#117: John Pantalone (@AmberOaksRanch) - Sovereignty & Getting Started Ranching

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John, how are you? Thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for having me. We we're very excited to host you on the Meat Mafia podcast. You're one of our first in person guests too, we're trying to do a lot more of these episodes, so we appreciate you coming into the studio.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's worth saying too, we do have the maiden of Amber Oaks Ranch, she's not on camera, but she's with us in spirit, Molly.

Yeah, my wife is here.

It's also fitting that this is where we met for the first time in the Bitcoin Commons. I remember going home to Brett and saying that we needed to get John from Amber Oaks on the podcast. Is your perspective on regenerative farming and also thinking about just kind of the food system in general in terms of taking ownership of your own inputs when it comes to food and also obviously the decentralization of money. It was just one of those one of those amazing conversations, and I think that our audience is gonna love what you have to say. So we're excited to have you on.

Maybe just to set the stage, could you talk about what got you into regenerative farming? We know you're a first generation farmer yourself, and I think just hearing that story will help our audience get a little bit of a taste of Yeah, what you're up

I've always been kind of rather independent and always try to do things on my own because I was cheap and because I like to learn, right? And so if you don't have enough money and things break or whatever, you gotta figure it out, I like figuring things out. So I've always kinda had that independent spirit of getting stuff done, But the real thing that attracted me to this lifestyle was just observation of the world around me. There was a couple of key events, nineeleven, Hurricane Katrina, I spent a little bit of time in Bosnia, I gotta clear my throat here. So all of those things kinda coalesce in, I really need to take care of myself, right?

I need to be able to provide for my family and my community and not be so dependent upon the systems that hold this false reality together. So I just took it upon myself then to start raising my own animals, processing my own animals. I'm kind of a serial hobbyist, so I kinda go through different phases of things. So with respect to animals, first you get some animals, and it's like, oh, okay, now what do I gotta do with them? And now I gotta learn how to process them.

Once you get all of this meat, it's like, okay, now I need to learn how to preserve all of this meat, right? So you start canning and freezing and drying foods and all of that stuff, and it just becomes a hobby and a passion that gets out of control. But the good news is that you learn a lot, you gain a lot of skills that help you basically become more self reliant, and I'm big on self reliance. And I think Bitcoin does that, there's medical side of it, how do you take care of your health, how do you learn how to take care of wounds and injuries and that type of stuff. So again, so in the event that the hospital's a couple hours away and you're out there on the farm and you hurt yourself, what are you gonna do?

So you gotta know Prior these

to you starting the farm, were you pretty plugged in on the nutrition side of things or were you eating more of the standard American diet? No, not.

You know, we lived in Germany for a while, and definitely the lifestyle and the food is different there. They would go shopping basically every day, right? In Europe, they have basically dorm fridges, and that's all they have. They would shop every day for their produce, fresh breads, meats right from the deli, that type of stuff. So I had that as kind of like an understanding, around food in general, just like to cook, I like to eat, and there really wasn't good stuff available.

And I had young kids too, and I wanted to make sure that they were getting the best, and so we just started raising our own.

Was there anything else that you noticed about living in Europe in terms of a food quality perspective that was different than The US?

It had a very finite shelf life. Interesting. Yeah. And so I think that's why they went shopping several times a week. It's like the food only lasts for a week, so you gotta eat it and then you gotta go get some more.

Was that similar to your experience being in Europe as well?

Yeah, mean, so I spent a little bit of time in in Italy and The Netherlands, and I do feel like that they emphasize the quality of their food to a greater degree than they do here in The US. I think a lot of that is we have a lot bigger urban centers, but they're I think they're a little bit more used to kinda this idea of shopping fresh, shopping local. They're not as big on the preservatives. There's just a lot of chemicals in general that are legal here in The US and Right. And illegal to use over there.

I just think they have a totally different view on it. Like, in The US, I think they're you're innocent until proven guilty in terms of, like, what chemicals you can put in your food. But over there, it's like you need to prove that it's safe before you can actually Yeah. Add things to food. So I just think that they have a totally different view of

And I think they have a more of a culture, more of a conservative culture around a lot of things. Food is one of them.

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, it's like a focal point of their family. So if you go mess with that, it's like, well, wait a minute, that's not how we do things here.

Yes. Yeah, go tell some Italians how they start changing their principles around the food that you're putting on their table and they're gonna riot in the streets.

Yeah, I'm the youngest of seven from an Italian family. There you go. And my parents grew up during the depression. So my mom was 42 when I was born and my dad was 46 when I was born. Wow.

So that kinda puts, it also probably leads into like why I'm doing what I'm doing and kinda how I ended up this way. My mom used to make all her own sauces, she would roll out all of her noodles. When I was a kid, you'd walk into the kitchen and all of the kitchen chairs would be laid out and there would be noodles draped over them, drying the noodles, right? And so how she did that raising seven kids, I have no idea. Oh my gosh.

But that was just a way of life. So being instilled in me, the mindset of depression age parents, you use everything, you learn how to fix your own stuff, learn how to grow your own stuff, don't be so dependent upon everybody else except your neighbor, right? And you need to have good relations with your neighbor, you're gonna need your neighbor, you're gonna do things together, that kind of communal aspect of it. Was something I really missed. And we were living in a subdivision outside of Dallas, Frisco.

And that's really when it dawned on me that this is not normal, right? We had a homeowners association, there was neighbors stacked up on top of each other, very plush, very expensive houses, but not connected at all with your neighbor whatsoever. Everything was focused around the kids, right? People knew each other through association with their children, but outside of that, there was really no community. And the kids really weren't living as kids either, not from my perspective anyway, they were living, they would go from practice to swim meets to dance recitals, and every minute of their day was programmed, there was no opportunity for them to go out there and discover and do things that I did when I was a kid, right, where you would take the front tires off of your bike and put on a different sized tire just to see what would happen, right?

Or you would go get your dad's tools and you would hot rod your bicycle or what have you, you would build ramps and you would go jump and kids would lay down and you'd see how many

bodies Yeah, you would clear, that's what you did.

Yeah, they just didn't do that. If you saw kids doing that today, they'd have the cops out there shutting them down.

A 100%. It's such an interesting topic to explore too, this concept of your houses are so close in proximity, yet there's no connection at all. So it sounds like you and Molly were really aware of that, and what was that conversation like of just saying, hey, look, I think we're gonna go do this and build this ranch and get out of here?

I don't know if I, yeah, she'll have to remind me, but my recollection is that her mom and dad were living South Of Houston, between Houston and Galveston in Santa Fe, And they had three acres there, and it was just a bunch of good old boys, right? And so we went and visited them, and there was really a noticeable difference between the way our kids behaved there from how they were behaving at home. Not like disciplinary, but it's like they felt, there was four wheelers to ride. They were joyful, they were happy, they were exploring life, as opposed to feeling constrained. I remember distinctly, there was a group of kids, it always rains down there, right, so there was a group of kids, they had taken a hood of a car, flipped it upside down, tied a rope to a four wheeler, and they were pulling each other through the mud, right?

