e144. Revving Up Agritourism: Merging Land, Life, and Leisure with Taylor Moyer

Transcript generated by Podium.page Help us spread the word by tweeting about us at @podiumdotpage and including us in your shownotes! https://podium.page NOTE: There were 2 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously. 0:00:00 - Cal Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 144. You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, sharing information and stories of grass-based livestock production utilizing regenerative practices. I'm your host, cal Hartage. You're growing more than grass, cal Hartage, you're growing more than grass. You're growing a healthier ecosystem to help your cattle thrive in their environment. You're growing your livelihood by increasing your carrying capacity and reducing your operating costs. You're growing stronger communities and a legacy to last generations. The grazing management decisions you make today impact everything from the soil beneath your feet to the community all around you. That's why the Noble Research Institute created their Essentials of Regenerative Grazing course to teach ranchers like you easy-to-follow techniques to quickly assess your forage, production and infrastructure capacity in order to begin grazing more efficiently. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at nobleorg. Slash grazing. It's n-o-b-l-e dot org. Forward slash grazing. On today's episode we have Taylor Moyer. The name may sound familiar to you because he's been on a few other podcasts and he was on episode 58 of the Grazing Grass and we talked about his journey into regenerative farming while working in NASCAR. He joins us again today to catch up what's happened in the last 18 months. He's retired from NASCAR and he's also taken on a new position with Land Trust. So we're going to talk about that a little bit today and just as a teaser, we have Nick, the CEO from Land Trust, on Friday how that can work with your farm to provide another revenue stream, if that works for you. But we talked Taylor today. We talked about what he's doing on his farm. Then we get into Land Trust and what he's doing there. Now For 10 seconds about the farm. Not too long ago I was complaining about the drought and the rain started, and since the rain has started here in northeast Oklahoma we've received over 12 inches of rain, so it is the wettest November on record. I'm always glad to have some water, so I will not complain about that. For 10 seconds about the podcast. First I want to thank Lynn for reaching out. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. And secondly, on the podcast, we are getting ready to do a podcast refresh. We're going to change things up just a little bit. It'll still be the great content you expect from Grazing Grass, but we're going to change the format just a little bit and that'll be coming to you in three or four weeks. You'll notice that, I'm sure, because the show will start a little bit different. But just be on the lookout for it and I'd love to get your feedback whenever we do make that change, what you like, what you don't like, how we can make the Grazing Grass Podcast better for you. And with that let's talk to Taylor. Taylor, we will welcome you back to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today. 0:03:38 - Taylor Thanks for having me, Cal. I'm excited to be back. 0:03:41 - Cal So, taylor, you were on the podcast about 18 months ago on episode 58. So for our listeners, can you just give us a little background and tell us where you are then, before we start talking about your journey since then? 0:03:55 - Taylor Sure, so where I was then. I believe the episode title even had something to do with my career at the time, which was in NASCAR. Yep, I've since retired from that career. When the checkered flag flew at Phoenix last year, that was my last race in NASCAR and I walked all the way from the sport, which had always been my goal, and my farm had been my transition plan. Any anybody that knows the has followed the cattle markets, knows that it's probably a terrible time to try to scale up and it you know were sitting in my shoes last summer it looked more favorable than the fall, but so 18 months ago I was still working full-time in nascar. Um, we were growing our farm. We were really getting our legs underneath us as far as understanding the amount of cattle our land can support, the seasons on which it could support it through trying to find the right context for myself and my wife and our family as far as what type of cattle raisers we were, we definitely lean much more towards the grazing side. We've known for a while that our competitive advantage in the Southeast is that if you manage your grass correctly, you can almost grow grass year round, or you can grow some type of forage year round in which you can graze, can almost grow grass year round, or you can grow some type of forage year round in which you can graze. We were up against and and still are and are still always going to be the. Probably the disadvantage of the east that's also an advantage is you're you're not very far from population centers. So we were trying to trying to model our business, use that to our advantage, to model our business around that with that. You know, land prices are always high. So, trying to figure all that out, that's where we were and we are far from having it figured out. But we have been operating under a, I would say, an adaptive business plan since then Um, since November, since I stepped away from racing. So we are almost back around a one full year of me full time on the farm. It has been uh, it's been everything you would expect it to be. It's been exciting, it's been rewarding, it's been terrifying, it's been frustrating. I don't think anything in life comes without a tuition of some sort, and I can go to as many classes and read as many books, but at some point if you're going to do it, do it, and you might as well do it while you're still young enough to bend and break and, you know, give yourself some time to to figure it all out. So that's where we kind of are now, and there's some very specifics that go along with that, but we can get into that later. 0:06:15 - Cal Let's jump back to that six months after you were on the episode, till you retired, or however many months it was. I don't recall you ever mentioning at the time in the podcast. Hey, this is my last year in NASCAR. 0:06:37 - Taylor Had you already started thinking about that, or did that come around later on? Let's see. If I was on 18 months ago, it would have been 2022, correct? Well, it was. 0:06:44 - Cal April of 23. Okay. So, it's like 15, 16 months. 0:06:50 - Taylor Sure yeah, the even even at the position I was in within NASCAR and I use the word retire because when you get done playing football, you retire from football. I'm not retired Like I have some big bank account and I play golf every day. I just mean step toy from the sport. I owe everything, I owe a lot of my life to what NASCAR has provided and the great people along the way that have given me jobs and been mentors and and helped me through I. It was a 15 year professional career. It's all I've done since I was 18. I'm 36 now With that NASCAR. It is the longest series in professional sports Valentine's Day to Thanksgiving and it's a sport that you have to give your whole life to, pretty much oh yeah, and be invested in, to continue to rise and shine. And the sports contracting in the amount of employees within the sport as the business model changes, so the one, the people that are willing to give it, you better be a hundred percent passionate at all times about it to make it through. And I just knew that there would come a stage in my life when I didn't have that drive and desire and passion to go, get on an airplane every single Thursday and get home every single Sunday. Again, it's just a lot of time gone and I did it for travel on the road full time for 10 years. The last five years I was in a crew chief position, which is the you know, basically the CEO or the head coach position it's. It was very rewarding. It was very fun. I won races, we sat on poles, I had a bunch of great times, I was able to lead a bunch of good men and women. But I knew it had a shelf life and I also knew the longer I did only stayed in racing, the longer, the harder it might be to try to get out of it and make a transition within my life. So it was just kind of a natural fit of all. Things came together the way it all worked out. It was a good time for me to make an exit and it was funny because as I was exiting, people were still calling me. You know, come crew chief this race car. A week before the Daytona 500, I got a call to go crew chief and try to get a car into the Daytona 500. Like there's a need for good people in the sport. 