Livestock farmer stories, tips, and resources for success.

Couple Episodes

April 24, 2024

Justin Bramhall and Vanessa Rose Are Part of the Solution

The occasional summer I would go to Arkansas for a few nights when my family would make the trip out there from Dallas, Texas, they would only stay for a short period it was my aunt and uncle's Chicken farm. They were conve…
April 20, 2024

Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Level Up Their Business

It feels good that we're providing this product for people's nutrition, for their families. They keep coming back to us and appreciating that. We are who we are; we're the face, we talk to them, we have them to our farm for …
April 13, 2024

Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Climb Mountains and Diversify

I describe farming as really just one long extended expedition. It's very much like a mountaineering expedition where you wake up every day, you're working outside. You have problems, often new problems that crop up at least…
April 3, 2024

Toby & Melissa Malandrinos Pick Their Battles

I remember being seven or eight years old and drawing… having construction paper, big rolls of paper all over the living room floor, drawing pictures of where my cows and my sheep and my chickens would go on my future farm.—…
March 27, 2024

Zan and Kimberly Walker-Goncalves Circle Back to their Roots

We had bought this house in Brattleboro. We'd bought the truck. We bought the sheep. We bought dogs. We did all of this long before COVID hit, but then we were like, okay, this is our pandemic project.—Kimberly Kimberly and …
Guest: Kiki and Z
Sept. 30, 2023

Chris & Samantha Kemnah Find Less Labor in Dairy

“Neither one of us came from a farm family or any kind of money in our background. We've just kind of done it on our good credit. We've leased the farms that we've been on. We are hoping to be able to buy the farm we're on n…
Aug. 15, 2023

Brad & Emalee Buttrey Find Real-Life Challenges

“We did have the sense to look and say, you know, God created ruminant animals to take advantage of grass and low input. You know, if we've got a grass base, and we take care of that, that's as low input as you're gonna get …
Aug. 9, 2023

Nicole & Jeremiah Vernon Talk Time, Family and Vulnerability

“I have a specific memory of the first time we ever did sheep, I was so mad at my parents, we were going to kill the sheep. And then fast forward like an hour into it. And I came running into the house holding a sheep tongue…
April 29, 2023

Hank & Heather LeTarte Listen to Their Customers

“We cleared eight acres and piled the trees by hand. Not the trees but the brush. We had 96 brush piles in one field. And we had no friends left, because we would say to them, ‘Come on over for the weekend. And we'll give y…
March 27, 2022

Ep 1.13 Ashlyn Bristle & Abraham McClurg

“The jobs that I worked were a pickle factory and a spinnery and an apple orchard, All of those were learning how to operate in a system watching how other people create systems and deal with the logistics of production. I t…
Feb. 5, 2022

Ep. 1.6 Austin & Maggie Troyer

“I think for me, my pre-farming life had little experience in farming, but I think the way my parents raised me, it’s just being honest. It’s working hard and trying to build something bigger than you.”—Austin Troyer Austin …
Jan. 15, 2022

Ep. 1.3 Chris & Jenn Talk Farmer/Non-Farmer

“People who don’t farm don’t realize how much it really governs what you can and can not do with the construct of your lives. Unless you’ve got the systems in place to manage that stuff.”—Chris Sargent When I had the idea to…
Jan. 8, 2022

Ep. 1.2 Randy & Lisa Robar

“Yeah, neither Lisa or I grew up on a farm. So this is all new. This was not in our plans. I was chasing the corporate ladder. She was a public-school teacher. Then we started to look into food, which is a spiral. A downward…
Jan. 1, 2022

Ep 1.1 Marc & Cheryl Cesario

“I would say the overarching of all of this is actually understanding that this is a business. Right? It’s great, it’s farming, it’s pastoral. It’s all these things., but at the end of the day, this is a business and a busin…