e77. From Classroom to Pasture with Catherine Kirchner

0:00:00 - Cal Hardage Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 77. 0:00:05 - Catherine Kirchner I would say the biggest obstacle that I see amongst producers is not knowing how to navigate working with each other. Just putting yourself out there and saying, hey, I have this idea. I know it's crazy, maybe I've never done it. Would it be a possibility of working together in this way, and you have to make it so that it's mutually beneficial. But I think there's a lot of opportunity there that is just not commonplace amongst producers yet. 0:00:27 - Cal Hardage So 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 episode we have Katherine Kirschner of Uncommon Pastors. We talk about multi-species grazing and stacking enterprises In a very interesting way. She found land to lease. Before we get to Katherine, 10 seconds about my farm. Not really much going on here. The weather's gotten a little cooler. We did get a little bit of rain. I always tell people, as in this part of Oklahoma, when we transition from summer to winter, that we need to enjoy both days of autumn. We've had some cold mornings. Afternoons been nice, it's been really nice, so we'll see how it goes, enjoying it right now. If you haven't joined us on Facebook at the Grazing Grass Community, I encourage you to do that. We started that up just a couple months ago and we will surpass 500 members this week. Thank you, thank you for joining, thank you for the conversation there, thank you for sharing and thank you for listening to this podcast and sharing. Anyway, enough of that, let's talk to Katherine. Katherine, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today. Yeah, thank you, katherine. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation? 0:02:04 - Catherine Kirchner So my name's Katherine Kirschner, I'm here in Big Timber, Montana, and participate in agriculture, Then I think I'd always been there, but I just didn't think it was an option for a couple of reasons. Even a woman was a part of it and coming from a single mom household where no one was in agriculture. So you know, first generation and my operation started in 2020. I was getting out of a 10-year career in education and really was answering a call to work the land. I resigned from my principal job and we bought some momma cows that were bred. Yeah, that's kind of how our operation started. I always knew that I was interested in on my first lease through Facebook actually, which is still surprising today and what I was seeking was already defined, or becoming defined as regenerative agriculture. And so now we're three grass bed operation non-conventionally. And then I learned as I studied that time, and so I tried to follow the framework that I've studied. You know, the holistic management from savory. 0:03:16 - Cal Hardage Katherine, I think it's pretty amazing. You took that leap of faith from a steady paycheck to get into farming and try, and I'm sure one of the contributing factors was, or could have been, was getting that lease. How did you go about finding a lease? 0:03:34 - Catherine Kirchner I want to answer your question, but there are some other things that are relevant to why I was able to make that big leap that I want to touch on as well. I had been reading the no Risk Ranching Book from Greg Judy and then also watching his YouTube stuff and he talks about some tips and stuff and I had just kind of been keeping an eye open and it was sort of just I don't know if it's luck or providence, whatever you want to call it, but I found a Facebook marketplace posting and it was they were offering pasture for horses and it was a daughter of the guy who actually owned it, because the guy who actually owned the place was on Facebook and so I just reached out to her and I was like, hey, any chance you guys would be open to some cattle. And she was like, maybe, let me ask my dad, and so that's really how it worked out. It was great family local doctor in town who really shared a lot of the same beliefs about wellness and being connected to the land and where our food comes from, and really wonderful family and helped me get started. Yeah, oh, a lot to them. 0:04:31 - Cal Hardage One thing about that that really jumps out at me you read a marketplace ad about land for horses and you took the initiative to say, hey, what about this? Maybe a little bit different thinking, but you took. You took that initiative. You know least land doesn't very often fall into our laps. 0:04:51 - Catherine Kirchner No, yeah. So the other thing about how I was able to do it is I didn't immediately go full time into ranching, which I think was really wise and wasn't an original idea. I had, you know, read and heard good advice on that. I did quit my steady professional job that required my master's degree that I have and went to something very different, and I was only able to do that because I had the support of my husband. You know I had his backing along and he could tell that it was pretty burnt out in my current role and being called to other things and so, yeah, with his blessing and support and all that that means I went for it. I tapped in deeply to my 401k that I had accrued. That helped me get started. And then I also, on good advice that I had received, got a ranch hand job because I knew I was deeply lacking in experience, and so there's a lot of good operations in my community, which again is another blessing. And I was able to get on with a place who took me on even though I had next to no experience whatsoever, and I learned all the things you need to know about, like how to stack hay, how to back up a trailer, how to how to do all the stuff. Low stress stockmanship is an organic operation, so it was in line with what I was looking to do and they taught me basically what I needed to know, in terms of rotational grazing as well. 0:06:12 - Cal Hardage Excellent. That's a wonderful way that's brought up Oftentimes. Get a mentor or someone near you who's doing what you want to do to gain more information. Yeah, wonderful. When you got that ranch hand job, had you already started buying some cows for yourself, so you were doing your own and doing that. 0:06:33 - Catherine Kirchner Yep, that's exactly right. So there was a little bit of overlap and this was coinciding at the same time as COVID. So I was doing my principal job, had bought some cows and was installing fence and learning how to operate a post hole digger and all the things kind of as like a side gig off in the weekends and after hours. And then the school year wrapped up and COVID was upon us and so I had already handed in my letter of resignation, knew I wasn't going back in the fall to education, and then shortly after that is when I picked up the ranch hand job, and so I think it helped that I had my own cows and I knew how to do a few things. Also, in my early years as a teacher I would summer seasonal work for some ranches and so I had spent a couple summers hanging and one was more of a dude ranch roll. So I had horses and stuff. But that helps a little. 