0:09:07 - Cal It's just not the light had gone out a bit for me. 0:09:09 - Taylor I think if you're going to lead people, you can't fake passion. My guys knew that if they walk up to me, I'd be much more enjoyable. If they wanted to talk about cows, I'd talk their ears off race cars I was just burned out, to be to be quite honest. So it was just kind of time and I had. Maybe it happened a year earlier than I thought it would, but you can't always choose the timing of life either. I just try to worry about what I can control, not what I can't, and it seemed to work out that way. 0:09:39 - Cal So here we are. So how's that transition gone for you, going back onto the farm or being at the farm every weekend now? 0:09:50 - Taylor I'm here full time. We live here full time. We sold our other place, which was closer to the race shop. Oh yeah, man, it's been really rewarding in a lot of ways. Lifestyle it's exactly. I'm not somebody who buys into the farming as a lifestyle. It's been really rewarding in a lot of ways. Lifestyle it's exactly. I'm not somebody who buys into the farming as a lifestyle. Farming is a lifestyle, but you need to make sure it's not a hobby. It costs you money, right? Right, you've got to make money. 0:10:15 - Cal The lifestyle is a bonus, but it doesn't pay any bills. 0:10:18 - Taylor Correct, but I enjoy the lifestyle of living out here in the country at our farm. We're similar setting to where I was born and raised, so that's been great. The amount of extra time in our lives to focus on the things that are important to us is also is also really been really rewarding. And the other big part of it that's maybe more of a personal thing is just being able to be involved back in my community, which I was always so busy. I had no time. I was gone on the weekends. Your friends normally have Monday to Friday job. I didn't really have much of a social life and that's always been important to me, you know, whether it's community organizations or just having friends and family or being able to help your neighbor with stuff. I didn't have any time for that anymore. So that was a big part and focus to me. It was just maybe a little bit better quality of life and so far all that's been great and the farming and ranching has been great too. It's been a good year. You know ups and downs, but headed the right way, so that's the positive side of it. 0:11:19 - Cal Has your farm evolved differently than maybe you anticipated during this time? 0:11:27 - Taylor Maybe we actually we pumped the break I had. I had some pretty big plans to scale pretty quickly, oh yeah. But then when you still really factor in, you know the price of some cattle and and the price to scale and the fact that you know depreciation might eat you up if the market falls tomorrow or whatever you know might eat you up if the market falls tomorrow or whatever. You know, I have always been slightly risk adverse. I'm not a huge gambler. So we've been scaling up tactfully, let's say We've been turning a lot of cattle we kind of have. What I like to say is we have multiple complementary enterprises here. We kind of do the opposite here of what everybody else around us does and that's where the mark, that's where our biggest margins are for us to be able to grow. But you know, economically as a business it doesn't make it easy, it's hard, it's. It's socially it's not too hard, because I'm kind of a weirdo. Anyways, I'm the guy that left NASCAR to farm Right, so I'm everywhere. He thinks I'm crazy, but things like I'm. As far as I know, I'm one of the only spring calving herds around, so you're finding advice from old farmers like, hey, how do you improve your breed up in the spring? You know what? What mineral do you feed in the spring to help improve your breed up? Most guys say, oh well, we, we breed in the fall and you're like oh yeah, oh crap, you know. So some some of the resource stuff specific to this region specifically has been a little harder, but the business has definitely evolved the right direction and I've been working really hard with the team of you know I put together a business team. You know we have people here on the farm, both like some part-time employees myself, my wife and some other people around us that are our business team myself, my wife and some other people around us that are our business team as well. As you know, we use John Haskell and Ranch Ride LLC out in Wyoming as our you know business coaches and mentors and education centers, still still very involved with ranging for profit, but been using every resource we can find to try to grow in a smart way and give ourselves a little breathing room and chance, chance make it just just on that, breed up or breed back um, that puts you breeding breeding during the heat of summer, has that? 0:13:33 - Cal how has that been going for you? 0:13:36 - Taylor mixed results. We we have it slid back a little bit so we're not into the meat meat heat of summer. So usually when the heat gets here bad, it's about the third heat cycle, anyway. 0:13:49 - Cal Oh, okay. 0:13:50 - Taylor Yeah, we've been trying to be more selective with. In a perfect world if I had a huge herd of cows, I'd run a really tight breeding window and I would use all conditional pressure. But I can't go broke along the way of getting there. So a lot of times a late live calf is still worth more to me than a cold cow. So we, you know, we went like 75 days last year. I think we were at 80 days this year and sometimes it just it just comes down to where we are in our big rotation and can I easily just get the bull out of the herd? 0:14:21 - Cal Oh, yeah, to be quite honest. 0:14:22 - Taylor Yeah, out of the herd. Oh yeah, quite honest, yeah, it hasn't gone terrible. We're also a pretty low we're economically minded input herd. I don't, I don't like love the low input tag because it's not like I'm so cheap. I won't go buy stuff if it would help, but if oh yeah, if it doesn't return on my investment, I try not to go just pump. You know, lick tubs out there all the time for no reason. So the system we have, we've been, we've been, we've been pretty good. We've been above like the 80 mark, which is okay for our inputs. I mean, right, I think there's a lot of studies out there that like say, moving from like 90 to 95, you know if the juice might not be worth the squeeze. What we've tried to do, though and I mentioned this is uh, we, we can try to find, we try to find cows in the market that are undervalued, so maybe they're late fall cavers or a winter caver. Honestly, more so around here we can buy those at a discount generally because they're very far back in a fall cavers calving window, whether they come with a calf or we calve them out the next time, you know they might get. Maybe they're skinny, maybe that's why they're nutritionally deficient. Oh yeah, we generally are pretty good at putting on weight putting weight on cattle, especially cows here, and so they can get a chance in our spring herd. So that's kind of how we can buy in for cheap when the when the opportunities become available yeah yeah, and then, in the same sense, anything that falls out of my doesn't breed, um, rather than just take it to the sale barn. I know my lowest cost to keep a cow per day is through the summer here and the spring in the summer, so I can get those cows pretty darn, fat and black and they kind of then turn into a and then I can breed them for the fall and then they turn into a premium product. So at least you're, I've done the math. The last two years and both years it was there was a better chance that I would get a lot higher return running those cows for cheap through the summer and getting them bred and sell them as a fall bred cow and just taking them as an open spring cow into a market because from my research around here and all the people I know like 90 of the guys are fall bred herds around here. So you end up creating something that looks like it's really well conditioned. It looks like the top of the pile in a in a fall bred herd and you know those cows might, they might shine in a fall bread herd and that's just what they want. 0:16:47 - Cal So Right and sometimes, you know, a cow doesn't breed back. For that first time. We're of the philosophy that well she, she goes, figures it out, and someone else has heard she didn't work for our management system. However, I have to say I purchased, purchased two cows I guess a few years ago, two cows that were were fat and great shape to kevin my right window but they'd missed that guy's window and I wanted the cows. I thought they fit my my program so I purchased them. They have not missed a beat since. I've gotten them to my herd and you know that first breed back, especially on a two-year-old heifer trying to raise the calf and get bred back. We're not, we're not ones to give much grace on that. If they don't get back they get to go to cell barn. But I don't necessarily think it's a bad purchase either. In fact, talking about undervalued cows, it makes me think sometimes buying those two-year-old open heifers that's kind of thin going through a cell barn because it's obvious they just had a calf pulled off of them, might not be a