#145 Gail Fuller & Lynette Miller

Hey everybody, what's happening? We'll come back for another episode of Ranking Reboot. For the podcast this week, we packed up the studio and headed over to Severy, Kansas to meet with my friends Gail Fuller and his lovely companion Lynette. After some tacos, we sat down and some comfy couches by the fire and I hit the record button and this is what happened. Today, we're going to talk about the Fuller Field School, what it's like taking over a retired organic farm, trying to rebuild the soil from scratch, and Lynette talks about her enterprises with Airbnb and farm stays. One of the things she mentions that people are asking for a lot is stargazing and guess what guys? Most of us live far enough outside of the city lights or our ranches are out there. We can offer stargazing experiences. So check that out. That might be something you're interested in. Check out LandTrust.com or click the link in the description. The Port will set up at a table with the professional microphones. I'm trying to different travel kit. This one's a lot less junk than I've been carrying around. Hi. Did you talk to Aaron about doing this at No Tone of Plains? Talk to him yesterday. On the road, yes. I mean, he said he'd been to visit you. Didn't we talk about it when he was here? He said he'd just been to have lunch or dinner with you guys and talk to him like the next afternoon. I thought somewhere, somebody said they was going to have you just come and talk to speakers. I think that's kind of what Aaron's. I thought we had that conversation. Maybe I'd suggested to him. I don't know. Because you did that at Soil Health. I think doing some live stuff like that is it'd be good for business. We're going to do that. So it will help you. And then a week later, we're going to turn around and do the same thing at No Tone of Plains. Going to have space to be able to meet people. Maybe have a little area on the trade show floor, not real sure. But at Soil Health, you and No Tone, they're going to let me have use of a room to where I can take people and we can do short recordings, get some thoughts down. Not necessarily do you like when he's full two hours set down because that's probably a lot at a conference. I'm not sure there is any value or if it even be possible, but I have a friend coming from Iraq. Tell me more. He's the retiring minister of agriculture. Yes. We will definitely want to say that. Now, he was here in 11 and spoke, I mean, we couldn't have a conversation. He knew enough English just to get him in trouble. Okay. So there was an interpreter. But we keep in touch on Facebook and he is now sending me Facebook posts that are three or four paragraphs. So I'm guessing his English is getting better. Maybe he's learning. I don't know. Or maybe he's just using some translate button on Facebook that he never used in the past. Well, I mean, another couple of months, I think, chat GPT will be able to do real-time translation from any language to any language. And if he isn't speaking English, he'll have an interpreter with him. And that kind of makes a podcast a mess. I don't. Yeah. We'll definitely have to work on that. He's a very interesting guy. And, you know, he's spent his career trying to feed a starving nation. That's crazy. And he's starving nation in a desert. In a desert? They do have water. He said that, you know, the one advantage. He said they have water. But they have no, and they can't leave carbon. There's his problem with cover crops is he goes farmers can't leave one ounce of anything on the field after harvest or the city people steal it for a firewood. Wow. So stocks residue. It's a mountain they have to climb. Wow. But I want a problem to not even consider. Yeah. Yeah. You always think that you grass is greener than the other side of the fence. It's not greener on the other side of the fence. Yeah. And he made a comet that would be very relative today with what's going on at dinner that night. He said the biggest problem facing my people today is at the end of the day. There's not enough protein on our place to keep our brains functioning properly. Wow. Wow. Well, and I guess that can lead into that leads into everything. Have you soiled? What does it you say, Gail? If soil's not the answer. Well, the answer was the question. Right. And it all circles back to healthy soil to grow healthy food, healthy nutrient dense food. And I just can't help but think we're just set down for a meal of tacos just a few minutes ago. I was thinking, man, this is just wonderful foods, wonderful nutrient dense food that we know where it came from. Everything in that meal, we know where it came from. We know who grew it. We know how it was processed. And we were talking at dinner that the last decade that we were all skinny was the 70s. And what happened in the 70s? We started to get more processed food. We had microwaves. Everybody had to get busier and two members of the family working full time jobs to support everything. Now, we don't have time to run a garden. We don't have time to cook home cooked good meals. And let's just get it in a box. But it's kind of like preaching to the choir, right, Gail? So what do you, tell me what your thoughts are? I agree. Yeah, you know, this started in a lot of it really started in the 70s. I think the other thing that happened in the 70s is when we really started to ramp up chemical use and agriculture was just one other thing. And the misinformation campaign of fat is bad for you. And then red meat is bad for you. Eggs are bad for you and kind of pushed us into this. So I think that's for a lot of it started. And I think, you know, we're so blessed. You know, let me always just share. I think part of the glamour of living small town in rural America is not hard to find a farmer. You know, I think about, you know, living in the middle of Kansas City or Detroit or New York, how difficult it would be to define this healthy nutrient and it's meal. No work came from. So we're blessed to be here. That's a great point. So I was at Regenerate several weeks ago. And one of the speakers there that I had a chance to talk to is a gentleman named Bobby Smith, I think. Anyway, here, here is a place called the Metro Atlanta Urban Farm. And his farm, it's in Atlanta, downtown. It's, he said it's five minutes from downtown, 10 minutes from the airport. And listen to him talk, but what you said made me think of that. Like, there are some of us producers out here, we kind of get like, why, why, why is this all so hard? We just want to give people food, right? But the problem is when you get a million people in a small area and how do you get enough food in for a million people in a city like Atlanta that's all local and fresh and raised by people that care, then it becomes a monumental problem. And I don't know, I hope Bobby will return my email so I can get him on the podcast and talk about what he does. And he had some really great stories about changing people's lives of food. Like, one of the reasons that he does what he does is he wants to be able to grow food, to give away to the, you know, poor, homeless communities there in Atlanta, I think it's pretty cool. Have you seen the Ted Talk grill a farmer? I haven't. Ron Franklin, that his name, he's an LA South LA. And he's been doing similar stuff for a long time in LA with vacant lots. The city came after him. Even though he was required to maintain his lot in front of his house, so he planted it to food. And the city said, no, you can't do that. He was, well, I'm maintaining it. And I'm giving the food away. They made him clear. They tried. And then we watched Common Ground Friday night and I thought the most intriguing farmer to me, may it's because it was out of my league is the Galan New York. And I find her stood it correctly. She's going around to homeowners and renting their lawn. I don't think she's paying to rent it. They're giving them, giving her their lawn and she brings in a farmer and soil and makes race beds, whatever she wants to do and plants it to a garden. And then it's all given away to underserved. It's all taken to a community. Yeah, like a food hub or yeah. That's really neat. Exactly. I mean, how many thousands of acres are there in New York or Atlanta that you know? It's a city. I've seen somebody that's doing with kind of like what you're talking about. So there's a lot of people that want their yards landscaped. And they're willing to pay to have their yards landscaped. But a lot of those people don't even know that it's an option to landscape with food. And what a cool business idea. But in Poria, I don't know if you've been up commercial street in Poria last few years, but they've got these little garden plots on it each corner of Main Street now. There's trees and flowers. So I think you actually know her, Marsha Lawrence. Yes. grew up in your country. Yeah. So she was in charge of one outside when she had the bookstore. She was well great. She was going to plant mine to food. Nope. You're not. City wouldn't let her. Wow. And you got to wonder why. I mean, maybe it's because your trees with fruit on the fruit falls off, rots, and it tracks. Yep. And it tracks rats or crows. I can see. All kinds of reasons. Library issues. Yep. All kinds of green bean off the plant and claiming you got sick and see the city. There's all kinds of excuses to not expect people to be responsible for their own. Most of them you can go back to a lawyer figure out there. Or the problem is. Yes. It isn't the city. And it's not the person growing the food. It's usually a lawyer. Probably don't want to add that in. A lawyer with an interesting concept of personal responsibility when it comes to choices. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to say I think we'd be all be better off if it wasn't for lawyers, but I think the world might be a vastly simpler place. Well, something I've wanted to know for a long time. That's how did you guys meet? We always knew each other because we grew up in for a. We knew each other because we were in the same county. And the county forage program was really what brought all the rural kids together across the entire county. Which the county's relatively large. So it was kind of nice. So there were lots of events like that. I always knew who he was, but he really didn't. He was older than I was. And so I had no. No one really interested. But later in life, we became competitors. Our children showed pigs in forage against each other. I guess I kind of took that all. Yeah. But mostly I would pick the person with the one that I was more interested in. Yeah. So somebody told me one time, keep your competition close. I guess I took that one little. I think is what I did. So our kids showed together and then I just kind of like he's kind of interesting. Yeah, I kind of enjoyed visiting with him. And yeah, it's kind of an interesting character, which I never had really. I'd never really talked to him. So I even in high school hung out with your two older brothers. I mean, plenty of parties and but still. I mean, she was enough younger. You know, guy been right. It was just the old guy went in the end. I have a similar story about Brian and and thinking he was the old guy when I first met him. He's there. Well, yeah, just like that. And he was like, "Oh, no, we'll be having that one, yeah." But yeah, it was one of those kinds of things though. You guys grew up in the same community. We did. We grew up in the same community. Well, not really. No. She grew up at Nopi, small Catholic town south of Emporia. And I grew up just north of Emporia. So yeah, we were in the same county and showed at the same fair and all that. But our families didn't really intertwine. So I think we hung out ice cream socials and anything outside of 4H. So yeah, just. Yeah, so we kind of got to get to know each other and then of course divorce always brings people together. And still had that similar experience also. And 18 years later. 