0:07:30 - Cal Hardage Yeah, well, that contributed to your knowledge base so you could do that. When you purchased your first cows, you already had that mindset of being more regenerative. Did you research breeds? Did you buy from someone already doing that near you? How did you get those first cows, or how did you select them? Not so much how you got them, but selection. 0:07:53 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, one of my early influences was Greg Judy, so I learned a lot of philosophy and insight from him about your animals need to be well suited to your environment, and there's this difference about how much are we going to prop up the animal and how much are we going to do for it and how much are we going to expect it to do for us and our operation, and an important emphasis on profitability and the whole concept of like. I had these intuitions about the industrial system that props up our food supplies not something that I wanted to be a part of and a certain kind of cow might be better suited to the kind of operation I was looking to run, and so that was like a smaller frame. And what is the expression? It's like it's not the pounds per beef, per cattle, but it's the pounds per acre, right. So I knew I was looking for a smaller framed critter. I landed on the American Aberdeen or lowline Angus for my first. I didn't end up sticking with them, but they did, in my mind, fit the bill initially and so that was the first breed I got into. 0:09:04 - Cal Hardage Did you buy cows or stockers? 0:09:07 - Catherine Kirchner I bought bred cows. That was how I started. 0:09:09 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah. 0:09:10 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, In hindsight I maybe would have done it differently, but I thought that was the right way to go. 0:09:14 - Cal Hardage You know I just have a soft spot for raising beef cattle. You know, having the cows, calves and stuff, it's just hard to surpluss or surplus Surpass the enjoyment I get from that, even though I read and think you know there may be more profitable segments I could be in, but I really enjoyed this segment. This is where I should be. 0:09:37 - Catherine Kirchner Absolutely, and I think that plays a role right. I have also been really fortunate to be like find just good reading material, whether it was recommended to me or I don't remember how I came across it, but Gabe Brown and his philosophy on raising animals has been a big influence and Nicole Masters and her love of soil Some of those people I've had an opportunity to meet on numerous occasions. I don't know if this part of Montana is just super blessed or it's just a little hot spot for a generative ag, but we've had a lot of opportunity to learn from these folks. 0:10:07 - Cal Hardage But anytime you get to hear any of those people you've said speak, you ought to take advantage of it and go listen to them. So when you got your breadcows, tell us just a little bit how that went for you getting started with that. 0:10:22 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah. So part of my operational story is just like falling forward and just failing and learning from it, and trying to do so with like minimizing your risk, which, you know, if I had the opportunity to advise other people, I would say I've learned some things, that there was ways I could have minimized my risk more than I did, but all things considered, I think I was pretty fortunate. So I got these breadcows and then, you know, a little bit later we had calves and weren't really set up for a bowl, so we were going to do AI and stuff. But before any of that became too big of an issue, our region got hit with really bad drought. You know, when I first bought cows, purchasing hay was like 125 a ton and within like a year or so after I owned animals, it was like $300, $400 a ton, oh wow, and you know drought was real bad for everyone. And so pretty shortly thereafter I had to sell my mama cows and that was hard right, but it was the right thing to do and I should have done it sooner. Then I ended up doing it, as is often the case. 0:11:26 - Cal Hardage It is yeah, yeah. So anytime you have to destock because of drought, especially with mama cows, I know you build that attachment to them and it can be tough to make those tough decisions and so tough yeah. 0:11:41 - Catherine Kirchner Absolutely yeah. 0:11:44 - Cal Hardage Y'all were going through a drought and you had to sell your mama cows. Did you keep the calves at that time? 0:11:48 - Catherine Kirchner No, we pretty much did a reset, which was okay because we were at that time we were also kind of transitioning our genetics. I had started to learn about and be attracted to the Galloway breed. Oh, yeah. And I had bought a couple of stockers yearlings that I had finished and I was really pleased with how they performed in our context, and so I was like you know, this is an opportunity for just a reset, and so that's kind of what we did. 0:12:15 - Cal Hardage Yeah, took an egg and made a positive right then I happened to destock because of drought but thought, hey, this is a perfect opportunity to kind of reset and realign my focus where I want to be. 0:12:26 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, and around that time we also got our second lease, which is where we currently are at, and it was closer to our home base. So cut down on the commute to move the animals every day, save us some fuel. And, yeah, it's where we still are and we're really fortunate to have the lease that we currently have. 0:12:41 - Cal Hardage How did you handle on that lease, getting your infrastructure up so you could rotate them daily and get water to them? 0:12:49 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, I mean, water is super important Can't underestimate the importance of water and in terms of infrastructure, I'm incredibly light and I think it's good most of the time and sometimes it's annoying. But so I just have, you know, my reels and my posts and a mobile stock tank and a couple panels. So when it was time for me to move from my first lease to my second lease, you know there wasn't a lot of stuff to reset up. Most of the time it's single line polywire. Now that we have sheep, we also have netting. We kind of have a smorgasbord of different electric fencing setup. But yeah, we operate pretty light and I think it's nice. I mean, I would like to have like a mobile shoot. We don't currently, but the second lease that we got had some corrals in place, which was really nice because the first place we had didn't have any crowds, so we were just operating with like panels. 