Welcome to the Growing Our Future podcast. In this show, the Texas FFA Foundation will take on a journey of exploration into agricultural science, education, leadership development and insights from subject matter experts and sponsors who provide the fuel to make dreams come true. Here's your host, Erin Alejandro. Here is your host, Aaron Alejandro.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening or whenever you may be tuning in to the Growing Our Future podcast. You know, we just are so appreciative that we're able to use a technology like this to bring on special guests to share insights, experiences, to share encouragement and hope and maybe some skills. And I was recently in Ria Dosa, new Mexico, and I met this couple and as soon as I met them and I heard their story, I'm like we got to bring them on to the show. So y'all join me in welcoming Cade and Morgan Hodges with Hodges Livestock. Cade, morgan, good morning and thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, thank you for having us. We're happy to be here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like Morgan said, thank you, we're honored to be here on the podcast.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, I just love doing this. By the way, everybody that knows me, I always say if agriculture has taught me anything, it's taught me. If you want to know what the future is, grow it. Well, how do you grow the future? Well, you got to plant the right seeds, you got to take care of them and then you got to harvest it and then share it with others. Y'all's story in this podcast. I said I got to have those folks on because I want them to share some of your seeds of wisdom and greatness so that maybe we can plant some ideas, some vision, some encouragement, some resilience and maybe the people who will hear this podcast. So thank you for doing that. Every podcast, we start off with the same question, so I'm going to ask each of you to answer this question.
Speaker 3:Cade Morgan what are you grateful for today? I guess I can go ahead and start. I'm grateful to be sitting here doing what we love and chasing our dreams together as a family Cade, myself, and then our almost one-year-old baby boy, Weston.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I can't use the same answer exactly, but no, I'm very fortunate to be doing what we do with our family, with my family out here involving Morgan's family as well. Just very thankful, very blessed to get to live this way of life.
Speaker 3:And for the recent rains, we have to add that Well, that's good stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I like to share with people is called R2A2. So I tell people, anytime you hear a speaker or presentation, listen to a podcast, try to R2A2. Recognize what they're saying, relate to it because everybody's going to relate differently assimilate it, take it in and then apply it. So, if you can, r2a2 things. Sometimes we find blessings, sometimes we find vision, and already y'all just got started and already you've given us some really good R2A2.
Speaker 2:So you talked about a dream, talked about family, you talked about faith, and we're just getting started. So thank you for that. By the way, I agree with you Everything that you just said. I love the fact that I live in a country that's got an incredible abundance. I love the fact that I get to do life with family and that we live in a country where we've got the freedom and liberty to chase those dreams that you talked about. So, with that, let's go ahead and get started.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 2:Thank y'all for sharing that by the way.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:So while we were in Rio Dosa we were at an ag co-ops managers meeting and I got to hear Morgan and K2 tell kind of their story.
Speaker 2:And when I heard their story it inspired me, because I'm from the city originally and I'm kind of a transplant to the country way of life, into agriculture.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times we hear people say, well, I could never do that, I couldn't pursue that, there's no way I could make that happen, and I could always offer words of encouragement but I really didn't have anybody I could point to. Well, now I have somebody I can point to, because when you hear Kate and Morgan's story, you're going to understand that this is a couple who had an idea, a dream that they wanted to do together, and they wanted to do it for their way of life, they wanted to do it for their lifestyle, they wanted to do it for the fact that they're feeding and clothing the world, and so with that I want y'all to kind of take us on that journey, morgan, if you will. How in the world did y'all come together? How in the world did you bring your family interest together? How in the world did you ever say this is the cattle company we're going to start and the harvesting of natural resources, all of the things kind of walk us through what that looked like.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So I guess we'll go ahead and start at the beginning. We met at Texas A&M University and it was kind of love at first sight for me, honestly and we started dating my sophomore year of college and from that moment on we knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and spend it doing what we loved. So I guess, to back up even a little bit further, I did not grow up on a farmer ranch. I grew up my dad was an extension specialist in my younger years in Southern New Mexico. So I got to bounce around on a lot of ranches but I didn't grow up as a quote unquote ranch kid.
