e95. One Pastor's Journey to Regenerative Farming with Rob Dowdle

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 95.

[00:00:04] Pigs perform both in the woods and on pasture and on cover crops,

[00:00:09] but they have the power to transform soil.

[00:00:13] You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, helping grass farmers learn from

[00:00:17] grass farmers and every episode features a grass farmer and their operation.

[00:00:24] I'm your host, Cal Hardeech.

[00:00:27] You're growing more than grass. Together, they can help you grow not only a healthier operation, but a legacy that lasts. Learn more on their website at noble.org. It's N-O-B-L-E dot org forward slash grazing.

[00:01:41] Be sure and listen in the upcoming open for our guest reader if you're interested in that. Hop over to grassfarmerbookclub.com and be our guest. With those things said, let's talk to Rob. Rob, we want to welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast.

[00:03:01] We're excited you're here today.

[00:03:02] I'm glad seventh, my siblings and I are the seventh generation who have worked on the farm and my kids are the eighth and of course their cousins as well. So it's been a lot of fun.

[00:04:20] When I graduated from high school though, the the eggs and then Jumped into pigs and since then I have been hooked on Raisin pigs. Of course, we still raise cattle. My dad has a cow calf operation now

[00:05:42] that I help him with I

[00:05:46] Finish out some of those steers and and all on grass stayed as far away as they can. In fairness, they do come back and help once in a while. I really think they use it as a photo op, but they do once in a while. They'll show up to do something. One of mine, you talking about castrating a keph early, it made me think of something

[00:08:20] that happened early on my brother. He won't be pastor by training. In fact, I'm still a full-time pastor now and just part-time farmer. If there is such a thing, I don't think there's such a thing as a part-time farmer

[00:08:23] or a part-time pastor, I recognize the value.

[00:09:40] But I do enjoy that animal husbandry.

[00:09:44] And so, but when we left Georgia, in Oh, yes. And one of the first things you did the garden, and then you got poultry. I assume poultry has a low level or low bar of entry. You can get chickens pretty easy,

[00:11:00] and they're kind of the gateway animal for so many people.

[00:11:04] How did that journey go for you?

[00:11:07] Were you doing pasture poultry, Sometimes they'd sell, sometimes they wouldn't. We had them priced based on our input costs, but because of the scale that we've ever had, particularly in labor, it was just a lot of work. I got out of the egg layers and kept doing some meat chickens for a year, and we had some folks that lived in the area that have since moved away.

[00:12:22] But one of them asked me, why are you getting rid of the egg layers?

[00:12:25] They're such good eggs. of eggs, you know, to people here and there. It's a good business plan, but it's in terms of predators, in terms of so many other things. You've got to really be dialed in. And I think it's best to be on the farm at least twice a day. And even though we're living five miles away for a part-time farmer, it's just not, it just wasn't worth a hassle for me.

[00:13:42] Growing up on a dairy, we started airing when I mostly like Australorps, but they're blue Australorps and all as well. And so, and I was breeding them and I did sell some some breeding stock of the Australorps

[00:15:00] and worked well, shipped them.

[00:15:03] You know, we had the certification from the state you're not, when you're there every day, maybe even twice a day for a little while, but you know, keeping the predators at bay, even when they're in a well-built pen,

[00:16:22] not a pen with chicken wire, but even in a well-built pen,

[00:16:25] it's that you move every day. The first pigs we got were American guinea hogs and I there's some story and I don't quite remember it They were there with had four of them and they were Great pigs. We processed them for ourselves um but I'm not really sure what first attracted me to to getting pigs does American guinea hogs we got it was kind of a

[00:17:44] I think somebody

[00:17:46] Dropped them off at the farm or kid. So I'm talking the mid-70s to late-70s.

[00:19:04] Maybe even into the early 80s a little bit, but I know pigs went dropped really in price I don't think there's any way to compete unless you're raising them really large scale in a barn. In fact, we've got, and even then it's incredibly difficult to do if you're doing it independently. At a Mississippi, in a Mississippi pork producers meeting, I think it was almost three years ago now. I met a guy who is doing it independently.

[00:20:25] Prestige farms typically raises them here in Mississippi. They would give him a little bit of a premium, but he was still raising his pegs Cheaper he was selling his pegs cheaper than I could have mine processed I Mean it was it was ridiculous I mean his cost and my cost were so much different in large part because he was mixing and grinding his own feet But he was he was just doing it on a very different scale

[00:21:43] but he was competing with that kind of of market and

[00:21:47] for us, you know, our

[00:22:50] are with beef regenerative farms can compete fairly well, even in a conventional market with pasture-based systems because most cows are sold through the cell barns anyway.

[00:22:58] But with pigs, unless you have that direct hog that takes 18 months to get the processing weight of 150 pounds. Right, yeah. It's a large breed, not quite like you get with a pot-bellied pig, but requires a good bit of feed,

[00:24:23] even if they do forage better, which I'm not sure that they do, but that's another argument from the other day.