18 years later. 18 years later. 18 years later, we're still together. And I bet that was never a prediction. And I bet it's been a fun ride. So the last time we really had a chance to catch up was just over a year ago. When I came over for your field day, field school. Sorry, I couldn't make it over this year. I had a couple of things going on. How did the field school go this year? We did two this year. Both fantastic speakers. We're just so blast. You know, to get the people to come that we do the springfield school. We had a focus on water and economy. And we had a DD Purse House did a segment on the water cycle. Large and small. And she's just. I think outside of Walter gain is she's the next best speaker on the planet when it comes to water. Of course, she trains under Walter. So. And then we had a lower lemic and Abe Collins. And both of those are really fantastic, not just with their knowledge of water and stuff like that, but. They're both really trying to do things. Community oriented, you know, regionalizing systems again. And especially Abe. It's about regionalizing economies. So he was. He kind of blinds how did everybody because everybody knows Abe is a grazer in the Northeast and grazing consultant and a. And a watershed guy. He loves to talk about watershed function and all that, but. He's working on a project in Vermont now of. You know, instead of paying for environmental services like we're doing with carbon markets and trading on Wall Street. He's trying to do it regionally locally or the town actually incentivizes the farmers for better practices and in turn gets better products and. And just a whole new economy that he's working on. And so that was that was really awesome. And then this fall we had a holistic educator Jeff global. And I think you know, probably the most timely topic we've ever done was conflict resolution. I apparently there's some budding of heads going on anymore. What we're told. And I think there's a few people that are legitimately trying very hard to start world war three right now. Exactly. So that that was really good. And Jeff's just a wonderful person. And then we teamed him with the analyst Zensky. Just fabulous farmer in North Dakota who's. Now direct marketing flower in pasta and. And almost all ancient grains and her story and her husband Kelly's it's just fantastic. So it was it was a great couple days there too. Really good year. Do you have anything on the schedule any plan jet for field school coming up in spring or you're just trying to get through conference season first. There will we for now we're not going to do a spring school next year was going to go back to one per year. Got our workload in half. And we have it booked October third and fourth. And our speaker will be Dr. Nation winners. Okay. When that knife will also be speaking as going to be geared towards physical health. If you don't know Nesha she is a fantastic doctor cancer doctor. She was diagnosed at night team was stage four terminal cancer cured herself. Wrote a book. Got educated. And now she trains doctors that are trying to get out of this system that's not working. She's in the process of building a farm in Arizona to treat cancer patients on. Exactly. Wow. We shouldn't be treating sick people in hospitals if we want them to get better we should be treating them on farms or in nature. And that's exactly what she's doing. It's tiny and I will we're driving yesterday. We're actually having a discussion about a friend of ours that's. And the first thing we do is we do a lot of work. And we do a lot of work. Days. Days. I'm sick. I don't feel well for days. That had you a hundred miles away? Probably an hour. They were telling me that-- excuse me. They've caught some rains. They grew some grass but it was late. They just didn't catch enough, they didn't get enough heavy rains for a runoff to fill any of their ponds. So they were kind of watered out and they moved south down towards Cassidy where they had some more grass. And I can't remember if they said that they had maybe a little more rain a little earlier than at Cassidy or they'd planned to save that grass. And I was kind of wondering if you've caught some of those rains and have some grass and are just short on water? Yeah, for the most part we've we've kind of lived paycheck to paycheck the last couple of years. We keep enough rain to keep the grass going. We've had some spells where the grass really went backwards fast with the heat. But that's usually been a week or two at the most and then we'll get a shower enough to keep the grass alive. But yeah, we haven't ran water here since May of 2022. Are your ponds looking okay? If you're a dirt farmer they do. That's probably less than ideal if you're trying to raise a livestock. We-- the sheep-- the sheep can still drink out of the pond. If they have to, they literally crawl on their belly to get to-- is they don't have the weight. The cows-- I mean, not that we want the animals in the pond. It wants them all to get out and you know, they're in charge and the cows can't get to the pond. But not wait for over a year. As the orchard donals that recovered any this year. Now another rough year with the orchard. We did have pears. How to lake freeze again. It's just, you know, becoming more and more difficult with these weather extremes that we get. Last year we didn't have any fruit production because of high wind during pollination. That was what we kind of come down to. So, and then of course the drought and the heat. I imagine the heat was probably the bigger thing this year than the drought. I mean, for everything, it was just miserably hot. We had a really good apple harvest till probably mid-August made it within a month and they just all aborted. This is from the heat. I think so, yeah. I love tomatoes that did that. It looked like they kind of pollinated. It looked like they'd actually set fruit, then the fruit just fell off. Yeah, the heat got pretty brutal here. Your August and September. Late July. Let's see it. It didn't start raining for us until really late May, like just the last couple of days in May. I'm not going to say it was hot, but there were some days kind of around the 20th of May that I'm looking at the grass. I think in this grass looks like August, September and 110 degree, heat in the middle of the drought. It should not look like this in May in any universe. That was that was hard to watch. It was hard to look at. What this year taught me was the high high intensity grazing events followed by long duration rest events. As long as you're appropriately managing the stock densities through periods of drought, that's stocking right with rainfall. As soon as it rains, everything just explodes. I noticed on some of the other properties around me that are more like a set stock type operation, they didn't grow near the grass that I did. We've got the same thing here. There's the neighboring grass that might have looked good two falls ago. It doesn't look good today. Not that there's a lot of it. Once in a while, you'll see the pasture that looks pretty good. They've really been abused now. Two falls in a row. That's going to hurt them especially next year. They'll pay for it even more. We've seen with us, we'll get one week wet spell. It's just amazing what happens. This place just explodes with life and very short time. A lot of diversity. We know we're on the right track. We know we're getting there. It's supposed to sleep and it knows it's time to go to sleep and there's no water. And you don't force it to stay awake and support livestock when it shouldn't, at least no more of it than you have to. The weird thing for us, we were kind of like you and me, we thought we were done. We thought it was over. Our cheat was at tall and going to seed. And I'm like, if we can't even get cheat grazing, well this wasn't, this would have been like an April. Yeah, early April, mid April. We used your head cheat. That was kind of what we used to get us to grass, because we'd put out hay for, we ended up putting out hay for six months last year. And so that happens and I'm like, "Man, our goose is cooked. We got a little shower and then it, and we kind of stayed alive and then we got a wet spill and we had a cheat that tall. Now, once it went to seed, I thought it was done. I'd never seen cheat. Take off and grow like that, once it was that close to maturity or anything really, but we had saved our butt. Well for us, I started raining, like I said, about the end of May beginning at June and I didn't even take in my custom grazing cattle. I kept kicking the can down the road, meaning like, "Let's wait for weather, let's wait for weather." This is the number they might have to go home in July. And it kind of got down there to the middle of May. And he said, "Hey, I got to do something." And I'm like, "Well, you can bring me this many, but just be prepared to send trucks back in 45 days if it doesn't rain." And then you go, "Did it start raining? Like, it rains one time." Then it rains again. And it rains again and you kind of, and it kind of start to relax a little bit. And it wasn't until the 1st of July that it dawned on me like, "I don't have to call trucks in two weeks." This kind of ties. We even got confident just watching it rain at your place. I mean, if you want the drought to end here, it has to end there. And I'm like, "Okay, we're not getting the rains. We're drying gets an inch and I get a quarter, but we're getting a little rain and the drought map keeps shrinking and keeps shrinking." We were just confident that it was over. Well, up until about three, four years ago is the other way. It's like, "Oh, Gail and Josh would get two or three inches of rain and Brian will get a half." But that's kind of the way it's supposed to be a little bit. I agree. That's the way it normally is. Yeah, that would be a quarter, not to be mean, but. I mean, there's a reason you're out here. That's part of the state, right? Yeah. There's a reason we stay on the east side of the flint hills. Yes. I mean, not gonna lie. It does get a little bit rougher. Rough gets more difficult. The further west you go with the rainfall and just the difference of what is like 200 miles, I think it's like 200 miles from here there. Just the difference in the spring and summer humidity that you guys will get here that we won't have at home. That's the humidity during the day. That does a lot to help plants out because out there, if we don't get rained for 10 days, two weeks in 110 degree heat, everything just. everything stops and starts to cure out. It doesn't do that here because of the higher humidity. Yeah, but the downside is, you know, in my life, I've seen the humidity less than we don't have the humidity we did 20 or 30 years ago. We're becoming you. I'm afraid. We've noticed that our house sets different than it is at your dad's, like just in gardening. Brian's dad has asparagus growing all over his garden. And I