This week we're talking to Kevin Cunningham of Shakefork Community Farm in Humboldt County California. Kevin and his family grow vegetables and eggs for farmers' market and CSA, utilizing oxen for draft power on their farm. They also welcome a number of apprentices every year, making it possible for more beginning farmers to get "boots on the ground" experience.

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Welcome to Barnyard Language.

We are Katie and Arlene, an Iowa sheep farmer, and an Ontario dairy

farmer with six kids, two husbands, and a whole lot of chaos between us.

So kick off your boots, reheat your coffee, and join us

for some barnyard language.

Honest.

Talk about running farms and raising families.

In case your kids haven't already learned all the swears from being in the barn,

it might be a good idea to put on some headphones or turn down the volume.

While many of our guests are professionals, they

aren't your professionals.

If you need personalized advice, consult your people.

You see

the cat butt, right?

Welcome to another episode of Barnard Language.

Thank you for joining us again here on the podcast.

Katie and her cat are here recording.

If you're in Patreon, you can see that.

If not, you can just imagine that her, she's trying to keep her cat off the

keyboard and away from the microphone.

Or maybe not away from the microphone, depending how how loud it's pouring.

Katie, what is going on the farm these days?

This is the girl Child's cat.

Her name is Dips, not my child.

The cat's name is Dips.

Got it.

Yeah.

These kittens were hand raised by my kids when they were in an in-home

daycare, so you can imagine how.

Tremendously neurotic.

A cat that was hand raised by a bunch of children under the age of five is

Right.

But also

shock proof.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We did not anticipate getting another cat, but they were going to

new homes and there was not even a moment of discussion before this one

was in our car coming home with us.

At which point I asked my kid what they were gonna name her, and my child said

him name dips and just looked at me like,

Duh.

Of

course, obviously.

Other than that, it has been very hot with no rain here.

And then today we had one of those days where it got down to

40 overnight, which 40 Fahrenheit.

So not a whole lot above freezing.

It's.

Absolutely stunning outside today, and I'm having a very hard time doing my

work for, my job that pays me money so that I can do stuff like that on the

podcast and feeding my children and dips.

Yeah.

So not a whole lot, just waiting for it coming.

Did

any rain come with that weather shift or No, it was just a swinging,

we have an 80% chance of rain, but.

Today is what they said, but there's no more than like a 10% chance per hour.

And there is, the nearest thing I saw on the radar is north of the UP in Michigan.

So whatever part of Canada that is.

And then there looked like maybe there was a storm in Texas.

And since we're in Iowa, I really doubt that we're gonna get

anything from either of those.

I love talking to farmers about weather cuz it's not just I don't know.

It's very precise.

The radar says, and this weather app says, yeah.

Yeah.

I would love to know from our listeners what the average number

of weather apps consultant is.

Per, I know it.

I'm sure it rises substantially when you're more anxious about the weather.

Yes.

But I'm wondering how many

weather

apps most families use?

How many sources are we checking here?

Which is the most

reliable?

Yeah.

And if anyone's found a way to not absorb the emotional impact, Of the weather

report when it's less than favorable,

right?

No.

Not the kind of weather report you want on that given day.

Yeah.

So what's happening in your world, Arlene?

We had prom rounds two over here.

My daughter didn't want to.

Use cows for photos on actual prom day, which is very responsible of her.

I think that was the right choice.

So we had our friend and photographer, Lindsay, come and do some cow

pictures on this past weekend, which is a week after prom.

So she got some beautiful cow shots with all of her babies

and all of her big cows and.

There were, there was a selection criteria that went from former four

H animals to the favorite cow in the barn to, I'm not even sure how some

of them got selected, but anyway, there was a pasture field involved.

There were cows on the driveway.

There was lots of different cow shots It was very nice.

My husband came in the house after having moved a few cows around and

said, I'm not ready for her wedding.

And I was like that's a long way off.

He's no, just the pictures.

So it wasn't that he was feeling all that, sentimental about the fact

that she might get married someday.

It was more the the number of photos.

I was like if it's her wedding day, someday, you're not wanted in that

many pictures anyway, so you don't need to worry too much about it.

Yeah.

And other than that, we're in the countdown to the end of school.

There are two full weeks left and then a part week.

So I'm also in countdown mode of how many things can I try and get

done before all of my kids are home all day every day because that's

what summer looks like around here.

There are maybe a few potentially like half day camps going on for different

children at different times, but pretty much everyone will be home all the time.

So that's a whole new routine to get used to.

And we're also in the depths of paperwork for.

My daughter has already applied to and accepted a spot at university, but now

it's all the different things and all the different logins and all the different

passwords, and so much of it is secure.

And yeah, learning about the bureaucracy of university and what

all of that looks like, especially in an online world is a whole new thing.

So yeah, we were doing some more paperwork and scanning

of documents today to try and.

Get some stuff completed.

So that's another adventure too.

Trying to make sure you remember all these very important logins and very important

numbers, but none of them are overlap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's always the thing too, is that they, they all have such different criteria

for what makes an acceptable password,

yes.

Yeah.

And what their security is.

The other day, that was for, it was even for something stupid, I don't

remember what it was, but it wasn't.

Anything that needed near the level of security that they

were trying to force upon it.

That was one of those things Yeah.

They thought that you needed.

Yeah.

And then of course you get your password in and then it kicks it

out and it'll tell you it's not suitable, but it won't tell you why.

And it's, yeah.

Yeah,

that's right.

Try

again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are your kids showing the summer for fairs then, or filming your daughter

that does that anyway?

Just my daughter at this point, the middle two boys.

We told them they had to do four H last summer.

Cuz it was the first.

Real four H season.

There had been in a while because of the Covid years where there were a

lot of restrictions and things weren't happening, and then they were, but

just at the last minute, or there weren't really too many live shows, a

lot of fairs had still been canceled.

So last year they did four H and.

That I think will be it for a while.

For animal four H.

They're doing other four H.

They're both in my cookie club.

But they're not showing animals this year.

No.

And the youngest will probably do the pre four H show at our Holstein

show, but it's not till August.

So he doesn't actually have to start training anything quite yet.

So at this point, yes, just my daughter, but we have six, four

acres with animals here, so she has.

What used to be the Sheep Barn is now called the Heifer Hotel.

And so all the show animals are over there, so there's extra work that's going

into raising all of those, but she's the only one of our kids who are actually

showing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think this will probably be the last year that we will not have

kids showing for quite a while.

The girl child did Clover kids this year, and they both will next year.

She got an invite to show it one fair this summer, but it

was, it's not even our, the.

Fairgrounds.

The club that their school district is in is technically four counties,

so it's not even a county fair.

The town sits literally in the corner of four counties, and so they have a

separate fair that's not really a fair.

And then it's a whole thing.

And of course because we don't live in town, they will.

End up being in a separate four H club than the one that they're in now.

And it's, I don't know, it's a thing.

So I'm sure we'll have plenty of updates on that in the future, but I am in

no tremendous rush to volunteer to start Getting them, showing animals.

No,

definitely don't hold off on that.

No.

Yeah.

Especially change.

It'll be fun when it comes.

But yes, at this age it's a lot more work for the parents

than it's gonna be for Yeah.

And at this age, any of the kids, the only animals they're old enough

to show are bucket and bottle calves.

And since we don't have any bucket in bottle calves, we would

have to procure some and Right.

Yeah.

I'm guessing you have lots of years ahead of you.

Don't start too

early.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm guessing bucket bottle calves aren't as bad if run a dairy and have

a lot of them, but a one-off bucket bottle calf is a pain in the ass,

and I don't really want to, my kids don't know that they're missing out on

anything, so I don't intend to tell them.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Will, should we welcome our guest for this week, then we should

indeed.

