e57. Grilled Onion Burgers for The Win with Jennifer and Luis Hernandez

0:00:00 - Cal Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 57. 0:00:05 - Jennifer Start simple. Once you can do simple over and over, then expand from there. But as farmers and ranchers largely, we want to do it all. We just do And we can't do it all And certainly if we can do it all, we can do none of it very well. 0:00:24 - Cal You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, helping grass farmers, learn from grass farmers, and every episode features a grass farmer and their operation. I'm your host, cal Hardidge. On today's show we have Jennifer and Louis Hernandez. They are a fellow Oklahoma and they produce grass-fed beef and visit a couple of farmers markets And then they also have some Airbnb or farmstays at their farm And we talk about all that. We talk about grass-fed, we talk about how they get potential customers to their booths at the farmers market Great info. However, before we talk to them, 10 seconds about my farm. Things are going well here. A month ago I was worried about grass. It was not growing as fast as I wanted And I was concerned. I sold a few heifers I was planning on keeping due to my grass inventory. I just did not think I was going to have enough And if the dry weather continued I was going to have problems. Since then, we have gotten some rain. It's been rainy for the last few days. We've not gotten as much rain as I would like to have gotten, so we are still behind for the year And through the drought monitor, we are abnormally dry. But grass is growing and we are in much better shape. I move cattle. I've got grass out there, which is very exciting. However, the Sarissa or Saricia, depending on how you say it is already getting ahead of the cows, and they do not like it when it gets too mature. Now I've read about teaching training cows to graze, something they are not familiar with. Seems like a lot of work, but if you have done something like that, hop over to the community at grazinggrasscom and let us know Enough about me. Let's talk to Jennifer and Lewis. Lewis and Jennifer, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass podcast. Hello, thanks for having us. Cal, can you tell us a little bit about you and your operation? 0:02:50 - Jennifer So my parents bought the farm in 1977, which happened to be the year I was born. My name is Jennifer, i have a late brother, jesse, and a little sister, jillian, so that naturally became three gin cars. So that's kind of how that started there. And my dad was an entrepreneur, farmer and rancher. So he tried lots of different things stalker cows, cow cap, and then crops farming, like that soul farming, that sort of thing And then decided that milking cows would be the way of their farming future, and so they had three little kids, built a new dairy facility and were shortly milking dairy cows about 200 of them. As you can imagine, it was a lot of financial stress, a lot of stress on my parents' marriage, just in general, and so ultimately they ended up divorcing. That was in the late 80s. And so then my mom actually retained the farm and continued milking cows. That's what her parents had done as a child, and so she was most comfortable with that. That's what she knew, and so she continued on and kept the farm. Then I was in bank help during that time And then when we started leaving home and getting jobs off of the farm and actually found people to pay us to work, we were gone too, and so you know, when I got wheels under me and found someone to pay me to be there, i was certainly out of the dairy business, and so ultimately my mom decided time until I sold the dairy cows And, as one can imagine, it was a really sad day. There goes your livelihood, loading up on trailers and driving away. What do I do next? And my mom at that time was certainly not scared to work and was most familiar with cattle, so she naturally went and started a cow cap operation in the beef world And so went along like that. She could handle that pretty well on her own And she always wanted to do what she called cell grazing And so back then and this would have been in the 90s there was people doing it, but it wasn't well talked about, known about or any of that, and the equipment wasn't as easy and user friendly and such as it is today. You know there wasn't folly, rope and step in posts like we know them and things like that then, and so it just wasn't something that she could manage by herself. But you know she can always have that in mind and knew what that could do or are severely abused compacted soil. Here We have a flood control lake on our property that's about 11 acres And that was the government, the Corps of Engineers, response to flood control, the erosion control. Most of our top soil sits in the bottom of that lake today, and so there really is a way of us getting it back, besides rebuilding it. My mom knew that kind of, but she just couldn't find enough to get going on it And so she kind of had to put it to rest and just wasn't going to happen for her, and so at that point she well headed and sold out completely and just started leasing the farm. Our main farm sits on 305 acres And then she had some other land couple hundred more acres that she just leased out to grazers and hay guys in the area. Most of our ground is burrito sprig from one of the government's other responses to erosion control and such. We've kind of run the gamut with some of that, and so you know that's largely what our farm is today. It's improved our interviews for vieta