mean, like in between everything this year, proud of it is tomatoes. He didn't get into tomatoes because it was crowned up. But he's left it there because it creates kind of like a cool humid area for him and he's up on this huge ridge and a south wind blows right across his garden all the time. And I think that's helps some, but just where he's trying to grow things compared to us, it's like a different climate and it's 10 miles away. Yeah, but to your point though, yeah, I absolutely agree humidity is huge because you know, Walter Yena told us in 2018 when he was here, I asked him about dew fog, you know, things like that. What does that do to our average rainfall? He goes, if you can catch it, probably add 50% to your average annual rainfall. I can see how many people can catch fog or do. You have to have a leaf and hopefully, you know, you can, sure, you can catch some fog on a two-inch tall plant. Catch a whole lot more on a two-foot tall. Yep. I've seen that and I've wondered about that for years. You know, the heavy late fog in the morning, in the summers, you know, I'll go out and decide by side and I have to run the windshield wipers because there's so much water coming up over the front of the machine just off the grass. I'll have to run the windshield wipers so I can see and I've I've wondered for a long time. Is there a way to quantify that in terms of effective precipitation and what the grass is receiving? Because when I can go out for a week straight and every morning, there's a heavy wet dew and if you just get out and walk five feet, you're soaked from the waist down. Yeah, there is. He thought, I don't know if he had this back up by size, but he thought you could probably find a way of hanging a paper towel or something and then ringing the water out of it and there would be a calculation. He said, there's probably a way you can measure that, but I don't know if he had a true scientific, you know, formula for that or not. I would be really curious with you how much do you have in the morning compared to your neighbors, even in your more drier environment than us because I know when we left the other farm with our organic matter from five to seven percent on the other farm that we had improved over the years, I wore overshoes three hundred and forty fifty mornings of the year and I wore overshoes till ten or eleven o'clock in the morning. There was a lot of do and here I have yet to wear out a pair of overshoes here in three years and I know we're more drought, but it's also the water cycle isn't functioning here. We're not getting, we're not getting the moisture coming up out of the soil because our water cycle isn't functioning properly. Do you think that there's a difference between precipitation that comes from fog or dew like we're talking about as far as mineral content versus rain and how the plant would effectively absorb that because it wouldn't just be washed up. That's a great question. It would be different because it's coming for much slower in the atmosphere. So there's probably more concentrated because it's not all just washing out. Probably some differences to it. You know, and with that, I don't know, we're also raining glyphosate anymore. I don't know how high glyphosate you could also maybe argue that there would be more glyphosate involved than rain. That's what I was kind of wondering. So there could be a catch to that. Working in the nursery several years ago, one of the things that was really, really notably clear when you had a rain in the morning on one of the houses that had like a shade cloth on it that let water in versus one of the covered houses, the plants that receive the rain water 100% grow and respond differently to plants that receive well watered. So I mean, I would think there would be a big difference there. Yeah, I'm sure there is. And then, had to that, some of our rainfall was microbially enhanced or produced. And does that change the mineral content of even one rain to the next rain? I was going to say in rain water, there's also going to be some bacteria. There's going to be, there's going to be some microbial life and some bacteria and things that are alive and moving that aren't going to be from a well water source that's going to be from underground. Or there's well, I guess in well water, there's usually microbes in bacteria too. At least some of them. It's just different. I mean, the plants are meant to catch the water from the sky. And you can tell that clearly when you see, you know, 30 plants that are exactly the same as 30 plants and you walk in in the morning and they've each had a quarter inch of rain. One of them was natural and one of them came out of well water. It wasn't even city water, clean well water, way down south. And the plants just are awake and vibrant and live alive and, you know, firm looking and healthy. And the other ones are just kind of droopy. That's interesting. You expect that from city water? Don't think about it. With well water. Yeah. But once it's water. Yeah. How do you know what is moving? How do you go to minerals? Within that. Within that water. Yeah. It has to be. Well water wouldn't be, wouldn't have the vortex. It won't be doing that. I assume, you know, when it's moving through soil, it's probably not. Well groundwater is more meant to be, I mean, in the scheme of plants and the plants cycle, more meant to be where the water stored and kind of like filtered, not necessarily where we're watering our plants. So it's supposed to be coming from the sky most of the time. So it makes sense. It wouldn't be. No. But water when it's on the surface moving, you know, creek river water, it's constantly in this little vortex. You see these little, you know, and it's just the way water and I think that's part of how it keeps mineralized. Jack, I think it was Zach Bush and Joe McCola did a podcast. I listened to several years ago on hydration and one of the things they talked about with our reservoir system is once you stop the flow of water, it starts to de-mineralize instantly. And I'm thinking it probably has to do with it. You know, you're constantly seeing that water wanting to span a little bit, even if it's flowing north and south. It's still, yeah. Still we got some circles too. Right. Because you know, all the river beds are different in the water. Is it water molecules? They slip past, yeah. Makes sense. It's just, it's stirred. I mean, it's just constantly just like when it stops, when it's, when it's still, then that wouldn't keep anything up. That makes a lot of sense. It's interesting. But I was once circled back to the comment that question you had about, you know, do on my place first the neighbor's grass. Now, I'll do my observations from my side of the fence. We're from the county road because good fences make good neighbors. And I'm not going to go out onto the neighbors, especially where I could be seen, you know, mess around the dirt or mess around their grass. But just, just from my side of the fence and driving through the roads, I mean, the tall grass catches the same mound of dew, no matter where it is. That's kind of been my observation. You know, in a course, you know, how dense your grass is to, how dense it's all. But if you don't have any tall grass, I mean, if you're grazing buffalo and gamigrass, that's two, three, four inches tall on, you know, two to three, two or three hundred pounds in acre of forage, how much are you catching with that dew? Well, not a whole lot. It's blowing right across. How much of my catching in five, six foot tall, big blue stem and India grass? Probably a whole bunch. But I would venture to gas is with dew coming up, that if you and your neighbor both had foot tall grass, I still bet you have more dew than they have. Because the dew's not necessarily coming from the air always. It's coming from the surface. There's also, you know, moisture coming up from the soil all the time. And you have, you should, I would hope you'd have better water holding capacity and infiltration rates than across the fence. And so I would think you would be having more dew. And if you, you obviously probably always have bigger plants for the most part. So you're able to cycle that back down and keeping, you know, that permeate evaporating as much as across the fence. I'll, I'll try next time we have a dew that go out and look and try to find a patch of the neighbors that look similar to mine across the fence and just see. Maybe go over there and just walk through it and see how wet my pants get versus the other side of the fence. You know, a fun thing we had to spring is we're, as this soil is starting to come alive, we're starting to see more, you know, fungal species, which is what we're hoping. There's just, there weren't a lot of mushrooms when we got here into cow pies or the soil or the trees or anything. And this spring we had that one wet spell in late May and and Lannette stumbled across just a whole plethora of mushrooms. And it was in some cover crop that was, had some decent size. And so we're out there one morning and she coming out and we're looking for all these things and you just, you know, you pull it. Can't even back and look at your head down in there and you just get hit with this steam. And we're not steam, but, you know, hot humid air coming up. Well, that's, you know, more sure that I've been able to catch. And that's just part of that. I think that small water cycle. Tiny little greenhouses down there. Exactly. Which is why we, you know, we had a perfect place for mushrooms. Call on size, Mike. Buddy in Australia. Three or four years ago, they had the big wildfires again in Australia. And they hit his farm. I think it was in, not over which month it was, but it was his, he was going into his dormancy. And it'd be like hitting us in September. So, you know, the grasses were going dormant, drying down. Not a good time for a wildfire. It was 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The day the fire hitting, ooh, and it burned a few hundred feet onto his property and went out. Because it was so wet underneath. I've wondered about that. On the range before. I think thinking about, he makes his humidity. Thinking about due from, from both above and below is something like maybe we haven't really been doing much. But yeah, like that, that you're absolutely coming from stuff you've caught not today, but last week, for the last month. I was just, you mentioned calling on Australia. And I can't help but think about, Josh and Gwen were telling me that they went to this, they called cattle stations in Australia. The Whirr point, the Whirr, billion acres. This one station. He said they'd get up and get up, load up a couple dirt bikes and drive 200 miles to their work site for the day. Do their work and then load up and drive 200 miles back. Now this is not like driving 200 miles from Gales House to Brian's House down nice paved US 54. This is the outback of Australia where there are no paved roads. Could you imagine 200 miles of Ranch 2 track to get to work? Oh thanks. That'd be exhausting. Terrible. Australia sounds like a very, very strange place to ranch, but I imagine a very similar conversation takes place in Australia among friends saying, those young senamericans sound like they do some really strange stuff. They were talking about how they use helicopters down there a lot to muster cattle. They call their big gatherings, they call them musterings and they use helicopters. Which