Today on the podcast we're talking to Kevin Cunningham, who's

joining us from Northern California.

And Kevin, we start each of our interviews with the same question.

And this is a way to introduce yourself to our listeners.

So we always ask, what are you growing?

So this can cover crops and livestock, your family, businesses

and all kinds of other stuff.

So yeah, I was what are you growing?

I was actually thinking quite a bit about this question cuz I like the format of it.

And I wanted to go from top down.

I could talk about the crops and the animals and I'll get there,

but I was thinking, the main thing that we're growing here is our

farm, and so that's like the thing that we're growing is this farm.

Kind of craziness.

And of course you can't have a farm without the farmers so I'll start with us.

So hopefully we are growing ourselves, through this process of growing the farm.

So it's me and my wife Melanie are the main owner farmers here

at Shakefork Community Farm.

And then we are also growing farmer Clyde, who is our son.

So he's nine years old.

And gainfully employed by the farm.

We actually officially this year, he is He is working chores with us on the crew.

So we got finished with chores this morning where you can, usually do about

eight to 10 on on our morning chores.

So he's working with me out there on doing chores.

And then we're also growing our farm community.

And that includes our apprentices and employees who we see

as growing future farmers.

So we have an apprentice program.

We have three to four apprentices a year.

And young, usually young people who come here who live and work with us

on the farm to learn about farming and and we are actually quite proud of the

number of apprentices and employees that we've had that have gone on to

either start their own farm businesses or work in agriculture in some way.

Because I feel like the world needs more farmers.

There's very few of them, and we would do a lot better if there was more of them.

So we're trying to grow more farmers.

That's one of probably our first main crop besides the farm itself and our family.

And then as far as the kind of the larger farm community we are a.

Shake Port Community Farm.

So we're we have a csa, we have community supported agriculture program that

we are continuing to grow and build.

And my wife, Melanie, she's in the background there.

Our developing and it's something that we've had since the inception of our farm.

It's taken a couple of different Iterations and types.

So that's growing that kind of customer support.

As well as our farmer's markets, which is the, one of the main things that

one of our main marketing outlets is the farm, the farmer's markets.

So growing our customer base and our community support

within the the farmer's markets.

And then, Also just, we tend to be really active in our community.

And so we're growing our Humboldt County larger community as well.

And that's all kind of part of it.

I guess more nuts and bolts kind of stuff of what we're

actually growing on the farm.

Like I said, we have a a community support agriculture, and that's for

the vegetables part of our operation.

So we have about five acres of mixed vegetables including a couple

of high tunnels that we use to start crops as well as to grow

crops during the season year round.

We have a year round vegetable production.

Luckily, despite the little dusting of snow that we recently

had, we are, fairly mild climate.

So we grow year round.

We have a farmer's market that goes year round.

Our CSA is seasonal.

So it's June through October.

So that's, the crop production part of our farm.

The entirety of the farm is about 85 acres.

About 40 of that is river are on the Vanduzen River which is a tributary

of the Eel River Watershed system.

And trees and rocks and wildlife.

The remainder, 40 to 45 is the kind of the farm stead.

So we've got about a 45 acre farm stead that includes our pasture

fields and the garden and, the buil buildings and out buildings.

And so probably about 35 of that is pasture.

And we've isolated that, we only have about five Good.

Arable acres and the rest is fairly rocky and sandy soil.

So that all is in permanent pasture.

And on that permanent pasture we manage intensively manage cattle for beef grass

fed beef, and we have a small home dairy.

So I'm milking three cows.

And and then we are also on that same pasture footprint raising egg layers.

So we've got about close to probably 500 egg layers currently

in two different coop systems.

And we are And then seasonally during the summer, we raise broilers.

Chickens for meat, we'll raise 1200 or so, a thousand to

1200 broiler chickens a year.

And then we'll also do a run of Thanksgiving turkeys.

So up to 60 some odd.

Thanksgiving, turkeys on the pasture as well.

Occasionally we'll also have, a couple of hogs that we raise

for, farm farmstead eating.

Haven't gotten into any pork production.

I don't like pigs enough to go there with the with pastured pork.

And.

Yeah, I guess that's the, that's the bulk of everything that we're doing.

So we're basically doing a little of just about everything.

I have in the past grown small grains I've done, that's

actually how we started the farm.

So I started as a grain CSA actually.

So I'd started doing oats and barline, wheat rye, buckwheat,

flax, a few other things.

We don't long, no longer grow that mainly because, We, when we moved to

this p particular piece of ground, we only realized we had five acres

that was at all worth cropping.

And the rest was just too rocky and sandy to try to work into crop production.

So yeah, that's that's pretty much the rundown of what we're growing.

We need to sell your dairy products or are you guys just eating a lot of ice

cream, which no judgment from me at all, but, it's always interesting hearing.

What the different legalities allow we Yeah.

Totally.

We do eat quite a bit of ice

cream.

It's true.

Cuz we do have, I have a, an ice cream maker and we I make butter

and we do a lot of stuff and the.

While raw milk is legal for sale in California Humboldt County, because

it's a very large dairy production area there's a lot of grass-based, awesome

dairy production here in the area.

We actually have stricter rules than the rest of California.

Raw milk was important for us and her, our family.

So that's one of the reasons why we milk the cows.

And I have quite a bit of extended family, so we've got the apprentices who were

also feeding as well as my family, my, my parents live in the nearest town here.

And so tho that's all about why, one of the reasons why we milk the cows.

Is for us.

Another thing that I didn't talk about in what we're growing was the kind of the,

one of the main things that sets us apart from a lot of other farms is the oxen.

And I raise and train and use oxen almost exclusively on the farm.

We actually do have a tractor and a rototill, another

other mechanized equipment.

But the oxen is a big part of it and one of the benefits of having

the dairy cows is that's one of, that's how I start my oxen.

So I do I raise bottle calves essentially to start all of my oxen.

And we work with a local dairy farm that's really awesome.

Alexander Family Farm up in Crescent City, and so we get.

Calves from them.

And we, we get to select out the best, four to six calves

and then I'll take those bowl calves and I'll bottle raise 'em.

So that's another reason why we keep the cows and we milk cows is cuz then I

can control and raise a set of group of bottle calves and then out of that group

of calves I'll select the best two that I like as far as physical confirmation

and personality and all of these things.

And then I'll raise those up and they'll become future oxen teams.

While we, the dairy isn't necessarily a financial part of our farm.

It's still a part of the the kind of the inner workings of how we work the the

farm organism I guess you could call it.

That's we do a lot of dairy.

And then we also use the skim to feed the pigs and raise calves and do all

of the things around the farm that that having a dairy cow around works well for.

Yeah.

And it is, that would it's a lot of, no.

There's,

there is no current market for oxen teams, but

who knows?

Maybe someday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know

in, in in New England, there are where, the, there's a lot of kind

of four h, working steer programs.

There certainly is a market for, like calves and, newer teams and stuff.

Because it's a big part of the, kind of the four H groups in New England.

And that's the, in, in the us.

That's like where most of the oxen are.

To be perfectly honest, I think I might be one of the only teamsters west of the

Mississippi that's actively keeping oxen.

It's not very common on the west western part of the, the us.

But yeah there's, I raise, and it's not every year that I raise a set of calves.

It's probably in order to keep teams in rotation I, it's about every three

to four years that I start a new set of calves it takes about four years for

those, those calves to be fully mature and to really do any appreciable work

on the farm, we will train and do, for those first four years we do a lot of

training and they'll start doing, some light work around, in year two and three.

But really at year four to five is really when they're big enough to

actually do a substantial amount of work.

So you've got a kind of a time lag right there, you've got about four

years of investment that you have to get to before you're actually

gonna have a team big enough to pull anything of subs of substance.