0:13:43 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah, and the good thing there is, you were working with some pretty docile cattle, I would imagine with the aubergine and then with the gallowy. 0:13:53 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, that's really important to me. It always has been. Just because I don't think it's worth it, you know, to keep on restock and I have kids and I plan to be around for a while, so I just don't want to be keeping anything that's on rear, aggressive. 0:14:08 - Cal Hardage I completely agree. My kids are a little bit older but I still don't want anything aggressive. In fact I hate to admit this but I guess I will. I was messing with sheep and cattle earlier today and I had to sort of ram out. I have a sheep shoot and I had him and three U lambs in that shoot and I grabbed him and held on to him and I thought I'll just shove him back a little bit and I'll get up there close the gate in time. Well, I'm not as nimble and quick on my feet as I used to be and I ended up laying on the ground as he ran out the gate. I got to get him back in, but you know, it's nice to have nice, calm Animals. 0:14:52 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, for sure your story reminds me of something that happened with my youngest recently. She's always been a big lover of animals and she loves her dogs at home and she's always loved their faces, which is not a great quality. She'll just put her hands on their faces and just want to shmush in love on them, and we try to teach her not to. But it's been kind of a hard habit to break, and so she was in with the sheep and she was doing that to one of our nicest sheep. It's basically like it acts like a pet. It'll come over and stand and want you to pet it. 0:15:21 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah. 0:15:22 - Catherine Kirchner But she was lovin' on a little too much and it headbutted her down and she wasn't hurt, but she was not happy about it. She cried and she was alarmed and we scooped her up and she was fine physically. But we're like. This is why we tell you not to do that. 0:15:34 - Cal Hardage Yeah, right, yes yeah. 0:15:37 - Catherine Kirchner It's too much. It probably thought you were going to eat it. You know, it's just a prey animal, yeah. 0:15:43 - Cal Hardage Well, yeah, we all have to be a little more careful, and I'm and my wife likes to remind me I'm not as young as I used to be. Anyway, we're not going to talk about that subject anymore. We're going to move on. You got your first cows in 2020 and with the goal of doing some grass-fed finished beef and selling to the consumer. How soon were you able to sell meat? 0:16:08 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, pretty quick. But the first thing we were selling was bone broth. So I had learned from somewhere I don't remember where I picked it up but I knew that the marketing piece was going to be really important. And so I always was of the belief that you got to create the demand even a little before you have the supply. And so I was like, how can I get my name out there, how can I let people know that we exist? And so I started buying bones from the operation the organic ranch I was working at and making bone broth commercially and started selling it at the farmer's market. And it really helped. It really helped me get a name and get out there with people so that when we were able to sell shares people were like, oh, they just trusted you more, right? 0:16:55 - Cal Hardage Right. That's one of those things where a person's got to see you so many times and even that interaction is brief or non-existent. Just by seeing you multiple times is going to build some trust up there. So that was a wonderful idea to get out there and get your face out there and start doing something before you had a lot of product available, excellent planning. I'll be honest, that's not something I would have thought to do, but that's excellent. 0:17:26 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, I loved making the bone broth. We haven't done it commercially for probably two years now because we started having the beef and just life got crazy with little kids and stuff. 0:17:37 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah. 0:17:38 - Catherine Kirchner You just have to. You have too many irons in the fire, you have to let some things go, and so that was one I decided to stop doing. But I really enjoyed making it when we were doing it and my customers were sad because they enjoyed it. We had a pretty loyal fan base of people who liked our recipe, but I just made it a lead magnet. I turned my recipe into a guide and started giving it out, and it's been one of my best lead magnets to date, Like, hey look, I'm not making bone broth anymore. But if you want to make it the way I did, this is how. 0:18:09 - Cal Hardage Oh, yes, yeah, Very good. And are you continuing to go to farmers markets to market your meat? 0:18:17 - Catherine Kirchner No, we did that probably for two years pretty hard, and then we quit last December. So we, and in Montana we will alternate between the ones that were hopping in the good season, the summer months, and then we had one that we would go to in the nearby city which was a winter one indoors. 0:18:37 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah. 0:18:38 - Catherine Kirchner And so, yeah, we quit around December last year and I am super happy about it, as much as I love meeting the vendors and meeting the customers just from a profitability standpoint, and we should get paid for our time. It's something that, as ag producers, we are bad about doing, but it just wasn't a good ROI and we are able to market more profitably through email marketing than going to the farmer's market, which was unpredictable. We didn't know who was going to show up and if what you had on the menu was what they were looking for that day. And then there's all the commute time traveling to the city. 0:19:19 - Cal Hardage That's what I hear about farmer's market that once you build up that customer base, the ROI on the farmer's market is not as good as when you're just getting started. I'm only saying hearsay because I have not done that myself, so that's not coming from me. 0:19:35 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, no, I agree. I don't think I could have gotten to where our operation is from a direct market standpoint without the time at the farmer's market, because it's something about street cred, just shaking people's hand, answering their questions. 