#016 4T% Ranch: Cold Hard Cattle - Ben Adams

In this episode I sit down with Ben Adams, owner and operator of 4T% Ranch in Soldotna, Alaska, to talk about the work, the cost, and the conviction behind one of the wildest modern ranching stories I have ever heard. 
Ben grew up poor in Canada with a legally blind father, learned responsibility early, and eventually "fluked" his way into a career as a criminal defense attorney. Years later, he walked away from the courtroom, carved a ranch out of the boreal forest on the central Kenai Peninsula, and has been grinding ever since to raise some of the most nutritionally dense beef in the country. Along the way, his body and spirit have taken a beating from brutal winters, dead calves,  broken equipment, borough taxes, skeptical farmers, and the foreboding task it is to build success in the ag industry. 

Through it all, Ben’s impenetrable work ethic, his love for cattle, and his belief that food should actually nourish people keep him going. His transparency on social media has turned 4T% Ranch into something like a live action docu series. Building quite the community of those that cheer him on, but not without those that remain skeptical and criticize his unconventional approach to life and ranching. 

In this episode we talk about: 

• Ben’s childhood in Canada and what it was like to be raised by a legally blind single dad while living in poverty
• How those early years shaped his work ethic and his decision to grind through university and law school
• The SWAT raid that flipped his view of the justice system and pushed him toward criminal defense work
• Going from broke public defender to successful private attorney and multimillionaire, then choosing a harder life anyway
• Why he always saw law as a way to someday become a farmer
• Buying land on the Kenai, building a massive timber frame home from his own trees, and the decision to ranch
• How a few cows turned into hundreds, and why ranching in the central Kenai Peninsula might be the toughest way to raise beef in Alaska
• The insane logistics of feeding and moving cattle when almost everything has to be trucked in or hauled for hours
• Losing money, losing cattle, and nearly breaking himself during long winters and calving seasons
• Why he feeds root crops like potatoes, beets, and carrots, and what the nutritional testing on his beef actually showed
• The lack of real support for agriculture in Alaska, from tax policy to local culture, and the pushback he has felt from some in the ag community
• Buying a USDA plant to keep local processing alive, and why he did it even though it cost him dearly
• The future of farming and food security in the United States as older producers age out and fewer young people step in

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Order beef from 4T% Ranch
Text: 907-394-5619 
He tracks orders by text. Reach out, tell him you heard the podcast, and he will walk you through what cuts are available and how pickup or delivery works.
 

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Thank you for listening and for supporting Alaskan stories.

 Keep North, Alaska.
 

Transcript

The State I Am In (00:25)
Hello and welcome to the state I am in where every conversation points north. Here we discuss topics that Alaskans and perhaps everyone should care about. I'm your host, Manny Coelho a fellow Alaskan and your guide to the conversations that Alaskans want to hear from the individuals who are leading the way.

My guest today is Ben Adams. Ben is the owner and operator of 4T % Ranch in Soldotna, Alaska. In today's conversation, we dive into his life before ranching, from growing up in Canada with a legally blind father as his primary guardian, to building a successful career as a criminal justice attorney and public defender. We talk about the beginnings of the ranch, the highs and lows of his journey, the obstacles and logistical nightmare that ranching in Alaska can pose.

but how his impenetrable work ethic, love for cows, and desire to make a proven and premium beef product keeps him going.

We discuss his unconventional approach with his beef and his experience with the shortcomings of law and policy for cattle ranching in Alaska. his openness on social media, the people who support him, the critics that don't, and what he has to say to both.

Ben's transparency has made his story impossible to ignore. Some people want to see him succeed and continue to share his story, while others would wish he would just stay quiet and throw in the towel. Today, we dig into all of it, set the record straight, and look at what the future might hold. And now, my conversation with Ben Adams.

The State I Am In (01:51)
Well, Ben, 4T % ranch, the man, the myth, the legend. Seriously, I know you're a busy guy, and I really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule, away from the cows, away from the ranch to come and just hang out with me and talk about your story. Your story is probably the craziest Alaska ranching story.

that I am definitely aware of, maybe that's ever been documented, I don't know. know, social media and the internet has made it to where we can get a small glimpse into your life and you've done a really good job of kind of sharing that with Alaska and the world. What do you think grabs people's attention when it comes to your story?