And then each team, has a working life of probably, it's considered good, to get an

oxen team to about 12 to 15 years of age.

They're not as long-lived as a lot of like draft horses would be, you can

work a draft horse into their twenties.

They start getting a little older in their twenties.

But it's cattle are different, they end up getting more joint

issues, around 12 to 15 years old.

If you calculate it out, like every three to four years I should be starting

a new team so that I have a team that's ready by the time the X team

is getting ready to retire, basically.

So yeah, right now I have I have my main team.

And they are five, probably going on six right now.

I have one, one of my, one of my very original oxen, Joseph,

and he's in semi-retirement and he is in that 13 year age range.

And, he still does some work and I can work him as a single and

he can be a fill in into the team if I have an injury or something.

And then I have a young set of calves and or a younger set of working steers,

I guess technically you would call 'em.

And so they're, yearlings going on two.

And then I have probably another set of calve calves less than a year old

from from last year's bottle calves.

So that's the age range of the the kind of the oxen that I have currently.

Yeah.

It is, yeah, you have to

kinda have to think ahead and it wasn't that long ago that

there was, there were people who were raising, and selling teams.

Even in an area like where we're at.

They were vital into the early days of the logging industry here in the county.

And old pictures and there was 12, 14 teams right there.

And so somebody had to be, used to be able to go down to probably a,

the local, feed hub and, buy a team of oxen but now not any longer.

I would say, both, both Melanie and I are our first generation

farmers.

I I don't, I didn't grow up on a farm, and my, my family was actually military.

Both my parents were in the Air Force, and so we moved around

quite a bit when I was a kid.

And at probably at age 20 is when I moved up to Humboldt County.

And and that's when I started getting involved in agriculture.

I knew I, I was a lost 20 year old didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do.

Ended up here at Humboldt County and I knew vaguely I wanted to work outside

and I didn't wanna work in an office and I couldn't afford to live in the city.

So I moved up to rural, rural Humboldt County.

And I got a job working at a local Farm here.

My, my mentor Paul Oli of Warren Creek Farms.

And so he was a straight ahead, tractor based organic vegetable production, up

to about 40 acres of mixed vegetables.

A lot of storage crops, potatoes, winter squash, dry beans.

We did a lot.

He also did some farmer's market.

We did a lot of wholesale.

And so that was my early experience in, in, in agriculture was working for Paul.

And I worked for him for six years before Going on and then studying

agriculture here at the local community college is how I, I got my start.

There's a college of the Redwoods here locally.

Ha does a, an agriculture program.

So that's how I got started doing all of this and then quickly found

that this was what I loved doing.

You mentioned earlier, Kevin, about the importance of community

and how community is part of your business, and it feels like for

some of us that's, that engaging with the community can be difficult

or just feels like one more thing.

Can you talk about how you engage with your community and

why that's important to you?

Yeah.

I.

I think it's, it, the,

for us, there's, from the business side of it, it's really important for us

to to engage with the community because everything that we produce is direct

marketed within 50 miles of our farm.

Like we have a lot of really good friends in the the dairy industry, that run really

different farms where, they are producing something that, that goes through a

commodity system and it's just a matter of the way that we organized our farm.

We have to have, at least within our local area, we have to have a strong community

in order to sell what we produce.

And and so that's probably from a business perspective, why we put

so much emphasis on developing our community side of what we do.

And that includes, face to face at farmer's markets, which is amazing.

But there's also limited to what we can do with that.

Being modern age farmers, one of the great ways that we've found to broaden

our community is through the social media.

And we've found that early on.

We, we tried doing some, marketing here and we took out a radio ad.

We do have a couple of really great local radio stations and, we did a few things

that as far as for marketing, but really to be perfectly honest, the only thing

that has really worked as far as marketing for our farm has been social media.

There have been plenty of times where, we've had customers show up at Farmer's

Market on, maybe a not good weather day when we have, and they were like, I showed

up today because you posted on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it might be.

And we've then subsequently been able to make a sale.

And so that's a really important part of the business.

I think both Melanie and I also have a strong sense of wanting to develop

our broader community, just as a sense of, I don't know, purpose or meaning.

We both have volunteered quite a bit on a number of boards for nonprofits

and local organizations currently.

My wife is the president of the N C G A, which is the North Coast

Growers Association, which is the the the group that runs all

of the local farmers' markets.

And I've been a board member on the N C G A as well.

I've also been involved with calf, the community Alliance with Family Farmers,

which is a California organization.

I've been locally involved as well as the state.

Representative for that local land trusts and watershed improvement organizations.

Our local co-op a grocery co-op, we've been involved in that kind of broader

community just because I think it was interesting be both Melanie and

I, our first generation farmers we both did not grow up in rural areas.

And, out of a sense of wanting to root into a place we've gotten really

involved here in our local Humboldt County community looking for that

connection and looking to be a part of something that's greater than just

ourselves and our farm, basically.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

When you take on apprentices, are they from.

Do you find typically they're local or are you finding them from all over the place?

Where do they come from and how long are they staying?

You say they stay on farm, are they living with you or do you have accommodations

or what does that actually look like?

Yeah.

This is actually the first year where we've actually had

a local apprentice.

We have a a new one this year who is actually, born and

raised here in Humboldt County.

So that's actually the that's actually n the not typical apprentice for the farm.

We have had apprentices from as far afield as Nepal.

We the apprenticeship program is on farm and we have basically three I don't know.

Y Yts you they're called a Yom, which is like a yk dome, but there are three yts

and they're rustic tent like structures.

They all have wood stoves in them.

But they're, they're, it's a rustic structure.

And so we do have we're, most of the time our apprentices run from about

now, from about March through November.

So for basically the growing season.

And they live here, they work here.

We have an educational component that we work into it.

They're also paid.

It's not an unpaid apprenticeship.

And they get food, it's a, it's an immersive experience.

A lot of our, we also have employees on the farm and

part-time, full-time employees.

And a lot of our employees were former apprentices who have gone on

to, to take, employment through us.

And so it's a it's quite a process.

It's, we have an application process.

We usually do video interviews and and then we have a working interview

where they come and they work with us for a few days and we see how they're

gonna fit into the overall picture of the farm, how the apprentices

themselves are gonna get along.

Sometimes they don't.

We try to make sure that there's at least some good social dynamics there.

But yeah, it's it started as we knew that we needed to have more than just

Melanie and I on the farm in order to take care of the number of animals.

In particular as well as the working in the garden.

Cuz animals are 24 7, 365.

It's helpful to have more hands on the farm if, the cows get out in the

middle of the night because they do, inevitably there's, something happens

and, they go rampaging through the farm.

But the it like, it, like I said, it's also kind of part of our mission to

teach and nurture the next generation of young farmers and to try to give,

the learning and the experience that both Melanie and I wish we

had prior to starting our own farm.

We've learned a lot of lessons, maybe the harder way than we would've liked

to starting a business and a farm.

And so trying to prep the, young people to do that.

And it's it's quite an an a learning experience on everybody's part.

We've learned a lot from them over the years, and hopefully they've also

taken away a lot from us as well.

Definitely.

Yeah, that's a, it's a really good question cuz it's,

yeah, it's but yeah, it's, it, it's one of those things

because, like I said, there is a sep, there's a physical separation.

We have our house and they have, the their own personal living structures.

And then we have a communal larger kitchen area.

And so they get to use the kitchen.

We also use the kitchen for things like the dairy processing and farm

cooking projects and stuff like that.

So they have access to the, to these spaces, and then we

have a little bit of that.

But it is very much bringing people into our home and our family.

And that's partly why we do such a like intense vetting procedure in

order to make sure that we, that we have a good experience with

somebody who is living with us.

And that brings up a lot of stuff cuz sometimes conflicts arise and there's

unmet expectations or there's, Flat out lies and deception, and there's

all kinds of things that we've come across over the years of doing this.

