Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Russell Jones Speaks, where we explore big issues that matter to parents, grandparents, and kids. We tackle intergenerational issues. Everything that affects parents, grands, and children is on the table.
Speaker: That includes health and fitness, relationships, attitude, family unity, vision, adversity, God, and anything else that might arise. The goal is for you to take away something that you can use in your life immediately.
Speaker: I really want to help improve the lives of families, especially those with 10 to 13 year old middle schoolers. Let's talk. Go to RussellJonesSpeaks.com to get an amazing gift and then jump on a call with me.
Speaker: My guest today is Jenny Schleyer from Middle Mountain Farmstead. Jen, Zach, Boone, and Charlie, and one on the way, Schleyer, live on a small farm up 92 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Speaker: Zach is a veteran and Zen is a former Zen and Jen.
Speaker: Zach is a veteran and Jen is a former physical therapist. They're both on the farm full-time raising pasture pigs and chickens, dairy goats, baking sourdough bread, and making all-natural skincare products.
Speaker: They love sharing their passion for real and locally raised foods, healthy living, and sustainability in their growing community. Welcome, Jen. Welcome, Jen. Hello.
Speaker: Don't feel bad about calling me Zen. A lot of people call us Jack and Zen. It's a very confusing little name complex there. That's funny. So um just for our listeners, Jen is my niece.
Speaker: Now, ah she grew up far away from where I lived. um My sister, her mom was an exercise physiologist. Her dad was an executive with IBM.
Speaker: She grew up in this really nice cul-de-sac in Raleigh, North Carolina. And just following from a distance her life, growing up and, you know, we'd get together maybe once a year we're lucky, maybe twice.
Speaker: And, um, And then Jen went off to school and next thing we knew she was doctor of exercise physiology and jumping off on her career.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden my sister called and said, Hey, Jen and Zach, they, uh, they just bought a farm up in West Virginia, 75 acres.
Speaker: And I said, what? So, uh, Can you ah give us an idea how you got to that point, Jan? Yes, I can bridge the gap a little bit. So i i think that the way that I was raised in like suburbia with like a lot of people that were really motivated to do like the biggest, best thing, I was motivated also to go do a great thing. So I was good at school.
Speaker: So I felt like Physical therapy was the route for me. I liked exercise. I liked helping people. So I pushed myself through school thinking that like that would be really satisfying once I was out.
Speaker: And it was satisfying to get the degree and to help people and to work that job. But um after Zach and I got married, we were sort of, we sort of just had a really regular life. Like I was going to work, helping people, seeing lots of patients every day in an outpatient clinic.
Speaker: He was doing school online, just kind of like, blah. Um, and in 2020, my dad passed away from pancreatic cancer and COVID was happening. So it' sort of just like a big, like big time to make a crazy decision. Right. So we decided to, um,
Speaker: I quit my job. We put our house up for rent that we had just moved into six months before. And he continued doing online school so that we could go to California and do travel physical therapy. So we lived in RV for a while and we were traveling and that was kind of fulfilling, but it still wasn't like, it was still physical therapy that was like, just like running through patients. I was doing home health and going to patients' houses. It was cool to be in a new area.
Speaker: We really craved like working towards something bigger than just like going to a job. And Zach was very unfulfilled with online school. That's not, I don't think that's where most people.
Speaker: um So if we stayed in California for almost a year and we came back this way thinking we wanted to be closer to family, start figuring out like maybe settling down, having kids. And I got a job in Covington, Virginia, which we looked up.
Speaker: um Technically the office was in Lowmore, Virginia, which I'm sure you've never heard of. And the Google reviews, they were like, um no one goes to school here. The kids, the kids are all on drugs. Like there's, there's nowhere to get groceries. We were like, well, what is this place? But the money was good. It was closer to home. So we took the job.
Speaker: So we moved our RV back across to the East coast, lived in this really sketchy little RV um camp near a state park. And we were sort of hanging out in Virginia. And this part of Virginia was right on the line of Virginia and West Virginia.
Speaker: So after a while of living there, we popped over to West Virginia and we like, whoa, West Virginia it's special. The people are just growing up in the South. You think people are kind, but sort of like the fake kind of kind.