I think a few things. I think that ranching in and of itself is a compelling subject. You think about all the TV shows and the books and the myths of, you know, the American West and the cowboy and all of that sort of thing that I think just naturally draws the American psyche to that sort of lifestyle. And I think also it's because I'm unabashedly

willing to provide an honest, open glimpse into my life. Clearly, I don't share everything. I don't even share 10 % of what goes on in my life. But what I do share is open, accurate, vulnerable. You know, I expose my underbelly to the world and that's not something that everyone is willing to do, especially in the day, this day and age where a lot of what's written on the internet is driven by AI or it's so artificial. I mean, you you get the

people with the duck lips and they're in a perfect body and they're, you know, they're boating the Caribbean and, you know, trying to make us all think that that's what life is. And that's not what life is. Life is dirty diapers and broken cars and a washing machine that's leaking and, you know, your bills are due and the snow won't stop falling. And, you know, that's, and I just try to be honest with people. And I think that's, I think that is very ⁓ compelling to a lot of folks as well. Yeah, you're right. I think social media is very much a,

platform that somehow has turned into just success and perfection and yet what do people want? People want real. People want authentic. And I think that's what you've been able to kind of communicate with those that follow you.

I don't know how many people you have following you on social media now, but did you ever imagine it would be thousands, over 10,000 people following a ranch in Alaska? No. I started it mainly to document it for myself and I thought maybe one day my girls or my possible grandchildren or something might want to see it. I no idea. I'm at 12,000 or something right now, which as social media goes is obviously extremely tiny.

But for me, it's a source of pride because, I mean, there's 12,000 people that follow me. And I know there's many, many more from looking at the metrics that actually read it without following it. And I know that everyone from the governor's office down to Housewives in Juneau read my Facebook page. And I never expected that, to be honest. Never expected it. It reminds me of like a Netflix series that people are like...

They don't want it to be their life. They're interested because it sucks. There's highs and there's lows and there's drama and there's tragedy and there's death. You got cows that die. You got characters that you form bonds with and then they pass away. I think people view it as this drama series. I think what keeps people intrigued is they don't know how it's going to unfold. Well, join the club. ⁓

And I think there's two groups of people. I think you have the people that are rooting for your success and they're like, they want you to succeed and they're like your number one cheerleaders. And I think you got the opposite. You got the people that like are waiting for you to fail or to jump it at the moment that you stumble. And you see that in the comment section, you know? And I'm sure you see that offline ⁓ as you talk to people. But it's got it all, man. And it's a pleasure to have you here.

Like you said, you give us very small window into your life and that is not even scratching the surface. And I hope through today's conversation, we can broaden that a little bit with just your background, what you've accomplished at 4T % in Alaska and what happens from here. so-

let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? Canada. Yeah. And I moved a lot as a kid. My father was legally blind and he was a single parent and because of that,

blindness and I guess his personality. We moved a lot. I think I went, I think I counted it at one point. It was either 12 or 13 different schools in 12 years. Wow. So, you know, we moved a lot. And I lived in Quebec. We lived in Alberta. We lived in the Yukon. We lived in British Columbia. The one thing that was true throughout my childhood was we were consistently poor. And I don't mean poor of...

like, know, gee, we only have the iPhone 4 when we really wanted the 6 type of poor. I mean, we were poor, poor. And ⁓ I learned early on to grow food, quite frankly. ⁓ It was always, I guess, maybe that's where the love of it came from. Some of my earliest memories are gardening, having chickens, you know, because my dad was blind, we used to, at least in British Columbia, when people would poach animals, they would often... ⁓

they would give them to the disabled and some of my earliest memories are coming home and my dad would be there with a hacksaw and a moose literally on the kitchen table trying to cut it into pieces somehow so we had something to eat. He'd make a big batch of beans, you know, at the beginning of the week and we'd take a propane torch and we'd heat it up throughout the week just for something to eat. I mean, we were poor, poor. And so that obviously shaped my life considerably because I'd never forgotten what it felt like to

a new pair of shoes in the spring literally be a big deal. mean, 30, 40 years later, I can still remember what that felt like to change out the one pair of winter boots I had into a new pair of running shoes for the summertime and not have to wear the winter boots and get made fun of because we didn't have anything else. So, and I don't see any of that to, to complain or, or in a negative way, quite frankly, if I could go back and change it, I don't know that I would.