0:19:49 - Cal Hardage So we were talking about you'd start with Albert and getting started and start your grass, fed beef out, and then you all went through a drought and you took that opportunity to reset and get into Galloways. How are the Galloways going for you? And when I say Galloways, do you have black Galloways or belted Galloways? 0:20:12 - Catherine Kirchner So we don't have belted, we have the solids. The cool thing about Galloways is they come in all the colors. So I prefer the solids, not that against the Oreo cow, but I love the Galloway breed. It's my absolute favorite. It's not that there aren't flashy things that come into my news feed that I don't also look into, but I haven't found anything that has convinced me to change wholeheartedly away from the Galloways. They're really well suited to our Montana climate with the way they have thick hide and the shaggy hair. It keeps them warm. And so there's a Montana State University study that showed compared them against some other breeds and they required a quarter less feed inputs during a winter than their counterparts, which makes a big difference. So we're really happy with them. They're docile, you know. They say that there's as much variety within a breed as there is a crossbreed. So it's not that sometimes you don't get a wild Galloway, but we've had really good luck with them there. They're meeting all the criteria that we have for our critters and that the frame size is right, and they've got a big old round barrel of a belly for rumination, so they grow good on grass. 0:21:24 - Cal Hardage I have one half belted Galloway, half South Polkow. I call her white side. She's got a little bit of white on her side but I really like her and she's really docile. And now you mentioned you like the solid. I've always been in love with the belted cattle and it really stems from Dutch belted. I grew up on a dairy and in fact we had hostings, but I had a few Dutch belted and so so the belt always appeals to me, but that's just a preference and but and. But I don't even know what I'm saying now. Anyway, I see them and I like them, but I have some concerns for them in my area because, like you said, they do grow a really nice winter coat. I'm not sure how they do here. 0:22:10 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, there's so many good breeds out there it's hard to get caught up into it. It's like I love, I love the Galloway and I'll see them their praises all day long. I think they make a really nice, you know. The finished product is really good too, but it's not a hill. I'm going to die on saying that it's a better breed than any others out there. You know, I like the Murray Gray, I like the Speckled Park from Canada and I know for everybody else's climate you know all the diversity of climates there are better options for them, but we've found something that's working really nice for us. 0:22:40 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah, and that's. That's so true. I, as a fan of breeds and certain types, I think all the time, you know, I have like three or four breeds in my head, that that's just that, the cream of the crop, I think, for where I am, and I keep thinking, you know I could have some of each of those. I'm not quite there. I'm mainly focused in one area right now, but you know it's a thought pattern. The Speckled Park is very interesting. I've heard really good things about the Murray Gray. My neighbor has some British whites, which kind of surprised me because they were limousine breeders for a long time, and she has purchased some British whites which, to be honest, the British white, the Speckled Park. Some of those are kind of confused in my mind and I'm sure the breeders of them would be very dissatisfied with my answer there. 0:23:33 - Catherine Kirchner But they would school you probably, if they would school you right. 0:23:35 - Cal Hardage Yeah, I'm sure. 0:23:37 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, there's a lot of promising breeds out there, right? It's just what makes the most sense for your, your context. 0:23:43 - Cal Hardage Yes, and then you decided to add sheep. When did you add sheep and why? 0:23:49 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, the why is because when we made that big pivot around the because of the drought it was, you know, this whole emotional heartbreak and these whole crunching spreadsheets and saying that, if you know, hay prices were over 200 a ton then there was really no way to break even on grass, finished beef and then all the heartache of getting rid of your first mulling cows. It was just a real pivotal time for our operation and our family and I realized that what's most important and what's going to be the future for us is investing in equity in the land, right. And then it had to become the animals, had to become secondary, the soil health and the forages. That was going to be the thing that made us or broke us. And so when I say reset, it was like it was all the things right, it wasn't just genetics, but it was like we're going to let the land dictate our stocking rate and we're going to invest in the health of the forages. And so part of that study and that belief pattern was learning that diversity and stacking operations, multi-species. It was good in every way. It was good from a biology standpoint and it was good from a profitability standpoint, you know, and the idea that you can have multiples and that those critters can be finished in under a year. It's like when you compare that to cattle, you know there was a lot of compelling reasons there from a cash flow standpoint as well. 0:25:19 - Cal Hardage And what degree did you decide to go with the hair sheep? I said hair sheep with sheep in general, because you wouldn't have to go with hair sheep. 0:25:28 - Catherine Kirchner No, we did go with hair sheep because we were not interested in the chore of dealing with wool. And I've heard that when you have a hair sheep, because the lanolin goes along with the wool, that sometimes there's an impact in the taste, right. So the idea and I'm not going to say that I 100% buy this, but it's out there that the wool sheep with their lanolin impacts the taste and so if you have a hair sheep doesn't have as much lanolin because of a lack of wool, that it's a less lamby or muttony flavor. And I have a lot of friends who have wool sheep and they would probably strongly disagree with that philosophy. But I was already leaning towards hair sheep and not shearing, so I didn't need a lot to convince me. So, and then you know, just gosh, how did I land on Katahdin? You know we heard about the St Croix. I visited Greg Judy's operation in Missouri and he had had some Katahdin's at one point and has a sort of a St Croix cross now, but I don't know what it was. There are some really successful producers around us that have Katahdin's, so that might have been the reason that we went with them ultimately. 