They were basically mud surfing on the back of a hood of a car. And I looked at that and it's like, that's what kids should be doing, right? That's fun. And so from that point on, it's like, look, we really gotta get out of here. This is not normal.

And fortunately, I had an opportunity, I found a job down in Texas City and was able to relocate near their grandparents, so that was good too, Molly's mom and dad. And at that point, we got seven acres. And that's really kinda what our first dip in our toe into being landowners and homesteaders.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons Brett and I are so excited to have you on is to basically have like an episode that we could share with people who are thinking about this, feel inspired to get into homesteading or small scale farming but don't really know where to start. And I remember we had a great conversation down in Georgia where we were talking about raising rabbits in, a New York City apartment or something like that. And I think people oftentimes think about this idea of farming and the barriers go up. It's almost like, oh, there's no way I could do that. It's, like, too much work.

But I think it would be helpful to hear your practical advice because, obviously, it is a ton of work, but there's ways to do it without Yeah. You know, making it so inhibitive to you actually trying.

Yeah, you know, it's a ton of work, I don't know. If you enjoy it, right, if it's fun, and also, like I equate work with love, right? If you love your family, if you love your neighbors, you don't mind pouring a lot of energy into what you're doing, because that's an act of love, right? That's a selfless act of love that's gonna result in high quality food or even a lifestyle for your family, right? So this is a little bit of a tangent, but people spend a lot of time watching football, or playing golf.

It's like, okay, that's all just self congratulatory activity. What are you doing for your family? What are you doing for your neighbor? And you'd be surprised how much time you have if you stop binge watching Game of Thrones or video Video games are crazy, the number of people and how much time they spend on video games. All you have to do is divert a little bit of that effort towards making yourself more self sufficient and self reliant, and the rewards you get are huge, right?

You'll gain all of this self esteem, confidence, and high quality food in my case. So, yeah, a lot of people look at this and are like, well, I can't get started because I don't have a 20 acre ranch, right? You shouldn't start there. You should start with small animals, maybe even a couple workshops just to find out if this is something that you wanna do. But there's a lot you can do in a subdivision.

You can start raising quail and rabbits, and your neighbor won't even know. And so you get, let's say, a dozen quail, and that dozen quail will give you eggs and meat, pretty much, certainly it'll supplement your grocery store bill, and then you'll probably have a little leftover to share with your neighbor. So it's a pretty easy stepping into point.

There you go. Were you intentional with the first animal that you all started with on the ranch?

You know, I knew I wanted the space more than anything, right? So I wanted space to putts around, I like the putts around. And so when I was a kid, my dad, he built his own house, his brothers helped him build that, and then so he's always been putzing with stuff, right? And my brothers, they would have cars that they would rebuild and stuff like that, and I would dabble as well. I knew I wanted space to do that, I couldn't do that in a subdivision, I couldn't even keep my boat in my driveway.

So it was that restrictive on what you could actually do with your own property. I thought, well, this is not normal, right, so I wanted space. And so we were fortunate to get seven acres, which was a lot of space, and so then you end up like, okay, I got all this grass I gotta cut. Do I really wanna cut this grass or should I get some ruminants that would eat that grass and then I would get a return out of that? But I think we started with, we did start with rabbits.

I wanted the kids to have a project, if you will, and four H and FFA type of stuff is happening, right? So the four H community, we went to a couple of meetings with the four H folks, and I didn't really like, what I was hearing. I didn't think it was, I I think it's a great program, let me put that disclaimer in, but it doesn't really teach the kids how to raise animals in a sustainable, profitable way. It's really about how do I win a prize? And you can win a prize if you spend a lot of money.

I didn't think that that made a whole lot of sense because I thought it was teaching values that weren't realistic for agriculture, right? It's like, well, you can pour a whole bunch of money into it and you can get a $20,000 scholarship for this one animal. But that's not reality, right? Reality is you gotta manage your costs, you got this long cash cycle that you gotta deal with, all that stuff. But we did start, got a couple, guess we got about half a dozen rabbits, and we started raising rabbits.

Being that close, that far south, rabbits is really not a good idea because it's too hot for them to breed. We quickly realized that rabbits weren't reproducing very reliably just because it was so hot, so the males will get sterile when it gets too hot, right? So we pivoted, and the kids really didn't like the one with rabbits and the taste of rabbit and that type of thing. They're a little bit It's a little bit too close to home.

Did have a Turns into a pet more than

We did have a pet rabbit in Frisco, and so when we made the transition to Santa Fe and we started eating rabbits, I think that was a little bit of a Yeah. Push for But then we got chickens, some laying hens, and then we moved up to We did do a batch of broilers, meat birds, the kids helped me process those. We ended up getting sheep, which was really, I love lamb, and I love to eat lamb, and lamb was just not, wasn't that available, it's really rather available now, particularly with imported lamb from New Zealand and Australia, but at the time, lamb wasn't that prevalent.

Lamb is so delicious, isn't it? It's so digestible too, it sits so well in the stomach.

And a side note about lamb, it's unfortunate that a lot of people have a negative impression of lamb because there's two types of sheep, really, there's a hair sheep and there's a wool sheep. And the wool sheep, they excrete lanolin to protect their wool and whatnot, and it creates that odor, particularly with animals over a year old, and so a lot of people are like, Oh, I can't eat lamb. It's like, No, try this lamb, this is a hair sheep and doesn't have that off putting odor.

So

anyway, so yeah, we started raising lambs, we did some American guinea hogs, we had about four females and a male, so we were a fair on our own, pigs, and had a flock of probably twenty, twenty five sheep. And we did get a couple of steers, we dabbled in that. And again, I butchered my own beef, did three of those, that's a lot of Can

only imagine.

Yeah, so I was butchering all my own animals at the time.

How'd you go about learning how to do that?

YouTube and books. Pretty much everything I learned was books and YouTube. There wasn't really anybody else doing it that I could follow.

Go ahead. No, you're good. I was just gonna say that from the perspective of, you know, someone trying to start this, I can see, like, there's just so many different learning curves. And I have to, like, embrace just being the beginner, which I think is hard for a lot of people. Were there ever any moments where you just, like, felt like you didn't know or you needed someone's advice that wasn't a book or YouTube?

Yeah. I'm not really good at asking for help. That's probably my biggest downfall. But at the same time, you learn a lot more whenever you go out and fail and try again. I think you learn, it sticks with you, the lessons stick with So I was really never compelled to like go seek advice.