Because one of the things that it helped me to do, I think, is it gave me a work ethic that quite frankly is unmatched. I don't want to sound overly arrogant here, but I don't know a single person that can outwork me. And that for me is just a huge source of pride that I work a lot. don't mind. I like working. I like producing. I like growing. I like creating things. And almost nobody I know can keep up with me. And that for me is one of the

signatures of my personality. That's very important to me. So... Were you an only child? Did you have siblings as well? No, I had a younger brother. Younger brother as well? Okay. And then so, you know, looking, having a father that was blind, do you feel like your mom was your, your primary, like, parental role since your dad was blind? Or did your dad's, blindness not really hold back from his, role in your life? divorced very early.

So I grew up with just my dad. Just your dad? wow, okay. In fact, they had such an ugly divorce that I didn't even have any communication with my mother until I was 16. Oh, dang. And I remember my father on my 16th birthday saying, I made an agreement with your mother, go meet her. And I hadn't seen her in 10 or more years and suddenly I was thrust into having to go meet this person that was my mother on my 16th birthday. And there was no warning from him either. It was just, boy, you're 16 today, go meet your mother. That was the deal.

So how they came to that arrangement or why that happened, that's all lost to history now. Wow. So that was, in terms of the parental role, quite frankly, a lot of that fell on me. I was always responsible for things like dishes and food preparation and cleaning and a lot of those things from a very early age that, quite frankly, I I don't think the average seven-year-old has to worry about feeding his father and his younger brother. Maybe they do, but that was certainly my job.

Yeah, and that's what my question was going to be. Did that put you in a position to where you had lion's share of responsibility at home with your sibling to and from school? Did you guys go to public school? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And we took the bus or we walked, depending. There were times we lived in very, very small towns where we could walk to school or take the school bus. that was partly, a lot of that was definitely my responsibility and just was what it was.

And the thing about my dad though is he was always a hustler. Even though he was blind, he wasn't one to take that lightly. He was always doing stuff. He was trying to make deals and you know, I remember he had a house remodeling business at one point. Maybe he couldn't do the work himself but he would hire contractors and we would figure out ways to do it and there was always things he was trying to make some business deal or do something. So...

It didn't always work because we were poor, but he wasn't one to sit there and go, oh no, my life is crap. I'm just going to sit here and cry about it. It was the opposite. Do you think you took on that quality from him? Oh, for sure. I mean, there's times that I definitely say, oh, my life is crap and I kind of complain about it. But I push through it. he blind from birth? Is something that happened later on in life? Later. That's the worst part for him. He was actually quite a successful

contractor and he had, you know, at one point, you know, the huge amount of heavy equipment and he was building subdivisions and he actually got a disease, ⁓ was it toxoplasmosis or histoplasmosis? can't remember which one it was now. But in any event, it came from ⁓ pigeon droppings, as I remember, and it was a basically a bacteria that only lived in certain part of Canada. ⁓ Boy, I think it was toxoplasmosis. You can also get it from cats, I believe. In any event, he caught this as an adult because at that point he'd had

He'd had a first wife and I'd had a couple half siblings and then my mother and there were two of us. So was five children. He was successful contractor. He building subdivisions, had all this stuff, got this disease. Boom, there goes his eyesight. Ended up losing everything. And then by the time I kind of came along, it was a very different story. Divorced from my mother and there was the three of us living in a, you know, very squalid living conditions trying to eke out whatever we could eke out. So I'm sure that was not very much fun for him. Yeah.

My assumption is you were a good student going through school. yeah. Yeah. And then graduating high school, did you stick around? Did you stay close to your father to help take care of him? what was that transition? I didn't, you know, and I didn't have a very good relationship with him. And I left as soon as I could. And you know what's weird?

He's been dead now since 99. And what's weird is I sometimes think about why that was. For the life of me, I can't really remember. I remember that it wasn't good, but I can't really pinpoint any specific thing why we had an acrimonious relationship, why I left as soon as I could. And it was 30-something years ago. So, that's just been lost to my memory. And you'd think that would be something I could remember. And I'm just not sure why that happened now. It just...

Maybe I was always too busy consumed with just trying to keep the family together or maybe I blocked it out or you know some sort of psychological defense or something. I'm not sure. It doesn't affect my daily life enough that it would be something I would really do a deep dive into. But I do know that it was when I could I left. And maybe I resented him. You know maybe I resented him for even though wasn't his fault at all. Maybe I resented him for putting us in that lousy position all those years. You know I'm not sure. Yeah.