Speaker: um i don't know if you could relate with your people in South Carolina, if they're real kind. of beautiful here. They are my neighbor. True. But. two but I felt like people in North Carolina were nice, but the people here are like a whole different level of niceness.
Speaker: They have all these skills that are practical, that mean something. They like community matters to them. They want to hang out with you and talk for an hour about ah this guy stops by our house all the time to talk about turkey hunting with Zach. Like it's it's just a different speed of living. So we decided we wanted to stay in West Virginia.
Speaker: We bought this farm um that was valued the same as our tiny house in Fuquay Verena, North Carolina, but it had 75 acres. We're like, wow, that's significant that our money can go that far. So we bought the property. It's way out of town.
Speaker: There's no cell service. It was kind of a crazy move. And we just thought we were going to live here. We'll see what happens. Zach will do some hunting on the property and then we'll go from there.
Speaker: So I was working full time. He was still in school online. We ended up moving here and then got some chickens. Then I got pregnant. We had a baby and we just sort of felt like living rurally is just a lot different than what you do in town. You can't just like run to town and get something to eat or go to the grocery multiple times a week like we used to. So being here sort of changed our way of thinking and finding a way to do more for ourselves.
Speaker: which not only sort of filled the craving for like that purpose and like the work and the meaning in life, especially having a new child, right. That adds a whole, whole different purpose to life.
Speaker: Um, ah but being here working and then eventually starting to sell those things to the community and provide something that's like healthier than what you can get at the grocery store to our community, just really, really struck a chord with us.
Speaker: Um, And then just totally took off. Zach read a book about growing meat, birds, chickens on pasture and quit school. And then we just sort of went went all in. I was working full time. Now I'm not working at all.
Speaker: um And we're totally, totally um living off of the business and all the things we're doing here. So, Okay, so did does Zach have any farming background? or or No. no like his child He grew up in Cincinnati.
Speaker: His childhood was very similar to mine. Suburbia, he was an only child. And so he was like a little more sheltered. He spent a lot of time alone reading books, like watching movies. um But he had always...
Speaker: wanted to be outside and that was sort of his main thing um we've always loved good food and being outside and good food and living in the country sort of turn into raising your own food it seems like right but um so okay so the big picture of regenerative farming the movement the community are you I mean, that had have some effect on you. Are you part of that community are you just, you guys doing your own thing?
Speaker: Like, how does that work? So farming as a whole is what, drew us in, like raising raising our own food. And as we were researching ways to raise our own food, it made the most sense to do it in a way that would regenerate the land, not only because our property, like our pasture was garbage and we really, we didn't have the money to, we didn't have a tractor. We didn't have the money to reseed everything so that we could have pasture that our animals could eat.
Speaker: um So learning how to use the animals to improve the land was not only beneficial cost wise, but also nutritionally and ah like 3 million other reasons.
Speaker: Wow. Yeah. So i know that, that made a lot of sense. Are there, um, Are there other people like in that, are there other regenerative farms in your general area?
Speaker: Yeah. And we, we, when we were getting into farming, we would go to the farmer's market and sort of talk to the people who were doing what we wanted to do on a larger scale. um But we did watch a lot of YouTube, YouTube, whatever anyone asks, like how we learned to farm YouTube, number one, number one spot. Justin Rhodes is a sort of the homesteading community is what we branched off of. And the homesteading community is very like family centric, regenerative farming, p permaculture, all of those buzzwords um to make farming make sense for
Speaker: you financially and also your land and your animals. um So we did a lot of consuming things there to figure out what we like what what kind of animals we wanted to have, what was best for our property in particular. like Our property is 75 acres, but it's not 75 acres of pasture. So we couldn't get a bunch of cows. We couldn't get a bunch of sheep.
Speaker: That's how we ended up with goats because goats love to browse versus eating things off the ground because they like to prevent getting parasites. Um, and pigs like to be in the woods as well. So that was sort of what informed how we're farming and what we're farming.
Speaker: Oh, wow. Okay. yeah It just, okay. I mean, it just from, I mean, that's wild. That's wild. Just give us an example of a day in the life. So there's, there's two little ones, one on the way.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. So a normal, like Monday to Friday, I'm guessing weekends or farmers markets and things like that. Yeah. We, try we love routine. Zach is like very, very routine guy. So we, we try to keep our days as consistent as possible and that helps the kids too.