[00:24:26] And even if you only feed, even if you only feed a large pig, We got one Hampshire that kept jumping out of his pens and the barns. He was ready to call him and he sold them to us. But they just didn't quite for whatever reason, the coloring for the herford. He had one of them. They may have too much white on their face or body.

[00:25:40] Just that kind of stuff.

[00:25:44] That's what we started off. Comment on that, but it may be the wagoo of port, but when you've got a pig that instead of taking six months to processing takes I've got two left from our first fair when that was over two years ago. I've got perk bircher durac crosses

[00:27:02] that were born in They have done, they've performed really well. Really good foragers. Some of them are better mothers than others. And so we're kind of culling through our breeding stock. So, but that's, that's kind of the brief roller coaster ride of, of how we've gotten to

[00:28:24] to kind of settled on our meat pigs now.

[00:29:24] and using some traditional breeds and using some large types and figuring out what works for your market.

[00:29:25] So I appreciate that insight.

[00:29:29] There's some detailed, there's a, I mean, this isn't really the place for it, but there,

[00:29:36] I think there are particular niche markets for kunik was three, my dad or one, my dad changed my diapers on the farm because I wanted to go to the farm with and cold, cold with it. But the problem with that in my mind, raising, especially for retail sales,

[00:32:04] meat because people didn't know what finished animals really were. And I don't...

[00:32:08] I really prefer not to finish them on grain, but that's a whole

[00:32:12] another story for a whole other day, but my point is, like this past year,

[00:32:16] we didn't produce any grass-finished beef because

[00:32:20] we didn't have the forage available

[00:32:24] because of some drought, also in part because of some health issues because they're monogastric and the grain, but it's really hard to appreciate the value of, like a kuni kuni and to compare with your customers until you know what a standard meat is. And if you were to get a mango leetza and try to feed it out to six months,

[00:33:41] you could get it to 250 pounds,

[00:33:44] but you're gonna have 80% fat

[00:33:46] and the pork chops are gonna be the size of a half strategy, you know, one thing in real estate, they always talk about multiple exit strategies. So I'm gonna rehab this house or renovate this house. What's my exit strategy? Do I go in the bank and I refinance it and I rent it out? Do I sell it? Do I turn into a short-term random, medium term?

[00:35:02] Multiple exit strategies.

[00:35:04] If you go too specialized on your livestock

[00:35:06] that's expensive and there's not a market We had, I gave it a lot of meat away and I stocked our freezer with a lot of ground pork. Actually, it's mostly gone. We ate it at the time. And so I lost a lot of money. I don't even want to count how much money I lost on those mango leeches just because

[00:36:20] of the slow growth rate, specialty breed.

[00:36:23] It's ridiculous.

[00:36:24] It really was. And then you will have a mangaletzo bore will anyway, and then you'll have 200 piglets rather than With gilts that don't even know how to take care of them that weren't even breeders I learned that one the hard way But so like it yeah our farm is roughly 300 acres I say our farm. It's my dad's land, but

[00:37:43] The farm is roughly 300 acres, but it's the way it it kind of weaves around the town there's I can keep our pigs in with a single strand of polywire. But I've been designing our paddocks and slowly increasing the infrastructure so that we keep two-strand high-tense and electric fencing, 12 and 1-1-1-2 gauge wire for our paddocks. So one will have like right now I've got my feeder pig, all our pigs in in a wooded lots. So my feeder pigs, there's 21 of them or so, 22. And they are in a four acre wooded lot. I just it's hard. It's really hard to subdivide

[00:41:23] more nutritious cover crops for the pigs. We keep sorghum sedan grass like in the summer.

[00:41:26] We got cool season and warm season mixes.

[00:41:30] And so very intentional about grazing those.

[00:41:34] And when we move the pigs on and off,

[00:41:37] it depends on the weather.

[00:41:39] Like we're in the season of mud here.

[00:41:41] Most people have snow and ice and we have mud in Mississippi.

[00:41:44] Yeah.

[00:41:46] But, you know, it's already gone to seed, when we move the pigs off of it, the buckwheat regrows. It's crazy. It grows from seed. Buckwheat, once it's grazed at any stage, it doesn't really regrow very well. Sometimes it does, but it typically doesn't.

[00:43:00] But if it's gone to seed, it'll regrow.

[00:43:03] The sorghum sedangress, of course, regrows not from seed, but from its roots. still some some uh for not plant matter that I can just broadcast the seed and it'll it'll kind of regrow from itself but so I've stumbled around a lot to answer that question but the short of it is depending on how they're managed um it can look like um a sporadic moonscape with some plants

[00:44:20] there or it can look like it's been completely annihilated and um look really it can look like And soil and sedan grass is by far the single best soil improvement tool. I think that you can find it, especially in our clay soils, hot weather, you know, and in the warm season, we can get three or four breaths without really any synthetic fertilizers.