bad move. Now, to be honest and this is important, I have not put my pencil to it or tried it, but at a 20,000 feet elevation or height. Looking down, it looks like there may be a potential there. So I like the idea of buying cows that's calving outside of the window for your area being a little bit lower cost being a little bit lower cost. And then if you have a cow that doesn't breed, hey, if you can get her bred and then sell her as a bred cow, it'll help your pocketbook yeah, yeah. 0:18:32 - Taylor Now what I would say is you definitely want to put a pencil to it, because if it's a cow that was to miss, it was like a fall cow that was to miss and then it's gonna needs to eat. Uh, hey, exactly, that's three months. Yeah, you're probably better off to ship her down the road. Save that hay for something that's making you money. I will say the caveat to that. And you know I've been through some marketing schools. I'm a follower of Wally Olson, doug Ferguson, bud Williams. I try to not get preconceived notions and not get recipes in my head. Oh yeah, because there has been. I did good on. I've done good, I've done well on some opportunities this year by just looking at what the market report says today and where things are valued against each other. There's definitely and you have to go, look at your local markets. You know it's good to know what's going on nationally, but there's, there's always some regional stuff that you might not even understand. But you need to understand that and understand where the opportunities are within your own community, because you might end up being the niche guy. For example, I, with cows being so expensive and I was like man, I gotta. I really need to scale up, you know, just for revenue reasons. Oh yeah, I really need to scale up, you know, just for revenue reasons. Oh yeah, what I did this year was I ended up LRPing all my calves. So I had some, you know, guaranteed value at the end of the year and I LRPed more than I knew I was even going to have in my herd. But that let me know that if I had the calf alive on the date that it needed to be quantified by, in my case, my banker, that I would get that return. So then I went and bought what I call skinny pairs. I went and bought cows with calves at their side. All the cows I bought were skin and bones. They look like older cows, obviously. They look like good, sound cows. They just needed some groceries and we grow grass and my LRP contract was on steers, so I only bought cows with bulls or steers at their side, like good, sound cows. They just needed some groceries and we grow grass and I, my lrp contract was on steers, so I only bought cows with bulls or steers at their side, and I was buying them at the value of what the calf is worth in october. Oh, yes, of everything I'm and then. So then when I split the pairs, when I weaned which we just weaned three weeks ago when I split the pairs, the cows were 300 pounds bigger and I turned right back around and sold those cows as bread spring cows. I sold them private treaty. I found somebody that's I didn't you know. I was very honest with what they were. Oh yeah, and this, this person is over the moon to have some good, solid, tall. They're way taller than I like, but you'll never have to worry about pulling a calf out of these big old girls. 0:21:05 - Cal Oh yes. 0:21:07 - Taylor Just good, solid, solid cows. And I guess what I was looking at, you know, at that time. I think I bought them in March, maybe, maybe April. The grass was greening up and you know, nobody was, nobody was darting their eyes at them just cause they look so pulled down from their calves. But the calf is already alive, the calf is on the ground, the calf is healthy and these girls just needed some groceries and that was what I probably did, the best as far as how my dollars were spent this year on. 0:21:33 - Cal You raise an important point there Regional differences in prices. You got to be careful. I think you got to be careful about cell barn you go to. A number of years ago I started going to a different cell barn just to observe and I started buying lightweight calves there because I thought they were undervalued. At this one market you could buy lightweight calves cheaper than I could buy them at other markets, all in the same area, and I don't know why that was. It's interesting. You just got to pay attention and look. You mentioned Wally Olson and Doug Ferguson. Have you been to either of their schools? 0:22:07 - Taylor I've been to Wally's school and then I read I read Doug's article every week that he puts out Wally's tied in through Right LLC and Ranching FYI, which I'm members of. So I interact with Wally a lot and, yeah, I think they're both great, they're both a little, have a little bit different philosophies on sell, buy but right that's, that's very much. Sell by the sell by philosophy is very much what's in the back of my head at all times whenever I'm buying and in fact the more I do it, the more it makes sense. 0:22:35 - Cal It's one of those things at the beginning. 0:22:37 - Taylor That's like you know. It's that it's so counterintuitive to most people. Maybe it's counterintuitive to most people. Maybe it's counterintuitive to most people. Maybe it's counterintuitive to you because your grandpa or your dad has done it differently. I actually envision it much more in my head. You know, you see, people do it with automobiles all the time. Oh yeah, you know, but in cows it's not as traditional right. I think the reason they do it in automobiles is because automobiles depreciate so fast. So people understand that very much in automobiles. Rarely do they appreciate so the whole. You would call it flipping vehicles is a very similar concept. But yeah, everything we sell we try to replace back within a two-week window and then it's the difference between there is the profit we've made back up, you know within a two week window, and then it's the difference between there is the profit we've made. So we're you make your profit. Especially once you comprehend that you make your profit on the buy and on the sell you're just cash flowing it. It gets pretty clear in your head how this thing goes and it makes it makes seeing good deals a little easier. 0:23:40 - Cal So One, one thing that Doug said, that, excuse me, one thing that Doug said and I'm going to paraphrase this incorrectly but if you sell animals and it's not a calf that was raised out of a cow, so you're not producing that animal, you're, you're selling that cow. If you're not replacing her and I'm using a cow as an example we're replacing that animal in two weeks on that same market. That's not a sell-buy. You just terminated that and that's a liquidation. And that's always in my head when I think about it If I'm not, and you can't liquidate your whole farm or you got nothing left True. 0:24:25 - Taylor Yeah, no, I don't disagree, Especially because the market can move right. Essentially, what you're doing is a liquidation and then you're doing another version, a rebuy. Yeah, yeah, I'm guilty of both. I mean, I'm pretty good at buying back right away, but I'm also guilty of like right now, while feed resources are a little scarce, with no rain, I've definitely got some of that sitting in some bank accounts. Oh yeah, as cash. Yeah. But I also know my market regionally pretty well and again, this is speculating and this would. This would go against what Doug says and I. I very much think that that guy's way wiser than I am. Oh, he is. Yeah, both of us, I, you know, trying to match my context, my feed resource and also my time. You know we're going into Thanksgiving, christmas. I still have these big, beautiful families. I know I'm going to do some traveling. I don't need a bunch of high-risk calves right now, oh yeah. So I know it's risky. The market can move, but regionally, traditionally, calves are pretty cheap here. The prices stay depressed between Thanksgiving to New Year's and then generally from New Year's till green grass. They're on a rising plane. So I feel like if there was a time of year to sit out and I'm not talking about all my capital sitting out, just some of it. If there was a time of year to sit on my hands a little bit, now is when I'm choosing to do it right, wrong or indifferent, that is as far as strict sell by marketing, that that does go against it. 0:25:53 - Cal Yeah, and everything's in your context and it's a balancing act. So, yeah, you have to do what you think's best, but I I do think, uh, doug's statement about that's very interesting. I have that in the back of my head. Yeah, now, like you mentioned, it's kind of a bad time to try and expand with current cattle prices. 0:26:16 - Taylor Yep, yeah, buy high, sell low has never worked. Ask Warren Buffett, he'll correct you immediately. 0:26:21 - Cal Right, yeah, yeah. Did you do land trust before working for him, or did you just you start working for him first? 