Speaker: um But every day we wake up at 530, except for our Saturday farmer's market, we have to get up at 430. So we wake up at 530. Kids are up shortly after. Both of us go out to the gym to exercise.
Speaker: Zach's usually out there for about an hour, and I go out for about 30 minutes, Monday through Friday. um When he comes back in, we make smoothies religiously. um I was doing raw eggs for a while, which made me think of you, because I know growing up, you were always eating raw eggs, you and Buddy.
Speaker: But they started making me a little nauseous. Buddy still does that. i don't I don't know if he does it just because I'm talking to him on the phone, but yeah he'll throw, you know, half a dozen raw eggs.
Speaker: I try to, you know, I never did it Rocky style like he does it. Just throw the raw eggs in there. It was always in a, you know, in a mixture or whatever. But anyway. Yeah. Yeah, i we were doing that anyway. Yeah. So we use a lot of our raw goat's milk.
Speaker: I make yogurt and all sorts of things. So that all goes into the smoothie, some frozen berries. And then Zach and I part ways. So I take the boys and I go out and do chores. Zach goes down to milk the goats. We have nine goats that he's milking right now.
Speaker: So we get about three gallons of milk every day. And that takes him about an hour and a half to like get down there, wrangle the goats, feed the goats, get them all milked. We do have a machine milker. And while he's doing that right now, I am feeding the chicks in the brooder.
Speaker: I'm down in the pasture, moving the chickens because the chickens are in basically like a, it's called a chicken tractor, but it's a large cage that is on the grass. Each day you move it so they can get to new grass. So I move all the tractors, feed them, go over and feed the pigs um and do whatever sort of outside things need to be done. Usually there's some cleaning up, being on a farm, there's just constant messes.
Speaker: um yes And that thats that's like our everyday. That's non-negotiable. And then after that, it's sort of like what needs to be done. So today, after I put our youngest down for a nap, I went downstairs and made a batch of soap. um That's what I was doing right before this call. I was like, hurry up, soap, be a better blend.
Speaker: um I was running a little late. um And Zach is out right now fixing a couple of our chicken tractors because we have some new birds that need to go out on pasture next week. um And then this afternoon, I do a lot of baking for the farmer's markets and for wholesale clients. That was one of the big ways that I was able to financially stop my work as a physical therapist.
Speaker: um So this afternoon, I'll be doing a bunch of baking. Zach will be outside. Oh, moving the pigs. The pigs have been in the same place for a while. Gotta move the pigs. Gotta move the pigs.
Speaker: um These pigs have been getting crazy. love... we love We love the pigs so much, but if they're if they like don't have new pasture, if you don't feed them, they just get, they're wild.
Speaker: um So that's that's sort of our on the docket. And then around five, we're usually settling down, eating dinner. After dinner, we have to go down and put the baby goats away so we can separate them from their moms so we can have their milk.
Speaker: And then boys go to bed around seven and then we lay on the couch like this because they're so tired. Nice. But that's sort of a day in the life. It sort of just depends on what's going on, what needs to be addressed. Zach has a sawmill, so he's like always milling stuff for different projects. um I'm always cooking stuff, making chili today.
Speaker: um it's a little bit chillier outside. Yeah, there's always a little rotating agenda. So now, when did you start this? What year was it?
Speaker: moved here in the fall, winter of 21. And that's the following spring in 22 is when we got our first chickens. We had egg layers. And that summer, we also got a batch of meat birds to raise on pasture.
Speaker: We just went for it. Yeah. Okay. And then, um, so, okay. So it's what three years now. This is our third year that we're selling at the farmer's market. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. So are you paying your bills? Yeah. Um, it's a little like, so I went from working full time, which a physical therapist salary is very comfortable for a small family, especially in a rural area to live off of.
Speaker: So we were super comfy. We could like travel a little bit, you know, um, Then I went down to a part-time position. And then after we had our second son, I went to PRN. So I was just working one or two days a week.
Speaker: And this past December, I stopped working as a physical therapist. So all of our income right now is from the farm. um And we have sort of a couple different avenues. Like the bread is one of the avenues, the meat, and then our like soap and skincare things. So we have um a bunch of people that we wholesale to locally. And then we're also at two farmers markets every week.
