How to quit your job and start farming: Feat. Joel Salatin, Paul Grieve and David’s pasture.

You can quit your job and start farming. Here's Joel Salatin, the master himself, for some inspiration and know-how. You're working in town. You've got your fledgling family. You have this dream. I want to do this. I want to do this, this full-time farming chicken thing. How do I, how do I get there? Well, everybody starts with a context. And so the first thing to do is to get out of debt. If you're in debt, get out of debt. So don't quit your day job. And then I always encourage people to save up enough that you can live for two years. Now, that doesn't need to be as much as you might think if you're willing to live cheaply. While you're getting out of debt and while you're accumulating a little bit of a nest egg, start taking that time either to get a second job. The point is to take all that time that you would spend recreating, find people in your church, your civic club, your groups that you're involved with. Start asking around for an acre of land, two acres of land. It doesn't have to be much. Find a place. You don't have to own it. You don't have to buy it. If it's close enough to commute to, preferably even to walk to or bicycle to, then you're in good shape. If you find a place that you can actually buy that's small, a couple acres, go ahead and move, live in an RV, live in a trailer, live in a yurt. A lot of people live in a yurt. They make pretty sophisticated yurts these days. If you want it, you got to want it. Theresa and I lived seven years up in the attic of the farmhouse. We called it our penthouse. The point is to cut your living expenses down and devote yourself to this dream. Once you raise that first batch of chickens and you process them, then you're up and running. Now, here's the classic normal guy. Southern California, quits his job, knows nothing about farming and gets going. True entrepreneurial spirit story here. I was so sick of my job as an accountant. I was like, I'm out of here. I'm but I got to get out of this cubicle. This is horrible. So I just left. I moved in, my wife, me, my wife, and my one-year-old son moved in with the in-laws for a period of time. There was nine of us living in a 1700 square foot house. Every single eight out of nine. My name is Paul Grieve. I'm one of the co-founders of Primal Pastures and the CEO at Pasture Bird. How did this compare to your very first brooder? I mean, you didn't know anything about raising chickens, did you? We didn't know a thing. We read some Joel Salatin and we ended up putting a little hover brooder inside of a garage and we started with like 50 chicks. So it wasn't anything special at all. Okay. It was absolute chaos, like mayhem. We had HBO, Showtime, Animal Planet, National Geographic. They all wanted to come film a documentary because it's like this madhouse of chaos at all times. But you know, that's what we had to do. Like we had to just cut back all expenses, rack up credit cards, like the whole, it's an entrepreneur story. I mean, this is the same thing that happens in a lot of industries. So for us and for me, especially my soul. All right. So in April, 2012, I was finishing my time as an officer in the Marine Corps and had some health problems. I had arthritis, everything from my ankles, my knees, my back, couldn't breathe through my nose, low energy. And at 22 years old, I couldn't really figure out what my problem was. I didn't know what was going on. So my whole family went on this real food adventure and we started learning about how food actually affects the way that you feel and your health and your vitality and everything. So we started eating a paleo diet and we started feeling so much better. Like two weeks in, felt like a kid again. I could breathe through my nose. I had all this extra energy. It could move. Everything was totally different. And my family had the same experience. So my father-in-law lost a hundred pounds. My brothers both lost a bunch of weight felt way better. So is it, is the hoverbrood or something that you bought or something that you slapped together? We slapped it together. So you got a heat, heat lamp. Yep. You got a cardboard box. Uh, it was actually made out of wood. Okay. And we'll put some wood chips down and a couple of heat lamps. And that was a, how'd you learn to do that much, man? I think that was a, I think that was a Joe Salatin recommendation. Pasture Poultry Prophets. So you went off of Pasture Poultry Prophets. That was the Bible for us for the first year. So have you talked to Joe Salatin? Yeah, we've met him a few times. It's been pretty cool. Yeah. Cause every time I meet him, we're a little farther along in the process. And now I don't know if we produce the same amount or maybe a little more than him. Yeah. At some point you're going to get more chickens and that's going to just be so real. Well, he served up the Pastured Poultry deal on a silver platter for us. So we're just picking up where he's kind of leaving it. We started really trying to buy good food for our family. That's how this whole thing started. From that experience, we started learning more about grass fed and free range and cage free and all this sort of idealistic meats. And doing the research, we learned that a lot of those things are full of it. They're BS. So we got really bummed out about the meat labeling industry. And while we were looking at this