[00:45:46] It's better grays with cows. They perform outstanding on it. What I'm finding is if we have like planting our fall stuff, the brassicas, the buckwheat, austering winter peas, cereal rye oats, that kind of stuff, if we're only growing 20 acres, shoot, even for our 300 acres, we can't justify $60,000, 10 foot pasture, no till drill that price, I priced one, $60,000.

[00:48:24] And a road crop farmer can And that's the thing. I think for people who have more experience with equipment, I mean, I've got a lot of experience with heavy equipment, but.

[00:51:00] From my days roofing while I was in college to, you know, but those, you may get better performance on smaller acreage, particularly, especially if you're finishing them out on grass, on cover crops. You'll get much better performance by growing like a sorghum sedan grass, hybrid pearl millet for the warm year, that's, you know, 50,000 pounds of grain, 25 tons of feed at eight. Oh, man, that that's a scary thought. I wish I hadn't bought that at $4 a ton. 25 tons is $10,000. Well, I'm sometimes I can do math in my head

[00:52:25] and sometimes I can't, but you know, that'sester carbon to increase soil organic matter is absolutely outstanding. I mean until someone grows it, it'll blow your mind at how effectively it can improve

[00:53:43] soil health even just in one or two seasons.

[00:53:46] It is amazing. form. I would probably go back to that. I'm and I'm not always the brightest crayon in the box. So actually when we when we moved back to Mississippi, we had a rental house for almost a year. And then we've bought the house we're living in now and the lady that was there had honeybees.

[00:56:03] something out. You're never doing the same thing over and over. And that's one of the things about honeybees. It's such a different animal. I mean, going from pigs to cows or chickens

[00:56:09] or whatever. Okay, you feed water, move on down the road. Yeah, there's nuances for each animal,

[00:56:14] but honeybees, that's like you're on a whole another planet almost in terms of how they operate.

[00:57:23] if they've got a interest in it and they don't have a, they're not allergic to the stings.

[00:57:26] I love my honeybees, but I'll be honest,

[00:57:29] they don't get enough attention.

[00:57:31] I need to give them more attention

[00:57:34] because they go, well, like you mentioned,

[00:57:36] they can go months without me.

[00:57:38] In fact, I kind of, I prefer my hives

[00:57:41] that survive better without me,

[00:57:43] but you know, springs getting ready to come here

[00:57:45] and I'm gonna have to, why didn't that pop on my radar early on? Because I enjoy them so much. Just being in a hive with bees flying around you and in checking it. It's just everything else has stopped. I mean, because you can't focus on anything else, but the bees, it's everywhere.

[00:59:04] But it's just a cool feeling.

[00:59:05] I really enjoyed that.

[00:59:06] Especially if you're doing direct sales. that we grow. You know, we've got clover in our pastures. Ironically, most of the time, the honeybees don't even use the buckweed or the clover in our pastures in the spring because there's so much other stuff blooming like the here tulip poplar is and privyph are the most dominant,

[01:00:23] you know, honey producer or nectar producing plants. This time of made up, but that buckwheat, even though it's not the best summer producing plant because of the way it grows, you know, we had honeybees buzzing all over the buckwheat, you know, in April and June, just because they didn't have anything else to go. So honeybees,

[01:01:42] I think, work really well, particularly if you can get around some of the direct language, it was a really inspiring book, not just because of it, it was telling their story book, and I think the best books on grazing and regenerative agriculture and all that, they get the woods and on pasture and on cover crops, but they have the power to transform soil health.

[01:05:40] Now they can be ecological disasters.

[01:05:42] Don't get me wrong.

[01:05:43] It's easy to really bug or something up. to a farm when you see the pigs when they see you and all of a sudden they start running to you. You know, you see that little bit of excitement with cows when you move them into a new paddock and they're ready to move and the cows jump through and they kick their heels in the air. You get a little bit of excitement like that, but then pigs, they would get with the standard and then kind of deviate from there because then you can learn and go from there. It's just like honeybees.

[01:08:20] I had some money calling me.

[01:08:21] We sell honeybees, honey and honeybees.

[01:08:24] And some money calling me and said, hey, I more nuanced. That's my suggestion. And I think that that's good advice for most people. Now, there are outliers that do really well with alternative systems. But, you know, we don't have a good market for pastured pork in my area. So how am I going to try to sell're doing, especially if they're more interested in pastured pigs and reducing feed costs. They can do that on YouTube at Dottle Family Farms. You can just search for Dottle Family Farms on YouTube or youtube.com slash the at symbol

[01:11:02] and Dottle Family Farms.

[01:11:05] We'll get those links sharing our episodes and telling your friends about it. You can also support the show by buying our merch. We get a little bit back from that. Another way is support the show is through our Patreon. If you'll go over to gracinggrass.com and click on support, you'll see our links there

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