0:26:29 - Taylor Kind of all happened simultaneously, but I literally just heard Nick on Working Cows podcast and cold called the CEO and said you need a farmer and rancher with some business experience to be on your team. And he said I agree, let's try it out. So I worked, I. I was looking for that service for this place as an enterprise to stack on my acres. Oh yeah, and then I started to work for them, just some contract labor stuff to see what skills I had, and then it turned into a full-time position. 0:26:56 - Cal So were you utilizing. When all that went through, did you decide, hey, maybe we can do some stuff with land trust on the land as a land owner yes, yeah, that's exactly it. 0:27:09 - Taylor So we knew we're only an hour from charlotte, north carolina. We have people wanting to come out here all the time. We have a pretty website, we have decent social media and it is part of my mission and vision to reconnect people to the land. You know, this isn't some closed door place. You? You want to come see cows? Come see cows with me in a controlled manner. Oh, yeah, so we needed to. We needed some type of tool to facilitate that, to cover ourselves liability wise and make it as low lift on ourselves as we can. Oh, right, so when I found, when I heard about Land Trust and Working Cows podcast, I was like this is exactly what we need. This is, this is Airbnb for outdoor recreation. This, this doesn't require any overheads from me. I don't have. I don't even have to build any extra webpage on my website. I don't have to deal with bookings, none of that stuff. They do all of that, and I just have to own the land and do what I'm good at. So I thought it was brilliant. So we immediately enrolled our place in it, and we don't do any hunting or fishing, we just do photography and farm tours. So, oh, okay, yeah, we already had some photography going on here, but I was only allowing photographers that I know and trusted to come out with their clients when I wasn't around. So, as that expanded, you know how can we? We were trying to figure out how we could mitigate the liability for other other photographers that we weren't as familiar with. So that's, that's how we, that's how we utilize it here. 0:28:35 - Cal We need to go ahead and introduce our overgrazing topic, which is sponsored by Redmond. At Redmond, we know that you thrive when your animals do. That's why it's essential to fill the gaps in your herd's nutrition with the minerals that they need. Made by nature, our ancient mineral salt and conditioner clay are the catalyst in optimizing the nutrients your animals get from their forage. Unaltered and unrefined, our minerals have the natural balance and proportion that your animals prefer. This gives your herd the ability to naturally regulate their mineral consumption as they graze. Our minerals won't just help you improve the health of your animals, but will also help you naturally build soil fertility so you can grow more nutrient-dense pasture year after year. Nourish your animals, your soil and your life with Redmond. Learn more at redmondcom agriculturecom, where we take a deeper dive into something about you or your operation, and land trust is what we're going to talk about today. So let's continue the conversation about land trust, and you said so. You're utilizing. You saw or you listened to Nick on Working Cows and, just as a teaser, nick's going to be on our podcast in just a couple of days and you decide to sign up as a landowner, but you're only offering photography and farm tool. How's that going for you? Has that met your expectations? 0:30:10 - Taylor Yeah, absolutely, as far as being a landowner through Land Trust and in utilizing the tool, it's completely seamless. It's an ironed out, flawless facilitation tool to bring, to bring people on your land and you maintain all control, but and you don't give up any rights, but no extra overheads or lift for you, right, there's no, that's, that's the best thing, it's an it's. It's a new revenue stream for any farmer ranch. That's not tied to politics, commodities, markets or weather. In fact, sometimes it does better when one of those is down because people want to, people want to come back to the land. Right, we saw that during COVID. So it's just a tool. It's a free tool to landowners that you can use to to do that. And when I say bring people back to the land, that can be in hunting and fishing and full disclosure. That's very much how land trust started. But land trust has. Land trust has moved into what they we call the farm experience model, which is stuff like photography and tours. We have some archeological type listings, you know, birding type listings, all these things that it's not just hunting and fishing. And what somebody was, what somebody lists, is completely up to the landowner, which is neat. So it's all at their discretion, whatever they want to list, and we're just a tool in which you are able to have all that done where you know a turnkey package to get people, get agritourism folks on your farm. 0:31:44 - Cal Yeah, have you? Have you had photographers come out since you've listed it there? 0:31:50 - Taylor Yeah, yep, we've had. I'm not sure how many, we've had plenty we have. We have photographers that use this regularly and then we've had some randoms that you know we do a little marketing ourselves land trust list and marketing but we've had photographers find our listing and bring clients. We've also had clients reach out to us that we try to connect with a photographer and we just make a booking for that party and then they come out and we have a photographer across the street who comes when we're not here. 0:32:24 - Cal She has a vehicle to get people around and she knows the best spots, and just happens without us even knowing if it needs to. 0:32:27 - Taylor So are they? What are photographers looking for In general? I've I've known I don't I'm a photography amateur, but I've noticed they're generally looking for light and contrast. So, being tall grass grazers as we are, we have long wispy grass, a lot, and maybe some weeds, and we have, you know, our place is rolling hills, beautiful oak trees and creek bottoms, so we have some very picturesque type scenes. I have learned the hard way that, depending on editing style, they're looking for different regions of the farm where there's either a lot of light or not a lot of light. The other cool thing we did this summer was we had some ground that we had to till up. We had two acres that had some perk holes dug in it for another reason. These were big, dangerous holes that were never filled in. It would swallow you up on a four-wheeler. We just tilled the ground and, rather than plant, most of our grasses are cool season forage. So rather than plant fescue in the spring, which wouldn't do very well, we planted some summer annuals. So we did sunflowers and millet and then, as you can imagine, sunflowers are beautiful to shoot photography in front of all summer. And if, in fact I learned a valuable lesson. Next year I will definitely plant those, probably in stages, to prolong sunflower season. 0:33:39 - Cal So they're not all riped at once or all in bloom at one time. 0:33:43 - Taylor Exactly Cause they was really pretty and then it was really dead and I had to. We actually had to postpone some bookings. A photographer had. She wanted a later booking than we had live flowers for. 0:33:53 - Cal But we were able to monetize. 0:33:56 - Taylor You know, we were able to pay for all of the disking and the planting of all that with just photography. And then we did dove hunting over top of it all fall. Now, we didn't monetize the dove hunting, but we kept that for friends, family. And then, as you listened to on district of conservation podcast, we had some different journalists and you know personalities come in to hunt with me to experience a land trust type model. We just never opened it up to the public but, that's a really good example of how a thousand bucks and two acres could be your cash register all summer and all through dove season. I guess you could honestly replant it and move right onto like a like a cool season annual type forage for wildlife too, if you want to hunt over it. But there's a proof of concept and it was very I will. I know how to make it even more lucrative next summer. 0:34:42 - Cal Oh well, very good, now one thing immediately. You know, coming from the regenerative realm, I'm like how can I get sunflowers in without disturbing my soul? I don't know if you can broadcast sunflower seeds, if they would get enough ground contact, or you've got to do at least some light disking to get them in, or not I know you can no-till them. 0:35:04 - Taylor I know a lot of those. No, do they hide high diversity mixes? You know I I don't want to name any name brands but I know a couple of them that have. You know different types of. You know they'll have some brassicas and they'll have some flat forbs and flowers and and all types of stuff and those become know it's not a monoculture. They might have 15 species in them they become really pretty in the summer. There's, you know, flowers that are just as pretty as sunflowers and they create a lot of contrast for those photographers as well. Oh yeah, I know a lot of those flower type stuff are in those summer annual mixes. 