I'm sure my animals would've rather I had, made quite a few mistakes, but there's a lot of good information out there, a lot of good books, a lot of good YouTube videos, lot of good podcasts. I did take some online courses, Darby Simpson puts out a good course, Grass Fed Life it's called, well, the course isn't called that, but his podcast is called that. I listened to Jack Spierko with the Survival Podcast, there's a lot of good information that he puts out about both raising animals and about sovereign living in general, gardening, that type of stuff. We did have a garden there as well, I asked canning carrots and beans and all of that stuff. Casting my own bullets, reloading my own ammunition, learning how to shoot, just all of that type of stuff, I basically self taught all of that.

Is that the right way to do it? I don't know. It's the way I operate. But there's a lot of resources out there for people who are interested in getting started. It's a lot easier now, think, with the proliferation of podcasts.

On your way to work, you can learn all kinds of stuff, and then go home and give it a try.

I think what's cool about what you're saying is I think there's almost this disbelief for someone that's never been a farmer or a rancher that you can actually go out and learn a bunch of things from a workshop or YouTube videos, but it seems like from your perspective that is possible, and there's also just this intangible element of just rolling up your sleeves and figuring it out and getting your hands dirty and just iterating over time, right?

Yeah, I mean, again, I have kind of an engineering mindset and building systems that are reliable and help me do things by myself, it's just something that I enjoy doing, so I would do those things. If I went to a workshop and it's kind of, it's a double edged thing, right? You go to some of these workshops and you see what other people are doing, you're like, oh man, I can never get to that level, right? And then a lot of people, their natural tendency is to quit right there, it's like, well, is beautiful, I wish I could do all of these, but I just can't ever do it. So you see that, and then everybody posts their wins on social media and then podcasts and stuff like that, they don't ever post about their failures.

And so it gives people this impression whenever they fail, they're like, Oh, I'm a big loser, I just killed all my animals, I'm gonna quit, right? And I think that's unfortunate, so I kinda take the opposite stance. Molly's always telling me, Stop posting all of the problems that you have. And maybe I should balance it more, but I want people to see that, yeah, even people who've been doing this for ten years, make mistakes too. I

was gonna say the really cool thing about what you and Molly are doing, and we were talking about this before he recorded, is that you both really have that passion for wanting people to become self sovereign and to be able to grow their own food, and I think you're taking a practical approach where you're like, look, you wanna own your own farm or homestead, this is just naturally part of the process, as opposed to just trying to sugarcoat everything, I think you're giving people real world advice and experience by doing that.

Yeah, so when we moved out of Santa Fe to where we're at now in Thrall, Texas, just outside of Taylor, I'd say about an hour east of here, Northeast, We moved on to a 70 acre ranch. And it was completely empty, it was just open space. So we built our own house. And when I was looking at, okay, what am I getting myself into? So perusing the internet and whatnot, trying to look for, what's this gonna cost me?

What do I need to know? There was really nothing. There was nothing about that. So I went and I blogged that whole process, like getting this foundation poured, what's that gonna cost? What kind of problems did I run into with contractors?

Kind of things that I wish I had considered before the concrete went down, because once it's down, it's down. All of my plumbing, all of my electrical, I did all of that myself, and I blogged about what does this cost, and I had an air conditioner contract come in and he screwed me, walked away with $4,000 those problems, right? And so we blogged that whole build process. And then now, once we got up and running and we started getting into production, we basically started publishing a weekly newsletter. And so I hope that people, we have those archives on our website, people can kinda go back and look at that, and so we'll talk about building water systems, right?

So we have rainwater catchment, I use gravity flow to water my cattle, I can practice rotational grazing, that type of stuff. So I spend several newsletters on water management, several newsletters on, okay, we got livestock guardian dogs now, how do I deal with those? Some of them killed chickens, we had to get rid of them, that kind of stuff. Just to show both the upsides and the downsides of farming, so people realize that, no, you're not a loser because your dog ate your chickens, right? It happens.

What's going on, guys? Before we get back to the show, I have a quick message from one of our sponsors. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Ranches. Jason Rick is the owner of Rick Ranches and he is passionate about raising his cattle in a regenerative way. He raises his cattle all on grass and it is grass fed, grass finished the day that they show up to the butcher.

He he also services his local community, so if you are in the Colorado area looking for great grass fed, grassroots beef, look no further than Jason Rick. He also accepts Bitcoin, so if you're a Bitcoiner in Colorado, there's no one else you need to look must be great

have your

platform built out where you start blogging about your transformation and building out the ranch and learning all these new systems. And then the newsletter is you get some inbound feedback from people who are following along saying, you know, what is the like, what is x? What is y? You know, can you help me out with this problem? What are some of the most common things that people ask you about through that blog and the newsletter channel?

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Get some feedback on our newsletters, but not a lot of questions about, like, I wanna do this. I've talked to people who say I wanna do this and I point them to our newsletters and I open, you're welcome to come out to the ranch, I'd love to talk to you. We've had that conversation with a lot of people, I but haven't seen a lot of people actually take action and follow-up and say, I'm doing this, what would you suggest?

I've done a couple of permaculture design courses. So And I've had some people like, okay, I'm buying this piece of property, would you be interested in coming out and looking at it and showing me? And, I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do that. And I'll go out there, and I'll give them my 2¢ worth. But I don't see a whole lot of people following up on it and pursuing it.

Maybe it's just that we lose contact and they're content. I hope that they go forward with it. What I would hate to see happen is that get started and then they fail and then they give up. And so hopefully they would reach out to me. Most of the feedback we get off of our newsletter are people showing appreciation for what we do, realizing the extent of the work that's involved, the cost that's involved, the losses that are involved.

We get a lot of great feedback from our customers touting their experience with the meat and how happy they are with their family. Every purchase that somebody makes from us, it's kind of a validation to me that, okay, we're doing the right stuff, right, it's worth it. I just can't imagine not dealing direct with customers and being a farmer, dealing like on the commodity side, where all of your food gets loaded onto a trailer and goes somewhere and you don't That would be so demoralizing to me, because it's such hard work, and all you're getting back is a couple of coin, and you don't ever get to see your customers at all, basically, customers are a corporation. I've never lived in that world, but I couldn't imagine doing this day after day and not having that positive customer feedback.

Yeah, and the amazing thing to your point is that for 99% of the population, it's such an abstract concept to actually have a one on one relationship with your rancher. I remember because we started, phase one was, Hey, let's change our diet, animal based carnivore, we improved our health. Phase two was, Okay, now let's get more intentional about where we're sourcing our food from. And I remember there was this question mark of, Where do I go find a farm or ranch? Or this whole concept of what Slim talks about of shaking a rancher's hand, that was so foreign to me, and now it's so common because we're in the Do space full you get a lot of questions from people that are asking you, Hey, how can I connect with a rancher?