And it's a it's, it tests us quite a bit.

It's there's a lot of reasons why, some of our other local farms have have had

kind of apprenticeship programs and quote unquote internship programs and

thought of it as a way to get cheap labor.

And I was actually just talking with another farmer about this at market

because he's oh, you still have interns?

And I was like I intentionally use the word apprentice as opposed to intern.

It has a different connotation.

So this is something that, falls into kind of a larger, older realm

of, Work and learning that we don't do as much in our modern era is

the kind of traditional apprentice.

There's not too many people that like apprentice to a blacksmith any longer

or any of those kinds of things.

That would've been more of a traditional way to pass on knowledge.

So I think about it in those terms, and it is it's one, we have to be really

careful with who we invite here and how we work with them and, all of those things.

And like I said it's not necessarily a way to get cheap labor.

It, and I was telling this fellow farmer, I was like, if we actually look at it,

a, they do get paid, like we have, they have a stipend based pay that they get.

Unlike our employees who, punch a time clock it's, it is different than

that, but, We also give them learning, so there's value in, the amount of

actual like educational component.

And then they get all of the farm food, and we pride ourselves on

basically eating the best food we can, best food on the planet.

And it's pretty much been our goal is to just produce and eat

the best food on the planet.

And and then they have This experience, and they gain a lot from that.

And if we calculate it out, how much we spend in, maintaining infrastructure

and providing food and doing education and all of those things, it probably

would be cheaper just to pay day labor.

Like that's the long and the short of it.

It's not a, it's not a a cheap way to get labor on the farm.

But it is super valuable, to them as well as to us, in a way that is different

than employment as well as different than just book learning, if that makes sense.

Yeah,

definitely.

And we are

like, one of the things that we state with our apprentices

is that we are super transparent.

I vaguely knew, when I was working for, Paul my main mentor, I vaguely knew how

I could in my head calculate out how much we made at a market and how many

potatoes we shipped that week and whatnot.

But as far as the nuts and bolts of the finances I did, I was completely

unprepared, coming out of an employment situation to starting my own business.

And we open our books, my wife Melanie is wonderful with the bookkeeping side

of the farm as well as the production planning and all of those things.

And they get the opportunity to see actually, line item by line

item, what we're making, what we're spending, how we're making decisions.

And that kind of learning is just, we both wish we had that prior to starting

the farm cuz we, when we started a business I had taken a couple of, business

classes at the community college and I had written a business plan or two.

I had a little bit of experience, but it still wasn't, I was un woefully unprepared

for, what it took to maintain the cash flow and profitability of a farm business.

Yeah.

That's really important because,

it's probably a lot easier for apprentices or employees to see the income

that's coming in, especially if they're.

Working at a farmer's market or things like that, but the expenses

are a little bit more invisible.

And if you are not upfront about both sides of the business then that, that

can lead people to think, wow, there it's just raking in the cash and but

the reality of all those other bills, that one just is a envelope in the mail.

So if you aren't open about it then there's not that, yeah, there's not

that transparency that people need to be able to see what it would be

like if they went out on their own.

Yeah.

It's I, we've had that experience, what I mean

with our employees to a certain extent, but also just

with like local community members.

We've both served on these boards and, w with the farmer's market, and we've

had people come in and be like, oh man, they just see the amount of cash that's

being exchanged at a farmer's market.

And they're like, wow, that's a lot of money.

We should raise your stall fees.

We should, be getting more of this.

And it's a you're seeing gross sales, you're not seeing what the expenses

are of that farmer to even get to that point where they're selling something.

And then each farm is totally unique as far as how much expenses they have and

what kind of debt load they're carrying and, and but they, but people come in,

they just see the cash, and they're like there's a lot of money there.

It's Yes and no.

It's sure.

Yeah.

And probably on, on the very sonst day when you have, the best crowds

that's when they see it, right?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Cause that's when everybody's out, they, they just see the, they see the actual

commerce and not actually see the the profit and loss

statement on any one business there.

So that's one of the things we do.

Fores.

Yeah, absolutely.

We, we'll show 'em the profit and loss.

We'll do a break monthly breakdown, we'll do all these things so that they

get a realistic sense of what it's gonna take when they do start their own farms.

Sure.

While we're talking about apprentices and money,

your your other little apprentice does your son get paid on the farm?

It seems like everyone kind of structures farm and family

life a little bit differently.

What does he get for chores?

Yeah.

Like I said, this is the first year, he's nine.

So he is, and he is actually at

an age where he is really helpful on the farm because he's you're up

here, he, this is his native territory.

Yeah, this is this season.

We started him out and he does get paid for the basically for the two to three

hours that he works in the morning.

We've already we started a fund for him that we were putting money into,

we started a kind of a savings fund.

And the other thing that we are doing with Clyde is we are homeschooling,

which started during the Covid pandemic.

We were, we were one of those ones that, he had started in kindergarten and then

when lockdown happened, and we've got.

30 kindergartners on Zoom, were like, maybe we should

do something different here.

And so we started we started doing homeschooling with him

and he's in third grade now.

And so what our current arrangement is gonna be, is that he's, we're

gonna, he's gonna work on the farm for an hourly pay wage.

And then the amount that we've already been putting into his savings fund is

going to be used for the educational materials that we're gonna need

to purchase for our homeschooling.

And then and then above and beyond that, he'll be able to, a portion

of that will get saved and then he'll have kind of a portion that he

gets to use as his own, per his own discretion with supervision, of course.

Sure.

Yeah.

Is he starting to show any signs of being

a little farmer entrepreneur?

Is he wanting to reinvest any of those funds into any enterprises yet?

I don't know.

We talked a little bit but yeah.

Fright

right now.

The main thing that he wants to buy is fireworks, so we're gonna have to

moderate some of that a little bit.

But that, that does sound like a lot of fun.

It does.

Yeah.

And

and last year was the first year that he did

use his o some of his own money to buy some 4th of July fireworks.

And He's got big plans for this 4th of July coming up you could, maybe

you could charge some members of the community to come watch his show.

It al it could could work out that, yeah, maybe we should

we could put on a one for the CSA shareholders or something like

that.

We'll have to see.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Sell lemonade or something when people come to to watch his

fireworks.

But yeah, no it's been great having him.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's one of the things that

we want to work out is starting to do a little budget

and, some of the math skills.

That's 1, 1, 1 of the, one of the things that we're doing right now in

our math programming is we're on a money unit, which gets us through the,

the actual learning of how to work with decimal points and all of that stuff.

But is, it's also I think just learning the real life skills of money, and he's

been with us at markets and, learning how to count money and count change back.

And we've had him at, work with the customers and at least the patient

ones that are willing to work with a nine year old and on, on counting

back change and all of that.

No one has.

No one has been like,

yeah, most of every I can't say there's ever been an instance

where somebody's been so super impatient or anything, but cause

everybody else thinks it's really cool,

totally.

Yeah.

It's it's totally random

to be perfectly honest.

I have no idea how it happened.

Y when I look back at it, it's like, how did this happened?

Because it doesn't make much sense.

But like I said, first generation farmer, I had no livestock experience,

and then when I first started working on farms, I, it was tractor

based, organic vegetable production.

That's what I knew, that's what I was trained on.

I always loved, I loved farming.

I loved driving the tractor.

I loved growing the crops.

I didn't necessarily love working with the diesel and the hydraulic fluid

and the lithium grease and the broken, Down equipment and all of those things.

I got a certain proficiency on, turning wrenches and working

with engines and whatnot.

But it wasn't like, it didn't really feed me, as far as my, with my love of farming.

And so I always dreamed about draft, and I, when I got into

farming, I just consumed as much information as I possibly could.