Speaker 3:But I always had a passion for the ranching industry. We were at a speaking engagement last night and I got to share the story about how, whenever I was about 10 years old, my one of my family members asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I said I wanted to raise sheep and they told me that was a bad idea and I didn't like that answer. So now we raise sheep and cattle and goats for a living. So, as you can see, I did not heed that advice and yeah, that's a little bit about my background growing up. Would you like to share some of yours, gabe?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I kind of have a little different upbringing. I'm extremely fortunate I'm a sixth-generation rancher out here in.
Speaker 4:Sterling County. This is what I grew up doing. My family started out in 1889 raising cattle, and then some of the first sheep were brought into our operation in the early 1900s. They were Merino Rambouillet Wool Sheep. That's what my family raised all the way up until 2016, whenever we transitioned fully to Hair Sheep, and that's what we still continue to do today. I grew up as that kid stomping the wool sacks, pushing the wool into the bags and getting them packed and load them on the trailer and then it's down.
Speaker 2:So real quick for our audience, because this is good stuff. What's a wool sheet?
Speaker 4:It's just a breed of sheep that produces fiber. There's several breeds of sheep that do that, rambouillet, merino being two of the most common, but there's several others as well. But that fiber is produced and it goes into making clothing or other wool-based products like army blankets felt all the way up to your high-end Italian suits.
Speaker 3:Wow fell all the way up to your high-end italian suits. Wow. And on the other end of the spectrum, hair sheep are ones that don't produce wool there's wool. They, specifically are targeted at producing meat.
Speaker 2:Yep there you go see. That's why I asked that question, because I know there will be somebody that will watch this and they're going to, in their mind they you know they'll never email me, but in their mind they're going to want to know what that answer is Okay.
Speaker 2:So y'all you meet, you come together and you said, hey, I've got a little background in this, I've got some aspiration for this. How do we pursue this? Take us down that path of how y'all began to unpack and put the bricks of the foundation of this dream that y'all had together in place.
Speaker 3:Well, I think we started laying the foundation whenever we were in high school and in our elementary years in the 4-H and FFA programs. We were really, really active in both of those programs and built some exceptional leadership skills there and I think that is kind of the pad from which we launched that, in addition to our amazing mentors, our amazing family that helped instill in us some exceptional I guess an exceptional life outlook and just general skills. But we took that love of agriculture. But we took that love of agriculture and as we transitioned into our college careers, I majored in animal science, minored in business at A&M and then went on to pursue a master's degree at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with a undergraduate degree in animal science and then a master's degree in animal science with a focus in small room and nutrition. So obviously very applicable.
Speaker 3:And we got married in 2021. And I worked in town for about six months. The San Angelo Stock Show had an exceptional time there. The San Angelo Stock Show had an exceptional time there, but we decided as a family that we wanted to take this time to give it our best shot and pursue both of us full time in our ranching business and took a really big note out from Capital Farm Credit and a lot of hours, a lot of sweat, a lot of tears and dreams, and now we're here.
Speaker 2:I think there's something here that really caught my attention when I heard y'all's story, and it was how zeroed in and focused that you were, that this agricultural way of life, this farming and ranching way of life, was something that y'all were sold out to. At least that's what I heard. When I heard you tell your story, I heard that everything has been very intentional, that, no matter what hurdle presented itself, it was to never give up. Presented itself. It was to never give up. It was to always say how do we overcome, how do we continue to pour into our faith and lean into our faith?
Speaker 2:Everything that I heard y'all say was you had a goal, you had a dream, you wanted to do it together. You wanted your families to be a part of that, and so you pursued it. Something tells me that, as y'all and where you're at now, by the way, because you shared some of this, I want you to share this. It was not without challenges. It's been not without some real hurdles that you've had to overcome. Can you walk us through kind of what that looked like as you got started and then you ran into some of these hurdles, and then how you navigated and overcame those?