grass. We've been doing some things there, but ultimately our top soil is in the bottom of that flood control lake. 0:07:39 - Cal When did you get involved in it And when did you? did you immediately start doing cell grazing when you decided to come back to the farm? 0:07:47 - Jennifer So a couple of things happened. I told you that my mom had leased it out and that was that's what she was doing. Life goes on. We were doing our own little lives. Everyone had their own little family doing their own little thing. And then my brother got killed in a single car accident. And, as we all know, death changes us. We do things different, and so I kind of rattled that song pretty good, and I just made this reconsider about how we were going to move forward with the farm. My brother and I had always we had kind of put together a utopian farm that would be self sustaining and generating up income to pay taxes and that sort of thing Similar to what we do today. It's had some changes, some things to it, but we envisioned some of what we do today. And so when Jesse was killed, it took a while to even gather your thoughts. You go through your grief journey and we can't think for a minute. And so once we kind of got thinking again, when we lost my brother, we gained a couple other people And you know we just started thinking about how we were going to bring farm back in a different way. I like to utilize what resources I have closed up And on our farm we have mostly grass. My brother was the mechanic, the fabricator, the engineer. That sort of skill set. That's an important skill set if you're doing a lot of equipment farming And we didn't have that skill set, so we need not bring on a lot of equipment. We also knew from the dairy business that when you have brain in your operation there's a lot of equipment that goes with that. But that's what I knew, that's what I was most familiar with, because that's what we did in the dairy days. And it just comes with its own set of challenges. And you got to buy the grain, you got to store the grain, you got to feed the grain, you got to have something to feed the grain in. There's just a lot of inputs there, a lot of pieces, moving parts, and I'm a believer the more moving parts, the more places for breakdown. That kind of leads you to grass And grass fed. Originally it wasn't the nutritional, it wasn't really any of the, it wasn't taste, it was really resources available. What do we have? And that's kind of how we determined that that's the direction we needed to go. 0:10:33 - Cal And about what time period are you thinking this? 0:10:37 - Jennifer So my brother died in 2016. It took a year for my hand to stop spinning from my grief, and then 2017 is when we actually started our business 3J Parts. You know, up until that point it was just kind of all utopian and in our head, and, of course, we had a pretty good business plan. I'm educated in business administration and I have some business structure that I like, and so businesses don't plan to fail, they fail to plan, and so we wanted to be sure to hit some of those points before we started. 0:11:21 - Cal So you worked on it and you had a business plan in place. Your goal when you got started in that 2017 was utilize that grass and go ahead and produce beef for direct to consumer. 0:11:32 - Jennifer Yeah, i mean that was the thought process that we would utilize the rotational grazing. Lewis had discovered that just through poking around researching here and there and stumbled on Joel Salatin and Pauli Face and Greg Judy and Malin Nation on savoring. You saw these different guys. They kind of all weaved together And common denominator is let's grow grass and harvest sunshine. 0:12:06 - Cal Now, did Lewis have a background in this before discovering that No, and yes, i grew up in the Panhandle, texas. 0:12:14 - Luis Oh, okay, i was born and raised in Harper T post and barbed wire is the only thing that keeps the wind from knocking you over. Yeah, i went K through 12 by, graduated from Harper And if you didn't go to college you had two choices Go work in a feed yard or go work at the processing plants. I ended up at a processing plant for a little bit. Didn't want to do seed yards And then we met, got married, we moved back to Oklahoma or she moved back to Oklahoma and brought me with her And we bought a little, a little 10 acre place And that's where the love of animals started showing up in me. I didn't know I had it until we had we got our own place And then we started with chicken goats, bottle babies. We've got kids at this time young kids So we're bottle feeding babies and just doing all kinds of stuff And they just as that skill set grew and the love of animals and just watching them grow and manifesting a lot of stuff that we were trying to do and planning for a future too, because I mean that's. I mean that's what we wanted to do. We're supposed to do this at 50. We're mid 40s and we are. We started early. So you know, i worked at a dairy, a well-known dairy here in Oklahoma. I worked there for a year or two and really loved it. And then we just kind of projects, just trying different stuff, trying new stuff. And yeah, that's where it came from, that's how I got in, so you'll have this plan. 0:13:51 - Cal you start running on these ideas, these influential people we've heard so much about. How did y'all get started then? 0:14:00 - Luis the first thing I did was I went to the great Judy seminar and Missus Stippy a lot of him for me and a lot of information in just a couple days and He kept on talking about these little red