0:35:36 - Cal Yeah, that's true. 0:35:37 - Taylor Yeah, one of these days I'm gonna have a no-till drill, but I don't have one yet. I hear you, I want the same thing. It'd probably be bad. It'd be like a gateway drug to me. Planning way too much, oh I I would agree. 0:35:51 - Cal Yeah, I could fully see that being a problem, but one of these days now you mentioned photography, you mentioned farm and then you mentioned hunting and fishing were how it really got started. Is that the realm of uses that it imagines? And, just in transparency, when I talked to you about this, about land trusts, I wasn't familiar with land trusts but I assumed it was more like hip camp or one of those sites where people come camp on your land. 0:36:25 - Taylor Yeah, I mean we have lodging and camping within them. The site experience, like going on the website landtrustcom is similar to going on Airbnb or hip camp in the way, the user experience of of how you would locate whatever you're looking, whatever type of experience you're looking for, If you are, you know, going to be, if you're somebody that's going to go, do the experience. The experiences range from all types of hunting and fishing to anything a landowner wants to list I, you know we have a ton of types of experiences. So anytime a landowner wants to list something new, we're all for it. You know, within reason, within insurance policies, right, you can only do so much. But yeah, we have. We have lodging, camping, fishing, we have hunting experiences. With lodging, a lot of the things are add on to, like there's some experiences you can book and then, if you like lodging, a lot of the things are add-on too, like there's some experiences you can book and then, if you like lodging, you can add that on and it might be. It might be a full cabin they have, it might be just rv hookups they have. That's very dependent on what the landowner offers. But we have, we've been real active with hunting. That's how the company started out west. As we're moving east, which we're picking up steam pretty quick, we're adding a lot of things. You know birding, ranch tours, farm tours, photography, trying to think of all the different things. We have a lot of different things. We have, you know, some cool coastal fishing now in Florida. We have some gator hunts in Louisiana, some like trophy gator hunts at a very cool historical place. But as far as if you're a landowner and you have something to offer, it can be whatever you know. Like I said, we're just the facilitation tool. We we literally a team of real people build you a listing to showcase whatever you have on your farmer ranch and we work with you to set the prices accordingly to what, how much you want to earn and how much business farmer ranch. And we work with you to set the prices accordingly to what how much you want to earn and how much business you want. And we go from there. It's a free market. We don't tell you what you should charge. We can advise you if you'd like that. But if you have more listings than you want, maybe raise your prices a little bit. If you're not getting as many, maybe bring them back down. What's really neat about us is we have we. If you list your land with us, you get comp. You get a layer of complimentary insurance, so we handle all the insurance you don't have. You do not have to go get other layers. 0:38:48 - Cal If you list your land. 0:38:50 - Taylor if you list your land with us, go back up. So it's a two-sided marketplace. So all of our users they have to book your. You would have to book your land through land trust. So when they're signing up for their profile they're agreeing to terms of service and within that they're indemnifying the landowners 100% non-liable. Now this is America. Anybody can sue anybody for anything. So we have multiple layers of insurance that come with your listing. We have a liability policy, we have property damage policy as well. As we can advise you on your state regulations. A lot of states have agritourism I don't know clauses within their state constitution and everything that we do falls under an agritourism title. So we are truly an agritourism company. So if you our CEO likes to say and I'm sure he will say it, and I use the line all the time like if you've had anybody on your land that's not in your immediate family, you're actually more exposed than if you were to have a land trust listing and just make them sign up to come on your land, you know, through that listing. 0:39:52 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:39:52 - Taylor You're covered for that time. The nice thing about it, too, is there's no contract to the landowner and it's free to try. It's truly a revenue share. I knew we're gonna get to the money part of this eventually. So let's just jump in. It's a revenue share. It's 80, 20. So if you have a thousand dollar listing, you're gonna get 800. We're gonna get paid 200. It's a revenue share oh okay, um, when people sign up to use the service to come book something at your farm, they are ID verified through a third-party verification service straight through our website. So they have to be a real person, they have to have a US driver's license, and then we also have their credit card on file. So as soon as they book, the money sits in escrow, so the money is credited to you. You know how much money you have coming your way the morning of the event or booking 8 o'clock when they step foot on your property. That money drops from the escrow account into your accounts. The money's transferred, it's left in escrow. So if there was a cancellation or a refund, we don't have to get it back out of your accounts Right. 0:40:59 - Cal Now, with that are all the things and this really speaks to a little bit earlier conversation you mentioned on the photography. You have someone guide them or take them around On all these things. Are you, the farmer, functioning as the guide for them? 0:41:16 - Taylor No, you don't have to be. It says all decisions are up to the landowner. We have some landowners that want to be very, very hands-on and involved and that's their prerogative. And as long as we explain that in the listing and you're not misrepresenting yourself, that's fine. Every listing comes with a listing instructions. So when somebody was to book your property, they're going to get a text and an email with the instructions for their listing. So, on some of our stuff that's more remote, or some of our stuff where our landowner does not choose to be involved at all, oh yes, that person doing recreation is going to get a GPS pin of where to park. They're going to get instructions on. You know, walk through this gate, please close all gates, check in here. Whatever you build, you build all that completely customized with our onboarding specialists and our customer service team. So it's so it's handled exactly the way you want it handled. You know we have some landowners we have w over 1.25 million acres in our network now. So we have some of those acreages that the landowner would never want to drive all the way out there to the backside of his property just to check in with a pheasant hunter, right? Oh, yeah, he knows, as long as that guy shuts the gate, it's good. The other thing to mention is the way we keep good people within our network is similar to Uber. Every time an experience is done, both the landowner rates the sportsman or the recreationalist, and they rate the landowner. So we were able to weed out bad eggs. We're able to personally call and handle any non-satisfied parties. We're a team of real people that are very hands-on and I guess I should mention, because I keep saying we, that I work for the company now. 0:42:59 - Cal I guess we didn't cover that. I knew that I never really covered that. We transitioned into it, but yeah. 0:43:05 - Taylor But yeah, we, I was looking for this product exactly for my, my farm. We found it. I heard the CEO, nick, on on Working Cows podcast. I have some business experience. With cows being so expensive I knew I probably wasn't going to scale my farm this year to be at the revenue the revenue needed and we're still in a growth stage. So I had, and I had some extra time and, as you know, I spend a lot of time in my office working on my business or working on the business as much as I work in the business. So it was kind of a natural fit. I enjoy business, I really enjoy agriculture, and I called Nick and I was like man, I have some skills. I, you know I'm fresh off a racing career but I have some technical skills that maybe I could help out. So we started with like a contract labor basis to see what I could help with and it kind of blossomed to there and it turned into me working for the company full time. The company's based out of Bozeman, montana, so there's