So I read books and, I, like I said, I went to, and I went

back to school and, got a degree from the local, ag College here.

And and I always kept it in my mind that I dreamed of doing something with draft.

And I, of course it just was always draft horses because that's, I.

That's what I saw.

That's what the, the books material that I came across was and and

then it was actually right when we started looking for our own farm.

And like I said I started out growing small grains and so that was because

of my tractor based experience.

I got tooled up so that I had a small combine and a tractor and a

disc and a plow, and I had all the equipment and I could basically

solo grow, at the time I was growing 15 to 20 acres of small grains.

By myself as a single person harvesting it.

And we actually ran a grain CSA for five years partially on lease

ground before we bought this farm.

And then our first year or two years when we moved to this

particular place on the farm.

And then during that time period I just have an insatiable desire to

read anything I can about farming.

And our local mall here in Eureka had a Borders books, and because of

the internet, all of the borders shut down, the big corporate book chains.

And they had a big sale.

So I went and I was like, okay, great.

I love books.

I don't ever go to the mall.

It's not usually where you would find me, but I went and I picked up a book there.

And cuz they were selling out, 50% off all stock.

And I found a book and it was see if I can find it on the shelf.

I can't see it there, but it's it was a book about oxen.

It was oxen, a teamsters manual by Drew Conroy and I believe he's at

University of Connecticut, New Hampshire.

I'm not exactly certain, but he's on the East Coast.

And he wrote a book and it's really, it's actually outta print now, but

it's pretty much the only thing in English that you can find on

modern oxen driving and raising.

And I found this book.

And it was all about oxen, how to raise 'em, how to train 'em, how to

work with them, different things.

And at the time my wife and I had always started with an animal component.

So we were milking goats at the time before we, we had the farm on, when we had

a rental, we had a nice landlord who let us keep a couple of goats in the backyard.

So we were milking goats and when we mo first moved to the farm we

had all the goat milk and I did that thing where I bought the calves.

And I bottle raised them on the goat milk.

And out of that, I decided to try, based on solely because of this book and a

few things that I had read about, I was like, let's try to raise some oxen.

And the idea was like okay, if I don't have any horse experience,

I'm not a draft horse person.

I don't have anybody around here locally that does draft horses.

I didn't have a mentor and, I, if I, if the oxen didn't work out, we had

well-behaved beef, at the end of it.

And that was the agreement.

We could raise a couple of steers, see how it went.

And, in the end it started working.

So I found through, working with the oxen that I have a real love

for working with cattle in general.

I learned a lot working with goats.

But there's a reason why we don't have any goats on the farm anymore.

The goats are, yeah they taught me quite a bit, but personality wise,

I feel like a little bit more.

I like cows, I like the calm, mellow, bovine energy.

And and then I just I still remember this first time, and I had these little, these

little bottle calves, these little bull calves, and I put a little yolk on 'em

and, and I attached to this little sled and I put a rock on the sled and I had

them step up and they pulled it, it was freaking amazing, it was just like, wow.

They.

Just, it just worked.

And then from there I started seeing how we could integrate the

oxen into the different aspects of the farm that we were developing.

And they fit into a really nice kind of middle power source,

like a mid-sized power source.

They're, a lot of vegetable farmers.

These, especially kind of these days with the no-till movement.

There's a lot of, farms that can get away with a small walk behind tractor,

like a b c s rototiller style tractor.

And that works really good on, a quarter acre up to about half acre farms.

Vegetable farms.

Like I said, we're growing five acres of vegetables.

It's not the 40 acres of mixed vegetables that I was growing

with a tractor previously.

So it's this interesting like middle ranged power source.

And then, if you were to price out like how much do I invest into an oxen

team and the amount of hay to, feed them, and then how much is a brand new

Kubota, gonna cost me a small tractor?

It actually works out fairly well, to look at what it's gonna

cost and the amount of hay that you're gonna feed, a team of oxen.

The benefit is you also get the fertility.

And it's a huge part of our fertility program is when we have the oxen

in the barn, we're collecting, we're mucking those stalls daily.

And then we're collecting and composting that manure, which is

then going back into the garden.

It, it just made sense in a lot of ways.

And I don't know, I just got obsessed with it and found that it

was something that I really loved.

And it, it, I had never had farm experience before that I'd never touched

a cow, I'd never even been close enough to touch, and interact with a cow

prior to raising these bottle calves.

And so I don't know if I would've ever known how much I love working

with cattle in general without having had that experience.

Are, they're just hell on fences and

like they're they've got too much personality.

True.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's a, cuz we

have, we'll bring, we work with a lot of school groups, a lot of times

we'll have kids come out and, we do public tours and stuff and I often get

this question like what is an ox, right?

What is, we hear that all, we know what that, we know that word,

but do we know what that means?

And I like to talk about it in terms of occupation.

Oxen is an occupation, like I'm a farmer, they're an ox.

And so it can broadly be classified as anything working cattle.

And that can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different places.

If you look worldwide working cattle are still the biggest class

of draft animals on the planet.

And so working cattle can include cows, female, breeding cows.

And then there are parts of the world where you can work cows

And then there's also bulls.

And there are parts of the world like intact male bulls where they work bulls.

Here in North America, usually the definition of an ox is a castrated

male bovine that is trained to work.

And there are a couple of different reasons why we use castrated males.

Bulls have all of the temperament issues that you would associate

with a bull, based on breed type that can be more or less.

They're, like in India, a lot of the quote unquote Brahman style cattle,

the boss indicus that they work in India are usually un castrated.

The bowls of those breeds tend to be more tractable and mellow.

The bowls of the boss Taurus breeds tend to be a little bit more aggressive,

particularly the dairy breeds that most of the oxen tend to that to

be, I certainly would never want a Jersey bowl in a yolk that would be

just a recipe for flat out death.

So the castration takes care of the aggression that would

be common in, in a bowl.

And then the other thing that's beneficial about the castration of an ox is that the

testosterone increases growth to a point.

And then limits it.

So the ox will be larger of the bowl than the bowl of the same breed.

So without the influence of the testosterone the ox continues to grow.

And particularly in the long, longer bones.

They'll more distinctly be taller than the bowls.

Cuz the femurs grow longer.

And for a draft animal, si and size is important.

It's not the entirety of the basis of whether an a, an ox will be

good, is just based on their size.

But size and then particularly height because of the physics of what you're

doing are actually a benefit to draft.

So in North America, like I said, the definition of an ox is a mature male

bovine that is trained to work so mature, meaning they've reached that four to

five year mark of age of development.

Like I said, a lot on the the east coast the New England area they'll have

what they call working steer programs.

So a lot of the, basically calf to, three year old.

Is considered the working steer, right?

And then at about four years old, that's when they can earn their,

earn the title of being an ox.

They've proven themselves through that working steer, development to

be like, okay, now you're an ox.

And I like to think of 'em, it was elucidating for me to realize, oh,

these guys are athletes, right?

What we're asking of them is a physical endeavor.

I have to treat 'em like athletes.

I have to feed them like athletes.

I have to, work their training as an athletic endeavor.

And the oxen that I try to train, I think of them as trying to be

basically the best of the best.

So that's why I start with a group, a smaller group of, or

I start with a, four to six.

Calves and then narrow it down to the best two out of that group in

order to continue their training up.

By the time they reach that pinnacle of what they are as

oxen, they should be the elite.

I think of 'em sometimes as like the warrior monks, they're just

some they're, they're set aside in kind of their own category above and

beyond any other class of bovine.

So yeah, it's I like to think of it, I'm a farmer.

They're an oxen.

It's partly more of what they do then who they are, but also

who they are at the same time.

It true that they don't make it, they do end up in the

It's a good question.