Or, hey, what are some things that I should look for to determine if a ranch is actually good to buy meat from? So we have a

lot of people come up to us to the Farmer's market and say, oh, I'm so glad you're here, I'm so glad we found somebody selling meat direct. So I think there's a great hunger for people that want to connect. I have some folks quiz me in-depth about how we raise our animals, but a lot of people are quite content to realize that, okay, it's locally grown, they're practicing, they don't dig into it, they're practicing regenerative agriculture, there's a high level of animal welfare, And I think once, you know, my sales pitch, when I talk about what we do, I touch on all of those things, they seem to be content with it. I think a lot of it is they don't know the next level of questions to ask. We do hold an open house annually, and so we invite a lot of people to come out and we kinda show them the ranch.

Of course, if anybody asks, like, what do I go look for? I would certainly point out some things to be aware of. But yeah, we do have a lot of folks come by. We have an interesting Our customer base is very diverse, right? We have a lot of fitness people, we have a lot of young parents that wanna make sure their kids are getting the best.

We have a lot of customers who are older or have some type of metabolic disorder that they're trying to remedy, cancer survivors, that type of stuff, and so they take their diet, all of those folks take their diets very seriously. And then we have folks that it's chic to shop at a farmer's market, it's trendy to buy direct from your farmer. And that's great too, they're getting high quality food, I don't know, I'm sure they're concerned about animal welfare and the environment and all those things, but from a food perspective, the nutritional aspect, it's probably a little bit further down on their priority list.

What is your typical, not to put you on the spot, but what does your typical sales pitch look like at those farmers markets?

Yeah, so I have a price list that I hand out, say, May I offer you a price list? And they take that and I'm like, We raise beef, pork, chicken, and lamb twenty minutes away from here. Everything's raised out on grass, we rotate the animals daily to fresh grass. We produce healthy, happy, tasty animals, basically what it sums up to.

Yeah, one of the other things that we thought was interesting about you as well, when we were all at the Beef Initiative Conference in Georgia, the topic of farmers markets came up, and some of the other panelists didn't seem to have the most favorable impression of farmers markets, which I thought was interesting because when I first moved to San Diego, I was trying to connect with a local rancher, but honestly, I didn't know of any in the area, and I didn't think that there really were any in the area. So for me, I was able to connect with a few local ranchers and try their products out, and that's really how I started sourcing my beef was through the farmer's market. So I'm just curious, your take on farmers How much

do you find a rancher or farmer?

I know.

I mean, where do you go? Do you go to the yellow pages? I mean, who even uses those anymore, right? Yes. So yeah, and then once you find one, is he approachable?

Do they have time for you? That type of stuff. So no, I think the farmer's market is the place for people to connect. There's different websites that'll connect you with farmers as well, but that can be daunting too, not all of them are listed, etcetera. So certainly the farmer's market is an opportunity to do that.

The downside about the farmer's market is it's just so time consuming. I would say over half of my labor hours and maybe even as much as 70% are spent at the farmer's market. It's just that much time, getting ready, four hours on-site, the transport back and forth, the breakdown, all of that stuff. So if you don't have a good farmer's market that's gonna have a high customer base, then it's sometimes disappointing. So that's the downside of it.

But at the same time, you get to connect with your customer. Absolutely, and that's gonna sad. To me, that's very rewarding. I like to introduce people good foods, I like to talk about recipes, a lot of people don't, they have a very limited understanding of what cuts are available, I like to sell beef shanks because I think they're delicious, right? You get the bone marrow and you get a really tasty piece of meat, but people know how to cook that, right?

So I get to talk them through that, and I really enjoy that.

Yes. Is there anything else that you do differently when you show up to the farmer's market that you don't see other farmers doing?

I don't know. So it's hard for meat vendors at the farmer's market because all of your stuff is hidden in a cooler, right? And so you got coolers, that's all you have. And so how do you draw the customer who's used to looking at soaps and vegetables and jams and jellies and that type of stuff, which has all got a high visual appeal, right? And people recognize that, it's like, oh, there's some carrots.

I have coolers, right? And so how do I draw those customers in? So that's always something that I struggle with, and that's one of the reasons that we have a price list, is that I can pass something out, right? I can give you that. And on the backside, there's a little bit of information about how we raise our animals and where we're located, how to contact us, some of our, we have a buyer's club and we have bulk programs and that type of stuff.

So by putting that into their hands, I can initiate a conversation. A lot of them just walk away, but I see a lot of them walk away and then they'll start looking at it, right? Because they're also intimidated, I guess I'm a pretty intimidating person. And so they want a chance to digest that, right, and then they'll come back and they'll ask questions. And so, yeah, so as far as things that I do different, I'm not sure, to be honest.

Rituals. Yeah, tried putting videos up, putting a video up of like, Here's our cows and just a montage, a rolling video, and that attracts a lot of folks, but a lot of farmers market, it's hard to set that up, power supply, etcetera.

Yeah, it's interesting, it's almost like there's two types of customer. The first type is the person that you talked about where they're coming out to the farm, they're very intentional, maybe they had some type of underlying health issue, or they're into CrossFit, or really want to pay the extra dollar to build a relationship with you and source meat from you, then there's a second type of customer that's, like you mentioned, they're just kind of wandering into the farmer's market, they're like, Oh, this could be cool to go shop here on a Saturday and Sunday, and they're probably buying their meat from a local supermarket, they don't know any better, and you're trying to basically show them on the spot why sourcing their meat from you from a local farm is better than what they're getting from the grocery store, but if they don't have that intrinsic push, I would imagine it's probably difficult to try and convince them when they're just looking at It things from a price

is, yes. And so we have eggs sitting out on the table, right? So eggs is like something everybody recognizes, and everybody knows that farm fresh eggs taste better than store bought eggs, right? That's just a given. So we sell a lot of eggs and we sell those kind of as the loss leader, if you will.

So if I can get somebody to see the eggs, get them to talking, and then I can kind of develop the sale from there Because our food tastes completely different than the food that you find in the grocery store. It really is different. And I think it's a shame that people don't know what good food tastes like, because they haven't experienced it, so they don't know what it's supposed to taste like. And then I think once they realize that, they would be willing to pay more for stuff that tastes better. I mean, why wouldn't you?

It's like that stuff in the store is garbage. Particularly like chicken has no flavor at all, the pork is just void of any kind of flavor and nutrition. Those are the two biggest ones, and so I can oftentimes convince potential customers, Look, just give it a try, it really is different. Here's a pound of ground beef, it's not that expensive, take it home, you'll see how different it is and then you'll come back.

Loaded question here, but what's the difference?

There's flavor. There's truly flavor. Chicken that So grass makes all of the difference. So chicken, any grass in its diet, same with pork, it's gonna have a richer, partier flavor. So it doesn't need as much seasoning.

If you don't like flavor, and a lot of people like with grass fed beef, oh, that's just too strong for me. So I get it, everybody's palate is different, excuse me. But a lot of people, I mean, like venison, like the way it tastes, that's what really got me started in grass fed meats, pasture raised meats in general. So if you like a lot of deep flavor in your meats, then you need to go direct to your farmer to get it, because you're not gonna find it in the grocery store.