Speaker 4:yeah. So I mean I was talking about these hurdles. I mean it's farming, it's ranching, there's gonna be hurdles. I mean it's not so much if drought's gonna hit, it's when drought's gonna hit, right, I wish my crystal ball worked a whole lot better than it really did, but no, yeah.
Speaker 4:So when we first started out ranching, we started out by acquiring lease country, reaching out to landowners and we operated that said lease country. We had multiple years on land, run these lease country back up a little bit. So we operate 98% lease country. Currently only 2% of it is owned. It is some family land that Morgan and I purchased from our family and everything else. You have 98%. It's all lease contract. But whenever we were early on in our ranking careers, we had the unfortunate event of losing a lease which at the time was approximately half of our operated acreage, which that was a huge blow to both of us and we knew that was going to significantly reduce our income potential and that really made us think hard like, ok, how are we both going to be able to continue to ranch together?
Speaker 4:and be, sustained by it, together to be sustained by it. And if we don't figure something out soon, well, one of us is going to have to buy a job in town or find a part-time job somewhere until we can make ends meet otherwise.
Speaker 3:We were. Also. I was two months pregnant with our first child at the time, so talk about a perfect storm of scary circumstances. But I remember once we got the call and got off the phone and we learned we were going to lose the lease, and I looked at Kate and I said we're going to make this the best thing that ever happened to us. We just don't know how yet and we tried to hold true to that promise.
Speaker 3:We got down and did the tough work. You know. We started making cold calls to people. We got a white pages subscription and uses county used, county appraisal, district data and started making cold calls down the list of landowners in the county and surrounding counties. And I don't know if y'all have ever done cold calls, but it is probably at the very bottom of my list of favorite activities and stuff.
Speaker 3:We, you know, put up flyers and tractor supply in search of release country. We posted stuff on social media and really tried to get out there and you know it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to us because we pivoted into some really exciting stuff. I guess we'll get to talk about it a little bit later, but we offer targeted grazing services to solar farms through sheep, so we are able to provide and manage sheep in hybrid grazing mowing systems on solar farms to help manage vegetation, and the reason that we pivoted to that was because we lost that leased country and eventually we actually replaced that leased country with another property that we're leasing and now we're way ahead of where we started and it truly was the best thing that ever happened to us.
Speaker 4:I guess way back, but it sure slingshotted us about 10 steps forward, yeah.
Speaker 2:Again, I hope everybody's picking up out of this great interview what I'm getting. Number one again. I'm going to go back to your laser focus. I absolutely admire that and I like the fact that, like you said, kate, it's not a matter of we're going to have a drought. We're going to have droughts. I live in North Texas, where you know we were on the verge of becoming the first major city, ghost city in the state of Texas, because we had three combined lake levels that were down to 17%. I mean it got scary. And what are you going to do? You're going to have.
Speaker 2:It's like COVID I mean in the world that we dealt with. Right, covid comes along. Nobody saw that coming. It's like Zig Ziglar and Tom Ziglar say. They say expect the best, prepare for the worst and capitalize on what comes. And I love that quote. Expect the best, prepare for the worst and capitalize that's what y'all did best. Prepare for the worst and cap. That's what y'all did. We didn't see COVID come.
Speaker 2:I'm in the world of development, so I do know what you mean when you talk about cold calls. But, to your point, you expect the best. Y'all have a dream that was not built on. What are we going to have to overcome. Your dream was based on the blessing of what it's going to provide, and so, when the challenges come, we prepare for that and then we capitalize on it, and I think that's the beauty of y'all's story is, you were hit with some serious setbacks, but they were never really a setback because you looked at it as an opportunity to say how are we? What are we going to do next? By the way, I do share that.
Speaker 2:So all the CEOs, all the people that I've been very fortunate to work with, I tell everybody they've got one word that's in their vocabulary that I love One word. I love this word. It's called next. It does not matter if they have a success, what's next? It doesn't matter if they have a setback, it's what's next. And I think that's the reason why God put our eyes here and not back here, because he wants us to keep looking forward and up and doing the things that we know are the right things to do, and y'all are proof of that. So I love your resiliency.