if you want to see something cool on YouTube, like that's something cool to watch. Australia and helicopter mustering, those guys know how to fly. I've been in a helicopter before and I would have zero desire to go ride in one of those doing that. It would be fun to watch but not to do. Josh said that the last day they were there, one of the Helo mustering pilots took him and went up. I'll tell you guys after we hit the recording that you want to know you have to go back to list the last week's episode because it's a funny story. But after listening to Josh you might not be able to pay me enough to get me in that helicopter. How about it? Be worse than a crop duster problem. Oh. I've watched them when we had the Ferrah Hog issue 10 years ago. Did you get touched by that over here? We had them. US Fish and Wildlife Services. I think it was Fish and Wildlife. One of their obscure divisions. They came out, they got money from Kansas Health and Environment. They fly a helicopter and they shot pigs out of a helicopter. This guy was taking that thing down into canyons. We were standing up on the ridge and looking down at the helicopter and they're down banking through these. On the ranch? Some of it on me, some of it over on Hogan, some of it up on Cogor. Those canyons are very wide, man. I know. I know. It's kind of a big helicopter to drop into one of those little box canyons that go under shoot pigs, but let's talk of the pilot and the pilot head like 30,000 hours in that helicopter. I bet he knows how to fly it well. Power time. I'm glad there's guys in the world that will do that job so I don't have to. So 2024, what are your big plans? I provided her. I like to hear the answer to this one. What are your big plans? Yeah, we both have an answer for this. There you go. There you go. Go ahead. What are you going to, what are you excited about for the coming year? Just to see how the farm changes. I've so enjoyed this journey. I think it all changed and all the different plans that have arrived that we can practice. So, or as the practice is, it's like previous years. And just, yeah, just love all. To watch all, it's gonna love all the different birds that show up and all the different insects in wildlife. Continually, I mean this year we counted seven cubbies of quail. And when we came, we saw two on so two quail on the road. So yeah, we've seen so many. You're and that's what I like that part. I grew up in, grew up riding horses and cattle and know what it's supposed to look like. You remember a time before trees? Yeah, just wide open spaces. That's all we saw. We wrote. Yeah, the trees were very few and very far apart. What I got to see when I was growing. So, I know what it should look like and I know the way that I know the plants. I used to remember all the plants because my dad taught me a lot of the the native plants, but I don't remember them all. But I remember what they, they don't remember the names, but I remember what they look like. And so when they arrive, I know that that's what's supposed to be. That's what I'm seeing. Well, I like grandma teaching me all the bird calls, but for some reason when I became an adult, I didn't think that was important knowledge. And I just left. Discarded at all. Yeah, forgot that to make room for yeah, for really important stuff. Yeah, something important like fertilizer rates. Yeah, I was thinking like what brand of herbicide. Exactly. Yeah. It's interesting how your brain does make room for those things when you slow down. No, we were down at the river. I had my niece in nephia here a while back and we were sitting down at the river plan and there was a strange bird up lived there for 10 years. And there's a strange bird call that we kept hearing. And the kids, what's that? What's that? I don't know. That's a bird noise. I've never heard here before. So the kids and I dig up, you know, get on the internet and start looking and come up with what the kind of bird is and it's called and he's been living down at the river for months and months now and we care him from the house and it's some kind of bird I've never even seen anywhere near our house. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool to see things just I think it's even since nobody's been farming in the field. You know, it's not in great condition or anything but at least it's at least that bad stuff has stopped a lot more life in our yard. It's not being sprayed and it's not being till. Yeah. Yeah, I think for both of us for next year or farm ground we're converting half of it back to native grass or we're not converting it. We're allowing it to convert and you're just going to leave it alone. Yeah, and we're seeing it. I mean, it's going through the steps that we're expecting and so this last this past fall 23 year where we are now, you know, we we're hoping to see a little bit of switchgrass and maybe an Indian grass or two. Those are usually the first grasses that show up. The forbs show up first and we saw a lot of we think Indian grass and even big blue stem last fall but it was so dry it didn't seed out. So it's a little hard to tell but I think we're I think we're actually ahead of schedules. We're both kind of excited to see what it's going to look like next next year. We get some water. I have a real hard time finding Indian grass until it throws the seed head. Yeah, me too. Really easy to identify in October. Yep. Pretty difficult to rest the time for me. We're still on a pretty sharp learning curve with trying to ID plants and all that stuff. When did you start transitioning that farm ground? We moved here September of 19. That's when it started. The downside of the thing that slowed us down I guess, we've got 160 acres total with seven ponds and this is 40 acres so it's a fourth of the farm with no water. So trying to graze it and get any kind of biological, you know, speeding up biological time which is what we do with grazing. That was a little difficult to do. You know, the first couple of years. The sheep is not so hard because hauling water, the sheep is pretty easy. You can haul several days with a water in one tank. So we were able to get the sheep on it pretty easily. The cattle, we had to be, you know, the first couple of years we had to go out there when it was raining so the terraces had water. We've now dug, what have I dug? Three holes or four holes for, so we've got some water out there. So that's really helped us get the cattle out there more. So it's, we're starting to crank it up now. Okay. Hang on, hang on. Back to slide. Say something. Hello. Hello. Goodbye. All right, we'll go on in three. So that farm ground, did you plan it back or did you put any seed out there? You just relying on seed bank. We're relying on seed bank. I've attempted a couple of annual cover crops that's been tricky between the drought and not having instant access to drill and things like that. So the cover cropping hasn't done much. So we really haven't got, well, I mean, as far as getting a lot of grazing off of and a lot of carbon, you know, doing the, what you fully expect out of a cover crop, yes, we're getting some gains out of it, but it's, it's minimal compared to what we could be doing if we had a little better management. So yeah, and everything we're getting is just coming out of the seed bank. It was really, it's really been kind of fun to watch. When we moved here, this farm was managed organically and managed like a golf course. So everything was mowed, we'd eat it dist and it was perfect. And the farm ground, I think for the last three years, he was disking it multiple times a year. It is just beat to a pulp and then the year that they had it on the market, then we bought it, they were finished mowing it once a week. And so we got here and you know, it was crabgrass and bindweed and anything that could grow under three inches. And the next year, so in 2020, our first summer here, it was probably what 80% ragweed, common ragweed. Just completely dominant and very, of course, the bindweed and some of that stuff was still there. And there was a little, there was some diversity, but it was just solid ragweed. The sheep, we were able to get them on it a couple times and they did some good on it, that we didn't get them across the whole thing. And 21, it was probably 40, 50% ragweed. And then a lot of forbs with Illinois bundle flour and sunflower and just a lot of the native forbs started showing up a little bit better than ragweed. Yeah. And then in 22, you know, less ragweed still. And then this year, there's still ragweed out there. I don't know if it's still dominant. It probably is probably a bit 10 or 20%, but we were seeing saw some grasses this fall and a lot more diversity in the forbs. And it's been really fun to watch. I mean, it's, there's really times you drive out there and it's actually more beautiful than the prairies. You get a week or two and everything's blooming or something and it's just gorgeous out there. And you get a lot of birds and stuff coming in there now too. Do you know how long it was farmed for? Well, yeah, kind of. And if that is, that was probably farmed as long as as long as people can farm in the Flahills. Yeah. We've gotten maps on this farm dating back in 1920s. And even the native two thirds of the way up the hill was farmed for 10 to 20 years. I just just, and that's your mind what they farmed back in the 30s. And that was a steep hill. It always blows me away when I see some of the places that their terraces on from the 30s or the 50s. I'm like, why did they think it was a good idea to warp that? Yeah, still today you can walk and whoever receded it, there's places out here that the go back, most people can't even tell it. It's that good. It doesn't look like it's been disturbed, but when you get to the line almost to the top of the hill, you have to literally step up. onto the on to the unbroke prairie. It lost that much. That's crazy. At a short time. And that's one of those things that like it, you pointed out to the right person, they're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But you pointed out to the guy that you stole that dirt. And he's like, oh no, that's that's not what happened. That's that soil didn't erode. I don't know where it went. Yeah. Yeah, I still had those discussions today, unfortunately. The farmers aren't causing erosion. I imagine that's a pretty short discussion on your part. Usually, no sense wasting time with some. There's some kind of saying about arguing with an idiot. We'll pass on that. Okay. How is your, how are things going with your stays? You guys written your house out over here, right? You guys have a lot of guests during colder months or is it mostly warm weather stays? Well, right now it's hunting season. Greenland County is really known for their bucks. White tell deer is quite popular. So yeah, so renting the house, you know, for that hunting. That's the first part, November and goes until the day. So we have a lot of people who want to reconnect with the farm. That's what we get mostly during the summer is a lot of kids. And families like that. So if they want to see the animals, they want to interact with the animals, they want that experience. The one thing we figured out is people come for the farm experience. At times it's not associated with other things. Just that they want the farm experience, which takes time to take people around and to show them different things. Then they request that. So we do