Oh my gosh, I mean, someone that's going from a store bought broiler chicken that's enlarged and slaughtered when they're a baby bird basically, and they're fed all corn and soy and they can't even walk versus eating your broiler chicken, it's probably, there's no going back after you try that, I would imagine.

Well, I brought you one.

Oh, beautiful, there

you go. So you guys can try it yourself.

That's amazing.

See, it really is different, the flavor is different, the texture's a little different, it's a different experience and it's unfortunate that people don't get to experience that. And I'd like more people to experience it.

You were talking about kind of like the intergenerational aspect of it too. Like I have memories of my grandmother where we shared meals and that stuff is kind of ingrained in my memory. And I think it's shaped my perspective around this topic where it's like, what what is food and what should it be? And I think that that connection has played a huge role in how I think about like, man, I'm not even eating the same food as what my grandparents were eating. That's that's crazy.

I like to eat. Oh, yeah. And so if you're gonna spend all that time in the kitchen working on something for your family, why would you start with substandard ingredients? That's kind of the way I look at it.

And it's amazing too when you're sourcing really good quality animal products like what you're talking about, there's very little that you actually have to do to the dish to make it delicious, like one of the quotes that we saw, I think Julia Child said for chicken, with broiler chicken, it should be so delicious on its own, all you need is salt, pepper, olive oil, butter, and that's how good it should be, but now we're eating these diluted birds that taste like nothing, so you're used to eating it fried and overly spiced, and that's the only way that we can stomach it because there's just no flavor to the food that we're eating anymore.

Yeah, and everybody focuses on the cuts they're familiar with, but most of the flavor is in the cuts that you would consider to be substandard, like your beef shanks and your neck bones the tail and the tongue. And at one point in time, these were the delicacies, right? And so tongue, like buffalo tongue, that was all that they would keep because it was such a delicacy, they could sell it anywhere. And people don't get to experience that. They don't know how to cook it, that's the big problem, I think.

But then where do you find it? Where do you get a beef tongue? Sell out of all of that stuff real quick. Wow. Not the beef shanks so much, but the tongue, the liver, the heart, the

tail, those go very quickly. Is that something you've seen change recently? Because the whole liver thing, I think, is starting to get traction again in the health community. The reason why I asked the question. I just think that there are some people who are doing a really good job of pioneering and bringing back these important, we call them like nature's vitamins.

Yeah, there is certainly a lot more attention on the organ meat. I think there was always a group of people that would come by it, but now I hear a lot of people, more people asking, Do you have liver? What do I do with it? And so I know that they're new to this. Or they'll come and say, How do I prepare this to get my kids to eat it?

And so there's a lot of tricks there. I've heard a lot of my customers, they've given me tricks, particularly eating liver raw. The best one I like so far is they would take a straw and they would punch the liver, and they would load the straw with basically little pellets. And then they would push those out and they would freeze them, and then they could just take it like a capsule. Like a capsule.

A frozen liver pellet.

That's genius.

That's a really convenient way. I've just been noticing raw, I chop it up into little pieces, I throw a little good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and I throw some sea salt on top, and I just like the taste of it for whatever reason, but you gotta just find what works best for your palate, whatever you can do to get the nutrients in.

Yeah, a lot of people go through a lot of effort to make it more palatable, it is what it is. If you don't like it, don't eat it, you know? There's other ways to get that, so.

Yeah. On the concept and topic of nutrition, I'm just curious, from a rancher's perspective, where do you think we've gone wrong with our food system and the way that we eat as a country?

Well, that's a big question.

It's a loaded question.

That's a big question, yeah.

Unpack it here.

No, I don't People are lazy, and I don't blame them, right? There's a lot of demands on you, And so, if you can give somebody an easy button, right? If you can give them a rotisserie chicken from Sam's, right? It's hard to blame them for jumping on that, right? They got screaming kids, they've got jobs.

I guess I would say that where we really went off the rails is devaluing the currency. Because now you don't have your stay at home mom who could prepare all of this food, not to be sexist, it could be the guy too. But you have two family incomes now, dual income family. And so there's not time to invest that love I talked about before into the nourishment of your family. And so I think that's really where it started because from that then you needed something easy.

And easy translates into cheap and void of flavor and nutrition. And that's kinda what got us here.

When did you start going down? Because we met here at the Bitcoin Commons. When did you start going down the rabbit hole and starting to make some of these connections between the decentralization of money and the decentralization of food and kind of these dynamics that kind of exist in both realms?

Yeah, so again, when you look at self sufficiency and personal sovereignty and you start with food, I probably started with personal protection and then food. But then when you start looking at food, you realize that I guess, no, let me back up. So when I started looking at food, and then you come to the realization that, gee, my income is solely dependent upon one source, right? I have a job with a corporation, and there's no redundancy there. And so when you look at personal sovereignty and self reliance, you look for how do I build redundancy in my life?

And so food is one of them, right? Even if I'm just growing a little bit of my own food, at least I have some redundancy there. And with personal protection, sure you have your institutional police forces, etcetera, you have your neighbors, but how do you take that upon yourself to be the primary line of defense? And then with finance, it's like, okay, I work for this company, but what if I get laid off? So I need a side gig, I need a side hustle or two, three, right?

And so how do I ensure a steady stream of income in the event that something happens that puts me out of work, what have you? So that kind of tied together with food, taking food to the next level. So we were just, we were homesteading, I was raising a family, I was raising my own animals. When the kids graduated high school, it was a perfect opportunity to take that to the next level, then diversify my income streams by starting what we are, Amber Oaks Ranch, right? And selling food in addition to my day job, which I still work for a Fortune five hundred company.

But when you start looking at, okay, how many systems are propping up the monetary system, right? So when you start, okay, and then you start looking at taxes and all of this other stuff, and then you see what the government's doing and how much energy you're putting into earning money, and then that money isn't worth anything two years later, that's very discouraging. And so with that realization, I started thinking about gold, silver, and then Bitcoin came on the scene, and I dabbled with it a little bit, and lately it's like, and the writing is on the wall that this whole system is a big Ponzi scheme. So yeah, so just diversifying your portfolio as far as redundancy goes, it applies to finances as well, right? So Bitcoin is a piece of that, cash under your bed is another piece of that, gold and silver is another piece of that, but there's also food, right?

You can always trade food, people always want food, there's alcohol, there's bullets, there's all kinds of means of commodities, if if you will, that you can be sure that have and hold value, and so I try to get my fingers into all of those things.

And you really started getting plugged into the Austin Bitcoin scene because you had a customer, Amy, that was, wasn't she buying meat from you and asking if she could Yeah, pay a Bitcoin or something like

so she wanted to buy half a beef, so she had been shopping at the Elgin Farmers Market from me for maybe a couple months, And she was ready to buy a half a cow. So we had already basically done all of the preliminary work, I took her order, etcetera, etcetera. I sent her the invoice, then she asked, do you accept Bitcoin? I say, absolutely. And so from there, she posted her experience online, right?