Speaker: um And that makes up our income. It's definitely tight. It's not, we're not like, yeah, but it will improve. but um it will improve Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. So now are there any like big plans for the future or is it just kind of tweaking and improving what you're doing now? Like what? So are, are you not close to thinking about that yet?
Speaker: No, we are. We, we try to think about it often because the, Our goal of doing all of that, our main goal was to be together as a family. It's so rare that you get to see young families spending so much time together.
Speaker: Like I see a lot of my friends, the only time they have as a family or the only time they have to play with their kids is like, one night a week, like Sunday night or something, you know, because everyone's packed full of all the things on their schedule. So it's it's one of our biggest priorities to be together and to be working together for the boys to be seeing what we're doing um and being a part of it.
Speaker: So we're working a little more than we feel like we'd like to right now. We'd like to have a little bit more downtime to like go fishing or enjoy all of the amazing things that are around us that we just don't really have time for right now.
Speaker: um So streamlining some of our processes and then growing. So um this year we're raising 600 chickens to sell. um But next summer we would like to raise a thousand chickens to sell, which sounds crazy.
Speaker: um Each year, the number just keeps keeps getting bigger and bigger. um But because of the seasonality of raising chickens, you can only raise them in the warm months. It's nice. You can like make most of your income during the summer, sort of like the opposite of a teacher, make most of your income there and then um have a little bit more time to be flexible during the winter. The, um,
Speaker: Yeah, I was just thinking about, well, the story about the yeah the turkeys. So I told you or Zach, you never processed...
Speaker: a chicken or a turkey or anything like that before, right? This was no. Okay. So, so I heard that I think you had told it to me the the turkey story you had so many turkeys you had last year and it became a very popular thing.
Speaker: um i guess people would just like, i don't know what, they'd shoot you a text and say, I'm coming up. And then you guys would just process the ah bird. So no, that's not quite how we did it. That would be a very, very labor intensive. So we did um reservation. So we like pre-sold all of the turkeys. And then the Friday before Thanksgiving, we it was naturally, it was a snowy day.
Speaker: We processed all of them. And then the next day at the farmer's market, we distributed all of them. So everyone got fresh pasture-raised, never frozen turkeys for their Thanksgiving. And um it was really, really cool to like a lot of people with their feedback were like, I didn't even like turkey until I tried this one.
Speaker: So that that's super satisfying. Oh, nice. Yeah. This year is different though, right? Cause you're, there's more of them and processing day is the due date for your third child. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah So this year we plan to raise 70. um We're partnering with a farm in the neighboring or a farm store in a neighboring County. That's going to help with some of the distribution.
Speaker: so The Friday before Thanksgiving, we'll be processing 70 with amazing help. Mind you, we have many friends that come and are incredible. I think that I will just not plan to be helping. I'll plan to be around.
Speaker: And if I go into labor, that's great. um But I'm sure a lot of our friends will. will help ah sort of pick up the slack. Yeah, i'm not not great planning on our part, I guess.
Speaker: Well, sometimes those things, you know, doing the math and everything is hard. but Yeah. um Zach was initially disappointed that the baby is going to be due during hunting season, but then we realized turkey day. So it'll be an interesting late fall.
Speaker: Oh, great. Okay. So um I need, I need a couple of stories. I need the goat story with the baby, the goat baby story. um That was the goat is giving birth to its first, and what they call baby goats, ki kids. Yeah. The first, yeah and you're witnessing the struggle Yes.
Speaker: The goat, your goat, your pet goat, I guess. I don't know. They're not really pets, but the dairy, the dairy goats are more pets because we're like with them, handling them and like not just eating them in a year.
Speaker: Okay. um so So you're watching this whole thing going down. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. so this spring, she was the first one to go into labor. And we actually didn't mean to get her bread. She was supposed to go another year and like mature and get bigger.
Speaker: So we were already kind of worried like, oh, is this baby going to come out? Her mom... had a hard time birthing her and I had to help her. So we're sort of just like keeping an eye. So she's in labor. I see her down by the goats stand up and like, there's just something sticking out of her.
Speaker: like, oh gosh, but she doesn't look like she's doing anything. She doesn't look like she's pushing. She doesn't really look like she knows that anything's coming out. So like, oh my gosh, her name's Pippin. I'm like, Pippin, what are we going to do with you? So I try to like get her in an area, but we didn't really have any fencing up yet for like kitting stalls.