a time difference which works out well in my case. I can get a couple hours in on the farm before I go to work for land trust. I know my schedule is very lined out for land trust and very lined up for the farm. I'm pretty type A and I run a pretty tight schedule anyway. So I kind of work for both companies cohesively and they both certainly compliment each other. If I'm calling a landowner in South Dakota, I can start the conversation by talking about the cattle market, if I need to, you know. But I think it probably holds some weight that the company's run by people who are within the industry itself and not, you know, we're not we. The company is. I would be considered a tech agritourism company, but we're not all from Berkeley, california, behind computers and don't have a clue what farm farmers and ranchers go through on the day to day. So I think that helps with our success for sure. 0:44:51 - Cal Yeah, I'm sure it does. As you mentioned earlier, it's free for landowner. Sign up, you get some insurance to go with that. Sign up, you get some insurance to go with that. Is there, as you think about landowners and who can sign up, do you all have like a minimum size of acreage? You're thinking you got to be at least this many acreage before you can sign up. 0:45:13 - Taylor I guess, but I hesitate to put a size value on that, Meaning you could have a nice. I know I only have a 60 acre property here and that's more than enough to accomplish the photography and the ranch tour thing that we do. You're probably not going to find a a very successful 20 acre elk property. It may be maybe you have a really good four acre bass pond that's just loaded and you sit on 20 acres. That might be very successful. So we handle it on a case by case basis. But yes, we do have. We know if it's not going to fit our model and we'll be very honest with you about that, because even though it's free, we're going to have time invested in you by the time we get everything built out and we don't want to waste your time, we don't want to waste our time. But there's no exact minimum size acreage. It's more as does the experience fit the acreage? Are we offering a good experience? We want everybody. We're an experiences company, both landowner and sportsman side. What we've found is not intentionally, but very much so. We hear so often from our landowners how much they actually enjoy having these strangers come to their farm. I think if you really thought about some old farmers and ranchers, you know most people just want to share their story at some point and they want people to have an appreciation of their life's work, of their life's work. So this is sometimes their channel to be able to tell somebody and show somebody that's genuinely interested their, their life's work, which they they might not not otherwise have a chance to do. That. That's been an like a very fulfilling part of this job for me. That was not something I planned on on being, but I'll write some blogs about some of these farmers and ranchers or we'll hear the reviews in his life. I enjoyed so much showing you know Roger and his family around all day. You know they're welcome back anytime and you can just hear the joy in their voice. 0:47:10 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:47:11 - Taylor That's awesome. Very good, you know, I think about, as you say, that my grandpa would love nothing more than someone to come up there and he'll show them around yeah, or whatever they may need I my grandpa like my grandpa that passed away last year, that was nothing he enjoyed more at the end of his life than just throwing somebody in the farm truck and four hours later you'd be pulling back in a dairy farm, and he showed you every corner of every field and told you every story that's happened oh, yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't have a grandpa. We don't have a grandpa tour listing, but somebody is going to have a grandpa tour listing and make a lot of money. 0:47:48 - Cal Yes, exactly yeah. Now, one thing we mentioned throughout is landowners. Is this a possible revenue avenue for someone who leased property from an absentee landowner? 0:48:00 - Taylor Yes, and we do have. We have plenty of cases of that, especially, you know, out West. That's a big business model. Oh yeah, it's not uncommon to find ranches that are owned by an absentee landowner. They might have an operating company that's an LLC, that's one set of people and you might, and they might operate off of lease cows that somebody else owns right, oh yeah, set of people and you might and they might operate off of lease cows that somebody else owns, right, so right, yes, that that's allowed. We put it upon. We put it upon the landowner and the, the absentee landowner and the operator to figure out how the revenue is distributed and and figure that out amongst themselves. You know, we advise, we don't want any, we want it to work as smoothly as possible so we can help advise that relationship. I think a lot of those things, I hope a lot of those things are spoken about when people lease land. I think it's very common, probably where there's things like oil and gas that would be called surface rights, but hunting lease rights are a thing of real value nowadays and those are generally discussed within contracts. So we try to help people work through that and and and try to help them reach a resolution that helps all Cause it on their end. Maybe it's included in a lease, you know, maybe the leases, I don't know. It could be a revenue share model, it could be, could be whatever satisfies that party, but we will help with it. We don't facilitate it between the two parties, but we'll certainly steer you the right direction, right when, I think about the properties I have leased, part of them. 0:49:25 - Cal I have hunting rights on them that I lease out and that was the agreement and then part of it we don't have any hunting rights because they were concerned about the liability on it and everything about just really concerned. But they might be interested in something else, so so that's an interesting potential revenue or avenue of revenue that that might work for somebody. Yeah absolutely. 0:49:50 - Taylor Like you know, I'm a I'm a hunter, I hunt a lot of different species and and I'm about to be a dad, actually in February and I think one of the this kind of goes back to racing. But one of the things I realized was that you can't buy more time, that's for sure. Right? Yeah, and it's not always easy to just schedule a week-long hunting trip in advance here, especially if you run a farm and ranch and weather's changed. You know you have to be flexible. So this model allows the sportsman to really have some flexibility. Hey, I have three days. Let's, let me look at the map. Like I'm in North Carolina, Maybe I want to go hunt whitetails, whitetails in Kentucky. Look at the map, find a property that suits me, send the landowner a request to hunt. He or she accepts it or denies it. I jump in the truck and I go. That's much different than having to pay for and maintain a yearly lease and keep a property up, and I think it's actually really good value. Now that I know what some hunting leases cost throughout America, Sure, but there's also a case for the times when you can take a week's trip to Wyoming or whatever and you want to go with an outfitter. This is just a different tier. It's between going to public land and between going to pay an outfitter. We kind of call it like it's like DIY private hunting. 0:51:09 - Cal You get to do it yourself. 0:51:10 - Taylor You reserve the right for the whole property so you don't have to worry about bumping into other people. You know you mentioned you listened to the district conservation podcast of Gabriella Hoffman. I never thought about this, but she was a first time dove hunter. Yes, and just him. It was just her and I in the field and I don't know if you've ever dove hunted but like a big dove hunt can be extremely intimidating for somebody. Lots of hunters in the field, lots of shooting but can be hard to get your bearings and I you know she was with me. She shot her first dove. It was awesome. She had some misses. She realized, oh wow, these things fly fast and they're erratically, but it was like a really good controlled environment to introduce somebody to hunting and have them have a good, positive experience. I never thought about that. 0:52:06 - Cal And I was like man, this is the perfect way to get people into hunting until they're really comfortable to maybe go on some of these bigger or other types of hunts. So yeah, oh yeah, we. I've never done dove hunting. I've only limited experiences with honey and it's just not a priority in my life. But we had a local gentleman who fishes and does some other hunting on us. He did some dove hunting this year on us. Yeah, so interesting. I'd never been around it, so that's the us. He did some dove hunting this year on us, yeah, so interesting. I'd never been around it, so that's the closest I've been around dove hunting, but it sounds like she enjoyed the trip on her podcast. 