thing, we really just said, we can't find what we want in the grocery store. And that bothered us quite a bit. So. Paul, how many problems did you have with those first? You said 50? Yeah, it went fairly well, to be honest. We didn't have problems until a year in when we started getting massive predator losses. So really probably six to nine months in, we lost like 1300 chickens and 35 lambs. And like, we almost went out of business. It was super bad. It was horrible, actually. We started adding livestock guardian dogs about a year in, and that was the best decision we ever made. I mean, they've single handedly saved the business. Really? Yeah. I mean, have you lost since then? Zero. We haven't lost a single animal to a predator since we added four years ago. We may have lost chickens to our livestock guardian dogs, but we haven't lost it. We haven't lost chickens to predators. So. So there they are right now. There it is. Your savior. This is one of them. Well, that's one of the pups. Is that a good one? I couldn't tell you. There you go. Pretty good. I guess so. Good dog. These are all the females up here. So we run the females all together. We run all the males in the lower pasture. Otherwise, we have puppy city. So yeah, 13, 14 livestock guardian dogs on 140 acres right now. Do you have the original dog here? Yeah. Duke down in the lower pasture. He's our original guy. Okay. And then his brother JJ is in the middle. And grandma is Jane, the big long haired great Pyrenees. She's original. Yeah. There she is. That's one of the originals, Paul. Yeah. Right here. You got a special place in your heart for her. This is Jane. Yeah. Well, she's one of the, she's one of the ones that actually has a name, so she's gotta be somewhat special. But yeah, she was our first female. She's grandma dog to a lot of these dogs out here. And she's very, she's a very important dog for us. I mean, she's one of the ones that saved the business. Wow. Hi Mary. It's okay. It's okay. She's just doing her job. Who's she upset at? The brown dog? I don't think they're actually that mad. They just, I mean, that's just what they do instinctually. They just bark stuff away. So they don't really fight that much with the predators, but they will have a pretty intimidating bark and they keep them away. Okay. She doesn't like anybody coming up by her fence line. Good job. Good dog. Go get him. And we don't do any training, but you see all these female, they're watching their grandma bark off these dogs. So they're going to learn. What do you feed them? They do get a kibble, like a grain free kibble, but we try to give them as much raw food as we can. So they'll even get, if we have chickens that die out in the pasture or whatever, just natural causes, they'll get those birds. They'll get animal organ meats, pork organ meats. They get beef organ meats, but the raw thing we love, we just don't have enough of it to feed them pure raw. In April of 2012, we ordered 50 chicks. And the way that that story goes, we're sitting around joking as a family. Ha ha. Wouldn't it be funny to get some chickens and put them in the backyard? My brother, Rob is sitting there in a little circle of guys that was talking. He walks away and he comes back like 10 minutes later and he goes, Oh, Hey, I just ordered 50 chicks. They're going to be here in two weeks. And we're like, you did what? You know, we've never raised anything before. We'd never had an agriculture background, never really studied this stuff. And so we got the birds, put up a little brooder. We put the birds outside on pasture. We raised them without any vaccines or drugs or antibiotics. And we gave them certified organic soy free food. And I mean, we didn't know what we were doing at all. Probably most farmers would have said you can't raise chickens outside. They're going to die. They're going to get sick, this and that, but we didn't know any better. So we just raised them the way we wanted to eat them and to feed our family. So this right here was your pastured poultry pen 2.0. Exactly. It was 2.0. So we started with a normal wood pen with a pole rope on it and all that stuff. We broke our back on that for a couple of years. And then we said, let's put wheels on this thing. Let's make it out of metal. Especially since we irrigate, they get wet all the time. This worked pretty well for us. You can see how they cave in though. Don't build it with a flat roof. You want to build it with a pitch roof because as the water comes in, it gets pretty heavy in there. The metal is much better. Yeah. It's more expensive to build it. I think we had almost a thousand bucks into each one of these, but to me, we can drive up. We could push them with a Kubota gator instead of having to pull them. And it just saves your back. It's much better. Way better. If this was a thousand bucks, how long does it take to pay for itself? Well, it depends what program you're running in it. But if you figure you're making five bucks a bird and you can run 80 birds in each one, you're definitely paying for itself in less than a year. Oh, sweet. Well, you guys want to help me push this thing real quick? All right, let's do it. We're going to push really hard. I don't know if we're going to be able to do it or not. So do you move these every day? These all move every single day. We use a little Kubota gator to push them forward. Okay. 365, man. Christmas morning, these things are