How much younger is your brother? He is born in five, so five years younger. He's now what, 47, Okay. So, what was that transition like? Did you stay in Canada? Did you leave? Did you go to school somewhere else? Yeah, no, I had great grades in high school and I got accepted to the University of Victoria and I immediately went there and I just did the typical student thing. I got student loans and I got jobs and I put myself through university and I lived, you know, at least...

at the time how a typical student would live, people's basements and rooms and you know wherever I could find a house that was shared with people, that sort of thing. And put myself through university. And I lived in Victoria, British Columbia at that point. And ⁓ it's funny how as we age, how our perception changes because I remember at the time just chafing at Victoria. I always kind of considered myself a country boy.

And even in there as much as I could, I tried to keep a little bit of the country lifestyle with maybe a little garden or a few chickens or something, but I always felt it was too urban for me. But when I go back now in my 50s, I'm always struck by what a remarkably beautiful place it is and how lucky I was to ever live there. And I'm filled with nothing but good memories of the place. So it's funny how our perception changes over time. ⁓

You shared before that you were a lawyer in a past life before the ranching? Is that what direction you were going to when you got into college or no? Total fluke. Okay. Not many people know this story, but total fluke. When I was getting close to finishing my undergraduate degree, I wanted out of Victoria very badly. just felt too urban, too constrained for me. I actually applied to become a...

heavy duty mechanic at a college up in the interior of British Columbia in a place called Prince George. And at that point I was accepted almost immediately because I had a either close to very close to having a university degree with a 4.0 GPA. So I got into the little college up there to do that. somebody at some point and who it was exactly how it happened is unfortunately lost to the mist of time, but made a suggestion to me that I should be a lawyer.

And I remember ⁓ blowing it off and thinking, you know, that's an absurd idea. for somehow that stuck in my craw. And in order to get into law school, you have to take a test called the LSAT, Law School Aptitude Test. And I said, somehow I got convinced into taking that test. So I said, fine, I'll take your stupid test. And I remember writing a check to take the LSAT.

and then changing my mind and deciding that I didn't want to take it, I'm not doing this, I don't want to be a lawyer, that's not the life I want, that's not who I am. And I went to the bank and I tried to cancel the check, but I remember that I got the amount wrong by one penny. It was like $199.99 or something and I wrote $199.98. And so the LSAT people cashed the check anyways. And at the time I was pissed because was a couple hundred bucks to me at the time was a bunch of money, it's not the direction I wanted my life to go.

And I thought, ⁓ okay, fine. You take my money, I'll go write your stupid test. So I went and wrote their stupid test and I just kicked the living crap out of it. And I got this absurd score on it. And I thought, okay, what message is this sending? What message is the universe sending me? And I said, fine, but I'm not moving out of Victoria.

You know, at this point, this is my home, even though I kind of was chafing at it a little bit and resented it. I said, I'm not going to move somewhere else because the idea of that just didn't sit well with me. And at the time, the University of Victoria, and I think my may still be was the best law school in the country, extremely difficult to get into. And I said, I'll apply to UVic only. And if they don't let me, then I'm going to go become a heavy duty mechanic. So I applied to UVic and I wrote a little story about who I was and what I wanted to do. And they accepted me. And so I thought, all right.

There's your sign. There's my sign. And so I went to law school and ⁓ yeah, and actually at the time I went to law school thinking I was going to probably be a prosecutor. I've always been fairly conservative. But in my first year of law school, I had an experience that completely changed my worldview. ⁓ We ended up living

in my grandmother's house. At this point, I was actually kind of reconciled with my mother a little bit and my grandfather had just died and my grandmother was still alive but needed to go into an assisted living facility. And so we ended up moving ⁓ into her house and I actually ended up got to live there the entire time of law school. She died just after I graduated, which was financially fantastic for me.

And it was also a great spot because I got to have a huge vegetable garden and I got to have chickens and I had some fruit trees and I got to live a little bit like I wanted to live. But what happened is, is that my younger brother came and stayed with us for a while and he had a little girlfriend in Japan and he ran up the $6,000 phone bill because this was at the time before cell phones and all the rest of it. Yeah, long distance. Long distance. gosh, it'd kill you.

And were, my mother was basically acting as trustee for my grandmother and the phone company got obviously irritated with her and started threatening, as I recall, know, basic quasi or even or even actual criminal charges if she didn't pay and at the time she didn't have six grand. So my brother's response to that and believe it or not was he swatted me.

He called the police and he made up some fabric. He lied that I had all of these firearms and I was being somehow violating federal firearms law and I was actually raided by the SWAT team. my gosh. In my first year of law school. And ⁓ I was never charged with anything and I did have to spend the night in jail. They took me to jail and they searched my house and took a bunch of my stuff and I had everything returned and I was never charged with a crime.