She tweeted about, look, I got this beef from my local rancher. Shook his hand. And the beef initiative had already kind of, I guess it'd probably been a year in motion already, and so, from that, it really expanded our reach around Twitter because I was just observing on Twitter, I wasn't posting anything. So from that point on, we've gotten quite a few followers and gotten engaged with you guys, have done a couple conferences and a couple panels where I got to talk about what we do.

Yeah, that's fantastic. One of the things that we spent a lot of time thinking about and we discussed this with Jose yesterday on his podcast Talking In Bits is we just noticed when we started posting some of our content publicly that the Bitcoin community, they were some of the first people that really jumped and took hold of the stuff that we were doing. We know that there's a huge push in the Bitcoin community towards regenerative agriculture, towards decentralized food, towards carnivore diets, and I'm just curious from your perspective, being a rancher, like, why do you think that is? Why do you think there's such a strong correlation there?

So I would like to think that they came to the same realization that I did, except the other direction. They started with the finance and realized that that game is rigged, and then it dawned on them that the food system is rigged as well, through work that you guys are doing primarily, right? They're listening to the Bitcoin people that are plugged into both aspects, and it's like, oh, yeah, that's obvious, right? Same thing with the medical system, I think COVID has really opened a lot of eyes as to how manipulative that system is as well. And once a person is red pilled about one thing, it's like the rest of the world just opens up to them to realize that, hey, this game is rigged, and I'm just a sucker if I don't find other ways of navigating through it.

As far as the Bitcoin community goes, I want you guys to listen to this, the most frustrating thing is you don't spend your Bitcoin, right? And I really believe that, so I was asked before, do you worry about Bitcoin not being as valuable as it was whenever you sold the meat, etcetera, etcetera? It's never gonna get any value unless we start using it as a medium of exchange, right? And so I encourage everybody listening to start using Bitcoin, start spending it. It's not gonna kill you to get rid of a little bit of it, right?

And you're not getting rid of it, you're actually just exchanging it for meat, right? And that's always a good thing.

Do you see other ranchers or farmers getting involved in Bitcoin space and thinking about because I think the two kind of go hand in hand in terms of thinking about sovereignty, and I think they both have similar relationships with how the system treats them.

Yeah. At the farmer's market, there's a lot of conversation with all of the vendors because they realize that we're accepting Bitcoin. And I've had some signed conversations. They're more than willing to accept Bitcoin. Just don't know how to get started, right?

And quite honestly, we don't have any customers coming up. We were in Pflugerville maybe a month ago, a kid was wearing a Bitcoin t shirt. I was like, again, I accept Bitcoin, right? And so he was interested, but again, he didn't wanna sell it or buy it or spend it, I should say. There's not a whole lot of action at the farmer's market with Bitcoiners, there seems to be a lot more online where they're willing to divest themselves to some Bitcoin in exchange for me.

Again, getting back to the guys that won't let go of it, I've had people through that community reach out to me, but they wanted to pay in fiat. Like, come on, where's your ethos, right? Thought you Interesting. Were a Bitcoiner, you

Have you noticed a good uptick in business in beef sold through the Bitcoin community and some of the publicity you've been getting on Twitter and speaking at these conferences?

Not so much because we really don't have the capacity to service any of that. And so there's some great guys doing great things out there, you know, KNC Cattle here in the Austin area seems to be able to satisfy pretty much everybody's. And of course they had first mover advantage and quite a following. As far as we're concerned, I would like to get more into pork and chicken because I can scale up a lot faster. With beef, it's really almost a three year turn to scale up on beef, right?

You gotta get a mama cow pregnant, and then you got basically a year of gestation and then two years till you can harvest it. So being able to ramp up on beef is a long term prospect, whereas chicken is much quicker, pig is pretty quick as well, plus I'm a little bit better positioned with pig already. And beef, to ramp up, I really need more land, and land is expensive.

How about lamb for you, is lamb also difficult to ramp up?

We are growing our flock with lamb, so I just got back into lamb, like we had lamb in Santa Fe, but when we started here in the Austin area, we were focused on beef and chicken and pork, so we just added lamb about two years ago, and so we're still kinda building our flock and our customers to buy in with that.

We probably should ask you this earlier, but I'm curious just to get your definition of regenerative agriculture because it seems like everyone kind of has their own way of speaking to it, and I love getting the insight of everyone who's participating in it.

It's a pretty broad definition as to what that means. And I guess the challenge is when you're getting started, do you go all in with regenerative or do you use some of the tools and technology that's out there to at least get yourself started? So I had a conversation with a woman who basically has a former cornfield, and she wants to get animals out there and practice regenerative agriculture. And she's like, How turn do this land? I said, Well, first thing to do, I think, would be to till it under, right?

To set back all of the stuff that you got there, put some compost out there and till it under. And just the idea of disking and tilling her field, it's like, that's not regenerative. Like yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Right now, you've gotta clean the slate and prep the soil and start afresh. That was my opinion with her particular situation.

So what does it mean to us as to how we practice is probably how I'll describe that. We do practice rotational grazing. We don't use any pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers on our land. So we bring in chicken manure, and some would argue that that chicken manure is laden with heavy metals or it's not organic or what have you. But again, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?

You gotta start with what you have and what makes economic sense too. And so if you're trying to make money at it, there's things that you, I don't wanna say there's corners that you gotta cut, but there are compromises that need to be made. So we rotate the cows and the chickens every day to fresh grass, pretty much every day, different periods of the year. So in the winter, I roll out my hay bales as opposed to bale feeding. So I basically rotate them around the property by rolling out bales of hay, which distributes their manure, all of the residual hay that's left, and becomes food for the microorganisms come springtime, that type of stuff.

We do practice water collection off of our roof. We have lots of water storage around the property. I pump that water out to the animals, so all of the water that we're using isn't groundwater, it's either surface water or water runoff that we've captured. What else do we do that I would consider regenerative? We plant grasses and crops and things like that to augment the food supply of the animals.

Yeah, that's probably about it.

It's amazing hearing what happens with these ecosystems when you start implementing some of the practices that you're talking about without using chemicals and trying to supplement that with animals and they are supposed to interact with the land and other living creatures. It's like, okay, you don't need synthetic fertilizers necessarily to go out there and make this pasture do what you want it to do, whether it's restore the soil, feed your cows, it's kind of this amazing system that's supposed to work together.

Yeah, and so in Georgia, we had a lot of conversation around how do you measure what you're doing, whether you're moving in the right direction, right? And there was talks about taking organic matter samples of the soil and that type of stuff. The biggest indicator for me is how many animals can you put on that piece of property and still sustain them? And so that would be, for us, when we bought the place, they were running about 17 cows on the 70 acres that we purchased. Now I'm running almost 50.