moving. Ready? One, two, three, go. Oh, yeah. Go, go, go, go. You guys got it. These guys are small, so we don't need to move it all the way. And then all this feed that was spilled behind, we'll have the pigs come through and clean that up. Oh, sweet. So there's no waste either. Is that what the pigs are for or do you use them for something else? Oh, yeah. Their cleanup program and baking program. I mean, yeah, they'll come through and clean up all this feed. Just for you guys or for the, you sell the bacon too? Oh, yeah. We sell the pork definitely once it's ready. But it's a chicken farm that we use other livestock for other reasons. Bugs, not drugs. So we believe that chickens should have a natural diet, grass, bugs, seeds, and worms, moving them to fresh pasture. They don't need the drugs. So we have never used vaccines or antibiotics or drugs or feed additives or any of that stuff. You don't need to. Those first 50 chicks, back in 2012, there was a thing called Facebook that was really popular. So we put those first 50 chicks. We said, if anybody wants a few of these, here's a link. You can put a deposit down and reserve one or two. And we thought, well, we'll offset the cost of raising these for our family. So two weeks go by. The birds are like this big now. And all 50 had been deposits collected, paid in full. They were done. It was a done deal, which was so crazy to us because my family was all mad at me for selling all the chicken. They thought they were going to be eaten. Now, Paul, look at them come running to you, buddy. Why are they coming running to you? Well, they used to get fed before they got here. They don't get fed anymore. Really? Yeah. Well, they don't really. They eat the grass. This is a Kunikuni grazing pig. This is the best backyard pig, I think, in the world. They don't like the electric fence much either. So this is the best backyard pig. I love this pig for backyard operation. They will graze 100% grass. They'll eat veggie. They don't root. They won't destroy your pastures and your fields. If you want. Oh, never mind. They are feeding them now. They will knock you over. You tried to get in the big circle. Spread out. By the time we harvested the birds and harvesting was literally like an iPhone here with YouTube on how to chicken processing from Joel Salatin and the bird like right here hanging in the tree. So that's how we first started out. But we harvested the birds. We had a waiting list of like 110 families that all wanted, you know, real local pasture raised chicken. And the next month we did 100 birds. And then a few months later we did 200 and then we did 400 and then we did a thousand. And this is the original, Paul? There he is. That's King Duke. King Duke. How old are you, King? Four. Oh, he's just four. You guys are just babies. Young kings out here. You guys are just five years old? Dude, man. Yeah. This is just five years? We got him as a little puppy. Come on now, Paul. This is just five years? Five years later, man. No way. We're going to go see what it looks like five years later. And this is just going to be a Yeah, this is a smaller chicken farm, but this is 30 chicken tractors and one of the big range coops. And down in this field, we have about 3,500 birds at any given time. And oh, geez, buddy. They're friendly. And this is important for us down in the desert as we do irrigated pastures down here. So that will keep us on green grass year round. We do 52 weeks out of the year we're producing birds, which does help us because we don't have to lay people off and take time off. We can really just keep it going. It's good and bad. A nine to five operation here. Yeah, for sure. It does help with wholesale and our other company, Pasture Bird, benefits from being able to do, you know, 12 months out of the year production. So here you go. This looks like it's just been moved recently. You can see the flies, which are annoying, but they help us break down the manure really, really fast. So they're going to basically take it, help us break it down. Yeah. This just got moved to fresh pasture. You can see we have pressurized water into this coop, which is super nice. So we're not tending water, filling up water all the time. That's just pressurized right into the coop on a little reducer. So you went from just a wooden pasture poultry pen, metal pasture poultry pens to now this. Yes. How many are you going to hold in there? Well, this will hold 500 of the Freedom Rangers. And now this, these chickens look like they're almost ready to graduate. They're ready to go. Yeah. They're in about 11th grade here. This is 500 birds. The first instinct people always say, oh, that's not very much room for 500 birds. But we got to remember is a square foot and a half for every bird that's moved every single day for 77 days. So you really have over 100 square feet over the course of their life. We want to concentrate that manure and know exactly where it went down and get them off of that manure every single day. So that's what keeps us off the drug. That's why we say bugs not drugs. And you watch them, you know, you see about 5% of them maybe eating the feed. 95% are just out foraging, grazing, fresh air, sunshine. This coop works really well for our environment out here. And look, they're acting like chickens. Yeah. What do you know? They're fighting, they're walking around, they're scratching. They don't need to be de-beaked. They don't need