0:52:30 - Taylor Oh, I think she's hooked. I think she's hooked for sure. 0:52:34 - Cal One thing you mentioned a little bit ago and I just want to make sure I heard it correctly. So someone says, hey, let's see if something's available, and they get on the website and they look and they find, oh, here's. Here's the activity I want to take. It goes to the farm or landowner to approve or disapprove that kind of like Airbnb. You make a request for a house but the the owner, could deny it or allow it either way. 0:53:05 - Taylor Yeah, that's exactly how it works. That's you know. You asked about how involved a landowner has to be and the minimum effort involved is you have to have a cell phone to accept or deny the bookings that come in. That's it. That's the minimum. We take a lot of pride in that. This model leaves all the control in the landowner's hands. So they actually have. The landowners have a backend to the website, a landowner portal where people can send them messages. You can talk directly to the landowner before you go get tips get you know. You can converse, and you can converse securely through our website, which is nice. You don't have to worry about some random person having your phone number. If you're not comfortable with that, um, but the landowner can also manage the dates that it's available, just like airbnb, you know if? he brings in, he or she brings in their family for thanksgiving, and they always do a family deer hunt. They can block off a week before Thanksgiving, the week of Thanksgiving and the week after if they'd like, and nobody can book it. Conversely, every booking request has to be approved. So if you forgot to block something off and somebody makes a request and you're like I just don't, I can't have people here that day, you can deny it or you can propose a new time, or you can speak directly to the people. But yeah, everything's approved. The landowner you stay in complete control the whole time. I think landowners I don't know many landowners that have ever had a bad experience with us oh yeah, it's very, it's very. Now the control is all with the landowner. So you have to be a little bit actively engaged. That is what's different than just a lease model where somebody leases your back hundred acres and you don't know who's coming or going. But if you're a landowner that's into, you know having control and to your rights on your property, this is the way to go. 0:54:52 - Cal Yeah, and you mentioned on there it comes with, you know, some layers of security for you insurance. So what happens? A hunter shows up and they shoot a cow, Because sadly, you know that happens, We've had it happen. Of course it's never a hunter, we told them they could be there. But what happens in that case? Or if you get a guest on and they destroy some property, what happens? 0:55:23 - Taylor I mean, we have all that in place to deal with it insurance-wise and we take pride in settling those issues. We will call the parties and settle the issues. Luckily, we've never had that happen. Nor do I ever want it to happen. 0:55:40 - Cal But it's a. 0:55:40 - Taylor it's a real concern. In some cases, on the property damage side, we carry an insurance policy for that. But in some cases it might just be cheaper for us to reimburse, you know, if it's a tore up gate are we gonna? File a claim for a $200 gate. No, we're probably gonna send you a check and ask if you can drive to Southern States or the farm store you know and reimburse you for your time. Sure, you know we do get that concern a lot. We have big insurance policies in place to cover incidents like that. 0:56:09 - Cal So Very good Taylor, very informative about land trust. Like we said earlier, nick is going to come on and so on Friday we're going to release an episode with Nick on it and talk about his journey, why he just started Land Trust and a little bit more about Land Trust and how it's going from his point of view. Taylor really appreciate you sharing about it today and it is time for us to do our famous four questions, sponsored by Ken Cove Farm Fence. Ken Cove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere At Ken Cove Farm Fence they believe there's true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow, proper management and monitoring can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant. Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres, ken Cove has everything you need to do it well, from reels to tumbleweels, polytwine to electric nets, water valves to water troughs, You'll find what you're looking for at Ken Cove. They carry brands like Speedrite, o'briens, kiwi Tech, strainrite, jobe and more. Ken Cove is proud to be part of your regentive journey. Call them today or visit KenCovecom. And be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Ken Cove YouTube channel at Ken Cove Farm Fence for helpful how-to videos and new product releases. And I'm excited, taylor, because you've already answered them before, but we're going to do them again and we're going to see if those answers have changed, if they stayed the same, no peeking over trying to figure out your last answers. 0:58:04 - Taylor Yeah. 0:58:05 - Cal Okay, our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? 0:58:12 - Taylor I believe I split this into a couple categories last time. But I think to know where you're going you have to know where you came from for sure. So in the cattle industry, I think knowing the history of how the cattle industry evolved in the U? S is is a good, good foundation so you can help think about where it might be going. So I, one of my favorite books is called cattle kingdom and it's very much on the history of the cattle industry in the U? S and and you know, if you like old cowboy books, it's real good too. I've read all of the grass management books, but I really liked Dale Strickler books. There's managing, there's managing, there's managing pasture, restoring your soil. I think there's one about managing in a drought, but those books are really good, because they're yeah, making your farm drought resistant. Resilient. Yep, that's it yeah. 0:59:04 - Cal I'm looking around because I have it on my shelf. 0:59:07 - Taylor Yeah, I like the illustrations in that book. I liked it. It's almost coffee table style. 0:59:10 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:59:20 - Taylor Yeah, well, the Managing Pastures is kind of too. Yep, absolutely, I think a really good one before you get in the business of farming is understanding. I know this wasn't on my list before, but this has been a favorite and a big changer in my life years and years ago was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, poor Dad. 0:59:28 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:59:30 - Taylor Understanding what's an asset, what's a liability, what's costing you money and what's making you money is a really good place to start in farming and ranching, because it's really easy to look like the fanciest farmer ranch on the block and realize you might have a lot of things costing you money and not many things making you money. 0:59:47 - Cal Right, yeah, excellent resources there. Taylor, you did mention Del Strickler books before, but Rich Dad, poor Dad I don't think you mentioned that, but someone else has mentioned that on the podcast before and it's a really good book Cattle Kingdom. I don't know that book, so I'll have to look that up. 1:00:04 - Taylor It's a good one. I get people know I'm a reader and I just get stacks of books for Christmas and I plow through them and I think Cattle Kingdom might have been between. I might have read them between podcasts. 1:00:14 - Cal Oh yeah, Well, between podcasts. Oh yeah, Well, very good. Our second question what is your favorite tool for? 1:00:21 - Taylor the farm. I'm going to split this one as well. We live and die by a soil temperature thermometer. Oh, yes, I have a little $15 Taylor, no pun intended, just who it's named by soil temperature probe that I keep on the four-wheeler. That really dictates a lot of answers about when we move cows, how much grass we take. I feel like if you boil grass management down and you just want to keep growing forage, the big part of that is keeping your soil at the right temperature, especially where I live, where it'll be 110 in the shade some days in the summer. So that's also dictates when I employ different types of grazing methods. You know, there's all these names now for different grazing methods especially in the spring when I'm maybe trying to stomp some seed heads in or something else. But I'm because I know that if I take too much I'm not going to nuke my soil. You know, with the sun Right Can't do that. I can't do that in July and August. Here I got to be pretty forgiving to try to keep that soil in that optimum range for growth. So that's probably my most useful tool as far as managing my cattle. Secondarily, that goes right along with the grazing chart. But then I would be remiss to say that an Excel spreadsheet, or in my case Google sheets, is something I use every single day, multiple hours a day. It's such a powerful tool, it's a calculator that's on your phone that links to your computer that links to other people. I use it daily multiple times. 