In this episode of the Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast, we travel to Kauai, Hawaii, to meet Sharleen Andrade Balmores, a sixth-generation rancher carrying forward her family’s 138-year cattle ranching legacy.

Although she once imagined her brothers or cousins would take over, Sharleen found her true calling in ranching — building The Rancher’s Daughter’s Reserve, creating Minnie’s Mercantile, and running the island’s oldest USDA-inspected slaughterhouse.

Sharleen opens up about:

Why she chose to return to her roots and raise gourmet, grassfed beef in Hawaii

The unique challenges of ranching on Kauai, from high land values to invasive grasses

How rotational grazing and smart pasture management keep her herd thriving

The importance of learning from multigenerational ranchers and trusting your instincts

Why community support and giving back fuel her passion for the work

Her journey is a powerful reminder that ranching is about more than cattle — it’s about family, heritage, and feeding a community with integrity.

📍 Learn more about Sharleen:

Instagram: @RanchersDaughtersReserve 

Website: www.ranchers-daughterkauai.com 

👉 If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a fellow rancher or friend who believes in the future of grassfed beef.

In this episode of The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast, Brandon Mitchell of Waynesboro, Tennessee, unpacks one of the most overlooked issues in pasture management: nutrient relocation. Unlike hay fields where nutrients are physically removed, pastures often face an internal imbalance—nutrients shift to the edges while the middle is left depleted.

Brandon explains how practices like set stocking (continuous grazing) cause cattle to graze the whole field but deposit most of their manure and urine near shade, water, or fencelines. The result? Strong growth around the edges and declining fertility in the center.

Through vivid examples and practical insights, Brandon introduces graziers to the “80/20 rule” of pasture fertility and shares strategies to rebalance nutrient distribution across the landscape.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

The Hidden Cost of Set Stocking – How nutrient relocation undermines pasture productivity.

The 80/20 Rule in Action – Why 80% of your field may be losing fertility while only 20% gains.

Smart Tools for Change – Using portable electric fencing, strategic hay and mineral placement, and even shade management to influence nutrient flow.

Practical Fixes – Why simple adjustments like bale placement or moving minerals can transform soil health.

Management Matters – How thoughtful decisions prevent compaction, runoff, and wasted fertility.

🌱 Actionable Strategies:

Use portable electric fencing to spread livestock impact and encourage more even nutrient return.

Rotate the location of hay, water, and mineral supplements to draw livestock into underutilized areas.

Consider silvopasture or portable shade to reduce nutrient concentration near barns.

Place hay on higher ground or nutrient-poor spots to recycle fertility where it’s needed most.

Adjust fertilizer or compost applications to match soil needs rather than treating the field uniformly.

Brandon’s clear message: nutrients don’t just disappear—they move. With intentional management, graziers can put them back where they belong, ensuring healthier soils, stronger pastures, and more sustainable farms.

In this episode of The Stockman Grass Farmer Podcast, longtime SGF contributor and Texas sheep rancher Sally Thomson takes us behind the scenes of life with one of ranching’s most indispensable partners—the Border Collie. From everyday gathers to competitive sheepdog trials, Sally shares 40 years of experience raising and training these extraordinary dogs alongside her husband, Chris, on their Central Texas ranch.

Listeners will hear vivid stories of instinct, intelligence, and sheer determination—from a dog named Amos who refused to leave stragglers behind, to the way a well-trained collie can replace two ranch hands and cut chore time in half. Sally explores not just the skills that make Border Collies unmatched in stock work, but also the deep working partnership and trust between dog and handler.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

The history and heritage of the Border Collie, from the hills of Scotland and England to ranches across America.

How instinct, “eye,” and natural herding ability set Border Collies apart from other working breeds.

Real-life ranch stories showing the breed’s intelligence, problem-solving, and sometimes stubborn streak.

The essential skills a Border Collie brings to sheep and cattle work: fetching, driving, sorting, and loading.

The balance of pressure and partnership when working with livestock—knowing when to hold back and when to grip.

Safety, teamwork, and mutual respect between handler and dog in challenging situations.

🌱 Actionable Insights for Stockmen:

A trained Border Collie can drastically reduce labor needs and improve handling efficiency.