to be de-talonized. They don't need to be vaccinated or antibiotic. They don't need drug or additives in the feed. It's just really a truly a natural chicken, a real program. And it comes true in the flavor and the health of the bird too. So we think the daily move is really important. So they're actually on green grass every single day. Yeah. If we left these guys for two or three days, this would be a mud bath in here. And there'd be no grass left. All the good stuff about this would be gone. So to us, it's really important to be moving them all the time. This is a really good setup too for rain. So we get some heavy rains through here in the winter time. And this allows them to get out of the way. If it's really wet in here, they can get up and perch. We can throw some straw in. This system works really well for stuff like that too. We hook this up on misters too. We don't need them right now. It's not hot enough. But if it goes over 100, this is useful because it'll bring the core temp of the entire thing down about 20 degrees just from running some water in here on misters. That works real well too. Is this made for this purpose or did you custom? It's just a normal greenhouse. It's a high tunnel or whatever you call it. But it's put on skids and it's kind of manufactured out with the roll-up sides. I'll show you the sides real quick too. And somebody else did that or you had to custom that? We customize a little bit, but mostly it comes like this. This is really nice too. So in the summer, we're never going to drop this. But with small chicks in the winter, it's a real easy way to really close down the coop, get tight. And it just hangs up just like that. What is the importance of nice but maybe more expensive equipment, but it makes the process smoother? We've always said like, are you going to treat this as a hobby or is it going to be a business? If it's a business, buy the right equipment, do it the right way. That's kind of how we approach it. So it's better on the labor. It's better on us. It's definitely more efficient. It results in way less mortality, faster grow outs. It's a better process overall. So we're always looking at ways to invest in better equipment. Come on, boys. There you go. Get it back in. Nice. There you go. Cut them off. Oh, lost them. Get up. There we go. There you go. Yeah, these guys are big. These guys are about 10 weeks old right now. So one more week and they'll be ready to go. Started adding in sheep and we started adding in hogs and we found a partner farm to do some beef stuff with. And now, five years later, we've got like 20,000 chickens out on pasture. We're doing hundreds of orders every week with home delivery. And it's just been like this, what the heck just happened? To take a step back and look at it now, we would have never thought that it would be here. If you told me I'd be farming six years ago coming out of the Marine Corps, I would have laughed. I would be like, there's no way. I don't know farming. I've never done farming. There's just no chance that would happen. So what started as a hobby became a business and really became a passion for regenerative agriculture. And now we're here today. Who knows where we'll be in five years, but it's been a pretty fun ride for sure. So this is our non-petroleum based lawn mowing crew out here. We use these to just graze off the fields in front of the chickens. The chickens don't like the real tall grass. So we try to get it down, you know, six to eight inches before the birds come through. And then we do sell the pasture-raised lamb too. It's not a huge herd, but we do sell whatever is produced out here. Cool program, Dorper sheep, really heat tolerant. It's a meat breed. So we're not shearing for, they're not meant for wool or anything like that. And the lambs are just born right out here. No assistance, no barn year round. We keep a male in with them. It's really, really simple, natural program. Yeah. And has it beat out a petroleum mower at this point? Yeah, don't have to sit on a tractor. I don't think we even own, we don't even own a tractor. So there's a baby in there. We should go, we should go check that out. You want to go see the baby, Mr. Brown? Come on, let's go see the baby. Solar powered electric fence charger works awesome. Southern California where we got sun 350 days a year. Yeah. This just runs to a ground rod, Premier One electric fencing. And that's what allows us to herd them up and move them around every day. Nice. This must be your mascot. That's Mabel. We got her for dairy, but we haven't really done any dairy production yet. So she's just the mascot, the trampler for now. They were born two days ago. Nice. And then the little brother's over here behind. You just let them do their own thing. We don't touch them. Those lambs have never been touched. So there's no vaccine, no antibiotic. It's just born here in the field. We come out for chores and say, oh cool, there's lambs on the ground. And that's it. I mean, that's all there is to it. And when they're your mowers, all that's just bonus. It's just cream on the top. Exactly. Having babies, harvesting lamb. Yep. The Dorper is a good breed. It's a twin like 50% of the time. And so they definitely reproduce pretty quick. It's a really good meat lamb. It's not good for wool at all, but it's a good meat lamb, especially for warm climates. I was a full-time CPA, which is a pretty demanding job. And it