cows. These little red cows that I use, little red cows, and I'm like what little red color you talking about many files you know caught my attention. I was like so I get done with that, come home, tell Jennifer all about the class. I show her all my notes and everything we talked about and burn. And I was like you can't talk about these little red cows, so we find some should have done a little bit better research on it. I should listen to the little red cow that kept on popping out. We started out with 25 pairs Mixed match I mean they're just mom rolls, as gate Brown calls them, and we have them for a couple years. And Then these little red cows start popping up everywhere Internet. And then I start really digging down into that. You know, like man, these cows are doing something and they're doing something on grass. Only these cows that we got some of them are able to keep up with what we're trying to do and the other ones are kind of falling back a little bit. The word is kind of Moving around, moving them in and out, trying to find ones that will work, and finally bought our first South Pole and That that pretty much started. It was a new beginning. This year was our first year with all South Pole bulls, 50% South Pole cows. 0:15:28 - Jennifer So before we bought the South Pole, well, we had a Pharaoh bull, we had bought one and he was. 0:15:34 - Luis He was a great bull, pharaoh. There's a great job on what they raised and I had no issues with that bull. But I just want some of those little red cows. 0:15:42 - Cal Oh, yes, yeah, you had in your mind to get some of those Little red cows. Pharaoh bulls are interesting to me. I get their catalog, i look through it. I don't see a lot around here, sometimes on Craigslist, and actually, as I say that I don't know that, we talked too much About where you're located in Oklahoma. So so, before we let's jump back for just a second and talk about where you're located, So we are in Blanchard, Oklahoma, which is about 45 miles south of Oklahoma City. I'm trying to pull it up quickly on a map because I'm not exactly sure in Oklahoma where you are, even though I've heard of it. But you're south. I'm up in the northeast corner. You're more in the southern area, southern central. Yes and Have you all been very dry or has it been fairly good over the last few years? I know when you go out to the southwest in the lotton area it's been really dry. 0:16:44 - Jennifer We're kind of on the line, really dry last year. Last year taught us new things. You know, the drought will learn you. Oh, it will it exposed some things and showed us some things that we needed to do to prepare for the next one. But Yeah, last year got really bad, just real bad, and the hay scarcity and prices and Quality. 0:17:12 - Cal I mean you needed, you needed Double the amount of hay because it was half the quality and it was double the price and And have you all had pretty good rains this spring, so you're in much better shape this year, or how is that rain for you? 0:17:28 - Jennifer We have been super blessed We're growing grass. It's really hard to get on the lawnmower and mow anything. When you think back of what last year was, i mean, yeah, you just don't want to knock anything down because you, it was so sad last year. 0:17:46 - Cal Right. Luckily for me, i live far enough out in the country that I can put a little net across my driveway and graze my sheep on my yard, and My wife doesn't yell at me too much about it. Yeah, no, i've been doing the same thing. 0:18:01 - Luis We got a fenced in yard So I've got some heifers that I'm keeping at the house And I was like after last year they can graze that yard. I really don't share, we'll keep all the grass. 0:18:11 - Cal Yes, I don't blame you. So last year you all had your first total Kef crop. That was 50% South Pole. How did that go for you? 0:18:23 - Luis Everything's going pretty good. We start cabin. We started cabin mid-March this year And we kind of talked about it. We were kind of gonna move it back to probably about April 1st Just so we could get that little bit better grass Going for them. Cat will for those mamas really. And then, yeah, everybody's done great. Those calves are growing wonderful, like temper said, plenty of grass, plenty of moisture. So yeah, everything's going good on that part. 0:18:54 - Cal Now you all bought or purchased those first 25 pair. How was your infrastructure on your farm? Did you immediately jump into some rotational grazing there With your new knowledge or did you ease into it? What was that process? What was that process? So yeah, we. 0:19:13 - Luis We bought them probably about mid winter when we got them and We kept them up on one part of the farm for a while As we were waiting for our equipment to come in. We were working on some high tensile and our polywire. Our step imposed all that stuff, but as soon as we got it we started stringing up high tensile and as soon as our The first two or three strands of high-tent we put up, we started rotating cows. 0:19:39 - Cal Did you have any trouble with those cows getting used to the high tensile and staying in, or did they adapt to that pretty quickly? They? 0:19:49 - Luis adapted pretty quick. After first two or three times of getting shocked, they didn't want any more of it. They kept their distance from it. So at the same time we had we were running sheep also. We had oh yes, yeah, we had 20, had a sheet and And they were probably a little more stubborn on on the fence on the electric fencing. 