Speaker 2:I think resiliency is a trait that more people need to have, especially young people. That's the reason why I hope the young people are listening to this. You're not always going to get a blue ribbon. I tell people I learned just as much getting the gate as I did getting a trophy for a calf or a sheep, whatever it may be a pig. That's the beauty of resiliency, is you learn, and y'all have learned, and I love the word, of course, pivot. No pun intended, but y'all did do that. And so when y'all began to make those pivots, those changes, where did this idea come from of why don't we utilize our sheep here? How did you vet this out?
Speaker 3:On the solar grazing side of things. It had been an idea that had been brewing for a long time. I think that I checked my notes in my phone and October 24th of 2021 was whenever we had a little bullet point written down that said solar grazing question mark and, for lack of a better word, the fire was put under us to find something new. So that's when we really, full steam ahead, tried to pursue it and we got to utilize some really awesome connections and mentors that we have, and they were able to point us in the right direction to the American Solar Grazing Association, where we were able to become certified solar grazers. And then we got to work with one of Cade's longtime family friends to get on our first site, and now we've got how many sheep on solar?
Speaker 4:About 1,300 ewes currently grazing on two sites in East Texas. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a story. So something else that you said in Rio dosa that got my attention um, there was a great motivational speaker named zig ziggler and, uh, zig passed away, but his son, tom ziggler, is now on my board of directors. So tom and I have a lot of these discussions and we were talking one day and we were talking about coincidence and I just made the comment that coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. And then Tom Ziegler said Aaron, he goes. In Hebrew there is no such word for coincidence. There is no word for coincidence. And I remember when you were sharing your story, you shared the story about how y'all were at a moment in time where you were looking for property and you happened on to a gentleman. Can you tell that story of what happened and how that began to unpack itself?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. This was I met this wonderful mentor of ours before we were even searching for lease country very hard, so it was probably in at the end of 2021, maybe beginning of 2022. I was sitting there, I was getting my oil changed at our local Ford dealership and I just struck up a conversation with a gentleman next to me Ford dealership and I just struck up a conversation with a gentleman next to me and we talked probably for the entire hour that it took for us to both get the work done on our vehicles and we. He ended up being one of the most exceptional mentors we've ever had, just one of the most kind hearted people I've ever met, and whenever we lost that lease, he was one of the first people I mentioned to like, hey, if you know of anyone who is looking to lease out their property, please let us know. And about two or three months later, he gives me a call.
Speaker 3:I think that Cade and I were putting in a water tap at a solar farm and I answered it and he said hi, morgan, I am here with so-and-so and they're looking at leasing out their family ranch. You're on speakerphone, tell them about yourself. And that got our foot in the door that got us to the lease interview and the bidding process and we were able to come through and secure the lease. And all because of that one conversation we happened upon one of the biggest opportunities to our operation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and just kind of expound on that a little bit. I mean, you never put yourself out there, you never know who you're going to meet, you never know what might happen, what might come from that, and just be genuine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, every single conversation is an opportunity, an opportunity to make a connection or an opportunity to help someone, and whether you're sitting in line at the grocery store or the doctor's office, there is always opportunity in the conversations you can have and your ability to help someone or have someone help you.
Speaker 2:I can tell you in my career, one of the programs that we run at the Texas FFA convention is we've got a program called the Foundation Ambassadors and we have about 300 kids apply. We take 70. And for a week we train them and they host all of our sponsors, all of our dignitaries. They do all that for the week. But one of the awards that we give is called the Three Foot Award and we teach the kids get to know anybody that's within three feet of you, Because anybody that's within three feet of you could become a customer, a client, a colleague, a constituent, a consultant, a mentor, an encourager. But think about it, Just like you said, both of you said you, you put yourself out there and you build connection. Because God didn't create us to be the lone ranger. Uh, he created us to be in relationship, and the more of those that we have, uh, we're able to solve problems quicker, we're able to take advantage of opportunities quicker.