was 80, 90 hours a week commuting both ways. You know, still had my wife and we had our baby. And so it was like really busy. And then my brother was a high school teacher too. So he had a full-time job. And that's what allowed us to start the farm. I mean, we had that off farm income. We didn't have to take a dollar of salary off the farm for like the first three years. That's what really would allow us to keep reinvesting every dollar that we made off of selling those chickens. We put it back into the business and we kept growing it and growing it and growing it. And it didn't have the burden to pay us a living wage for a long time. For us, for me especially, my soul was just dying slowly in a cubicle. I had to do something else. I love this regenerative livestock agriculture and grass farming. So there was no option. I had to give it a try. Paul, this is where you are now. And this is your finished good. This is what it looks like when it arrives at the customer. Yeah, so we've started doing this home delivery system. We're just trying to make clean food really, you know, convenient for people. Because we found that farmer's markets and trying to do all this stuff is difficult for working families sometimes. So we're really working hard to put stuff on people's doorstep. You know, I'm glad you're shipping. I know. At first you hesitated to do that. Yeah. Because you want people to buy local and that's great. But not everybody. I've been traveling and there are many, many food deserts. All over the place. And just because you have a farmer's market doesn't mean it's real food that's there sometimes. That's true. That's what caused us to start doing it too. That's true. We want to bring food to the people. They can decide if they want to buy something local or not. That's where we would love that. But if you don't have it locally or if you want to buy from us where you know what's going on, that's why we exist. So yeah, let's take a look at this box. Yeah, so this is what we ordered. Yep. Let's see what Rebecca got. So you can order anything from you then. You don't, it's not just like, oh, here's what you get this week. No, no, it's not a CSA. No, it's all a card ordering or a few packages and subscriptions. So we got this honey. And we got some chicken thighs. Yep. Yeah, we love some chicken thighs on the road. That's so easy to make. So healthy. So all this is organic. Everything. And you got bone broth. And you got whole birds. Whole chicken. Man. And you got, this is pork sausage. Beef sausage. Where are you getting your beef from? Beef all comes out of Central California, a little family farm that we work with up there. Cool. Really awesome pasture program. Cool. This looks great, man. And you got insulation here so it can ship to what? Seven different states? We ship to seven states, but pretty soon we'll be going everything west of the Mississippi. So keep your eyes out. Okay, cool. Good job, man. Good packaging. So if somebody wants to know more about you or they want to order their own package, where do they go? All of this stuff is primalpastures.com. So definitely go on there, check it out. We've got a la carte. We've got subscription packages, but everything in there is certified organic, soy-free, GMO-free, pasture-raised and pasture-finished ruminant animals. So it's all species-appropriate stuff. It's the best that, I mean, it's the best that you can get. So it's the good stuff. Say bugs, not drugs. Bugs, not drugs. Okay, you sound great. Okay. All right, tell your story. And finally, we have a man, another corporate guy working for Chick-fil-A, quits that lucrative job and begins a small farm with him and his family in Missouri. Okay, that's a passenger van. So how many of them are you? There are 12 of us. 10 children, my wife and I, Kim. David, I feel like when we were here last that we didn't know what we were getting into. Okay. And when I came here, I knew that you were modeling salads. So my story in my head was that you're the poster child for Joel Salads. And finally, and I was relieved to see that. But then when we got here, I scratched the surface a little bit and found out what the story really was. And it was that, one, that you were able to quit your job and start working with your family. And two, that you weren't having to seem like forcefully work with your family, but it seemed like everybody was on board. Yeah. So I'm going to get deeper into that. Do you have like a task or a chore or something that needs to be done that maybe we could work and talk? Yeah, we've got some fencing to repair. Okay. And that doesn't take a lot of brain space? No. Okay. So you can talk and work at the same time? Yeah. Okay. He's talked, carried it in front of him at the same time. That's probably what you would rather do anyway, right? Yeah. Okay. So my hands are done. Kill two birds with one stone. Yeah. Look at that garden though. We didn't even speak to that. But that's part of it, I'm sure, right? Like being able to quit your job and be at the farm is being able to grow most of your own food. Yes, yeah. Just so you know, at the meetup yesterday, somebody came up to me and said, it's because of you, we have land. And I'm not saying that to brag on myself or whatever. We're inspiring them. But you're going to inspire people, just so you know. Good. Somebody or somebodies is going to quit their job and start farming with their family because of