And I know that there have been some people who have done the actual

breakdown of the, I forget the whole equation of what horsepower, means,

as far as actual physical, movement.

But you can think of it pound for pound.

The general consensus is that pound for pound an ox is stronger than a horse.

Most draft horses tend to be larger than even some of the largest cat

like oxens, if that makes sense.

So your average draft horse will be able to pull more than an

ox simply because it's larger.

But and I'm sure I, there are draft community members that would

argue tooth and nail either way, whether it's the draft horse or

the ox is the stronger of the two.

But there are documented, cases of oxen pulling, 10,000 pounds on a sled.

Of course they're pulling it for six feet in a competitive pull.

But, it's more of a balance of like, how much can they

pull weight wise for how long.

Of a distance and then for how much time?

I think of it, that's why I think of it as more of an, as an athletic endeavor.

When you turn your tractor over, you've got, I've got 80 horsepower, right?

Or whatever it is in the engine.

And then the, what's interesting about tractors is that of course, the longer

you run 'em, the less likely you're gonna get that 80 horsepower, right?

As the wear and tear of your tractor.

And every single time you fire that up, you might get just a little bit

less through the wear and tear of that.

That piece is, that piece of equipment slowly becomes an antique tractor.

It's it may not have the same pulling power that it once did.

Whereas an ox, because they're athletic, the more you use

them, The stronger they get.

To a point, you can obviously work so hard that you get diminishing returns.

You can, as an athlete, like you can train to the point of

over-training and get less strong.

In the case of oxen, you are never going to work them that much,

personality-wise, like oxen will never work themselves to death.

This is something that draft horses have been known to do, where they

just push themselves to the brink of exhaustion and then keel over.

You're never gonna get an ox to do that.

They will give up and lie down long before they reach that

point of absolute exhaustion.

It's just the way they are.

It's one of the nicer things about, oxid as opposed to horses.

You don't have to worry about that high strung personality that's gonna

work themselves into an early grave.

But yeah, so the more you use 'em, the stronger they get.

And I'll, I try to think about the work that they're doing in terms of that,

so I'll do harder, shorter term work.

Like logging is a really good, it's like CrossFit for oxen, right?

High intensity, short duration, muscle building activity, right?

Logging is like probably par excellence the best like conditioning that you

would do with your oxen because by the time you get them into the garden,

you don't want those poles in the garden to be their maximum pole.

You want them to just be able to walk around in circles all day,

because honestly, that's what you're gonna do when you use them

in the garden during the season.

And so traditionally that's what you did.

During the wintertime you logged, if you lived someplace where it was

snowy, great, you had extra, you had, better friction coefficient and you

could do heavier poles in the snow.

And then you used that work during the winter to condition your

animals so that when it came time in the spring to plow, you had.

Highly athletic animals that could just go out and plow all day, which

is gonna be a lot of work, but you don't want it to be maximum exertion.

And a lot of the work that I do out in the pasture, so we move a lot of

our structures daily in the pasture.

I'm moving chicken feed out to the broilers and the layers.

I use that work to condition my animals so that when I go into the

garden, they're in top fitness so that, they can do easily do the work.

It's a it's a different way of thinking about horsepower, it's a it's

more about where they're at within their physical athletic development.

For sure.

When it comes to the actual implements that you're using are

they antiques or are the, I will admit, I know nothing about draft animals.

Are there new implements that you can buy for draft animals, or what are the actual

tools that you're using behind your oxen?

Totally.

Yeah.

We started with definitely a lot of antique equipment.

There's still a lot of that available.

Of course oxen, most of the antique draft equipment is of

course, set up for draft horses.

Some of it can be modified to work with oxen.

But we quickly found, and like I have, and there are, there's

also some new equipment.

There's being made, I.

The Amish communities are still producing new manufactured, draft equipment.

It's gonna be expensive and it's gonna be well for me on the west coast,

harder to access, but it is out there.

And I have I have a brand new not brand new to me, but it's

a newer piece of equipment.

I have a draft plow, a small plow.

What we found was that I had to be sm like, because I don't have the

horsepower of a tractor, I had to be smart with how I'm using the power

that I do have, which is substantial, but not a tractor's, worth of power.

And so we try to change the way that we do the vegetable production specifically.

To be this more low till permanent bed system that really works with

the draft power that we have.

And so subsequently, I've gotten into making my own equipment to

match the tillage systems that we are implementing in our garden bed system.

What that looks like is less of a traditional mole board plow kind of thing.

And more of, I've got a toolbar that runs in the pathways.

It has wheels that run in, in the pathways behind the oxen.

And then I set my yoke to a width that puts the oxen where

they walk in the pathways.

And then I can do different tools on the bed top within that.

That permanent bed.

The benefit of this is, the oxen can learn to walk these pathways

because we walk them all the time so they're walking in the same spot.

And so that's, unlike any kind of precision agriculture, gps,

tractor based system, the oxen can actually learn and anticipate.

Where they're going next, and I've even seen them learn where to put their

feet based on the firmness of the soil.

So if they start veering into the bed where it's nice and soft,

they're like, oh, that's squishy.

I'm gonna step back up over here onto the firm, walkway,

that's not, that's not the bed.

And so they can learn where to go.

And so I have some rippers and some bed shapers and cultivation equipment.

And then we have a a big wagon that we call the ox box that we run in

that same pathways and we can drop compost directly on top of these beds.

And then, like I said, we still have mechanized aspects to it.

So we, we do have a rototiller and a flail mower that runs also over these bed tops.

And then we're using big heavy duty silage tarps to do the the a

cultivation where you're, using the tarps to solarize or, the vegetative

mat material and then going into it.

So it's an interesting balance of old and new as far as the equipment.

I'd say definitely at this point I've retired all of the

antique stuff that I once used.

I think there's great value in restoring and maintaining antique equipment.

But I've found that what I want to do is take oxen and think about it

as super high tech, cutting edge, new development in agriculture as

opposed to anachronistic throwback, where it's, reliving a past and.

Honestly, I live in a mu, like a humid, muggy climate.

Like most of the antique equipment that I can find is just so

rusted out and barely functional.

It's one of those things like it's better for me to think about it in terms

of new equipment than old equipment.

That makes a lot of sense.

Those antiques are good decorations, but you

don't wanna be used every day.

Oh, yeah.

And I still, I have like I have this walk

behind plow that I'll probably always hold onto because it's got

a story, like I know it was given to me by, somebody who had used

it and their father's, fathers had, plowed with it with horses.

And it's like that's always gonna stay around.

But I'm not gonna use it to pull anymore, basically.

Yeah.

And there certainly are like, I'm less concerned with well-matched

and more concerned with well mated.

Like I want a team that works well together as opposed

to one that looks flashy.

Because.

That's, I don't like, I don't but there certainly are oxen people who do a lot

of the show and competitive pulling where that is a con, it is a consideration.

They want a team that looks really good together, because

that's part of the aspect of it.

And I don't, I don't, down on that at all.

That's, there's certainly a beauty to a well-matched, a beautiful looking

team that looks really good together.

I don't have I'm so far away from any, competitive ox poll

show or any of those things that.

For me, it's more important that I have, because I'm actually using

them for the work on the farm.

I want a team that works well together.

And like I said, it's more like there are physical attributes that I look for, like

when I'm raising the calves, like I look for certain confirmation characteristics,

that show me the physicality of it.

But honestly, sometimes it's more mental than physical.

I've had oxen that are beautiful physical specimens that.

Just didn't quite have the mental fortitude to do the work, it was like, no

matter how like buff you are, if you can't actually make it through a day's work,

and then I've had some, some animals that, like Joseph, honestly, Joseph, who is the

the remainder of one of my original team, the first team I ever started he just

has whatever it is, like he's my rock.