0:20:13 - Cal When you all started rotating them, how was your water and how'd you get water to each paddock each time you moved them? 0:20:20 - Luis So when we first started, we only started with 50 acres of the 305. The rest of it was still leased out. The 50 acres that we had was around One of our main ponds. At that point We just kind of let we fence them off the pond to a certain point. They couldn't totally submerge themselves in the pond, they could just go up there and drink. It was hard on the cattle and it was hard on us trying to keep them fences up across the water. 0:20:47 - Jennifer We kind of wagon wheeled off of that 11 acre flood control Lake that holds all the topsoil on this farm. 0:20:57 - Cal So they gave you lots of area to water from as you went off, because 11 acres pretty good size, it'll hold a lot of topsoil. 0:21:06 - Jennifer The lake is a good water. It is also spring-fed, so it the water quality is Really pretty good. 0:21:16 - Cal Very good. Water is usually that limping factor for so many people. So even though that takes up a big area, it does give you a lot of shoreline to water from. 0:21:28 - Jennifer We have five water wills on property and we have a lot of water locations that my parents have put in for the dairy cows. 0:21:39 - Cal So when you started with your cows and going through the rotation and stuff, what were some challenges that you all came up on? 0:21:47 - Luis One of them was keeping the fence high because that boundary of the farm is just the fence line, is a tree line, the tree lands falling off the trees or just growing into the high tensile or just different things like that. And then when we took that 50 acres, when we started on that 50 acres, it was the worst part of the farm The grasses. There were parts that they had good grasses and there was parts that not so good. It was pretty much better in some spots And it was just kind of trying to fix something. That's going to take a while, but trying to hurry and fix it was one of the hardest things to do. Oh, yes, and not having somebody to call and say, hey, i'm having issues with this, what do you do to take care of this problem or that problem? And YouTube and Facebook were one of my best friends trying to figure it out. 0:22:42 - Cal I think you touch up on an issue right there that is common to too many of us, and YouTube, facebook are great resources. Hopefully, podcasts like this and the others out there are good resources. Yeah, just having that mentor that you can contact and say, hey, this is happening, what do you suggest? And they can be like oh yeah, i've gone through that. 0:23:04 - Jennifer When we took over that 55 acres it was there's a portion of it that's on the hillside and we had the state resource conservation guy come out pretty early on just to kind of get a baseline for where we were starting and what we were doing, Because we really didn't know much either. But and we just happened to get a young person in that position that had put on a soil health demo. We got to watch the rain simulator display. 0:23:37 - Cal Oh yes. 0:23:38 - Jennifer And then we just stood up and ran into a young man by the name of Blaine Stacy. He's here in the state of Oklahoma for the state resource conservation And, lo and behold, you can call him and have him come out to your farm and help you gather soil samples and look at plant species. I mean, that's what he's there for to do that And of course he loves getting to go out in the field, and so just happened to be that he didn't live too far from here either, so we were a great Friday afternoon visit for him. We would have him come out and we'll take soil samples every year try to do it about the same time every year January ish and see where we're at. The first couple of years he we struggled to even get the probe in the ground to get a sample. It was that hard. It was, oh yes, very similar to concrete. We just kept hammering and putting, putting seeds down, rotating them, trying to grow. Anything that would grow there really would hey down there a lot, but yeah, and so having Blaine come in every year about the same time to kind of see where we were a year over a year has been really helpful. 0:25:08 - Cal That sounds like that would be really helpful. You mentioned a couple of things there, one putting hay down and then seeds. So on the hay, how are you all feeding hay and getting hay out there, and are you putting some hay down besides feeding hay? I got lucky. 0:25:27 - Luis Two years ago, i got lucky enough to purchase a bell unroller the famous Greg Judy bell unrollers. That thing has been a godsend since I got it, because before that I was taking hay out with the tractor and pushing hay bells by hand To get them rolled out, so that we unroll all of our a those bells that don't look so good, we'll set them out, we'll just let the cows kind of mess them up and spread the hay out a little bit If we can't unroll them, and then we'll do our see. We'll do our seasonal cover crops winter. We'll do a cover crop. We'll plan about September We'll start putting our cover crops in for the winter And then we broadcast. As a matter of fact, that's what I was doing first thing this morning before the rain was broadcasting some more see warm season grasses. 0:26:24 - Cal Do you just broadcast those with a broadcaster on a tractor or? 0:26:31 - Luis four wheeler, my warm seasons on broadcast with broadcaster on a tractor, and then my winter cover crop I'll put in a grain drill. 0:26:40 - Jennifer We'd like to use the four wheeler over the tractor. We had a broadcast spreader that would go on the four wheeler And, of course, when you're using it is when it brings. 