you. I think that's great. That's great. Okay. So I can't think of anything better than that, right? It gives me chills. I mean, it's exciting to do it ourselves, but you want to complete your joy by sharing that, right? Absolutely. Okay, good. Look at the smile. Look at the smile on this guy. People are going to want to know your secret, how to get these teenagers to smile, right? Next to pop. Come on, kids. Come on, guys. Let's go. Okay, guys. Let's go mend the pig fences. We're going to get some wire and some gripples. We use gripples. They're fantastic for mending fence. Yeah. Pulling high tensile wire. Cool. I'd like to see those in action. We don't use any bog wire. We just use high tensile. The gripple tool. No, okay. We got these from Greg Judy. This idea? The gripples. Okay, cool. Okay, is that it? That's all we need? A little bit of wire, some gripples, and a gripple tool. What are you doing, man? I'm making a penny hockey board for each project. Okay, a hockey board. Woodworking is what I do when I'm not farming. Cool. So farm by day, woodworker by night. Let's go. Let's go get those pigs. He's nice. No, he's entertaining himself. They're setting up this area for a pig paddock. The pigs are in the barn. They're going to bring them out here. So they got to put up the fence. How many strands of wire are you going to put up here? Just two. Two strands of wire. It's going to be electrified. They're going to till this up for them. Or should we say plow the pigs? Yeah, pigs are going to plow. Chickens are tillers. Pigs are plowers. They're going to plow this up and then plant pumpkins. Move the pigs on over. Looks like they got a lot of work to do over there. How did you market yourself so quickly? Well, we didn't. Because people are going to want to know where do I go? How do I sell it? Right. We started just doing a couple hundred chickens and selling to friends and family. Getting feedback from them. Okay. That was so important to make sure that our product was good, quality, as well as what's it really going to cost us. So I need to know what my costs are before I start selling some of this stuff. We didn't start markets, farmer's markets, until year four. We were really worried about making sure we had enough product. We didn't want to go to a farmer's market and run out of product. Yep. There's nothing worse than that. We started with drop-offs to homes and that went really well. These are still your friends and family? No, now we did a home drop-off to Lee's Summit, Missouri. Okay. So at first you're calling friends and family. You're just looking in your phone and you're just going down the list. Yep. And then now you're going to have this home drop-off. How did you get those customers? You know, just through other people telling people about us. So friends and family started talking and telling people about the products they've been getting from us. All right, so this gripping tool. This is great. We're just going to put this. Show us how it works. Slide this on there. It's going to grip that end right there and just pull it tight. Slide it back in. Wow. Pull it tight. All right. Oh, that's nice. Basic marketing here, folks. Selling the chickens and the product to friends and family. I mean, if you can't sell it to friends and family, you're going to have a hard time selling it anywhere. Going down the black book and the phone or wherever. And then just relying on the word of mouth to get it going. And of course, there's always markets. Is there anything you wish you would have added to our time together the other day? I mean, was there anything after I left? Man, I wish I would have said that. Yeah, lots of things. No, absolutely. There's all kinds of things. Just seeing the comments. People just have to start somewhere. Yeah. Start growing it for yourselves and then for your relatives and your friends. And then it's just going to go from there. Go slow. You are in rural Missouri, but you are only an hour from Kansas City. We are an hour from Kansas City. So it is worth it. It is financially worth it for you to go to the market in Kansas City. Is that fair? Absolutely. Would it be worth it if you were two hours away? Yeah, it would still be worth it. We just would have to drive a lot further. All right, let's straighten it up, buddy. Tighten it up. What was your life like before farming? What was your goal? My goal was money, toys, and what it was about me and what I did with my life, hunting, fishing. It's a very selfish life. What happened? Was there a point where that changed? Your goals changed from money and pleasure to something different? Yeah, I mean, I just made some mistakes in my life that I look back and thought, man, I've got to change who I am and who I serve. That's when I looked at farming, something to do with my family, found Salatin, and we went from there. If you were going to quit your job and go into factory farming, traditional, conventional farming, and you were going to do chickens, you'd have to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. Okay, so you go the Salatin model, and all of a sudden, what was your startup cost with Salatin? Estimate. Oh, gosh. And you started small, so I guess it was just... Starting a farm for six or seven hundred dollars. Are you kidding me? And then that being mobile, too, so literally, you could have done that on borrowed land. We unplugged our brooder lamps, and we put our chicken