N there's been nothing I've ever put behind him that he has not pulled,

so he's got the the mind game the mental fortitude to do the work and.

That's what I'm looking for.

Like I really want more of that and less of a pretty looking, pretty looking coat

and, well-matched with beautiful horns and, the same color and all of those

things that might look really good, but, it's gotta it's gotta actually,

they actually end up having to pull, they have to pull, that's what they're,

that's what they're out there for.

And if they don't have that ability, then that becomes really the hard to work with.

Yeah.

It's it doesn't really matter how pretty they are.

If they're not gonna work

for you, then they're not gonna be very helpful.

Yeah.

I think

if Katie's okay with it,

we're gonna move away from ING questions.

She might loop back to a couple more in a minute, but we're gonna

move into, I love it too, but we are a parenting podcast as well.

So one of the reasons that we started this podcast was to talk

about the opportunities and the challenges that farming parents face.

So I was wondering about, we're always interested in when kind of people

became parents for the first time.

Did those first weeks and months of parenting reveal anything about

yourself that you weren't expecting?

Yeah, definitely.

There's no doubt

that, when you become a parent, it's like, It's, I guess it's one of

the few right of passage, experiences that we have as modern adults.

Where it definitely changes who you are on a kind of fundamental level.

And I'm sure there's probably studies about how it changes you

biologically both, women and men.

And but yeah, for me personally, like I, it's like I always, I talk about how,

how it changed what I thought about love.

You grow up and you love your parents.

You do you love your parents, as long as they're like relatively like stable,

parents, you will love your parents.

You might have to forgive them for things, later on down the line.

But, you.

For, hopefully for the most part, you love your parents and then

you meet somebody and have a relationship and you love that person.

You you love and you care about them, and it's different than

the way you love your parents.

But yeah it's, you love them.

And then when you have that kid, when you have that, that first child and it comes

out and you're like, wow, I thought I knew what love was, but that's love, yeah.

Yeah.

It's all new, right?

Oh, yeah.

So it's,

sorry, I'm getting a little choked up thinking about it.

But yeah it's it, I it really was like way.

Eye-opening, thinking about, there's this little being that

comes out and is just so dependent upon you and like it's just blank

canvas.

To a certain extent they do come out with obvious personalities.

It's like this is a person, but it's just, it's a it's a whole different thing.

And so it obviously changes, it changes your sleep schedule, it

changes the way you socialize.

It changes, the way that you run your business.

All of those things.

And it can be hard, there's no doubt.

It's, we've seen it with ourselves.

We've seen it with our.

Friends who have had kids, and it's been really hard on their relationships

to the point of breaking, it's, there, there's no doubt that having

a kid changes a lot in your life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're also super lucky to have that experience.

I don't, I would never change anything about that for sure.

Yeah,

definitely.

It was definitely hard and I would say,

I think we were, I was definitely warned about, having kids.

It was, I had a.

I had a mentor who right after we bought the farm, he sat me down and he

had just that look on his face and he is first thing, don't have kids your

first year, while you start this farm.

Cause we had just bought this property.

Luckily there was a house on the property a lot of places around here you might

end up having to build a house first off.

And it's okay, luckily we didn't have to build a house.

But he knew he had started a farm and he knew that the amount of work that it

was gonna take to start this farm and start a family was just incongruent.

And, it was enough of the thing I was like, okay, I we waited

until the, at least a couple years into starting our farm business.

And I'm glad we did because.

I think we were unprepared with the way it was going to affect the other people

on the farm, because like I said, we've had the apprentices from year one,

we've had apprentices on our farm here.

And it certainly was hard that, when we brought home this little creature

that then took us away from them in a way that we didn't anticipate.

And so those first couple of years were really difficult in working

with people who unders, who, who at least could intellectually

understand, where we were coming from.

But no one.

They were all young folks and no one had their own families.

And so they just didn't really honestly know what we were going through and

couldn't empathize with us with why are they, why is Melanie in the house?

She's taking breastfeeding this child.

Is a you just don't get this, like this, one of those things, and yeah, it was

really difficult I think some of the early years, especially when you have

that newborn that is just so fragile.

And we tried to think about that.

We, we, we planned it out and, we, we gave ourselves this window of time knowing that

there's no way we could have had a baby in June, or July of our growing season.

That just.

This just wouldn't work.

We gave ourselves this window and, we got fairly close.

Our son was born late October.

And it's on the early side of our down season, but it was the beginning.

So at least those first few months, we're less intensive than

during the main growing season.

That would've been much more difficult I think with a newborn.

And then, but then, I think one of the things that you're woefully unprepared

for as the parent is the How much of a long game we're talking about.

You're like, oh, that's right.

I just signed up for something.

I have teenagers now.

Yeah and I'm just

starting to realize that now.

Like I said, my son's nine.

I'm

like, oh, wow we got some time left.

This isn't a, yeah, there are a lot of years.

It's not even, it's like you go to college and you

get a degree and you're like, wow, that's

a big commitment four years of your life.

But then at four years you're done.

With kids it's different, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

And it keeps changing.

Yeah.

As soon as they figure it out, they go through another

phase.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You're say same thing.

Soon as you got solved, you got that stage locked

down, and then they're, yeah.

Moving on.

Yeah.

You got that puzzle solved and then all

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

No.

Yeah, but it, it does, it definitely did get easier on the farm.

Like once, in, in some ways it was easier once he was mobile,

but some ways it was different.

It was harder when he was mobile then, okay.

So then he is got some, you get the, to the five to six level and there's some

level of independence and okay, now we don't have to be, doing the toddler

thing, but, it's oh, we got this other thing and you got the school thing.

That was the big thing.

What that we, cause we, we didn't start out thinking we were gonna do

homeschooling, I thought maybe it would, might be something that we'd entertained,

but we actually have a good public school here, and then boom, you get the Covid

pandemic and then all of a sudden, boom.

I guess we're homeschooling.

It's it, so there's that added on to what we do, and I'm a fairly.

Unusual homeschool and, it's there are some homeschooling

fathers, but it's mostly mothers.

But and amongst the homeschooling groups and stuff that I've been a part of it's

usually just me, and so there's just always kinds of these things that we

have to keep learning with the kids.

They keep just it's one thing after another of okay, I'm,

figuring this whole new thing out.

And honestly the, I tell our crew this all the time.

It's everybody wants to have the download of here's how to do it all.

But the better thing is, okay, how do I figure out to do it all?

Because, like I.

What, first time I built, rebuilt a carburetor.

Like no one, I didn't learn that.

Like I had to figure that out, and it's a lot that the kids with

the kids like, you just don't, no one told you how to do this thing.

You just have to take the skills and knowledge that you have and the

problem solving and then figure out how to do that, yeah we say pretty

often that farming and parenting are similar in that way, in that

there's really no right way to farm that.

Everyone does it differently.

And it's the same with parenting, right?

We've all got different kids and what works for one is not gonna work

for another, even within the same house if you got multiple kids or,

it doesn't, there's not a recipe that we can follow and be like, there.

Nailed it There.

We finish, yeah, we finished up with age nine and now now we'll move on

to age 10 and we did it all right.

There's really no one way of getting the secret formula.

So Yeah, you're right.

You just have to learn as you go.

And I guess we all hope we're doing it right, or at least mostly, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Problem solving skills are more valuable,

in farming and parenting than like being able to, recite

knowledge, or whatever, facts.

Yeah.

That's, it's you're better off like knowing how to tough figure how to problem

than actually coming into it with a, with any kind of fixed amount of knowledge.

Yeah, for sure.

So what do you enjoy most right now about being able to raise

Farmer Clyde on the farm?

Honestly the best thing is having him work

with us in the chore setting.

That's just been, and it's like literally been this week and he started

we started, so our apprenticeship officially started March 1st.