Speaker: So I'm like first chasing her around, like trying to, the goats come out like this. So like their front hooves first and then their head comes. So you can sort of grab on their little front toes there.
Speaker: um So I'm like running behind her with my hands on the toes, but man, are they slippery? So she goes over by the hay feeder. I'm like, I got to get some better grip. Like gloves aren't going to help me. All I've got is this sweatshirt.
Speaker: It was a sweatshirt that I really like. It ended up washing up fine. So I take it off. I put it on my hands and I grab that goat. And I'm like, girl, you're you're not losing this goat. This is going to be a good goat.
Speaker: So she sort of starts pushing a little bit, and I pull. But you'd be surprised how hard it is to pull ah a baby out, especially a – I mean, maybe you wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker: I was surprised. no I'm on the be surprised about it. I'm kneeling on the ground. Zach has the boys, and everyone's watching like – They're pretty unsure about what's happening.
Speaker: i give a couple of tugs and like really yank. And she sort of helps me a little bit. Baby comes sliding on out all the fluids and everything come out and he's totally fine. A little, little buckling.
Speaker: We named him Pete and mom was fine. She was, she did great. Yeah. So and that's what cleaned up. So I cleaned up. Yep. Just took it down and threw it in the washer.
Speaker: And then what about the, I guess this is a goat story too, about the short stud. but my ah Your mom was telling me about that one. Yeah. So last year, okay, so when you have dairy goats, if you keep an intact male around, sometimes it can taint the taste of the milk. And some people say it tastes bucky.
Speaker: like just more goaty tasting. If you've ever tasted something goat, like goat cheese tastes sort of goaty, but the taste of real goatiness is just nasty. you don't You don't want it. So we don't have a buck.
Speaker: We plan to have one eventually like fenced off far away from our girls. But this past year and the year before, we had to borrow a buck. We borrowed a really nice buck when everyone first went into heat and no one took.
Speaker: We think maybe it was like a false heat. We're not sure. um So we borrowed another one that was a standard size goat that should have been big enough, but he was a little, like he was not fully mature. So he, whenever, whenever the girls go into heat, the the boy goes crazy. And this is really with all farm animals. We see this with our pigs too. They just bother them all day.
Speaker: So this goat all day is mounting the girls to the point where, like he couldn't get the job done to the point where the girls were so desperate that they started mounting his head. Like I have a picture of one of them.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was bad. It's really, okay. We had heard someone before like sort of assisting like with different sort of heights that the butt could stand on.
Speaker: So we went down and we made a little stand out of hay. for him to get up and we had to like lead the girl around and then he hopped up behind her and got the drop. So was more successful than we thought it was because in the moment felt very silly. Oh, didn't even realize it was successful. Oh, that's cool.
Speaker: Oh, very cool. We didn't think it was successful. So we ended up borrowing another buck from someone else after that just to like be a coverall. But yeah. Shorty came through.
Speaker: Cool beans. right. It did come through. Yeah, more girls than we thought. then And then there was a ah little confusion, goats with a dog. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah What was that story about? that sound i can I was trying to get the visual on that. like My dogs would have went along too well. So we have an Australian shepherd that just like loves getting a little like frisky with pigs, pigs especially, but just like likes to be close with some of our other animals.
Speaker: So you can regularly find him mounting our pigs out in pasture. And it's kind of funny because our pigs have spots and this Aussie is gray with spots. So they kind of look like they it could be distantly related. um But his name is Angus.
Speaker: And we had one of our babies that was born this year. Her mom rejected her. Her name was Mabel. So she was in the house and she was extremely weak. Um, her legs would just splay out in front of her. She couldn't really stand. We had to help her get up and walk around.
Speaker: So she got extreme like special care. Nobody else usually gets to come into the house, but she did. And not only did Angus really enjoy licking her butt, that's sort of his, thing and I think that's just a dog thing in general.
Speaker: Um, we we noticed, so the kids have the reflex to like go under their mom, find the teeth and nurse. um And this this goat still had that reflex. We were bottle feeding her, but Gus would stand there and she would go up underneath and like try to search for something. And he would just stand there. Like it was his job to like be his standard mom.