that, but I always tell Gaell, it's one interaction at a time. And every time you interact with somebody who doesn't have farm experience, you get a different view of farmers. You give them also a different view of how how farms and they find this farm, which is so fun for us because we don't sometimes see the beauty. We sometimes just see what. And with them when they come, they are just incomplete all. Flowers bloom in life. Away the animals, you know how peaceful and quiet. They're so surprised by all because that's not the life that they get to experience and wherever they come. And so when they get to see that, it's wonderful for us because we get to view the farm in somebody else. I think that's amazing. I think oftentimes on our own places we miss so much and mistake needing to provide an experience for someone when really you're providing a place for the experience to happen because the stuff's already here. The space is there and really that's where people is the space. They need the space and the client and the piece and just the green, everything that's out. So we need spot. For example, in 2020 when the farm ground was 70, 80 percent ragweed, wasn't the most fun place to go to get lost in nature for Latin. The visitors, they didn't care what ragweed is, do they? But they might in September for a couple of weeks but they're not. They thought it was beautiful. And that's a good reminder, especially for me, beauty in the eyes of the beeholder, whatever that is. That's a cool way to knit community into your farm too because a lot of times everybody thinks you have to go to town to intermingle with people and really part dismissing is them being away from all of that and you guys definitely get to enjoy your place more because you are seeing it through other people's eyes. A lot of people miss that, I imagine. During the Get Bigger Get Out era, which I just kind of have this thought that is maybe starting to end. Maybe we'll see the end of this Get Bigger Get Out era. But you know, our communities are smaller than the thought for 20 years has been, well, if you want to do anything, you've got to go to town. You've got to go to town. And now it seems like the whole script has flipped and the town folks want to come out here to get back to everything they thought they were escaping 20 years ago. Yeah, I'm just a farmer. Okay. I heard somebody say that. Yes, they're going to podcast where I listen to a gentleman who seemed very intelligent actually said about himself, I was just raised on a farm like, what do you mean you're just raised on a farm? You could probably solve problems that most people wouldn't even dream of solving because of that, you know. Little similar time. I'm just a state home mom. Exactly. Exactly. Like you're one of the best problem solvers in the world. Just a state home mom. You're an organizer, you're a scheduler, you're a nurse, janitor maintenance. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So there's another thing that they're coming for. I mean, what she talked about is spot on, but there's also a minority that are coming to see the sky, especially at night. Yes. You know, just things that again, I try not to take for granted because there's nothing more beautiful in a night sky in the country when it's dark, but good, you know, go to Kansas City on any given night and look up. And it's not there. It just doesn't even exist. Like the Milky Way. How often do you guys see the Milky Way at night? Whatever there's not clouds, right? No. We see it whenever there's not clouds. And you know, all four of us take it for granted that we are in. I don't know, probably let's just say less than 1% of the population that in on a cloudless night can see the Milky Way. There's probably less than 1% of the population in this country that can say that. When we went, we were talking about turner falls when we were eating earlier, we went, went out there and I think a lot of times when people are thinking about concessionizing on their farms or their places or whatever their land is. You think about needing to have to have a destination or you know, supplying something for people to do. And when we went out to turner falls, it's one of the things that I noticed is that there's nothing there. It's too shallow to boat in. You can fish a little bit, but there's no, there's swimming. And that's it. There's swimming and camping and there's no provided activities. And it's the exact same reason that you guys are saying. The activity people want is just simply to get away. And I think a lot of people on their farms and ranches are taking for granted what someone else sees when they get there. Yeah, and that's a great point because correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the families that we get here that come to bring their kids to interact with animals or nature for maybe the first time or rare occasion for them. And it seems like we have two different sets of kids. We have one set of kids that don't stop. I mean, they hit the ground running and when they get tired of chasing chickens or looking at cows or trying to climb a tree, they make up some game to play or we have some that come down and try to trap chickens or ducks and they try to build whatever they can to trap something or catch something. But unfortunately, we have way too many kids that go with the two-worth mom and dad in the morning and then they're in the house the rest of the day on the Wi-Fi. And you can just see the lack of imagination and usually we know in 30 seconds. Upon arrival, what kind of person has been raised? What kind of, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Kind of stay those people are going to have and we see some things that we could probably, you know, if we knew ahead of time, we could probably even tell what it was going to be like. But it's just, you know, it, I'm kind of torn between, it's really cool to see these kids come out and do things, you know. Like they neatly want to trap some why is that? Yeah. Just constantly out making up games or whatever. But it's just so sad to see these other kids that, you know, what we're doing to our kids today with squashing their imagination and denh, you know, desensitizing them from nature and really feel for them and what their life will be like. Have you guys ever hosted homeschool groups out here? No, not really. What we get is we get, we get homes, families. There's a lot of those and you can tell them pretty easy when they come because they, they truly are very interested. Their questions are amazing. You know, they're very connected with what's, you know, they interact like adults. They come, they come to you. Yeah. They come find us to ask a question. Ask it. You know, we don't have to chase them down and does one of the things that we tell them is that, you know, this is a, this is a, we, we practice free range with our chickens and everything and your children are welcomed, free range. You know, we kind of let them know we have lots of fencing and stuff like that. You know, if you need them to stay in a certain area, close the, you know, and just let them go. And so the first thing that a lot of them will do is they'll come to me and I'll give them a quick tour. And then that, that gives them that open opportunity to go see those animals again and again and they do it every day. Those kids you'll see out here by themselves. Yep. They come out by themselves. They're even in the confidence. And yeah, they know where they're going. They know what they're going to look for. And then yeah, they'll stop you and you know, if they see you and ask a couple of questions, what they, what they're seeing or, or you know, even just tell you, hey, I just want you to know I saw, you know, a pig limping or something, you know, they saw something. And that's cool. We have questions. Yeah. Why is it? Was that chicken live over there? Yeah, or why does this thing stick out here? Why does this look like that? And not, not real common, but once in a while, we even have a homeschool family come and this is, I mean, class. They come out here and they, they find a way to have class and, you know, different things. And we've had a couple of, or at least one family that was here about Easter and used it for, they were homeschoolers, but they, you know, have a heavier spiritual load on their learning and they, they use this as tidied into the Bible and all of that. So they're just, it's really cool to see all the, you know, the diversity we get and the people that come here, especially the ones that, that free range. Yeah. Do you guys remember your very first day? Your very first people that stayed? On the farm? I think that's something I would remember because I think I would be nervous the first time, maybe, you know, I was tough to have the first, first ones here and they didn't interact. So it was, it was not a, one of the things I learned was that two-day stays are the best. Don't ever do a single day stay with people because they come here expecting it to be a motel and it's, and so it's, it's a long, dark drive and most people will come in the dark and leave in the dark and then they're unhappy because it's so dark. Right. And so you're like, yeah, you've got to come. Want to take a day to get acquainted? It is. Yeah. On day two, this one you see the, yeah, they would be real exploring. For city people to like, to stop too, you know, like we talk about this a lot on vacation, like the first day or two you're getting out of being at home at work mentality and then you need a day when you get home to come back but takes a little bit to get there. So, yeah, I could see why one day would be a little disappointing for everybody, you guys especially, really. Yeah, the RV people that we get to come through here, one of the positives of COVID was how many people during the lockdown bought an RV and just hit the road and you know, had kids, a lot of me even were teenagers and you know, instantly you're homeschooling and a lot of times for the first time ever. Yeah, it changed the way people think about it so much. Yeah, these, those families that did that and made that choice, those kids learned more in three months or a year or whatever they was on the road and that they probably learned in their entire education and the school system. Life changing things. Yeah, and we also saw two months. They didn't fear of it and that was that was some the pandemic kind of caused that people, especially scared kids about these kids that were traveling at these are they unloaded out of those RVs like, this is a ballroom and we get to Rome and they had no fear of and we weren't scared people. We had a farm and we had a, we had a family from California pretty early on they had teenage boys, they high school, two high school boys and they let the boys plan the entire trip. It was homeschooled. The boys got to plan what they were going to go see. They're, their goals hit all the state capitals or as many as they could as part of their history and like American history lessons. Exactly. We kind of did a really culture but how the journey, they got to determine how that journey went. So we're for sure going to to peak it to the Kansas State Capitol but how we get there was the boys. But they also, while they were here, they met a neighbor of ours who has a goat dairy and so the boys post pown their trip to peak about one day so they could go milk goats. Oh cool. Two California teenagers that got