Wow. So plus the pigs, plus the sheep, plus the chicken, right? And so just incorporating good practices where you're rotating the animals every day, it's almost like having two ranches, right? Because the animals are gonna eat a lot more of what they wouldn't, if you let them free range, if you will, right, if you let them graze uncontrolled, they'll just eat the good grasses, and then the bad grasses will grow and take over and reseed, and it cuts down the amount of good grasses that come back next year, etcetera, etcetera. So by doing what's called high density grazing or managed intensive grazing, by controlling where the animals are, keeping them in that location and then moving them intentionally to another location, you're able to increase your stocking density such that, it's more profitable, number one, right?

And it's also better for the animals and it's better for the soil because the animals, will get fresh grass, they're not living in their own feces, right? So like with our chickens, we move them every day. If you go to a factory farm chicken coop, they're there for those six to eight weeks living in their own feces, and it's pretty foul. And so by moving them, I'm distributing their manure, which is good for the microorganisms because it doesn't burn it out, right? The microorganisms and then they're able to convert all of that manure into nutrition, which basically helps the grass grow.

And so as I move those chickens back around or as I move those cows back around, all of the manure has been broken down before they come back through. And the grass is greener because the microorganisms are taking advantage of all of that manure and converting it into energy for the grass. The other upside is that the animal's health is better because an animal, if it continues to graze short grasses, so they have internal parasites, right? Worms that deposit eggs through their feces and those eggs turn into larvae and they basically live on the grass, right? And the animal consumes that again and it basically continues the cycle of parasites, which is not good for the animal because they basically feed on the blood of the animal, they're parasites.

But if you wait long enough before they come around, that life cycle of the egg to larva, to animal basically expends itself and then the animal dies, right? It's lived its life cycle. So when cow comes back around and he munches that piece of grass again, he's not consuming the parasites. So you don't have to use as much wormer. If you don't use as much wormer, then you're not harming beneficial bacteria that lives in the soil as well because they'll excrete that chemical through their system and it can kill the belgum beetles and that type of stuff.

That type of a practice is intensive, it's a lot of work for the rancher, but you get better utilization of your property and you get healthier animals.

Interesting. Would you say in terms of pure economics, is it more profitable for you as the rancher to implement regenerative practices or morals aside, it would be easier to cut corners a little bit and do more conventional practices?

It depends upon your objective. And I say that because, well, everything's situational dependent, so you have to live there, you have to have time to rotate the animals. And you have to have the infrastructure to support it, right? So you have to build systems in place, water systems, fencing systems, that enable you to practice rotational grazing. All of that costs money, and then the rotational aspect of it, takes time.

Whereas most of the beef across The US, they have perimeter fencing, cows do what they want, the rancher will go out there maybe once a month, inspect his animals, and then he'll load them up onto a trailer and take them to a market. Is he utilizing his pasture to its highest productive level? No, definitely not. But he's cutting way back on his labor costs, he's cutting way back on infrastructure costs. So again, it's all very situational dependent.

For me, I'm able to get a lot more animals on the limited amount of property we have. Property here in the Austin area is extremely expensive, and so it makes sense for me. Plus I live there, and plus it's just fun. Just going out there with the animals and spending time with them is fun, it's relaxing. So instead of me watching football, I'll go spend time with the cows.

Yeah. Have you noticed that you haven't had the same pressures to raise prices as some of these other conventional guys?

So we have raised our prices, so we used to feed organic feed to our chickens, so COVID really messed me up because our organic feed supply couldn't get the materials that he needed to produce. So I had really bad chicken feed for a while. As he substituted with another product, it didn't work for me, cost me a fortune. So I basically stopped going organic, which allowed me to lower my production cost. Allowed me to keep my price the same.

And then I took it to the next level, I started grinding my own grain. And so I'm buying it direct off of a farmer, and as a side note, you asked me about Bitcoin and other ranchers, I have purchased services like hay baling services for gold, so I've traded, everybody recognizes gold, they don't quite recognize Bitcoin yet, you can get around the system in other ways. Now what was I just talking about? Oh yeah, so I started grinding my own grain as opposed to buying it from sacks of grain or buying it in bulk, which has allowed me also to manage my cost And it's a supply chain aspect of it, right? So I don't have to worry about what commodity prices are doing, I don't have to worry about whether it's gonna be there or not, I have a stockpile of grain and the equipment now to make my own.

So that applies to chicken and pigs primarily as of course the beef is all grass fed. Yeah, so as a result, we have raised price on beef, fuel price is killing me. Diesel is $4.50 a gallon, and that was like, what was it, like $2.50, right? And even if look at price of diesel versus gasoline, gasoline's about 3, diesel's a buck 50 more, that's 50% more.

And California's like $8.

Yeah, so fuel cost is just crazy.

Food's gonna be insanely expensive.

Yeah, and I spent a couple episodes on my newsletter talking to my customers, and Molly was chastising me about this because it was all doom and gloom, right? I had like two or three newsletters where I'm really concerned about people, I'm concerned that they don't fully appreciate what's about to happen. I mean, it's already happening, right? Just I think people are able to absorb it to a point, right? Yeah.

It's like, okay, well, we've definitely seen a downtick in our sales probably since early September. I don't know if it's because of schools back in session and they're spending money on new clothes and everything else. I don't think so though, I think people have finally reached that point, it's like, oh, consumed my expendable income, right? I'm just trying to figure out how to put gas in my car. And so I was informing my customer base back in July, like, look, need to start planning for the next twelve months because with the war going on in Europe, with inflation the way it is, with zero COVID policy in China,

I mean, are really Energy crisis

in Europe. Yeah, it's just not gonna be a pleasant winter and spring, it's gonna be very challenging.

We had Tucker Max on the show a few months ago, and he said that his entire perspective on just nutrition and self sovereignty changed around that winter storm in Texas a few years ago, and he's out in Dripping Springs now, and I think he was running a company in Austin, and he was telling them, You should be prepared to not have power or food for a few days, We don't know how long it's gonna be, and I think he said a bunch of millennials worked at the company and literally no one had any plan or any type of preparation, so he ended I think he had a full cow in his freezer, so he literally took his pickup truck, brought it to the office when shit was going crazy, and just delivered meat to his entire company, and if he didn't do that, these people wouldn't have had any food to eat.

Yeah, had a huge two weeks at the market around that, right? And so it started with COVID, people didn't wanna go stand in line at the grocery store, and then when they realized that there was nothing at the grocery store anyway, a lot of people started coming to the farmer's market. And we really tried to promote, come to the farmer's market, we still have food, right? And then that was just reinforced by that winter freeze, because it was about that time that people were like, oh, the grocery stores are open, COVID's kinda going away, and then the winter freeze happened and the people were like, oh yeah, the trucks aren't rolling, there's no food in the store. And so it's unfortunate that we need these reoccurring reminders about how fragile the system is.