So last Wednesday was we had the first the first apprentices starting in and and

we had come to our arrangement as far as, negotiations over pay and, how that was

gonna be, utilized and all those things.

And then, so last week, this week, and just having him with me while we're

doing the chores, cuz he is always been out there, but it's more focused now.

And it's just a really cool thing, and honestly because, this is his

native soil and he grew up here.

It's really helpful, like having a nine year old boy out here who knows how

to do these things way better than, a 20 year old who, didn't grow up on a

farm and is wanting to learn about it.

It's and sometimes I would rather have that nine year old, out there to help

me with this thing because they're, he's gonna be more knowledgeable

and more skillful than somebody, I have to, teach how to use a hammer.

It's cool.

It's a really neat part of raising a kid on the farm.

I just feel super lucky, and that as a father, cause even some of the

other dads that I know, who have to work off farm or they work, in

town or whatever it is that they do.

They don't get to spend as much time with their kids as I get to spend.

I just feel super lucky, it, it takes a certain amount of self-discipline

on my own part to do the homeschooling and, manage the crew and work

with my son and, keep the family, going and all of those things.

But I'm also get to spend every day with my family and it's really cool.

And seeing him just learning and exploring and taking ownership is just really neat.

It's a really cool part of the process.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I always remember

I was just gonna like I remember a time when Clyde was right

around that, that four year old age and I can't even remember the, how

the circumstances were worked out.

But I was working out in the back field.

And and which is, considerable amount of ways away.

And he was, I think somewhere in the, in, in the, kinda the main homestead area, and

he ended up walking, and it was like it's a quarter mile, at least out through the

grass, all the way out to the back field.

And I just thinking about wow, I think most kids his age have never been that

fully independent where they could cross an amount of space on their own,

and it's completely safe and there's nothing out there, but, grass, it's

just, I'm sure, luckily we don't have any poisonous snakes or anything.

But it was a long ways to go for a little guy and and he walked all the way out

there and it was just like, that was, that's the kind of cool Kind of farm

kid independence that I think a lot of kids, don't get because if they were to

walk a quarter mile they're gonna have to cross five streets and, it probably

is not a safe way for them to go.

It was a really cool.

Luckily my son has taken on

an all black wardrobe, which we have encouraged because it doesn't

show any grease stains as much.

So yeah that's honestly also one of the reasons why I wear black jeans,

because you can see the dirt a little bit less, in the grease a little bit less.

But yeah, no the general keeping things clean is always and there's

the cleanliness and then there's just the The things that get left around,

wow, it's amazing how many things can get left in all the weirdest places,

We'll be finding stuff, I'm like, wow.

How did this ended up in this particular place on top of the hay?

I had to deconstruct a pulley system from our haystack that the other day,

cuz I think there was some sort of materials handling up to the top of

the haystack that it was in process.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I no.

There you go.

Dominate a category at the

county fair.

I actually wish that we had an oxen component at our county fair.

I've been out to the the East coast for a certain number of draft events.

And I've never been to like a county fair that has a, a.

Draft pulling event or a, working steer show or any of those things.

So I guess that's what I wish our county fair had.

And so I, because I think if I did I would definitely dominate.

I'm pretty confident that with my oxen, I have put more weight

behind my oxen than most Ox Teamsters would ever dream of doing.

And I feel like I feel pretty good with my teamster skills.

So if there was an ox pull at our county fair Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I'd be going home with that trophy for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

From the way you talk about them, I'm pretty sure you

might

even you could probably enter different age categories and then

you'd get multiple ribbons, right?

Oh yeah.

I know.

I have the whole start out.

Full range.

Yeah, for sure.

So we're gonna move ahead into our cussing and discussing

segment.

We've registered for an online platform where listeners can leave their

cussing and discussing entries for us, and we'll play them on the show.

So go to the show notes and go to our SpeakPipe to leave us a voice memo.

Or you can always send us an email@barnardlanguagegmail.com

and we will read it out for you.

So Katie, you're up first.

What are you cussing or discussing, or, and discussing this week?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little easier when they're their own size.

But

yeah coming from a grownup you have slightly higher standards.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

And you can respond honestly if you're, yeah.

Yeah.

That is tricky.

Yeah, that too.

Oh gosh.

Yeah I don't know.

I feel like I feel like

I've the, let the.

The the podcast down.

Cause I don't think I've actually cussed the entire time that I've been on here.

And I wanted to uphold So mandatory.

Yeah.

I wanted to uphold the ox and Teamsters have this reputation

and they are known to cuss so much that they can make sailors blush.

And so I don't know.

I feel like I, I missed my opportunity to do some serious cussing.

But it is interesting.

I certainly have quite the vocabulary.

We were actually at dinner the other night at the, the

local brewery pub here in town.

And the table next to us, and there's They're, a group of adults and they're

having a discussion about it and they, and he goes off about fucking this and that.

And, we're sitting just like right next to him and and he, I was,

oh, because he sees my son there.

And he sees that oh, they're like, oh, I'm sorry.

We didn't mean to.

He was like, no it's okay.

I, he has heard more from me than Yeah.

He knows.

He knows that word.

I know.

And

the interesting thing is

I hardly ever hear him cuss, which is interesting cuz I never, I think I

quickly took on the, I was like, I'm just not even gonna worry about my language.

I guess it's a benefit of homeschool.

Like I don't have to worry about him coming home from school and

the teacher's saying, your son used this word at blah, blah, blah.

And he's but he doesn't even really cuss that much, but he hears me

saying it all the fucking time, yeah.

And unlike, unlike my kids when they come home and have learned a word

on the bus, at least, if he learned one, it's from you.

You've got nobody do it.

Nobody to blame but yourself.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's a, it is an interesting thing.

But yeah, no, it's

I don't know.

I think I think trying to teach my son the power of language is good, and all

words, whether they are expletives or not carry power, and so you just don't

want to use 'em all the time, basically.

Yeah.

That's fair.

Time and a place, right?

Yes.

Mine is

very frivolous, but this is the one that came to me.

So I

thought I was being nice to my house plants and some of them

were getting kind of root bound.

So there was a not frigid day the other day and I did some repotting and one of

the older plants in the house that was very root bound and I thought would be

delighted by having a brand new larger pot is like trying to die on me now.

And I don't know why it's being so fickle and such a baby about it, but

I was trying to give it new life and now it feels like it wants to just

drop all its leaves and pouch cuz it wanted to stay in its tiny little pot.

Yeah.

I'm trying to help you live.

Yeah, that's right.

Not interested.

Yeah, exactly.

You could have

stayed the way it was.

Yeah, you try whenever you wanna Thank you very much, Kevin.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

I was just gonna say the just on that, it's like whenever you

try to guess what they're gonna

and then you might have five minutes of active play and then

it gets, relegated to the pile.

It's oh wow.

That, that didn't go over very well.

Yeah.

We'll stick with cardboard boxes

and piles of dirt from now on.

Yeah.

Yep.

Definitely.

As my son is making a box.

So

thank you very much, Kevin.

Yeah.

Thank you for joining

us today on the podcast.

If people want to follow you, check out your oxen, see

what's happening on the farm.

Where should they find you on social media?

Yeah.

My Instagram page is the most active.

It's

at Shake Fork Oxen.

I also, you could follow the farm page, which is my wife's Instagram

at Shake Fork Community Farm.

And subsequently the same on Facebook.

And then, yeah, those are probably the best ways.

We've been working on developing our website, so you could probably

also check that out at Shake fort community farm farm.com.

Yeah, and if you happen to be in far Northern California, you're

always welcome to stop by the Thriving Metropolis of Car Carlotta.

I will put it on my bucket list for sure.

Thank you so much for

joining us today.

Yeah, of course.

It's been fun.

Thank you for joining us on Barnyard Language.

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