Speaker: Obviously no milk is coming out. um If you, if you look on, I posted a video of it on my Instagram and Facebook page. If you look it up, um it's just adorable and hilarious. one All right. So adventures, adventures.
Speaker: yeah Let me just ask these two about these two places. This guy, Joel Salatin, I hear a lot of his stuff, you know, when I'm in my looking into, you know, the food process, you know, in this country and everything else. um Is he somebody that, you know, you follow or you're, ah what you know, is there anything about him that,
Speaker: I know he gets in the media a lot. Any comments on him? Yes. So the book that Zach read um that initially got him wanting to raise chickens was a Joel Sattleton book called Pastured Poultry Profits.
Speaker: um And I think as a farmer starting out, it feels more reasonable to start raising chickens versus raising beef because like, well, having us having a cow feels pretty scary after like only having dogs your whole life.
Speaker: Um, so that book was very, very informative and just like really makes you think about the way that your food is raised. Um, conventionally chickens are raised in buildings, just like in their poop, but just like filthy, filthy conditions, the way that they're processed with machines, they're like dipped into some sort of chlorine solution after they're plucked and everything.
Speaker: um learning more about that was very, very eyeopening. And then learning how, like, I don't think I ever would have assumed that they ate grass because like they're in buildings, but the chickens love eating grass. You see them like pecking away chickens and turkeys both.
Speaker: um And thinking about the quality of food that you're feeding them. um And then also it's kind of mind blowing being, thinking about being able to do it yourself um because we're so removed from from the food system and growing food and doing all of that so all of that was extremely eye-opening and it sort of put a bug up his butt about doing it ourself and at least for us and then we liked it so much that we wanted to do for the community too so joel salatin is super super cool i love hearing what he has to say yeah yeah now he's virginia right yeah and he's not that far from here
Speaker: um I think he's about two hours Northeast of us. Um, so we like, there are a lot of local, um, speaking events and stuff that he attends, which is cool.
Speaker: And white Oak pastures. I think they're down Georgia. Yeah. I've heard some stuff about them. I follow him on Instagram. He has the coolest accent. that I read that whenever he pops up with any quotes, like turn the volume up. Um,
Speaker: um they're They're doing something a little bit different because they're mostly focused on beef. So it's not as relatable to us. Also, the scale that they farm at is like, I mean, even Joel Salatin's farm is like way bigger than ours.
Speaker: It's easier for us to sort of follow the people that are doing more like small farming just for their community instead of the people like shipping beef all over the place. But yeah, he's he's definitely, it's cool to see the older farmers doing like the new age.
Speaker: techniques of farming you know not just doing what what their well joel salatin's dad was are always sort of a forward thinker but not just doing what their parents told them to do or what their grandparents always did with their cows and sort of thinking out of the box with rotational grazing and stuff like that yeah cool yeah we have yeah so all right and um i should have had a hint i don't of what you guys, I don't know when this picture was taken, but I remember being at Grammys a number years ago and you were there. And, um, I remember taking a picture of your shirt and it said raw milk on the front and on the back, it said pasteurization is for weenies.
Speaker: I'm going to see if I can post this actually at this spot on the podcast, if I can post this picture. but But so know you don't have cows, so you guys are going straight goat milk now for for the for the foreseeable future?
Speaker: Yeah, we would like a cow um mainly for like cream and just like more traditional milk uses, but Having goats has been a really cool start because we didn't have any experience with dairy animals. And having a cow is, A, a huge financial investment.
Speaker: But B, also, like, with small children, like, kind of intimidating. The goats are so good with kids. um And goat dairy is also – none of us have issues with um lactose or anything like that. But goat dairy is easier for kids and adults to digest um because of the lower lactose.
Speaker: And it's delicious. I actually had a patient who we ended up buying ah bunch of goats from who sort of introduced me into goat dairy. I always thought it'd be cool to have a goat that I milked and she sort of made it seem like more of a reality.
Speaker: um With our goat's milk, we have a herd share. So we share it locally to people who are in need of goat milk because the goat milk from the grocery store A is extremely expensive. I think it's $7 for a quart and we sell a half gallon for $8 of raw goat milk.