Speaker 2:So the fact that y'all are living proof that getting an oil change was a moment that you jumped out there and look at what happened. So I appreciate you sharing that story. I just wanted to share that with you, that I really valued that For the young people that may be listening, or the ag teachers or agents. Or, by the way, the podcast goes nationwide Just out of curiosity. Are there opportunities? Do y'all see a future in agriculture? Do y'all see a future in farming absolutely you're gonna touch on that one yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 4:I mean like agriculture today doesn't sure does not look the same as it did 100 years ago, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean you always gotta look back, respect the tradition, respect what was done, learn from the older, older folks that have been in this profession for 50 plus years, listen to them, listen to their mentorship, take their advice, but at the same time too, look forward to other opportunities like solar grazing, for example. What we're doing now. This is relatively new and on a large scale in texas. I mean this is something that's been going on the east coast for 15 years now, on smaller scale, more community scale sites that are 15 20 acres, but larger utility scales. Grazing sheep under those in Texas is probably the past five, eight years, realistically, so it's times have changed a little bit. But I mean, grab those opportunities and hang on tight.
Speaker 3:Exactly. You know you can look at your circumstances and find challenges and opportunities in any single circumstance, and we choose to understand the challenges because they're there and they're real and it would be silly to ignore them.
Speaker 2:but we chose to have laser focus on the opportunities and how we can use those to help put high quality protein on people's plates I just want you to know, morgan, that when we do podcast interviews, I'm always listening for what the title of this podcast is going to be, and you've already y'all have already given me three different titles that I've written down throughout this whole time.
Speaker 3:Awesome.
Speaker 2:So that you just threw another one out there to make this even more challenging to find the right one. Let's talk from the standpoint again. I said if you want to know what the future is, grow it. So hopefully we're planting some seeds in the imagination of young people that life's not a solo project. You've got to dream big. You've got to work hard to make your dreams come true. That takes leadership, and leadership is not easy. Y'all have said it already. You've already talked about the challenges that come with leadership, but give us three leadership tips. If you were going to give a young person or a teacher or a colleague or somebody close to you a leadership tip, what would be three leadership tips you'd give them?
Speaker 3:The number one, most important one that I would share is lean on your faith in the Lord. The Lord is the sole reason Caden and I are here today. We are not here by our own actions, by our own doing. We are here because it is God's will and he has placed us here and in our mission statement, which we have built around the Lord is. Our mission is to be good stewards of God's creation by producing profitable and productive livestock for both consumers and fellow ranchers, and my favorite part of that is good stewards of God's creation.
Speaker 3:So, my number one tip would be lay on your faith in the Lord and just let him see what he's going to do in your life, because it's going to be pretty exceptional whenever you fully trust him.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'd say for me, and big one, is resiliency. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, it's not if drought's gonna hit, it's when. And just be prepared, be thinking ahead, think towards the future. Um, don't get your head down. Whenever circumstances just kind of take a turn on you, keep your head down, keep going, power through it or find something else, find a new opportunity, and you got to go out and look for them. They may not necessarily all fall in your lap. You got to pursue them.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And I think the third one that we would probably say is creativity. You know, one of the biggest skills you can have is for finding creative solutions to complex situations, and your ability to adapt and be creative in tough times and good times is one of the biggest skills I think you can have as a young person or a more tenured farmer or rancher. I really think that creativity is highly, highly important by the way, everything that y'all just said.
Speaker 2:The reason I love all this is because if we do read the bible and I tell people you can read it as a history book, you can read it as a religious book, I don't care which direction you read it, but it's really got some great content in it. I would agree. There's a lot of agriculture in there, a lot of agriculture in there, and so it tells me that there must be a lot of life lessons that come out of growing things and planning things and expecting things and nurturing things and weeding things and calling things. There's just a lot of wisdom that I think comes out of that. And y'all, just y'all said it. You know, I asked the young people a lot of times to name the most successful people they can, and they'll name movie stars and athletes and business leaders, and I always ask them, I said just name one of those, just one that every day gets up and makes their own heartbeat. Somebody allows us to be here because there's a purpose.