0:26:55 - Cal So we'll be looking for another four wheeler spreader on that. Do you have a particular model that you like that work really well for you, or are you just looking at what's out there? 0:27:07 - Luis just looking at what's out there. The one that we had was just John beer pulled behind and it worked until it didn't work. We don't do a lot of overseeding, just hitting the spots that don't have very much grass. We'll run some seed over top of it. Try to at least get some growth in there and have them call it, trample it down and do their thing. 0:27:30 - Cal And what are you using for, like your warm season mix? 0:27:34 - Luis this year we had, we did a little bit of millet, some buckwheat, crabgrass and Sudan sort of. We turn a little bit of okra in there this year to. 0:27:44 - Cal Okay, that's a new one for me. Okra in it. 0:27:47 - Luis Yeah, we'd got we'd gone to a field day couple years ago and these guys had done that okra some millet Sudan sunflower and they run it as a cover crop. They're row croppers and they run it for cover crop but they'd also let get their cows and they run their cows through there and they graze all the cover crop before they went out and started row crop. Oh yes, so we figured out why not? we'll try it. We had a bunch of okra left over from a couple summers ago and we're like we'll try it, see how it goes And the okra handles the heat, and what do you all use for your cool season or cool? season ranges from anywhere from eight to maybe 12 different seeds. We do betch, we do turnips, radishes, tree to cow rye. We did a little bit of native seed this year. That's one thing we're working for. We want to get some more native grasses back into the pasture. Those cows do white better in the pastures, are a lot easier to manage with your diversity of grasses. 0:28:52 - Cal Before we move on to the over grazing section, we talked more about direct to consumer. what are some other goals you have for your farm or anything else you'd like to share? 0:29:05 - Jennifer So one of the things that we're working towards is getting all of our waterways protected, meaning no cows access to natural waterways. So we're we're well into that and we've got several of those fenced off, but we're still. We still got room to improve there. So we're still working on getting all the cattle access from any natural waterways. Last year, you know, i said during the drought some of our ponds were. They didn't dry up, but they certainly didn't look like anything. I wanted my cows drinking, and so at that point our county was issued some extra drought emergency equip money and I stay in contact with those folks over at the NRCS office pretty regular And so we had put in an equip application for some water A water well on one side of the farm that we didn't have fresh water and water from well as a solar pump, because we don't have power on that side of the farm And we don't want to run power on that side of the farm. And so we had some wells that they're there but there wasn't a pump in them, and so ultimately, what we ended up doing was getting a brand new drill and then we purchased two solar pumps And one set of solar panels and a pressure tank that's mounted on a trailer that we can pull around with our four wheeler. The wells stay in the hole. We just unhook the power and can move the power with our four wheeler to the other locations. So ultimately we will end up adding some piping to be able to take that water further. But right now we have at least are able to get it out of the ground and watercals right there at the well. Goal is to get that water further down in some areas to give us just a little more flexibility and, again, more fresh water in more locations. The other thing that is a major or that is on our five year. Our next five year plan Is bringing the sheep back. Like to bring those back in 2025. 0:32:15 - Cal Why did you sell the sheep when? 0:32:18 - Luis we started out still working full time, as we're going trying to handle them to work in a full time job. And then the farm was also growing. We're starting to take little pieces of farm bit by bit. It got a little too much there for a little bit and men's emperor talked about it knows we need to simplify some stuff. We do farmers markets every Saturday. She goes to one in that and I go to one in Norman. March of 22 I was able to leave my job and be on the farm full time. So it's back to. The sheep did a lot for us when we did have them and we miss them. Just seeing some of the stuff that we know they can take care of, like the ragweed that we got coming up them. Sheep will take care of ragweed. For some reason they love that ragweed. 0:33:12 - Cal Yes, you gotta do what you have to do to not overextend yourself. So I fully get that, but you're planning on bringing sheep back in a couple years. Yes, now, before we go to the overgrazing, i've already said we were going to go ahead and go to the overgrazing, but I want to ask about your farm stays. So it's not really grazing grass so much, but that is another revenue stream for your farm. 0:33:37 - Jennifer So, because we were a dairy farm, we had grain storage facilities in the way of grain bins, and during covid, we had decided to convert one of those into a little farm store so we could sell our grass fed me, along with some others things. And so we did that and we actually had two of those bins, and so we converted the one into a store. The other one was a just we didn't know. And then we decided a bedroom. It'll be