Stock work is a partnership—both dog and handler must read the livestock and adapt together.

Instinct can be nurtured from puppyhood, but patience and years of training are key to producing a reliable working dog.

Respect the dog’s natural abilities while guiding them to work within your system and terrain.

📌 Resources & Links:
For more articles, insights, and training stories from Sally and other contributors, visit:
The Stockman Grass Farmer Podcast Archive

🎧 Tune In:
Listen now on your favorite podcast app and discover why a good Border Collie is worth their weight in gold—both in the field and in the heart of a rancher.

In this episode, Steve Kenyon shares how he built a profitable custom grazing business without owning land or livestock. Drawing from decades of experience with Greener Pastures Ranching in Alberta, Steve offers an honest and practical look at how regenerative graziers can succeed by keeping costs low, building strong relationships, and managing risk.

The episode explores the mindset and strategies that allow producers to thrive in a low-overhead system—and emphasizes that biology, ecology, and economics must all work in sync.

Steve explains how he grazes over 1,000 animals annually on leased land, approaches grazing management with simplicity, and uses custom grazing contracts to minimize capital outlay.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

Low-Overhead Grazing Systems: Why owning land or cattle isn’t necessary—and how to build a business anyway.

Custom Grazing Contracts: The benefits and responsibilities of grazing other people’s animals.

Risk Management: How Steve limits exposure and focuses on the variables he can control.

Biological Foundations: Applying nature’s principles to grazing systems that regenerate land and profit.

Working with Landowners: The value of win-win partnerships and effective communication.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Focus on increasing profit, not just revenue—especially in volatile markets.

Build simple systems that reduce risk and increase adaptability.

Let the biology of the land guide your grazing decisions, not just spreadsheets.

📌 For more insights and resources visit us at: www.stockmangrassfarmer.digital

In this episode, grazing expert Jim Gerrish explores how digital mapping tools are revolutionizing grazing management for producers of all sizes. Drawing from his decades of experience—and looking ahead to his Advanced School on Grazing Economics and Mapping Tools—Jim explains how modern software and mobile apps are helping producers better plan, monitor, and optimize grazing systems.

The episode covers the role of GIS technology, the benefits of real-time paddock measurement with smartphones, and how to use mapping tools to forecast feed needs, track animal performance, and make more informed management decisions. Jim also discusses the key differences between tools like Google Earth, AgriWebb, and Maya Grazing, and shares tips for integrating these tools into any operation—regardless of size or location.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

Tech Tools for Grazing: An overview of digital platforms like Maya Grazing, Google Earth, and AgriWebb, and how they serve different producer needs.

From Theory to Practice: Why Jim now uses smartphone mapping tools instead of measuring reels or pacing paddocks.

Feed Forecasting & Inventory: Using mapping data to anticipate shortages and make informed rotation decisions.

Grazing Economics & ROI: How mapping tools help measure efficiency and returns in real time.

Preparing for the Future: What to expect at the 2025 Advanced School and how mapping is central to adaptive grazing success.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Start by mapping your property boundaries and paddocks using Google Earth or a smartphone GPS app.

Track your daily animal moves and feed utilization to build a digital grazing inventory.

Use feed forecasting to plan ahead—especially for drought or seasonal gaps.

Choose tools that match your operation’s complexity; don’t over-tech if a simple map will do.

Use mapping to communicate more effectively with landlords, employees, and collaborators.

📌 For more insights and to reserve your seat at Jim’s School at Polyface, visit:
👉 https://www.stockmangrassfarmer.digital/profile

👉 Tune in with your favorite podcast app to The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast and learn how tech-savvy grazing can regenerate your land—and your bottom line.

In this episode, grazing expert and longtime SGF contributor Jim Gerrish tackles a frequently overlooked threat to pasture health—soil compaction. While it’s easy to spot visible issues like weeds or bare patches, compaction is stealthy. It reduces infiltration, chokes out biology, and quietly erodes pasture productivity—even when everything above ground looks fine.

The episode explores how compaction develops in both dry and wet conditions, why certain grazing practices (like overstocking or ignoring soil moisture) make it worse, and how to manage your land in a way that protects the invisible ecosystem beneath your animals’ hooves.