tractors on a trailer and hauled them over. And that was it. And, you know, deep freezers, which we already personally had. There's more work with the Salatin model. You're going to move the animals every day, but you're also going to increase the productivity of your land. And the other way, tractors and big buildings and infrastructure is permanent and very expensive. Oh, yeah, we don't have a tractor. We borrow a tractor if we need to do some work. You testing it, buddy? Yep. Is it on? Working? It's on right now. How'd you go about the transition then? Did you save up money, or did you keep working your golden chains, as Jill Salatin would call it? Yeah. Did you keep your golden chains while you did this part-time till you knew this was gonna go, or did you save up money? Oh, we started again. So it was so little to get started. Yeah, I mean, six, seven... Six, seven hundred dollars. And then as it grew, we've never had to go get a loan for things. We definitely borrowed friends, families money, because they were so excited about what we were doing. And that's cool. Got it. We just grew the business to the point where you can't do both. Okay. You can't do both. So you worked on the farm business until you're like, this is growing so much. I need to get more poultry pens. I need to get... I need to get ducks. We need to get big. Because the demand's there, and now... The demand's there, as well as I'm not going to be able to grow my business unless I'm working on my business, and not for somebody else. Okay. Did you have a savings when you finally quit the golden chains? No. I think everybody wrote when you were gonna say yes. Okay, no. Guys, it's getting better and better for you guys, okay? You don't have to have a savings. We had put every... At that point, we had put so much in the farm with walk-in freezers and chickens, crates and infrastructure and buildings. Okay. Redoing barns and such that were here that were not usable. We had... Oh, gosh. The old brooder that we used that was already here, there was more rats than there were chickens in there. All right. Hey, it looks like maybe he didn't turn it off one time on you, huh? Hey, he's losing trust in you, buddy. What happened? Did you turn it on, dear old dad? Huh? Have you done that before? I have. It was funny, too. He's shocking, dear old dad. And dad's been watching you. He's watching you. I can't believe I grabbed that without testing it first. Next up, we're going to see the ducks move. Was your wife on board with this crazy plan all along? Yes, she was. Okay, that's handy. Well, what would you say to somebody if maybe their spouse wasn't? Whether it's the man or the woman that's not on board. Yeah, that's a tough question. You know, husband and wife have to be in unity on that. You know, just the change of life, how you spend your money is so important because if this does, as it grows, you've got to continue to put a lot of money back into it to grow. We've got to be on the same page and see eye to eye and see the vision for the family. What did your parents and your friends and family think? Did they just think you were nuts? I mean, you're going to quit Chick-fil-A. You're going to quit the steady job to be a farmer? Oh, yeah. You know, it doesn't matter if you show them Joel Salason's video. That's right. Let them read the books. They still think you're crazy. Are you still crazy in their eyes? Four years later? No, not at all now. On their hearts. They love it. Well, they also love the food that they get, too. That's what you do. You just wait it out, okay? They think you're nuts until they get some of that food. That's right. All right. Whoa, y'all ready to move, aren't you? What are they telling you? They're ready to move. They want new... That's what they're saying? Yep, they want a new salad bar. Give me some salad bar. Lily, let's get them some salad bar. Okay, wait a minute. They're going to get out. Yes. Yeah, he says. Is that not a problem? Nope. Normally, I come out here and move them by myself. So they're used to getting out. They get out while I'm moving the fence. I move the fence and then we just walk them back in. They don't go far. They'll stay around this area. Okay, I'm going to take your word for it. What do you think, guys? You think he's going to get them back in a new fence? You think they're going to run off? David, you can walk and talk if you can or just stop for a moment. What are some steps people need to take if they want to do this themselves? I would say, you know, start small in your backyard. Raising your food for your family. And then go find another farmer in your area that'll talk to you. I have no problem sharing what we do, how we do it, where our market is, where we sell. There's enough. You in the way? I think I am. There's enough demand out there. For all of us to share. So we're very open about what we do and how we've done it. Go talk to them. Find one that has some knowledge that you look. Find one that's doing a good job and see what you can learn from them. Glean that information off of them and how they can help. We've helped two or three farms around here start. And they're direct competition to me. But again, I love seeing fathers that have a desire to stop leaving their families during the day and starting a farm. Step number one is to begin growing food. Because you may not even be doing that. First of all, you find out what you really like