a bedroom, and my sister had experience with Airbnb and short term rentals and she's like me and that, oh yes, and so we set it up like a bedroom. The restroom and shower area is still utilized and the milk bar and the dairy bar right behind it. But we started it about a year and a half ago. We just put it on there and, lo and behold, people start coming and they didn't stop coming and they kept coming. I mean so much so that we decided fully on a store. We don't need a store. We prefer the traveling guests. As farmers and ranchers, we don't travel a ton. When we travel, it's usually to go see another farm or something like that, and so getting some traveling experience through that traveling guest is really awesome. They are totally enamored with what we do. They value what we do. Largely, it's a chance to educate people on agriculture. It's a chance to showcase our state And it is a great revenue source for us. We enjoyed immensely and I certainly will tell anyone out there. If you have any kind of space that you can convert and house guests overnight, do it. You will be pleasantly surprised by your results. We liked it so much. Now we have both units going and Jen's house kids going to the gym And Jen's housekeeping is very busy all year round and it's just a great experience. I highly recommend that to any farmer or rancher out there. 0:36:10 - Cal With those facilities, oh very good. We my wife and I have discussed that a little bit. We don't have a great place, but we have discussed maybe we buy something that's something to keep in mind that that may be a potential, potential income revenue stream. So I'm glad it's doing great for you And I know from looking at your website and looking at them on Airbnb they look really nice. 0:36:40 - Jennifer Yeah, generally we're going to a touristy area sometimes to check out things. They're trying to get away from it And so minimizing your inputs. No need for Wi-Fi, no need for TV. If they're wanting those things, they're not the guests for us. We're just keeping it real simple. It's peace and quiet. That's what we offer. 0:37:02 - Cal Very good, jennifer and Lewis. It's been a great conversation thus far. It's time we transition to our over grazing section, where we take a deeper dive into something you're doing on your farm And we're going to talk about direct consumer. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing with direct to consumer. 0:37:24 - Jennifer So when we decided to be 100% grass fed beef, at that point we thought that we needed to offer all cuts of beef right. And so steaks, roast, brisket, plain Jane cuts, as well as some of the crazy ones just trying things out because you don't know until you try. And so the inventory in that is the nightmare. We had cuts all over the place. I say you create, you grow, you produce quality beef two ways breed or feed. And at that point in time we had neither really we were fresh into our grass rotation and not great grasses, but still doing it But yeah, and nor did we have the breed. We were really essentially adapting cows to our make your genetic code, match your zip codes, type of things And so we were using, we were selling these cuts. We eat some roast, but largely we ground beef. And so we had eaten some of our steaks that were supreme. I mean, you put them against any five star restaurant out there. They were that great. And then we had steaks that our dog had a hard time eating. They were that tough, and so a few times are that and you can't test them all. I can't take a bite of every steak before I send it on down the road. Enough times of that. I was like this just doesn't feel good, it feels clunky, it feels like it just doesn't feel good When I give you a 30, 40 dollar steak and kind of like a steak And kind of have to turn my head and hope that it's a good one. I don't like that feeling. How can we do things different? And so we had some really great steers at that point that we hadn't gotten up to size And we thought these guys are going to be really good. We're going to offer some beef bundles. So much like seven sons does. We put together some quarter and eight and half bundles. And how they recommend doing it which I agree with was we set this many roast and steaks And then we filled in with ground beef. So we'd get to the poundage with the ground beef and it was set bundles. So OK, set cuts. No, asking the customer what cut? How do you want it cut? none of that. We predetermined that for them. All that was great. But what would happen? that customer that would buy that would run on a ground beef way before anything else. And then, when we were dismantling our store to turn it into a bedroom, i ran across a roast that had been processed in December. This was in June. I don't know how much direct to consumer cells you've done, but to sell a beef roast in the middle of summer is almost impossible, and not to mention people don't know how to cook anymore, and so to sell a roast in the first place you're going to have to give them multiple ways to cook it in multiple recipes, and then they're not even going to have the confidence still yet to cook it Still. Yet You may need to cook it and serve it for them. That's kind of where we're at with people and cook the roast and the confrides, things like that. They just don't do that anymore in our area. And so then I was thinking back to my parents in the daring days. In the daring days when you had a downer cow before you administered any medicine, you kind of made a call, a judgment call. We're either calling the mobile butcher to come