to milk goats. I mean, public school never. I mean in California public school, never. Do you guys have returned guests often? Because the experience is a lot. So if you're going to set, if you think how I want to put this, what I want to ask is lessons learned from setting up the farm stays and how you do things here and how you would do it different. I mean for us, the first thing that we learned in two night stay, to do that just because that way they really truly experience it. Okay. I can't really think of anything off the top of my head we'd do different. Obviously we've made changes like Lynette said. We went from one night to two night with Airbnb but all of our campers are mostly over-nighters. I think a big part of it is just meeting them and letting them know our why. I think that really just helps. I mean by and large probably setting 5% of the people that come don't have the best diet in the world. Don't really understand why we're doing what we're doing. Don't put a lot of this together with what this has to do with human health or any of that. So I think it's important to have those conversations. Lynette is really really good at it. I mean she's great at meeting the people. One thing we've been talking about that we need to change, this is probably not where you are going but 95% of the people that come here bring one or two or three or four cases of bottled water with them. Really that will change next year. We're not going to ban it yet but we're going to highly discourage that. Okay. Tell me more. I mean I'm with you, microplastics waste. It's probably just Dallas or Kansas City municipal water at a bottle anyway. But obviously we're not getting our point across that the water here is safe and we have reverse osmosis and all those things but we have to find ways to lower our carbon footprint a little more. There's things that we can do to help the environment while people are here having a good study. So education on top of what you're doing just providing this day, finding a way to educate people a little bit more. I mean we do do that. I mean obviously with there being be just to cut down the trash load you know was a so different containers for different recycling materials explaining you know about all food waste is never waste. You put it all in this container and you get to go out or you get to go feed the chicken whichever you know whatever you want to do and take your food waste out there and just see that these are this is food. I mean what you waste is not is never you know on this frame we use it all. So that thing is ever wasted. It's always goes to some so we always make sure that that's the things that I try to teach him and even with my hunters we kind of had had a little discussion you know about okay so he's like oh well I've got a container full of food I'm like that's perfect right over the fence right there. And if you if you have like people I think people want to participate in what you want them to participate in but if you just left a note out that said you know take your food out to the chickens or whatever it wouldn't be the same as you telling the kids this is why we're doing it this is what happens when we do it this is what happens when we don't you know and and actually the act of them participating in the thing that Siemens memories. That's what I always try to remind myself is that it is it does take a lot of time so for me to do all of this extra stuff that takes away from times the things that I need to get there and so I always try to remind myself that every contact somebody important and that every time that I help change person or whether it or just an awareness awareness of what you know what is what it's making the most of each contact you have with your guests right. Okay. And in the case of the you know the food waste especially with the families I mean that's that's just a win-win because the kids just go go because they get to feed an animal so that that makes it even more fun. I bet that sorry go ahead. It's going to be part of our thing with the water bottles it's not just or the plastic water bottles isn't just banning them but it's just letting people know we want to try to find a way to educate them of what these water bottles are doing into the environment and so not just that they maybe not do it here but rethink at the next time they go anywhere to buy one to take with me and buy them out of water bottle to take with you instead of buying cases of water everywhere. Yeah I bet that's the first time a lot of people have seen all of their food waste in one place to actually have you know genuine concept of how much is there and water bottles would be the same way if you guys are if people are bringing them you're asking them to keep them all in one place you have to look at all that trash you know the whole time you're here. So my there's a gentleman that's in my life that's a friend of my dad's my dad has known this guy since college. His name's Randy I don't know if I mentioned him on the podcast or not before but Randy is a very very interesting guy. He's made his living most of his life sorting garbage. That's a very simplistic view. I don't know exactly what his job title is but what he would do is he would go like like New York or Chicago would contract with him and accompany us with to come do a waste management study. So they'd go to the landfill and pick up a whole bunch of garbage and take it back and sort it out and he said he could tell an awful lot about a group of people from the kind of garbage that they produce and what they throw away. He said the amount of food that you see is just absolutely appalling in the in the in the landfill but he said that the worst offender for taking up space in a landfill. Plastic water bottle. Plastic water bottles are taking up so much space in landfills because what are most people doing they get done drinking it. Put the lid on it and throw it in the garbage. They don't maybe cut a slit in the bottle so the air can get out of it to compact. They don't crush the bottle so it takes up less space in the bag. They just put the cap on the empty bottle and throw it away and never think about it again. I've crushed my bottles for a long time because I've lived in a country. Have to take out your own trash. I mean I would rather take out one heavy bags and five really like bags. Crush your dang bottles, you crush your dang cans. But what amazes me is single use plastics. Just absolutely blow my mind and you'll like okay so we have a plastic five gallon water water jug like camping water jug. Those are reusable. Those are great. Five gallon bucket. You could put all kinds of stuff in them. You can reuse it. You could what a useful life has done as a bucket you could turn into other stuff but a plastic water bottle. A sandwich bag. You know what like a ziplock bag for sandwiches. My dad probably still washes and reuses ziplock bags to this. Yes he does. Yes he does. So do we. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And sometimes when I'm throwing away a bag that we've used once I feel bad about it because I look at that plastic bag and I just can't help but think about the amount of oil and the amount of energy that it took to make that bag. And we use it one time and then it goes to the landfill to be thrown away. Let's talk about carbon sequestration. Like let's just leave some of it down there not make so many single use plastics. That'd be a good start. I'll back and be in there. Everything in our lives is about fast cheap and easy. So you can get to the next place that you don't want to be at. Yeah. You know you a water bottle and a water what's a water jug cost? We all carry to water jug I don't 15, 20 bucks. You know five cases of water would pay for that. Yeah. And then you've got money to spend. But you've got to wash that out once in a while. That's true. I mean you're supposed to wash it once in a while. I think sometimes my water bottle has its own very unique microbiome. The last time I was who I don't I have a wash jars and ages. You? Like the coffee pots in the Navy. If they didn't if they didn't have layers of varnish built up in the bottom of them you don't want to use it because it was too new. Gross. Flavor. Gross. So besides sharing your why what would be like I guess I'm asking what are your other like tips for setting up farm stays or starting that type of operation because I think there's quite a few people out there that are looking for more ways to concessionize their property and get you know maybe get some more foot traffic so they can sell some more beef or they've got an outbuilding whatever. But yeah I think I'll let you go this is more your enterprise anyway. And just convenient for those people I mean it's a convenience thing right I mean so if you do want let me want more people to come you know also say Airbnb the RBO you get it posted on there you can also use hip camp if you just have you know just the space that that people can come. Harvest host is another one harvest host is amazing it's it's campers you that they don't pay unless they use electricity or something like that and they just buy product and a lot of times you they already know what products you sell so they they're looking for you on a lot of the camping people they're looking for high quality products because they know that they can't get a many play sell so as they're making their tour across the country they're looking to find life. But really it's just meeting everybody wherever they're at and always welcoming to your farm you know that's the first thing I do is as the camper or as the people arrive I I meet them because I want them to see that that I'm a person and that this is our this is our woman this is our place and it's amazing how much respect they'll have for that you know once they've here they know about what you're doing here so yeah kind of my tips to try to do it and just yeah always meet them yeah what she said about meeting them is so important because yeah you get a whole new layer respect of them for your property of not wanting to throw out or say grab butts or they're water bottles or whatever I mean they realize they're humans here that care so that's really important we've got like where Airbnb that you know a pot well harvest host you know they're required or highly encouraged to purchase product and lieu of rent well that's not the case with Airbnb but we've still got you know our price list is hanging on the refrigerator and you know usually part of the discussion is you know we sell products so there's ways for us to try to sell other things we try to if they want a full blown tour they have to pay for it obviously Lynette or I meet them when they arrive and they kind of get the the nickel tour of what to do where but if they they really want the full blown thing then that's something they pay for so there's there's ways to you know add value to them and but also revenue for us is you guys have to add anything infrastructure wise before you were able to host just campers I mean electricity obviously is a thing but I mean just regular campers don't even have that the harvest host they're they're not supposed to have there's just piece fully contained or self-contained campers but on the rare we've had a couple of years that'll come in and for whatever reason you know the water wasn't working in their last place and they'll ask for water or electricity and we always lie to them have it