Speaker 2:That purpose is going to be faced with some challenges.
Speaker 2:And I tell people if you want a place that it never rains, I can take you there. It exists. It's called a desert, and I tell people if you want a place that it never rains, I can take you there. It exists. It's called a desert and nothing grows. But you show me somebody that's had a little rain and I'll show you somebody that's had an opportunity, will have an opportunity to grow, and that's resiliency, and y'all are proof of that. And then, lastly and y'all are proof of that and then lastly, you know, we have to be innovators and not imitators. We've got to be creative, we've got to be thinking. You know what, if what's next? And I just appreciate y'all sharing your story, because your story is a story of a vision, of a dream, of family, of faith, of resiliency, of creativity. Again, when I heard y'all at Ria Dosa, I said I've got to have them on this show because it's everything that I hope young people, teachers, can embrace. I call it the three E's encourage, equip and empower. And that's what life's about.
Speaker 2:We, you know it's crazy to think that maybe why we're here today is that your child, my child, my grandchildren they may have to lean on each other one day. We don't know that they may have to lean on each other one day. We don't know that. But maybe it's because of what we did today that we pour into their futures, because we planted seeds that taught them these very essences of leadership. So I just want to say thank you to both of you. Thank you for sharing your story, thank you for being willing to share your story. Not everybody wants to share that. They had challenges or setbacks, but I think it's inspiring to hear those that found ways to overcome and that you did it together.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 2:I found that very inspiration, so thank you for doing that. I found that very inspiration, so thank you for doing that. All right, so let's wrap this up. This is all good stuff, though. I mean we. I keep talking to y'all all day long.
Speaker 1:Everybody gets a fun question at the end of the show.
Speaker 2:So here's your fun question.
Speaker 3:Hey, Morgan what's the best concert y'all ever been to? Oh man, I was not expecting that one. Uh hey, do you want to go first? I think the last concert you know we don't make it off the ranch very often for those kind of things, but I would say probably in college I really enjoyed um Shane Smith and the Saints.
Speaker 4:I think that's the first concert Kate and I ever went to together, so there you go at the now, uh, or the no longer standing Hurricane Harry's in Colton which I now I think is a parking lot yeah, yeah it, it's your change. I'll say that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now I get to say you're dating yourself a little bit yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great, that is absolutely great. Yeah, I think it's a fun question and the spectrum is unbelievable Everything from Metallica to Pitbull to the greatest showman, and then, of course, george Strait's, always popular. Oh yeah, I'm sure it's always fun to ask people, because I think it's just another insight into life, that the same thing that motivates you, motivates me Family, friends, a good song, good movie, a good book and so I think it's fun to ask people what's your best concert? And there have been some really good responses to that.
Speaker 2:Well, cade Morgan, I just want to say again, thank you, thank you for your story, thank you for your testimony, thank you for your example, thank you for your willingness to share. I'm hopeful that whoever tunes in and God's going to have tune in, who God wants to hear the message I hope that when they do tune in, that they're going to get those three E's, they're going to be encouraged, equipped and empowered to go out and grow a better future for them, their families, their communities, our state and our country. So the fact that y'all are willing to share today, it means a lot.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. We're super excited to have been here. Thank you for the invitation. It means a lot to us as well.
Speaker 4:Thank you much. We really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Sure and okay for all the listeners. Thank you for stopping by. I meant time you can't save it, you can only spend it and the fact that y'all are willing to spend a little bit of your time with us today. We hope you found something of value here, maybe some seeds that you can plant in your life, that you can grow it even better tomorrow. So until the next time we meet, go out and do something great for somebody. You'll feel good about it and guess what? By doing so you'll just make our world a better place to live, work and raise our children. So thank y'all for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1:We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Growing Our Future podcast. This show is sponsored by the Texas FFA Foundation, whose mission is to strengthen agricultural science education so students can develop their potential for personal growth, career success and leadership in a global marketplace. Learn more at mytexasffaorg.