https://www.facebook.com/tscra/photos/a.10151880629109687/10160446777279687/

(prosecuted for cattle embezzlement in Oklahoma in 2018)

Across The Pond, Down Under And Up Above

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2023/04/15/arrest-made-after-herd-of-cows-stolen-from-farm-found-120-miles-away/

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-farm-man-jailed-trailer-26730849?int_source=nba

https://www.staffordshire.police.uk/news/staffordshire/news/2023/april/appeal-after-more-than-400-tree-saplings-stolen/

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/over-20-sheep-stolen-in-donegal-761240

Africa

https://www.blueprint.ng/man-jailed-for-stealing-one-yam-gets-niger-cjs-leniency/

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/dallas-fort-worth/ap-top-news/2023/04/20/cattle-raiding-by-jihadis-soars-in-mali-fuels-conflict

https://www.namibian.com.na/farmers-urged-to-stop-hiring-zambians-as-cattle-herders/

Chalk One Up For The Good Guys

https://www.kalb.com/2023/04/19/alexandria-man-arrested-theft-poland-community/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/utah-registered-sex-offender-arrested-after-dressing-up-elmo-around-kids-farmers-market-police

This is BJS's first recidivism study on sex offenders with a 9-year follow-up period. Fewer than half of released sex offenders were arrested for any crime within the first 3 years of release, while more than two-thirds were arrested within 9 years. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/press/rsorsp9yfu0514pr.pdf

https://vault.si.com/vault/1999/09/13/every-parents-nightmare-the-child-molester-has-found-a-home-in-the-world-of-youth-sports-where-as-a-coach-he-can-gain-the-trust-and-loyalty-of-kids-and-then-prey-on-them

More Places You Can Listen to Off-Farm Income And Matt Brechwald:

Jerry Stephens is the Northern Plains, Regional Sales Manager of Agoro Carbon, and in today's episode he will be talking to us about getting paid to sequester carbon on your farm.

Today's episode is one of those in which I need to give a disclaimer before beginning. Agoro Carbon is not a sponsor of the Off-Farm Income Podcast, and they did not pay me to record this episode. Also, they are not a prospective advertiser. I agreed to have them on the show today because what they are offering might be a source of revenue for you that can help you to achieve and sustain the lifestyle in farming or ranching that you are seeking.

Carbon offsets are a hot topic, and farmers hold some of the best possibilities of capturing carbon through the practices they use on their farms and ranches. Agoro Carbon works in the area of voluntary carbon sequestration, meaning that there is no government involvement, and none of their buyers are compelled by the government to participate.

In today's episode I strive to have the conversation with Jerry that you would have, if you were considering working with Agoro Carbon to sequester carbon on your farm and to generate a new source of revenue.

Tomorrow's ag business episode is featuring a way of creating extra revenue on your farm. This may be a fit for some of you and not a fit for others, but I like to bring these ideas forward for you to do your own research and find out if they would be helpful to you. For our re-cap episode today I went back into the archives and found this interview with Ryan Conklin talking about another possible revenue source on your farm.

Casey DeVries is the "Test Plot Chairman" for the Forreston FFA Chapter in Forreston, Illinois. If that is a title you have never heard of before, it was also a new one for me. Casey's family has been farming in the Forreston area since 1948 when his great grandfather purchased farmland there. Today some of their land sits across the road from the high school. So, during Casey's freshman year he suggested doing test plots of corn in that field to compare varieties and provide the agriculture department a way to do hands on learning. The project stuck and is still doing four years later, and will continue after Casey leaves high school.

Casey and his family have a large farm and a large shop. Working on machinery and engines in the shop is a significant part of keeping the farm going. So, Casey has been doing something mechanical since around age 5. When it came time for an SAE, he decided to challenge himself. He purchased an old tractor, brought home and tore it all apart. He restored the transmission, the rear end and even painted it himself. And then he marketed it on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Within one week it was sold to a gentleman in Wisconsin!