Speaker: um And the stuff at the store is pasteurized and just tastes like garbage. So when goat milk is heated up, it just gets goaty. The taste is just not that like,
Speaker: sweet, fresh milk that you get on day one after you milk your goat. um So it's a cool thing. that It's sort of like a niche thing that we're able to provide to the community. um And then turning it into other things, like we eat a ton of the goat cheese that I make.
Speaker: but That's really simple. We eat a lot of the yogurt. And then we use the milk in skincare products that are beneficial for people with sensitive skin, babies, older folks.
Speaker: Yeah. I know that Grammy would have loved my soap. She didn't really get a chance to use it, but she, with her rosacea and dry skin. That's, she passed some of that along, but, uh, mom.
Speaker: but Um, it's okay. So, All right, this'll be like, i don't want to call it a rant part, but this part, I'm just going to ask you to comment on this list. It's a excerpted from the Sacred Cow book, but it's applicable to every type of regenerative farming.
Speaker: You know, I don't have to respond one at a time. I'm just, you know, just want to get a general reaction. um So I have like these start items. ah The system needs to change.
Speaker: The row crop centric food system proposed and embraced by academia, media and government is now and will be owned by a few gargantuan multinational corporations.
Speaker: These all powerful entities will control every feature of our lives by controlling the molecular basis of our lives, food. The current row crop centric system is indeed a predicament.
Speaker: Not only is it unsustainable from an ecological perspective, it is poised to bankrupt the economies of developed nations thanks to the exponentially increasing healthcare costs of a broken system built on processed foods.
Speaker: The fact is, we can't afford not to change how we are growing food and how we are eating. We're overweight, metabolically broken, our small towns are dying, and we're ruining our soil.
Speaker: regenerative agriculture, saving our farms, and our health. There are so many ways to implement resilient regional food systems. Education about the undeniable dangers of ultra-processed foods is to bring back cooking classes to schools and community centers, and running campaigns recommending families get back to the kitchen and eat more real food.
Speaker: approximately 36 to 40 percent of today's corn crop actually goes into livestock feed, cattle, pigs, and chickens, with the rest being used mainly for high fructose corn syrup and ethanol.
Speaker: So while hospitals are now touting their reduction in meat as an environmentally positive step, given the fact that most patients require more nutrient density and protein to recover,
Speaker: Perhaps the focus should be instead on helping people improve their poor diets and lifestyles and avoid hospitals in the first place. Big agriculture does a great job at carbohydrate production.
Speaker: That has given us an unhealthy overweight epidemic. The need is for more nutrients. We have plenty of calories. And we overlay a food system that makes our populace sick while destroying our topsoil.
Speaker: The enemy is industrial agriculture and hyper palatable infinite shelf life junk food, not the family of farmers who wants to raise their animals on grass.
Speaker: How food is produced is far more important than what food the food is. We hope we have made a compelling case for why we need more ruminants grazed in the right way in order to mitigate climate change, increase biodiversity, increase the water holding capacity of the soil, and sequester carbon while providing nutrient-dense food.
Speaker: The irrigation of crops takes about 70% of the world's freshwater withdrawals, but that is largely ignored in discussions of sustainability. Nature wants to store and cycle water, and we've broken the system.
Speaker: The EPA considers agriculture the largest water pollution source in the United States. Corn production uses more herbicides and insecticides and causes more runoff and water pollution than any other crop.
Speaker: thirty seven and 37.5% of the corn acreage in the U.S. is used for producing ethanol. This is a greenwashed boondoggle that costs more energy than it provides and is totally subsidized by the government.
Speaker: So, I believe that the one that designed this earth and its function has made everything we need to live healthy lives. But mankind, in the name of progress and convenience,
Speaker: has not only genetically modified perfect seeds, we have also destroyed the soil and ecosystem. And then one more thing popped up, Jen, while I was doing this, a quote from a doctor.
Speaker: Young people have rejected the trust the science mentality of older generations, paving the way for acceptance of the concept of make America healthy again, according to a holistic doctor in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker: I grew up in an era of thinking if it was that bad for us, it really shouldn't be put in our foods. And I'm sure the government wouldn't allow that. And it turns out that they were allowing it.
Speaker: And your generation is like, I'm not sure I'm going to trust the government in making all these decisions for me. who Any response to all that? I know. as Yeah. I mean, like preach, all of that is totally what we stand for.