0:26:36 - Cal Hardage And you mentioned earlier, you're using Electro-Nedding with them. 0:26:39 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, so with the cattle we just were running single strand polyline. Obviously that was over the level it's about at your pocket or butt loop sort of. That's too high for a sheep. So we had to kind of adjust our planning how we moved that and Nedding seemed to be the best bet. We don't have a livestock guardian dog, which typically those always go together have a sheep or something like that. But with our lease operation it wasn't a good fit. Our landowner lives on the property and has animals Lifestyle guardian dog can't be faulted for doing their job, but we just didn't want it or us to get in trouble. So yeah, the Nedding seemed to fit all the bill as far as protecting from the predator and being able to rotate. 0:27:23 - Cal Hardage And are you rotating? I'm assuming by your answer you're rotating your sheep separately from your cattle. 0:27:29 - Catherine Kirchner You know we do both. It's kind of fun. Oh yes, we've done the flurred, the flock and the herd together and I like it. It's kind of a little bit less work and I have this feeling that the sheep, or the presence of the cattle keeps the sheep safe. I can't back that up, but I just we haven't lost anything to predators and I'm not going to say it's just because of the cattle, but I think it helps. We also have done them separately because you know just with what we'll do is we'll run the cows ahead of them and bring the sheep behind, and sometimes because of water and because we'll put the cattle in silvo pasture but I can't do the Nedding in the silvo pasture very well, so occasionally we'll split them up. 0:28:14 - Cal Hardage Yeah, electro-nedding will jump out and grab anything in silvo pasture or any kind of brush you go through. 0:28:23 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, it's a little. It's too much contact surface area. So I mean, I have friends who do a really good job with goats. They use Nedding and they clear a path for the Nedding and then send the goats in and they clear up some pretty thick, nasty stuff. But yeah, we're not at that level right now. 0:28:42 - Cal Hardage And once you got sheep, did you? You started immediately with your grass-fed lamb and selling that. 0:28:48 - Catherine Kirchner We've been starting to offer lamb. You know, it's really its own sort of marketing effort because there's not as much crossover between a beef customer and a lamb customer as one might think. Actually, I don't know what one might think on that, but I think I thought there'd be more crossover than there actually is. So you do sort of have to kind of start from scratch when you need to build up a customer base of fans of grass-finished lamb. 0:29:14 - Cal Hardage Well, that was. That leads right into my next question I was going to ask you about how did that go over in your market? When I think about Montana, I think of rural areas, I think of beef cattle. So so to me, but when I think about my market, it's a rural market. Beef cattle's always been keen. I'm not sure, because I haven't done it, how grass-fed lamb would sell here. 0:29:40 - Catherine Kirchner It's a funny point that you make because, yeah, most people think about Montana as, like you know, for beef cattle, but in Big Timberlantana our high school mascot is actually the sheep herders we do have. Historically we have a background in, you know, this place being settled by people who had large blocks of sheep, and my husband's family goes back. Well, our kids are fifth generation here. So it's funny because it didn't really plan on being a sheep herder, but it really does kind of fit in nicely with our personality. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but yeah, not everyone loves sheep, not everyone loves to eat lamb. It is its own market. It's different because we had built up a pretty good customer base of people who were interested in our beef, but that didn't mean that they were all interested in our lamb, so we had to kind of cultivate a brand new email list of people who were interested in that. 0:30:31 - Cal Hardage Now jumping back to your farmer's market days. Did you go to the bigger cities for your farmer market or were you more local? 0:30:38 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, but we do. We have a lot of our customers come from the neighboring cities. Cities tend to have a little bit more diversity. It'd be diversity background right. So we have two population hubs about an hour east and west of us, and so most of our customers reside either you know buildings or both men. 0:30:58 - Cal Hardage And talking about that marketing of lamb is something I'm not sure how the community here would respond, because beef cattle is keying here. But interestingly we went to a restaurant that's 15 minutes from us in a tiny town Indian restaurant which I was shocked to find it open there and I guess they must be there's another business in the building and somehow related for them to open it, because they don't, because it's just a small hole in the wall place. But I was able to go in there and order goat curry, which was just shocking to me and of course shocking to my wife too. She knows I go but she doesn't like to admit I do it was. It's just interesting diversity, what I'm getting to long winded. Like you know, there's more and more pallets out there for different things, like there's a bigger market for goat kids I've found locally than there used to be Used to. It went to Diamond, but I do some off the farm sales with goats. So it's interesting and I was. I was shocked to find 15 minutes away from me I could order goat curry in the restaurant. 