by growing different things. And then you kind of find something that you think you want. And then you go find another farmer. I'd say that'd be step number two. Absolutely. And maybe in there you're reading books. Absolutely. Hopefully in that step number one you're reading how to grow more vegetables. That book. Or Joel Salatin's Salad Bar Beef. If you're thinking about cattle or something like that. Like some of this how-to stuff. You're starting to grow something. Then you go talk to somebody that is growing what you think you want to do. Yes, the style you want to do it. You'll go learn that information for your area. How are they growing it? What's the grasses like? Cows and chickens. Where are they getting their feed from? We are strictly non-GMO. We drive two and a half hours to get our feed every other week. And then now go to your friends and your family and start selling to them. It'll grow. Because the demand is there. I would say that would be the third step is pretty much you're growing this stuff on the side and you're pretty much working yourself out of that first job. You've gotten so busy with it because the demand is growing. You've learned from that other farmer how to market and things like that. We can't sum it all up right here. It's going to be different based on your area where you are. Are you near the city? Are you away from the city? What are the different demands and wants of that place? Those are three really good and practical steps. Thank you so much, David. Okay, what's your name, young man? I'm Reeves. Okay, Reeves. How does your dad get you excited about going on the farm? He doesn't. He doesn't? Okay, well, why are you excited to be on the farm? Just being out here with really God's creation and how cool it is. When you first come out here, you have a passion for it. Dad has pretty much just exposed you to this. Yes. Given you access to this and you run with it. Now, I also take it that this is your operation, these ducks, right? Yes. You make the money off of this? Yes. Okay, you pay dad something? For feed, yes. He helps. He pays the feed. He's put together these infrastructures. Go ahead. No, they bought the ducks, the feed. They've done all the work for it. Yep. They get to use our land. You just picked that up, honey. I'm not seeing that. Have you seen that yet? You just picked it up. Forget dragging it. You done picked that up. I did. Earth's jam right there, guys. This is the duck feature. They usually go to the mulberry tree. There's still mulberries on it. They're just about done, but they really like the mulberries. And when you go up in the tree while they're under it and shake the branch, they all fall and go crazy with them. They love them. Look under the mulberry tree and you'll find the ducks. Come on, guys. Go help them herd the ducks. See how they're going up behind them? Come on. Let's go up and get behind them. See? Yeah. Go right there with them. You can help them. Do you want me to see? No, thanks. I want back with my buddies. Hey, I see you found the toys. I see you found your favorite part of America Parcher. What's going on over here? Playing with the toys. Don't be tearing them up now. Go for it. Get in. Oh, slam dunk. Good job, buddy. Good job. Okay, David. One more last question, buddy. Yes. Before we go. Personally and for everybody here. I've got kids. I want them to be involved in the farm and the business now, but also when they grow up. And it seems like you've been able to do that with at least these two and probably some more of the rest. What is the big secret? Well, the world shows us something different. We raise our children at home. Our children are around us as parents and as well as our community that we belong to. We want them to be adults at a young age. That doesn't mean they can't have fun. They're out here playing, playing basketball, enjoying the toys. But there's a time they're going to have responsibilities. There's a time we're going to introduce them to chores on the farm and slowly work with them. They're going to want to work with mom and dad. Now their attention span is a little bit smaller. We're going to gradually work on that. We're going to give them some responsibility. We're going to find something they like and give them that responsibility. It's something that they enjoy. It's going to build that character. It's going to build the responsibility, discipline in their life. And my young man at 13 is a young man. He is mature. He can go out and he can talk to people. We go from children and we want to be young men and responsible and dedicated to their life. Have an idea of what they want to do. They have gifts and we're going to encourage in that. We're going to mold that. And the character is so important. Their education. We teach them to read. We teach them math and we allow them to just blossom through that. So we're using every minute that we can as parents to mold them into what God wants them to be. Thank you so much for having us again. Hopefully we've dug deep with this guy. Hopefully he's encouraged you guys if you're in that spot where you just want to get home with the family. Sustainable farming is a valid opportunity. It is. And don't make it hard. Make it easy. Follow solid signs until you figure out and have success. Then you can venture off. But yeah, it's simple. We're talking about starting part time. $600 investment. You can do that. Yes, you can.