out or we think we can save her and get her going. And then it was minister medicine On those downer cows. They would come out process. My parents always sold ground beef out of the freezer off of the farm in the dairy days It was custom ground beef, but they still sold it. It was no big deal In the dairy world. Dairy cows, especially Holstein, which is what we are they are not good steak producers. The tenderloin is fine. Anything beyond that a dairy cow needs to be put in ground beef, and so that's how they sold beef off of the farm, and so I thought you know what they had it figured out. I don't need to be messing with all these steaks, roast brisket. You know this one one's half inch thick steaks and this one one and a half inch steaks. I don't need to mess with any of that And I certainly won't be trying to sell a roast in the middle of July If I just put all that into ground beef and what. I don't have to have those prime steers anymore, my cows that won't breed back or that I'm trying to turn so I can get more of those little red cows. they grind up just fine, really nice ground beef. We are transitioning to 100% ground beef. We sell the ground beef in one pound packages. We do also sell our Oregon meat. That is a big selling item for us. The only variations that we do off of ground beef is in the spring and summer. We'll do our quarter pound hamburger patties. We'll put eight to eight quarter pound patties to a package, so it makes a two pound package And then we have our one pounders. In the fall and winter We do a summer sausage. Simplifying probably gained us the month the most peace in our life at that point, as you can imagine. 0:43:51 - Cal You bring up an excellent point just about that varying quality. When you don't have that consistent genetic base. We noticed that in our own beef we're going to butcher a cold cow or a heifer that didn't breed or something that got hurt, something of low value, and sometimes those cuts are excellent And sometimes they're not, and that's always been a little bit of my hang up on the direct to consumer. So I think you'll have a really good idea right there Put them into hamburger and that is quality hamburger, no matter what that animal is. 0:44:31 - Jennifer That's 100% correct, cal. We've unplugged several freezers because we just don't need them anymore. We can put three cows and one chest deep freeze So simple to inventory. I can look in that freezer in almost any given time and see how much is there quickly, because I know how many's in each tub. It's just easy. The other easy thing about it is we decided that we would go to market. We had not been to the farmer's market up until that point. We had done a lot of marketing ourselves online sales with the home delivery, things like that. We had a little co-op that we used to sell that, and so that had been most of our sales at that point, and so then we decided that we needed to get in front of more people. So we'll go to the farmer's market, and when you go to the farmer's market as a beef vendor, there's generally, hopefully, a couple of beef vendors our markets. They try to not duplicate too much of anything, and so we're always welcomed because we're 100% grass fed. In the state of Oklahoma there's just not a lot of 100% grass fed beef out there yet, and so it makes us unique in that way And we're a one man show. We're going to try to conquer two markets. So we got to be able to handle this by ourselves And with those little ice cream freezers on wheels it's easy peasy And everyone can see our beef right there. But you still have nothing on your table And so you're trying to fish out these people to talk to about your 100% grass fed beef, and that's a challenge, especially when you're new to the market. And so we went about half the season. We was doing okay, but I was like man, we can do better than this. I know we can And I have a friend that works the Dallas Farmers Market And it's a lot different than our markets here. And so we took a field trip and went down and toured the Dallas Farmers Market So there's some time with my friend there And just kind of checked it out. She serves her pork in bratwurst, cooked and in a bun in your hand, walking down the market eating it. She moves a ton of pork that way And I thought you know what? we can move a ton of beef if we was putting it in their mouth. If we put the beef in your mouth, you will want to buy the beef. We can take our little hamburger patties straight from the freezer to that little griddle. And Oklahoma is famous for fried onion burgers, and guess what's usually at the farmers market? Onions, and guess what brings people for miles away the smell of fried onions. And so there it was. That's what we need to be doing. We're not a commercial kitchen, we don't have a food truck, we're not long sense for any of those things, because we're not any of those things. We're farmers trying to move our beef. We don't sell hamburgers. We do burgers for tips and donations. So, because we're farmers, we want to feed you. Oh, okay, you do whatever you feel comfortable with. We still want to feed you, and so we will use onions, cheese or no cheese, which is from the market. We also put honey on our little onion burgers, which is a game changer. 0:48:19 - Cal Oh yes. 0:48:20 - Jennifer If you sell direct to consumer, you need to discover honey on your beef. It will change your life. Raw honey especially, and so there's always raw honey at the market. So we add that to our burger, but no condiments, and that's it. 0:48:38 - Cal There you go. I was wondering how not having a commercial-grade kitchen etc was going to affect that, But that's a great solution that works in our state. 