Jim also dives into his personal experience observing compaction on both his Missouri and Idaho properties, highlighting how the signs and solutions vary by climate and soil type.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

What Compaction Looks Like: It doesn’t always show up as standing water or bare ground. Sometimes, it’s just lackluster growth and “off” grazing behavior.

The Role of Moisture: Pugging in wet conditions causes serious surface damage, while dry compaction happens deeper and more subtly.

Grazing Management and Movement: Why leaving animals too long—or returning too soon—can set back your pastures for years.

Biological Soil Health: Compaction strangles the biology that makes nutrient cycling possible. Without biology, the system falls apart.

Dealing with It: Jim shares simple, low-cost ways to start healing compacted ground—starting with observation, rest, and strategic animal impact.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Don’t just look at the top of your pasture—dig in and observe what’s happening below.

Avoid grazing when soils are too wet or too dry to protect structure and infiltration.

Move livestock before signs of pugging, and give compacted areas plenty of rest.

Foster soil biology with diverse roots, living plants, and manure distribution.

Use animal behavior as a barometer—if performance is off, your soil might be telling you something.

📌 For more insights and resources, be sure to visit us here for our latest specials and exclusive offers.

🎧 Tune in with your favorite podcast app to The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast and uncover what’s really happening beneath your pastures—because soil that looks good isn’t always soil that is good.

🎙️ Episode Title: Weak Links By Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm

In this powerful episode, Joel Salatin challenges one of the most common assumptions in regenerative agriculture: that land access is the biggest barrier for aspiring farmers. With supply chain disruptions, regulatory overreach, and rising input costs, many well-intentioned investors are looking to help—but often target the wrong weak link.

Joel draws on personal experience and hard-won lessons from decades of observation and mentorship to offer a clearer, more actionable path forward. He argues that the keys to launching successful next-generation graziers lie not in land—but in mastery, management, and marketing.

Whether you're a new farmer, a funder hoping to support one, or a seasoned operator looking to mentor the next wave, this episode delivers a compelling case for rethinking how we grow the future of farming.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

Land Isn’t the Weak Link: Why throwing capital at land access often fails—and what matters more for farmer success.

Mastery Through Repetition: Why real skills come from doing the work under all conditions—not from a certificate or a title.

Management Over Machinery: How workflow, team-building, relationships, and mindset trump technology or land ownership.

Marketing as a Survival Skill: Joel explores why "nothing happens until you make a sale," and how storytelling and branding keep a farm alive.

Lessons from Allan Nation: Revisiting the idea that land ownership is defensive; real wealth-building comes from control, not capital lockup.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Support farmers by investing in skill-building, not just land.

Seek out apprenticeships, experience, and real-world reps—not just degrees.

Improve management systems before expanding acreage.

Focus on market fit and messaging—know your “why” and communicate it well.

If you want land, make your operation beautiful—opportunities will follow.

📌 For more insights and resources be sure to visit:
👉 https://www.stockmangrassfarmer.digital/profile

🎧 Tune in on your favorite podcast app to The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast and discover why the most successful farmers aren’t chasing land—they’re cultivating mastery, management, and marketing.

In this episode, grazing expert and longtime SGF columnist Jim Gerrish shares decades of experience transforming worn-out cropland into productive pasture using adaptive grazing—not chemicals. The episode explores Jim’s approach to pasture renovation, weed control, and animal performance, emphasizing observation, timing, and biological principles over conventional inputs.

Jim discusses practical strategies for improving pasture health, including managing pH, building soil biology, and introducing species diversity. He also reflects on the importance of listening—to your animals, your forage, and your own common sense.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

Converting Cropland to Pasture: Jim outlines how he and his wife improved 260 acres of degraded land without herbicides or reseeding.

Biological Weed Control: Learn how livestock pressure and timing can naturally suppress unwanted plants.

The Limits of Test Results: Why soil tests and forage tests are useful—but not the final word.

The Role of Animals in the System: How different species, like goats, can be used to diversify and manage landscapes.

Climate-Specific Management: Lessons from Missouri’s humid pastures and Idaho’s arid rangeland.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Use grazing pressure as a tool for weed suppression and plant community evolution.

Observe animal behavior and performance as the ultimate indicator of grazing success.