we don't we don't ever say no we don't play with the rules very good but they're not supposed to need anything so now we haven't had to add anything for that or Airbnb the hip camp the people come with the tent campers it was just a matter of setting up campsites which I built little fire rings out of bricks just to mark them off kind of yeah okay now that was yeah part of that was just so they could find their spot and things like that so now we really haven't put much into any of them really a lot of them are pretty low effort I've got a couple of hip camp spots on the ranch that you know I'm a little farther off the beaten track and I'm not in the Flint Hills so there's just not not near the tourism out in the Red Hills but I still get a few on that you know I still get a few on my hip campsites and it's been a pretty low effort deal and I haven't been the best about going out to meet everybody that comes in because it's it's right off the road there's a lot of one night come and goes and I think holy charge like 35 30 dollars a night for that and if I'm done with my work at noon and I drive the 10 miles home and the camper does it show up till 630 it's hard for me to want to go back out there yep for five minutes just to meet them and be like yeah that pulled down their part and I also think that they pointed out a really good reason to look at it differently like honestly I know you've met some people and had good interactions with them but I mean that's kind of the whole it's it's on tack and that's one of the things that I think and I always think about that all the time is that I try to meet everybody because every contact I met I give them a different your army I give them a different or what a farmer's life but I also am able to plant those seeds how important what I to them not just in the world but to use specifically and why to you it's important exactly to each one of them and yes it is time to see but every time we interact and the person we create this this amazing web that will continually spread because they will mention because of something you said or something and with that that message it's it's just so important to make that extra but also when you make that extra effort to be one more than it for and then when they do post a review about your hip I'll say oh I'm like this wonderful ran you know and this is what he does and these are the things he did and you should go to this place because of what we we have the advantage of living here on the property which makes it a lot easier because yeah I would be certainly less inclined to have to drive to meet a guest and time consuming you know financially that doesn't you know that starts to add up takes time out of your life so that does make it a lot more difficult if you've got to really go out of your way to do and it's you know we've had these discussions even with our harvest toast in our hip camp because they don't pay much I mean 30 bucks a night for hip camp you know so how much time can you afford financially to spend with them right I mean everything she talks about a spot on because there's there it does come back to you but at the same time it's still time out of your day so I mean if somebody's gonna stay two or three nights yeah I'm probably gonna go out and meet it my've had I had one that wanted to stay for a week she ended up leaving after the third day because she had a family emergency back home and we're communicating beforehand and like she asked me to come down and help her park and level her camper because she'd never pulled a trailer before and then she was leaving yes which she which she left she told me she says thanks for putting it where I could get back out by myself no um one thing one that is really good at is the the people that come here um if she if she includes them in a farm experience you know the little kids get to go gather eggs or feed a bottle lamb that's just five stars I mean that's an instant or good review but they'll say what they did and then the next people that come they'll read that review there's a lot of these people read reviews so yeah when they see that they and they say hey we saw something about gathering eggs can our can our kids gather eggs and so that really helps pull people she does a really good job in our advertising you know people when they sign up you know can we see Leonard can we meet the dogs or you know the bottle lambs and they either read it in reviews or in her advertising so a lot of them they I mean they they come here for this purpose of reconnecting but they've already before they get here feel like they've met one or two of the characters on the farm and they're already asking questions about that's cool we we want to meet we want to meet this animal you guys are like you're kind of making it personal for them before they even get here by using your animals names and that's I mean that's a little thing to think about but that could be kind of a big deal telling your story with some character in it so that when people get here they already feel like they're part of the story and I don't know initially do you warn them a little about Lucy up front that Lucy it meets them no that's my that's my that's my first talk okay that's my first talk when I when we go when I go meet them a couple of years ago we had a bottle lamb that got a little confused and started to identify as dog and thought Lucy was its mom okay and it got to where it followed Lucy everywhere and Lucy is the first she's the first one to meet you she hears you and you turn off the highway she's already coming up the driveway barking in a haram and the lamb would be following her trying to bark I mean it was the and so that became an instant hit with all of the guests so it was Lucy and peanut that lamb that identified as dog and we had probably for a year after peanut was gone people coming asking about Lucy and peanut you know because people so many reviews got posted and so many pictures got taken of you know fans man and posted on Facebook or Instagram and not just in the reviews it you know so there's there's little things like that there was a complete accident but if you you know find things like that that really I mean peanut probably rented peanut probably made us quite a bit of money I'm so excited I'm so glad you told that story because I mean I think about all the like all the silly little things that have happened at our house that are just a silly thing that happens in the day of the life of us like the chicken that thought it was a guinea exactly yeah we have a barred rock that lives with the guinea's because I mean why why would that be why would the guinea's be did they look the same I mean they just don't know and guinea's hate chickens so they don't hate the barred rocks I guess because they know they don't you can't like if you see it from far enough away you can't tell and in it and there was also a silver lace wine dot in there and like there was there was never any brown chickens with the guinea's it was just the black and white chickens but there's there's always weird things that happen that we talk about and laugh about that you don't think about you know that sharing that with somebody would be you know great all the silly things we name our animals I mean just those stories alone are pretty hilarious they do they love that they love all those parts they want to know why that animal was yes I think we're probably getting to a point that we're going to be able to raise our rent in May because of lambs and baby calves people are starting you're asking when can we come see the babies well if they're going to ask to come see the babies yep they're going to pay to come see the babies I mean that's in demand and Lynette took her two cousins out they were what seven and ten we got I just happened to see a you laying down and I come down told Lynette when they were here once staying they come a couple times a year and then that was took them up and they got to see one actually being born you know from a close distance exactly that's something they'll never forget you know that where they they can just imagine were these city kids um um what was they were they're parents with them how horrified were their parents at what they were seeing no they were just really curious they asked lots of questions because you know just the whole birthing process right from the you from her just spinning and pying and you know from the very beginning very near and the girl is I could see hers of that her zookeepers she's she's just an animal person to begin with so this was a really big moment for her from just from that aspect of furthering her passion and desire to be around animals yeah and of course it was born on the driveway so that meant that that those little lambs had to be moved so they got to carry yeah so they got to carry the little lambs but oh yeah they got a first hand experience and start to finish something those kids are not going to forget for a very long time the sea five live coming home great stuff that's a good place to a good place start wrapping up you have anything else uh gale linette you have any events on the farm coming up um I think you do I remember so we actually have a lady coming and she's going to do astrology and numerology so for the new new year of 2024 she's gonna predict kind of a cool event yeah really excited about that one yeah her name is half-ren and um she's written some real books yep she's several books and yeah that'll be kind of a cool event and that's gonna be February eight right February eight ninth tenths somewhere in that right in that area so yeah on a Saturday and a Sunday and yeah you can register for that website fuller field school fuller farm oh yeah yeah you haven't posted those flyers yet then no no I didn't know I searched you on the website my bad okay yeah eventually they'll be able to register them fuller field school yeah well yeah it'll be actually it'll be yeah it'll be the flyers will be there which will show you the link that sounds like it's only that in a field school is only two events we got officially planned so far right we just feel the registration start oh sorry I'm gonna tell you to turn that off right now you did sometimes that happens every once in a while I forget to put mine on mute too so before we get out here today field school you said that was coming up October 3rd and 4th so where will people be able to find out information and roughly when uh fullerfieldschool.com there will also obviously be post on facebook etc I assume we'll probably open registration after the first of the year get through the holidays and get everything up and running probably have it going then and like if you're coming to the field school tent like tent camping in Gales Yard it's it's well as my dad would say it's a happening man it's a happening yeah it's been really fun you know since we moved here well you know we moved here in the the first summer was 20 with COVID and that just changed everything and we we were adamant we were gonna host our workshop that year so we moved it outside and we made it happen and it was such a hit people just literally begged us please no more PowerPoint so we've now been outside for four years for schools and so yeah now we allow you know the I guess backup the downside of moving to severy is the overnight accommodations are a little more difficult than they were in imporia so we've added anybody wants to come and camp out and