0:32:09 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, and for goat and lamb a lot of producers think about the ethnic markets but what we've found is it's not exclusively that way. You know we attract a lot of people who are interested in hunting. Our family is, we're definitely hunters and we feed our family with deer and elk throughout the year. In addition to you know our farm animals. But it's not that big of a leap if you haven't had like a bad experience with mutton, which some people have, but some people have had a bad experience with grass fed beef. It's, it takes all kinds right. But if you've had antelope and deer and elk and if you're interested in like eating locally and knowing where your food comes from and what your food ate, you're a little bit more open minded to grass finished lamb, Then you know if it's not as big of a jump. I guess is what I mean. You know people are more flexible about that. It's like they're not put off that by the taste and we find that because our pastures are really diverse, it's not like a monoculture of grasses. It's really kind of similar to if you went to the, you know forests and mountains and you harvested your wild game. It's not that the sheep is gamey, it's just kind of the way the meat is supposed to taste and it's not like super flavorful in any one particular way. That would possibly be off pudding, you know. 0:33:30 - Cal Hardage And that that's a great point you make about. You know people who eat a little more diverse diet because of hunting or whatever reason, maybe more likely to try a similar food. I'm going to pick on my wife just a little bit. I hope I don't get in too much trouble. But she did not grow up on the farm. She grew up well, she grew up in Hawaii. So it's really amazing she stays in Oklahoma with me but she got meat or protein from the grocery store and we got married and that was her first exposure to us. You know her going to the deep freeze to get meat out because she always went to Walmart and just that change from you. Know, I want the meat packaged in paper because that's what we've always done. Now a lot of the processors will do vacuum sealed plastic bags. Now I'm not a fan. I like the paper, it's what I've always done Anyway. But for her that's foreign, that's not what she was used to. She wanted to come on that Styrofoam carton wrapped in plastic. That's taken her a little while and she has eaten or eaten lamb with us to that we process and be if she's coming along. So, but just that, that exposure. However you were raised, or what you're exposed to, makes a huge difference in what you're willing to try and sample and see, if you like. 0:35:01 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, I fully agree, absolutely. I grew up, you know, with a single mom who didn't know anything about hunting and culinary skills were not, like, you know, chef Ramsay style, so it was a lot of cardboard boxes, a lot of TV, dinners and stuff, and I only got into hunting through my husband, so kind of a late bloomer there. But our kids I'm really, you know, fortunate and blessed that they really know where the food comes from. You know, our youngest, our oldest, would be like in the high chair in the garage while dad and I were raking down an L, you know, and that's all they've ever known. And so that's a very different childhood and lifestyle than the one I grew up in, and I'm really happy that we're able to offer that to them. 0:35:43 - Cal Hardage Oh, I agree, because that's going to make it more open to experiences in the future with food. Yeah, it's a great upbringing for them. Now, one thing you mentioned earlier in the podcast you're selling grass fed beef, you're selling grass fed lamb, but you've partnered with some neighbors and you're able to offer pastured pork and pastured chickens to your customers. Can you expand on that just a little? 0:36:08 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, I feel really fortunate that we have great neighbors and that means like fence line neighbors but also, you know, 30 miles south of Big Timber right, because we all kind of have the same bio region and our kids all go the same schools and 4-H clubs and stuff. So we have a lot of producers who are regenerative or organic or American Grass Association certified and so I'm really fortunate in being able to tap them and say, hey, do you have some you know regenerative lamb that you're looking to sell, because before we had our flock ready there was some ready. That you know, I do sort of put more of an emphasis on the marketing and the email marketing than some of my neighbors and so you know I was able to contribute there where I didn't maybe have the as many acres or as big of a you know herd, but we were able to find ways to support each other. So I can sometimes tap the shoulder of a friend and neighbor for lamb before we had ours and and now pastured pork and the poultry is really new. Like my good friend Jamie, she's just getting into it with her family and it's going really well and they're happy with it, but it's, you know, a budding deal and small batch and ultimately we envision doing the same thing. We want to roll out pastured poultry, just kind of stacking enterprises right. So we've got the cattle that go first in the tall grass, and then the slightly shorter grass comes the sheep, and then behind them the chicken tractors, and that diversity is really good in the biology they leave behind. So we're lucky that way. 0:37:45 - Cal Hardage Actually, let's just continue on that subject. Just a little bit for the overgrazing section, where we take something about your operation, we take a little bit deeper dive and you mentioned there about stacking operations. Can you speak to that a little bit more? 0:38:00 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, and I sort of steal that verbiage from Gabe Brown. I definitely was inspired by the level of stacked enterprises he has there at his operation. I guess it's sort of a goal. I don't know if we'll ever get to that level, but the idea that from a profitability and sustainability angle, if you can take one enterprise that maybe isn't that profitable. Like we were talking about earlier, we all love baby cows. They're the cutest darn thing ever, but they're not the most profitable type of operation. A cow-calf operation is probably one of the least profitable ways to be an ag, and so if you can take something that you love and you're passionate about but marry it with something that's a little more profitable, that's also good for the diversity of your farm, then that's a win on every angle. So whether it's pastured pork or pastured poultry or lambs, that was the next obvious step for us, because the Romanians have this deal where they don't share the same parasites. So you don't want to leave an animal on land that it's soiled because it's not good for its health. So that's why we move our animals every day. But if we move the sheep behind the cattle, they can't pick up any internal parasites from the cattle, they just biologically differ that way. So that's cool. And there's just this natural symbiosis that you can achieve in your operation if you Bring on diversity, and it's one of the I love. 0:39:32 - Cal Hardage That situation was a win-win and this feels like a win-win because if it, if it helps with your Financial profitability, sustainability and it's good for biology, like I don't see any downside, like, yes, let's do that and as you, as you talk about that, the thing that pops out to me is a conversation I have with my, my dad, quite often just when we talk about the acres and Watch our profitability per acre and how do we increase that profitability per acre, and when we're talking about beef cattle, do we bring in another? If we're stuck on cattle, do we bring in another type of enterprise, cattle enterprise? Do we change the type of cattle we're using, like commercial versus breeding stock or seed stock? But I probably, probably could use the word. A better way is to stack enterprises like you're talking about. 