0:48:50 - Jennifer In the state of Texas. They have a whole different set of rules. They're allowed My friend down there, she's allowed to charge people. We can't do that here. I'm constantly reminding people that I'm not a commercial kitchen, i'm not a food truck, i'm not a restaurant. I'm not any of those things. We are farmers just trying to move our beef. I tell you the crowd goes wild over it. I will tell you that it's changed our market Really. It's made our market better. Both of them I would say Other vendors have started sampling more products, bringing more things for people to try working together to showcase a few people's products. Instead of some of the bickering weirdness that you sometimes get in some of your markets, people are actually working together and trying to make the market a better place for everyone, specifically our guests. It's a game changer for the market And it's been a game changer for the amount of beef that we move. We'll serve, on an average, 50 to 60 burgers Saturday morning from 8 to 1. Then people are coming to you. You're not trying to drag them out of the crowd against their will. Everybody loves the smell of fresh fried onions. 0:50:12 - Cal Oh yeah, yeah, that is a great technique. right there, jennifer and Lewis, it's time for us to transition to our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question is what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource, your podcast, for? 0:50:32 - Luis one Thank you. Podcasts in general I've listened to quite a few of them. 0:50:38 - Jennifer I've read a lot of. I'll say a lot. I've read many of Joel Salatin's books at different times, Probably podcasts. That helps me more than anything, i would have to say. It's Charlotte Smith, with three-cal marketing and profitable mindset podcast. I have done her private coaching mindset coaching. It's worth every penny of it. 0:51:06 - Cal Her podcast is one that I used to listen to more often. I actually changed podcast apps on my phone. Some of those I used to listen to. I haven't got onto the new app. I'm going to have to make sure I've got her podcast back on there, because she does have a good podcast. 0:51:23 - Jennifer Especially if you're doing any kind of direct to consumer, that you need marketing tips and tricks and things. She's a good one for that. But more importantly she's good for your own mindset, helperly the stress and sometimes the frantic and panic that farmers and ranchers tend to go through. She just helps calm, rat down. 0:51:48 - Cal Excellent resources there. On question number two what is your favorite tool on your farm? 0:51:56 - Luis Mine is my Leatherman and my four-wheeler. I couldn't do what I do without either one of them. Yes. 0:52:03 - Jennifer I may say my computer and my phone. I'm one that I like financials and I like checking to see where we're at. Are we making money, are we bleeding money? Are we wasting money? What are we doing financially and keep track of that. Are we being profitable? Is this sustainable? All those types of things, and I find that most helpful with my computer. 0:52:33 - Cal Very good. Our third question is what would you tell someone just getting started Find something that suits your environment, that's going to thrive in your environment. 0:52:45 - Luis Take your time before you make any purchases. Take your time for your study. Find something that's going to fit your program and that's going to benefit you. 0:52:55 - Jennifer For me I would say start simple. Once you can do simple over and over, then expand from there. But as farmers and ranchers largely, we want to do it all. We just do And we can't do it all. And certainly if we can do it all, we can do none of it very well. And so focusing on one to two things and doing a good job at those and then expanding from there if it allows. 0:53:27 - Cal Excellent advice from both of you. Excellent advice. And, lastly, where can others find out more about you? 0:53:34 - Jennifer Our website, 3jfarmsokcom, is accurate, with up to date, current information. My little sister, jillian, takes care of that for us, keeps track of it, keeps it up. Today Our social media Facebook handle is just 3JFarmsOK. We do a large amount of socializing there. We don't do a lot of advertising marketing really there, just kind of a funsy type of space for us. And so, yeah, either Facebook or website. We do have an Instagram as well, so Instagram, facebook, website. 0:54:20 - Cal Very good. Lewis and Jennifer, thank you for coming on and sharing. I think we've had a wonderful conversation. 0:54:27 - Jennifer Thanks for having us, Cal. We're excited to share what we've been through and learned over the years with others. One of my favorite monos around the farm is I like growing food, but I love growing people. 0:54:45 - Cal You're listening to the Grazing Grass podcast, helping grass farmers learn from grass farmers, And every episode features a grass farmer in their operation. If you've enjoyed today's episode and want to keep the conversation going, visit our community at communitygrazinggrasscom. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the Grazing Grass podcast on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for past and future episodes. We also welcome guests to share about their own grass farming journey. So if you're interested, felt the form on grazinggrasscom under the be our guest link. Until next time, keep on grazinggrass.