come and camp out for $25 a night and so the night before the field school it's not uncommon to have 20 30 40 people sleeping on the farm play and music around the campfire sing about earthworms and we have community meals and it just it's you know becoming almost a festival type really fun really fun atmosphere it's just really added to it having having the people staying here well maybe instead of fuller field school it'd become the fuller regeneration festival yeah we're good yeah yeah it seems like that too and then yeah food or everything's based around food and really from local farmers and people who know us we bring in chefs to prepare it so that makes it fun very passionate chefs we do a beautiful job with it then it's coming that you get what we provide for the people that come to the folder films is a community and it's almost as everybody that comes just all have something common with that they they join in they help us wash dishes they yeah they help prepare food sometimes when the chefs need a couple extra hands and you know there's there's the sense of community that's cool it's it's really helped take a load off of us it's very difficult for this control freak because when you're the host you're the host everybody else is supposed to stay all the way will you kill yourself working for two days so that everybody else can have fun and so it it was difficult for me when people would ask to do something to let them but that Charles really hammered at home when he spoke here two years ago is you know paying it forward and the gift the gift economy and so I relaxed after that and you walk in here now at six o'clock in the morning on the day of the field school yeah there's somebody at the sink doing dishes and the coffee's already percolating and it's amazing what happens when you let it yeah really yeah and they're not upset I'm so happy to help it's just like you would be happy to help you leaving leaving that field school when Charles was here I remember driving out of the place of your place that morning afternoon whenever we left and just and Santa Brian I have goosebumps here because the whole energy of the group of people that was here was just unbelievable Charles had the same he was I mean he dated his he did his presentation without shoes on which was super cool but by the time he was done I had my shoes off and I know at least two or three other people did too and I thought that was it was pretty neat when we brought Charles in we we were told by a couple of his friends that he will be a fantastic speaker people will be blown away but he will show up he will give his presentation he'll go back to his room because he's that's just Charles he doesn't care for social events he was in the middle of every conversation here he was he I tell people I really think he only showed up at a morbid curiosity of why a farmer in Kansas wanted to listen to him and I really think that's the only reason he came and he did not get what he came for he was a magical here it was wonderful to have like to be here while he was here and then it was so cool so cool what I remember about that was he kind of started off and he kind of admitted that he started off on the back foot because it's like I didn't know what to expect coming here and this is completely different than what I had in mind she's just bear with me as I gather my thoughts and I thought wow and then I looked down and noticed he wasn't wearing shoes and I really started to pay attention and and the article that he wrote afterwards about some of his these preconceptions before coming to Kansas and about meeting some of the people here he didn't mention anybody by name I think maybe except you guys but he didn't mention anybody else by name and it's been a while since I've read it but it was just it was just incredible like he was just blown away that there's actually people that care about the food and the environment and the microbes and the nutrient and the water cycling and understand how it all fits together and care about each other without talking politics and religion you know it's yeah I think I think he was as blown away as anybody else something this school is just it's taken on a life of its own the speakers show up we have a we have a really difficult time explaining to them what they're getting themselves into and that's you know he was a perfect example and then they show up and they're like oh my god he he was so interesting to see speak because he's such a patient speaker and he's confident in his patients so when he needed to take time to gather his thoughts he just did that and you it was really cool to see how uncomfortable it made people at first and by the end of the conversation how different that was I think it I mean I think that really made an impression on you on being okay taking a minute to gather your thoughts in the middle of a conversation I have to fill every yeah I think it's just part of our lifestyle anymore is along with everything else fast sheep and easy as dead air is no longer allowed you you know dead air is wonderful because everybody at time to think and digest and I could see why he wouldn't wouldn't have been looking forward to the social aspect of the thing when you show up to a lot of social things it's all about pretenses and I think the reason that I left here with goose bumps is because it was real the hole there was no you guys didn't put on some thing some with some you know agenda it was a group of people who the purpose was to gather and be close and learn and love each other and I think that's how we were lucky enough to draw you know naysia for next year's she's such an in such high demand but you know our our initial phone call with her she wanted to know what we expected from her and we said you should open do what you want to do you can talk about anything you want and you know any speaker today it's you know that you're given a topic you're given an hour you're you're talking all these constraints yeah this is what you can that's we've never been that way we we want our speakers involved in the agenda and with her we know you know how speaking is become a job and we just want her to come and have fun and we've just turned her loose and she just she just blew up we're on zoom and you can just see her face light up and the wheels are already let's when you get the best of people is when you let them do it they're good at no and the other thing we told her is we promised to fear well and we're going to house her right on the park she did a senior light up I mean I don't have to go anywhere I get to just walk out the door and speak right there on the lawn and we're like yeah right there and she's like oh my god this sounds like this is going to be amazing and it will be will be abs and she is a Kansas girl yeah she does even cool very cool yep so she's returning very cool all right where can we find you on the internet besides fullerfieldschooled.com Airbnb oh yeah on Airbnb it's under slant hills premiere get away and that's also on VRBO yep camp so you just type in severy Kansas and bring me thing with harvest hose same with harvest hairs and the Airbnb is also on our website at fullerfieldschooled.com it talks about and getaways so you can also go on there to find a way to come see us I have a very short list of saved properties on Airbnb one of them is yours and we've had this idea for a while is to make a fake account under somebody else's name on Airbnb and book it and just show up have you guys ever had anybody just like show up that you didn't expect that you knew now you've ruined it Brian great oh we remember nobody anyway yeah fun I do yeah amazing we love it we love when people come to see us fun I know that's the thing they're there we're having the air there could be a little risk with that and that we might not be here yeah John knows coming to spend the weekend and we we they got planned it's like a no this yeah yeah here's the instruction for check in there you go good luck good luck we had a couple of sunned up for hip camp a year or so ago we didn't know them from Adam but they so you know they sign up for hip camp and they I think they ordered some meat and eggs or something and a firewood bundle which is pretty typical and we were gone that weekend and come to find out they signed up for field school and they were wanting to become farmers and they they were they come here for that weekend to meet us oh no so they got to meet the farm sitter but they didn't they we've since become friends but yeah you know we've got to have a life off the farm we've got to we've got all have time to be able to get away from the farm just to get away from some of the stress and the decisions and oh man I need to go fix that gate uh god to tighten that wire up maybe we need to go doctor that sheep you know sometimes it's nice just to be like we need to leave for two days hopefully everything will be alive when we get back yeah it's it's it's just extremely important and very difficult for me because I don't care how beautiful your farm is and how much you love doing it it's still that stress of the list that everything that has to be done that day and what you think has to be done that day and okay gale hypothetically if you went to someone else's farm to stay on their farm not if that's what we do okay wouldn't you do that do you do like look at other people's gates and be like yeah man I might stretch out that wire you know I you know hang that gate a little bit but well that's like no I don't have time for that okay we never I never look at it like we see that or I see that but I don't that's not what I think but when I go to other people's farms I ask if I can go do chores just to learn their place and just it's a little bit of yeah you get to see the the backside of the farm or the inside of the farm but you also get to see you know okay maybe they do things just to tad differently that I you know what can I bring back to my place to never thought about using this sort of container for a feed button exactly and I guess feeding their animals you you know if there's one dead so what it's not mine you know it's not the same kind of stress there's not yeah it's not the same kind of stress and it's they're probably with you so you're having a really good conversation while you're doing it and and maybe they're even you know from the gates for you yeah we like the good we've done a lot we love to see what they do and there was the first time I spent the night at Gabe's though he ended up in the emergency room the night before grass fed exchange and so I ended up doing chores all right now because you wanted to know that was the one time it wasn't very fun sometimes you got to take the good with the bad and now that's what it's like an agriculture we said don't get a lot of choice the only choice we have is how we choose to internalize it and how we choose to deal with it back we all right it's great place to thank you guys thank you thank you a lot of fun all right gang see you next week if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to like share and subscribe to our podcast we'd also love to hear your thoughts so leave us a review if you haven't already and don't forget to check out the Q&A and the polls on Spotify your support helps us bring more enlightening conversations and fresh stories from the world of farming and ranching thank you for listening to Raging Reboot your favorite regenerative ag podcast.