Speaker: i think that like a lot, just like the way that people have changed the, how busy people are now necessitates the convenient food. They don't have time to do the cooking. Even if you are just buying like grocery store meat, which is definitely subpar compared to locally grown meat that you might be able to find at your farmer's market, but still a better option than pop tarts.
Speaker: Um, people just don't have the time or like mental space to even think about that because it's just not their priority. They're not seeing that like, that's what's killing them early or that's what's giving them chronic illness.
Speaker: um It's just not a, not a priority for, don't I don't know what kind of percentage of the population, but most people you talk to, like I've seen so many patients who are just extremely unhealthy and they even say like, Oh, I know that I need to,
Speaker: eat better, and but it's just so hard, buts but it's not just buy the things that you know you should eat and then eat them. It's, it's really, you're just fueling your body. Like you wouldn't put garbage fuel in your car cause you know, it would break your car.
Speaker: It's, it's the same, the same idea. I think that, you know, that convenience thing too, I think, um, you know, getting out of the kitchen, um, you know, yeah it's work. I mean, you know, Lynn and prepares all our food. I mean, you know, I mean, every once in a while, get some frozen, but it'll be, you know,
Speaker: with good ingredients, but still, yeah, it's extra work. But I think, you know, the mindset's got to be like, oh, like, I mean, this is like, this is like the basis of of our life is eating good stuff.
Speaker: And um so, yeah, I think we got to take the time to, you know you know, the effort and everything else to prepare it properly and enjoy it. So um I loved the cooking class idea because I think that the skills are lacking too.
Speaker: Like not only the skills for raising your own food, having your own garden, but the skills for just like taking raw meat and doing something delicious with it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. and and again, I think, you know, the way the system is today, I mean, I, I,
Speaker: you know, I want to be optimistic about, you know, if, if, you know, whatever this health movement is from the federal government, uh, I want to, you know, about, you know, I want to be enthusiastic about the initiative, but, you know, um if they're going to go back to like the food pyramid days, um,
Speaker: when you know we found out later that the food pyramid should have been upside down but it was yeah you know the way it was was because of you know uh big big agra interests in in selling certain parts yeah you know certain foods so uh yeah but i'm i always wake up hopeful and everything so uh but i'm just uh you know just proud of you guys and and what you're trying to do um So I think, uh, you know, you and Zach, uh, middle mountain farmstead are part of the solution.
Speaker: ah and, uh, you know, I'm happy about that. I know that if there was a will in this country, I believe that that type of farming, um, you know if you get into it and study that that type of farming um could supply all our needs, the country's needs.
Speaker: So anyway, so how can folks get in touch with you for products and questions? I know we've had your, you know, we've used your products and the meat was really, really good.
Speaker: um And, the you know, the soaps and everything was were awesome. So what's the best way to get in touch with you? So we are on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker: Middle Mountain Farmstead is what you can search. um But we also have a website, mmfarmstead.com, where we sell our body products. We don't sell meat online.
Speaker: Technically, we can't ship our chicken over state lines um because of all of you know the USDA and all of their crazy rules. um But our pork,
Speaker: We can ship, but we're not really getting into that yet because we have such a high demand here for what we're producing. um But body products and soaps and everything. We make a balm. Tallow balm is really big right now, but I make a lard balm, which has really similar benefits and is just incredibly moisturizing. We don't have a dishwasher and I do all my dishes by hand. So my hands are just like dry and c crusty all the time. And this stuff just gets deep in there um and really, really does the trick.
Speaker: Nice, nice. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a wrap. I hope everyone enjoyed today's episode and you got some takeaways that you can use. More information on Middle Mountain Farmstead pages and website will be in the notes.
Speaker: Please share this with your friends. And don't forget all my stuff at russelljonesspeaks.com. If you're a parent or grandparent or mentor to attend a 10 to 15-year-old, check out our 60-day transformational interactive video series, Top Secrets of Success for Kids and Parents.
Speaker: It's amazing. It will equip and encourage parents and kids. Yes. Topsecretsofsuccess.com. Get on our email list. Jump on a call with me. And in the words of the inimitable Hulk Hogan, say your prayers, take your vitamins, and you'll never go wrong.
Speaker: Then you can all go and make it a great day. Bye for now.