1:02:04 - Cal Excellent resource there. I love Google Sheets. I love a good spreadsheet Soil temperature probe. I really hadn't thought about that. I think you bring up a valid point there about soil temperature. You know, if you go in in the spring or fall and do non-selective grazing, you're reducing that soil cover down greatly. But if your temperature is not going to affect that soil temperature negatively, like it would during the heat of summer, then it might not be as bad as if you do it during the heat of summer. So during the heat of summer, to keep that from happening, modify your grazing just a little bit to leave more residue there. You know all these grazing methods we hear about. Sometimes we hear, and people just do it this way. They're all tools. They're all tools for us that we can pick out and use when we need to use it. Yep, you hit the nail on the head with tools. They're all tools for us that we can pick out and use when we need to use it. 1:03:01 - Taylor Yep, you hit the nail on the head with tools, I feel like. Whether it's finances or grazing or cattle, you just need to put different tools in your toolbox, understand how to use them and when to use them, and I very much agree. I see a lot of arguments over different grazing methods and the argument is one level too high. You need to go to the root of the argument, which is, if your goal is grow maximum amount of grass, you need to know what your goal is first of all. Is it cattle health? Is it soil health? Is it grow grass? Is it a year that cattle prices are high and you're going to take some grass out of that let's call it a savings account of your farm and you know you're going to trade some of that grass value for some more economic value. That might be a year, but you got to. You got to get down one more layer in the context of what does it take to grow grass, and that's water, soil, temperature. 1:03:53 - Cal that's pretty much all that grass cares about and just just just speaking a little bit more about that. My goal for a paddock I give cattle may change day to day depending upon where that paddock is on my land and what I'm trying to do there, so it it could change. Well, it could change for the paddock they're in. Today I want, I want to make sure I leave more residue in the paddock I put them in. Tomorrow have some briars and I want them stomped out. You know it's going to fluctuate pretty rapidly, or could? 1:04:23 - Taylor Sure, yeah, yeah and it's. I mean, all of your land is going to be an evolution, it's going to change year to year. It's. It's either going, it's either getting better, getting worse, and sometimes there's sometimes it's okay and necessary to make a pasture worse. Maybe it's a set, like I have a sacrifice pasture right now for the betterment of the rest of the land. Oh yeah, I think as long as you have a plan and you know where you're going, it's okay. You know that's, that's okay. 1:04:53 - Cal Just know, have a plan and figure it out. Well, I, I know I'm going to do a little bit more non-selective next year, at least in the spring time, because it was a little too selecting. My paddocks were too big and my Sarisa lespedeza had a great year and the cattle only like it when it's small. Gotcha, you know, I would have to say my land went backwards this year, but we're, we're going to use it as a stepping stone for next year. 1:05:20 - Taylor Funny enough with we had historic summer rains and I thought I had the bees knees. We grew a lot of grass, but I think I brought my land backwards as well. We when they're calling for an inch of rain and then we get six, it's really hard to not damage a pasture when there's cows out there that happened twice this summer and you know you beat up my cows aren't huge or anything, but when it's that wet they're going to pug it up. Oh, and I definitely have to do a little damage repair this fall, yeah, yeah. 1:05:49 - Cal Well, that was a. We kind of got off on a tangent there about grazing methods on the favorite tools. That wasn't your tool of choice. If someone skipped over that, you probably want to go back and listen. Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started? 1:06:05 - Taylor Okay. So my favorite advice to somebody getting started now is the I didn't make this up, this isn't a Taylor Moyer made up. But somebody said to me whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right, right and it just comes down to mindset and I'm not I'm not like talking about hippy dippy shit. I just mean you set out to be a farmer or a rancher and your mind and you have it in your mind that you're gonna go do it, go do it. Don't let anybody tell you you can't take that from experience with me, and that also goes for little things within farming and ranching. You know, if you don't think you can do something and you try it anyway, it's probably not going to work because you're not putting your best effort forward. And if you do think you can do something and you set out to do it, you're probably going to find a way to make it work. Or you might learn lessons along the way, but get there. So I think a lot of that goes to mindset, and I think mindset's super important within anything you do, but certainly in farming and ranching. Oh yeah, I. 1:07:06 - Cal I completely agree. I think that coach attributed to Henry Ford I'm not sure if, maybe who who really said it. You know you start digging into quotes and sometimes they have interesting histories on their own, but I do think that mindset is so important, just to continue on that. You know your mindset determines, before you even begin, whether you're going to be successful or not. Sure, yeah. And lastly, taylor, where can others find out more about you as well as LandTrust? 1:07:36 - Taylor Sure. Well, first and foremost, they can find more about Land Trust at landtrustcom. That's our website and you can even talk to a real person on there. You chat with us, however you want to communicate with us, and Land Trust is also on all social media. So, landtrust underscore hunt. Landtrust underscore landowners we have a couple of different Instagram accounts. But yeah, just please. If you have any questions, come ask us. We're real people. You'll talk to a human being. You're not talking to a chat bot. It'll be Josh or Colin or myself if you call the landowner side. So we'd love to chat, answer any questions you have. Me personally. You can also hit me up personally. That's fine. We have a farm website, ridgeviewlandandcattlecom. Instagram is ridgeviewlandandcattle, or you can find me on any of the other things at Taylor C Moyer, whether that's X or Instagram, but I love to talk about this stuff. I love to work with people. If anybody you know just wants to bounce ideas or chat, I run a pretty broad network of folks and if I can, I don't. I have no shame asking other people for help. If, if I, if you, if there's a question you have that I can't answer, but I love to help folks and I love to talk about this stuff, so please reach out to me and let's have a chat. 1:08:50 - Cal Well, Taylor really enjoyed getting on here and catching up with you. I'd probably be a little while before we catch up again with a baby on the way for you. That'll keep you busy for a while. I really appreciate coming on and sharing today. 1:09:05 - Taylor Yeah, I appreciate it. Last thing I want to say is Nick is much better at talking about land trust than I am, so if this is halfway interesting, please listen to the next episode from our CEO. 1:09:16 - Cal Very good. Thank you, taylor, thanks Cal. I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I know I did. Thank you for listening and if you found something useful, please share it. Share it on your social media. Tell your friends, get the word out about the podcast. Helps us grow. If you happen to be a grass farmer and you'd like to share about your journey, go to grazinggrasscom and click on Be Our Guest. Fill out the form and I'll be in touch. We appreciate your support by sharing our episodes and telling your friends about it. You can also support our show by buying our merch. We get a little bit back from that. Another way to support the show is by becoming a Grazing Grass Insider. Grazing Grass Insiders enjoy bonus content, monthly Zooms and discounts. You can visit the website grazinggrasscom, click on support and they'll have the links there. Also, if you haven't left us a review, please do. It really helps us, as people are searching for podcasts and I was just checking them and we do not have very many reviews for 2024. So if you haven't left us a review, please do. Until next time, keep on grazing grass. Transcribed by https://podium.page