Would think that people would be clued in by now and just be aware that this thing is just held together with smoke and mirrors. Any little disruption.

Do you see a world where Are you optimistic in some senses? Or it sounds like you're, like, cautiously prepared, personally, but do you see optimism, when you look around and see how people are operating?

I I think a lot a lot of people are aware. Right? And I think a lot of people, COVID has opened the eyes of a lot of people. I think inflation, a lot of people don't understand what the cause of it is, right? And so they're just victims of circumstance.

But I still think that they're much more aware that this is a very precarious system that we're living in. What I'm concerned about is that they don't know what to do, right? Or their day is so occupied with just trying to survive, they don't have the mental energy to put in any reserves or redundancy into their life, which is very unfortunate because then they become a victim when things fall apart, they're not prepared. And so a big thing of what I wanna do is wake people up to this, but also then give them the tools that they can use then to a little bit of redundancy in their life. Everybody should have redundancy.

So when we lived in Santa Fe, we were 20 miles from The Gulf Coast, there was hurricanes, we went through Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Katrina really was a big eye opener. So we started putting in redundant water systems, redundant energy systems, that type of stuff, and that was kinda commonplace on the Gulf Coast. If you remember when Katrina happened, there was the, what did they call them, the Cajun Navy or whatever, right?

People just,

they take care of themselves, They didn't need the federal government to come in and take care of things. And same thing happens there, but when you move farther away from disaster areas that don't have a reoccurring thing like a hurricane, and people become very complacent around and they expect that the systems are gonna be there. But the systems are not always gonna be there, it doesn't take a whole lot, right? We're subject to this global forces that are outside of our control and it's important for people to, for their own sanity and own stability, to build systems that enable control. So even to have like eight gas cans in your garage and just rotate those out, that would be 40 gallons of gas.

In the event that you can't get to the gas station because there's no fuel, well, at least you have 40 gallons of gas, and maybe you can get out of whatever area it is and go back to your folks or your family. But if you didn't have that, what are you gonna do? You're just a victim.

Yeah, and the interesting thing is a lot of people would label what we're talking about as being a doomer optimist, that's the term to use now, but based off everything that you're saying, it's like, I think it's just being a realist and taking personal responsibility. And I know something you talked about is in the early 2000s, really felt this intrinsic desire to wanna take on responsibility and provide for your family, and you were talking about this concept of twenty four hours, and people are telling you they don't have the time to farm, but they're pissing it away on Netflix or cheap sources of dopamine, and I do just wonder if that lack of willingness to take on personal responsibility is part of the decline that we've seen of the modern man, because I think there's a good argument to make that that has happened in last decade.

I think you're right, I think you just talk about cheap dopamine, There is so much reward in doing something physically that's hard, right? People don't know what that reward is like, right? So athletes, collegiate athletes, or even in high school, right? Get a little taste of that. And the military does that, right, where you have challenges that you have to overcome.

And so unfortunately, I think a large population of today's youth don't get to experience that. They only know video games. They don't go out there and hurt themselves and break things and fix things and live life, right? They don't really know what it's like to have that reward of, hey, I built that. At the end of the day, I got a lot of sweat, I got some bruises and some blood, but look, I built that.

And the reward lasts much longer than leveling up on some video game. Because if you go out and build a house, twenty years later, can drive by that house with your kids and say, I built that. There's people don't understand they don't know what that feels like, and that's unfortunate.

Yeah. It kinda feels like there's two different worlds that have kinda been developed or that are kind of breaking. There's people like yourself who are and this is probably the minority of people who are just taking extreme personal responsibility, and then there's, like, this massive ship, titanic sized ship that's seems like it's just being driven off a cliff.

Yeah. Well, really think that that's gonna come to a head here, in the next six months. Think a lot of people are gonna suffer, and think it's very unfortunate. Mean, I we won't be in horrible shape here in The US, but across the world, I think a lot of people are gonna suffer. I think a lot of people are already suffering.

And I think we're gonna experience a large degree of discomfort here in The US just with inflation, with the price of food and fuel, and I just hope people are prepared for it.

Yeah, and it's being a realist too, one of the things, I was talking to Molly before we hit record, and she was saying how you might have friends that know that you're selling eggs and they'll almost be embarrassed, they'll be like, oh, I bought eggs from my neighbor down the street, and they think you're gonna be upset by that or something, and you're like, no, we're so happy that you did that, because what you care about is helping other people take responsibility and be self sovereign with their food, I feel like that's just like the core ethos of who you are.

And it does, we talked about redundancy and we talked about gold and Bitcoin and dollars, it could be the same thing around anything that you're doing, right? If you have a skill, you can monetize that skill, even if it's just a hobby, right? If you're building, I don't know, you like the garden, that's great, maybe macrame and you're building pot holders or whatever, if you're knitting, that type of stuff, you can turn that into a community, right? You can find people who want what you're doing and maybe they have some eggs or what have you, but you really need to connect with your community because community is how you're gonna survive challenges. And there's no community, there's no sense of community.

We live in all of these apartment buildings where we're right next to each other, but we're not connected with one another. And that's unfortunate. Yeah.

That's one of the things that we try to always bring into the conversation when we talk about health. And it's like part of our show. It's like, okay, how can you talk about nutrition in isolation? Like, it's not the whole picture. You do need to speak to human elements of connecting with people because that plays a huge role in, like, self esteem and and honestly, yeah, just that feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself.

But, you know, I think our audience is gonna really just resonate with that message and and just everything that you've spoken about today. Is do you do you have a good place online for people to connect with your message more and just sort of what you're doing at Amber Oaks?

Yeah, so it's amberoaksranch.com. And we have, if you go to the newsletter archives, you can sign up for our newsletter. So it's a tab across the top, says newsletter archives. Of course you can shop with us as well, we have, I think it's a shop or store tab at the top, picture our price list, and you can generate an order form there. We really don't ship, I really wanna stay local, I think it's important that people connect with their local food stores because again, shipping makes us dependent upon infrastructure that is outside of our control.

But if you get to know your rancher and you're a steady customer for your rancher, he's gonna take care of you if things get tough. He's gonna have something for you, you can always call him and make sure that he's gonna have something. So if you're in the Austin area, particularly on the East Side Of Austin, we do farmer's markets in Elgin, Bastrop, Pflugerville, and Taylor and Hutto. So we would love to have you come out and shake our hand and get to know you. And again, in April, we'll be having an open house.

So if you're following on our newsletter, you'll get an announcement and invitation for that.

Are those all different days of the week or is that different

points for my pretty much do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Nice. We're moving to Bastrop in November, we know where we're getting our chicken and pork from now. I love it. But thank you so much for coming on the show and thank you too, Molly. Really appreciate it and hearing your perspective and everything you're trying to It's a phenomenal conversation.

You guys do a great work. I appreciate it.