0:40:21 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, there's so much opportunity out there. You know one thing that we don't do personally, but I see a lot opportunity for other producers would be. You know, even in a situation where there's cropping, if you can Bring your herd on in an arrangement that works for both parties, they can, you know, help with the residual that's left behind after a harvest. Feed your cattle, say, over the winter or something, and Leave the fertility that they leave behind naturally right, which should be a win-win, because then the crop farmer doesn't have to apply as much fertilizer in the spring and the animals got to feed value out of it. I think that's a huge opportunity that I guess I would say the biggest obstacle that I see amongst producers is Not knowing how to navigate working with each other. You know and I'm not gonna say I'm an expert by any means, but I've been willing to try and you know it doesn't always work out but Just putting yourself out there and say, hey, I have this idea I know it's crazy, maybe I've never done it would it be a possibility of working together in this way and you have to make it so that it's mutually beneficial. But I think there's a lot of opportunity there that is Just not commonplace amongst producers. 0:41:34 - Cal Hardage Yet I think you bring up an excellent point there. And when we think about education your husband works in education. You were in Education for a number of years yourself. I work in education, my wife works in education and too often the reason we do stuff is Because it's always been done that way. So when we start thinking about out of the box, thinking what you think, well that's not really out of the box, I'm just, but it is because traditionally it's not what's been done. So sometimes it takes some conversation to get to that point and it takes a while. 0:42:11 - Catherine Kirchner It's funny because we find ourselves in our current context and so what seems traditional to us, like I know exactly what you mean when you you speak that way. It reminds me of a funny conversation I had with. I met a producer who was new and showed up at the farmers market and I went over and introduced myself when we were visiting. I was just curious how they finished, because a lot of people finish in different ways up here. Some people use peas and barley, a lot of people will finish grain on grass which is cool, you know and art. We were committed to grass finishing all the way. But I don't knock other operations that do it differently and I was asking and she said that she did it traditionally and I was, and I was like you mean conventionally, because it was traditionally their ruminants, they grass, you know, and so it's like what's our, what's our context? I think sometimes we just kind of have to zoom out a little more than 60, 70 hundred years and go a little further back and we'll see that traditionally Mean something a little different depending on how zoomed out you are. 0:43:14 - Cal Hardage I completely agree and I just had this conversation. I don't remember if I had this conversation. I know it was on a podcast episode, but I don't remember if it is during the episode or after we'd stopped recording. But we were talking about homesteading and and I had made the comment you know, grazing so beneficial to homesteaders. And when I really think about homesteaders, it's not anything new, it's the way my grandparents would have done it when they were young. So, yeah, that's the same thing conventionally versus traditionally. Yeah, I get that. That's a very good point. 0:43:51 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, it's just it's. It's been a couple generations now that our food system is the way it is, and so sometimes it's that is the way grandpa did it, you know, and so it feels like that's all you ever know. But just a little bit further behind that, it was done Traditionally and that looked pretty different. 0:44:08 - Cal Hardage Now, one thing you'd mentioned on sacking enterprises. You think your next step is to add pasture poultry. Is that where you see it stopping, or do you see a fourth enterprise in there at some point? 0:44:20 - Catherine Kirchner I mean, you know, as my capacity allows. You know, I have three young kids and I have a lot of ambition. That is not really realistic, but no, I don't really see a stopping point. I mean as much diversity as we can stack, and you know, our mission is to, you know, produce as many nutrient, dense, calories as possible and with the land that we steward, and with that mission there's really no Sealing except what mother nature provides right. And so no, I mean I have, I would love in the future to be able to do things like Fruit trees, and some people I know do turkeys. I don't have a strong ambition for turkeys, but I like duck and you know all kinds of things. 0:45:00 - Cal Hardage So I don't know what the stopping point is, but I Haven't decided what that would be right, I, I completely, I completely get that, and my wife would like further to be a stopping point. I just need to do everything more efficiently. Anyway, catherine, it's been a great conversation, but it's time we move to our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. Our first question what's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? 0:45:29 - Catherine Kirchner So many it's hard to pick. You know, the savory holistic management handbook is a good one. It's a little dense, it's it reads a little bit like a textbook, so I don't know if it's my favorite for that reason. There's a lot of valuable knowledge in there that you can revisit time and time again. The ones that read more, like you can remember, the stories are like gay browns, dirt to soil. That one's really good. And Nicole masters her for the love of soil is really well written. You know there's a lot of story in there that helps you remember the importance of this, like the science you're learning. I think that helps. Yeah, and then I've, you know I've mentioned great Judy a couple times, I, and then you know, joel Salatin. There's plenty. You need a whole library, I don't know. 0:46:10 - Cal Hardage There are a lot of resources out there and a lot of them can benefit you. You suggested a few excellent ones there. Yeah, excellent selections. Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm? 0:46:25 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, and thank you for giving us a chance to preview these questions. I thought about that and I had a hard time picking. So, like you know, at first I was like, oh, my pocket knife. And then I was like, oh, you know, I really like a good pigtail post, because a good pigtail post is handy. But aside from those two that I like, I don't I don't know if this counts, but I don't think you can if I had none of those things, if I went out to the past, I had none of those things. If I am there with on on the ground, with my feet on the ground and my eyes there, that's really all I need to do my job. Well, as a grass farmer, there's just observation and and being out there, you know, and I don't think, like on the ground level, you know, I don't think that there's anything more important than that. So, like, I have like lost or forgotten my pocket knife and I have been without a good post, but as long as you show up, I think that's the most important part. 0:47:16 - Cal Hardage Observation is so important and tend to reflect upon it. It's so easy or maybe it's just me it's easy to go out and go through the motions of doing something and just doing it because that's the way you plan to do it. But you really need and in my opinion you really need to take a step back and be observant about what you're doing and then make the decision. Maybe the plan you had in place is exactly what you should be doing that day, or it may have changed because nature changes. Before we get to our third question, I have a 2A part. Tell us big-tail posts. Do you have a favorite brand or type? 0:47:59 - Catherine Kirchner You know, locally we only carry one. I don't know who it is. I think it's not the orange one, it's a white top. So I think the orange one is Gallagher and I've used Gallagher's Orange Top. They're skinnier, so like the where you thread. Yeah, I like the white top. I don't know who makes it, but that's my better one. 0:48:17 - Cal Hardage Yeah, Does the step on it go to the side the pigtail curves to, or does it go to the opposite side? 0:48:25 - Catherine Kirchner It's like a 45 degree angle, right. So it's not. Yeah, I don't know how to explain that better. It doesn't go aligned with it, it's not in line with it, it's the opposite. 0:48:34 - Cal Hardage The reason I ask. I have some pigtails where the the step goes in the direction of the pigtail which those are my favorite and I think those are Gallagher, but they're narrower, like you talk about, and they're not as stout. So if I could design the perfect pigtail, it's more along that design but it'd be stouter and bigger. I have some others and they're aimed the opposite way and I feel like I'm not pulling into the foot. 0:49:03 - Catherine Kirchner I like where our foot is because I can put it in a corner and it feels like the foot is in the right spot for the like a corner of a line and it can hold the tension. 0:49:13 - Cal Hardage Oh yeah, I think that's. That's very good, Catherine. Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started? 0:49:21 - Catherine Kirchner Definitely get a mentor. I know it's like so, not original advice, but it's really good advice and the sooner you do the better. And don't look for too many mentors, because too many voices coming into your head can like conflict and make it analysis paralysis. Don't be afraid to fail forward. Decision is the strength behind just making a decision. But, yeah, find a mentor that you trust and that you like the way that they are doing it. There's a lot of people who have opinions, but you have to look around you see like hey, is there field overgrazed? Do animals look healthy? Are they selling their beef at the market for a reasonable price, like a good price, not a cheap price? Look for signals of success and pick your mentor that way, because there's a lot of people who are sort of what do they call it? Armchair quarterbacks. A lot of advice. 0:50:14 - Cal Hardage Excellent advice there, I agree. Our last question, fourth question of our famous four questions when can others find out more about you? 0:50:24 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, so we are on the social medias such as Facebook and Instagram. My handle there is uncommon beef Funny story. So I was always uncommon beef originally, but then when I got the sheep, I sort of had like identity crisis and I was like how can I sell lamb under uncommon beef? So we also have our farm name is uncommon pastures fawn. So we have a website, uncommon pasturescom. And yeah, that's mainly it. We don't do TikTok. Montana has tried to ban TikTok, so we'll see how that shakes out. But yeah, just that, that's pretty much it. 0:50:59 - Cal Hardage Very good and I have to say I really like the name uncommon pastures. It's a common word. So when you say it, people I don't know that they would be confused at first. Uncommon, it makes sense, they know how to spell it. Pastures, they know how to spell. There's not some of those Some names. You tell someone that and then you got to spell it out Kind of like my last name. I tell someone it and I got to spell it With uncommon pastures. You can tell someone that and then boom, they're there. No typical misspellings with the words. It's great. 0:51:35 - Catherine Kirchner Yeah, funny you bring that up. So initially when we were uncommon beef, I had a couple of people at the farmers market confused. They're like what is it? Because Beyond Burger came out and they just thought it was like is it beef? So that was a little awkward. We got past that. But then uncommon pastures actually came from one of our best customers. I was putting out through our email that we're looking at changing the name because we have other species in the future, and they were like we love uncommon beef, but if you have to change it, let's do. How about uncommon pastures? I was like there you go. Thank you, jeff. 0:52:08 - Cal Hardage Yeah, excellent, excellent, catherine, thank you for joining us today. Really enjoyed it. I appreciate you coming on and sharing about your journey and your operation. 0:52:18 - Catherine Kirchner Well, thanks, Kyle. I appreciate the conversation. Thanks for having me. 0:52:21 - Cal Hardage 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, feel free to fill out the form on grazinggrasscom under the be our guest link. Until next time, keep on grazing grass.