Address pH and biological activity before focusing on fertilizers.

Don’t blindly follow test results—use them to inform, not dictate.

Think in terms of long-term systems, not short-term fixes.

📌 For more insights and resources—including Jim’s live and recorded schools—be sure to visit us here for our latest specials and exclusive offers

👉 Tune in with your favorite podcast app to The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast and discover how grazing with intention can regenerate your land—and your bottom line.

🎙️ Episode Title: Precision Agriculture
✍️ By Joel Salatin

In this episode, Joel Salatin challenges the prevailing narratives around precision agriculture. While modern ag technologies promise efficiency and control, Joel asks whether these tools actually serve regenerative graziers—or if they erode the very principles that make biological farming successful.

The episode explores the difference between mechanistic efficiency and biological intuition, calling graziers to think critically about how much control we’re handing over to silicon and sensors. Joel argues for a more grounded approach: one that respects the autonomy of the land, the genius of nature, and the hard-earned wisdom of the grazier.

He questions the push for electromagnetic frequency control of livestock, centralized data collection, and hyper-mechanized management, advocating instead for what he calls "precision biology"—a system based on observation, feedback, and humility before nature’s complexity.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

The Marketing of Precision: How “precision ag” is often a euphemism for centralized control and top-down tech adoption.

Biological vs. Mechanical Thinking: Why nature’s complexity requires observation and intuition, not just algorithms.

The Myth of Efficiency: How labor-saving gadgets can backfire when they de-skill the grazier and disconnect us from the land.

The Dangers of Centralization: Joel’s critique of Big Tech’s growing influence over small farms and independent graziers.

Precision Biology: A call to redefine precision in regenerative terms—through feedback loops, attentiveness, and trust in natural patterns.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Don’t adopt ag tech just because it’s trendy—ask what problem it actually solves.

Use tools that increase your attentiveness to the land, not your distance from it.

Be cautious of “solutions” that remove biological feedback and farmer autonomy.

Reclaim the term “precision” to mean tuned-in, adaptive, and context-aware.

Invest more in observation and ecological literacy than in gadgets and gizmos.

📌 For More from Joel Salatin:
Visit stockmangrassfarmer.digital to explore Joel’s full library of articles, books, and courses on regenerative farming.

👉 Tune in on your favorite podcast app and discover why being truly precise means listening to your animals, your soil, and your own common sense.

In this episode, Louisiana farmer and entrepreneur Grant Estrade shares a grounded, no-nonsense approach to running a regenerative farm business without sacrificing personal well-being or profitability. As the co-owner of Local Cooling Farms and Laughing Buddha Nursery, Grant has spent over two decades balancing the tension between growth and sustainability.

He explores the internal tug-of-war many graziers feel between "saving the world" and simply maintaining a farm that works — financially, personally, and relationally. Rather than chasing every opportunity for expansion, Grant challenges farmers to step into the mindset of an economist, making clear-eyed decisions based on realistic assessments of production capacity, sales channels, and return on investment.

🔑 Key Points Covered:

The Trap of Unsustainable Growth: How the regenerative mindset can lead to burnout and financial instability if not checked with economic realism.

Balancing Growth and Maintenance: Why fixing your fence may be more important than buying new land.

Working On the Business vs. In the Business: Understanding when to take the role of the technician and when to step into strategic oversight.

Thinking Like an Economist: Applying key concepts like Growth vs. Scale, Production vs. Sales Capability, and Diminishing Returns to your farm decisions.

Letting the Market Lead: The importance of scaling production based on actual sales data—not dreams or assumptions.

🌱 Actionable Insights:

Before expanding, assess whether your current operation has unoptimized systems you can improve first.

Avoid white-hot growth fueled by outside capital unless you’ve built the sales infrastructure to support it.

Learn to distinguish between profitable production and overproduction that eats away at margins.

Regularly review your bottlenecks—whether they’re in labor, marketing, or infrastructure.

Build a farm business that supports your life—not the other way around.

📌 For more insights and resources, be sure to visit us here for our latest specials and exclusive offers

👉 Tune in with your favorite podcast app to The Stockman Grassfarmer Podcast and learn how to cultivate both profits and purpose with Grant’s blend of farmer wisdom and economic savvy.