And but what it did was in an instant it changed my worldview. My paradigm shifted from being very much pro-law in order to ⁓ I spent most of the rest of my careers as a criminal defense lawyer railing against the government and I enjoyed every second of it. So that was and I have and that was

Boy, oh boy, 1996 or so. I have not seen or spoken to my younger brother since. So that fueled you because you were put in a position, an unjust position because you weren't in the wrong. I was not in the wrong. And yet it was portrayed as that. Correct. And then so you were like, if I'm going to be in law, then I'm going to defend the innocent. Correct. Or even the guilty. That never bothered me as a criminal defense lawyer. What bothers me is the power of the state.

I don't particularly like cops, even though I'm a conservative and I don't particularly like the government at all. I'm going to fact, I'm going to take the word particularly out of that. I don't like the government and ⁓ that experience at the hands of the SWAT team was ⁓ so startling, so stark that it blew away parts of my personality instantly, just gone and replaced it with something different. So,

That's what happened to me and I said, know what? I focused on after that, and that was at end of my first year of law school. After that, I focused on criminal law, my remaining law school. I became a public defender after that and I spent decades protecting people. Wow. And this is all in Canada? No, no. I was a lawyer in Canada, but I was also a public defender in California and in Alaska. Okay. And then I was a private defense lawyer in California. So,

Wow. At what point did you start a family in all of that? I got married in 2000... Boy, I should know this. 2002, I guess. My first daughter was born in April of 2006. And then I had two other daughters in 2008 and 2010.

How was your relationship with them? I assume the life of an attorney is a busy one. ⁓ Did you guys move around a lot? you in California for a while? Some. I mean, I think maybe I got some of that from my father being restless. ⁓

think we always provided a very stable home for our children, regardless of, you know, we did definitely move from California to Alaska a couple of times and, you know, I, we bought houses and I remodeled them and we lived in them while we remodeled them because I can't, I'm not much for one for sitting still. In fact, just this interview will have me jonesing for my cows here. But the, the relationship with them, I mean, their daughters, you know, they went through their teenage years.

I think when they were younger, I think I'll probably look back that though some of those years were some of the best of my life for sure. When I was a public defender, there was never any money. I mean, I remember being in Kenai and getting up to this day, I remember what it felt like I'd get paid by the state on a Friday and it was a big deal to go to Fred Meyer and get some extra chicken. Like I'm not exaggerating like that we're gonna go get the fried chicken at Fred Meyer because it was money was tight. It just was.

And then when I became a private lawyer in California, it was tight for the first year or two and then that tap changed. And suddenly I had more money than I could ever even imagine from working my ass off and having a brilliant partner and from making wise choices in the cases we took. And then I went from being in debt and broke to suddenly being a multimillionaire.

And so that I was able to provide a life to my children that I could have never imagined. And I think there's two ways to parent. I think there is one way to parent is to say, well, I struggled, so you should struggle too. Or I struggled and by God, you will never. And I always took the second approach. And so I definitely, as I developed financial resources, my children experienced that.

They traveled and they had amazing experiences and amazing food and lived in great places and had nice things. I mean, they went to Europe and we went to Hawaii and we, you know, I mean, it was, I mean, it was, they had a childhood that I could have never imagined. And so what I ended up with now is three remarkable daughters. ⁓ My oldest daughter is ⁓ going to become a medical doctor. She is brilliant.

She just in fact sent me a screenshot a couple minutes ago. She's been frantically studying for her test in genetics and she, the highest possible score was 200 and she just got 196. She has got a GPA above 4.0. She's on the president's list. She's on the dean's list. She's on the state's, she's on the school senate. She's on the budget committee. She's in a sorority. She's running for academic chair. I mean, she is just this talented person beyond my imagination.

In fact, I said to her the other day, said, it's every parent's dream that their children are better than they are. And we have succeeded because you are better than us. And I'm so proud of you. That's awesome. So, I mean, the children that I have are my middle child is still in high school and my youngest as well. And they're both remarkable in their own ways. somehow they just, we develop these children that are.

Remarkable. Yeah, and that's that's what you hope for as a parent I think and like you said to give them a life better than your own and then to see them go and succeed You know to get feel like you've given them the tools to go and succeed has got to be a rewarding feeling as a parent Well, and I think that the last few years of living on the ranch has been extremely helpful. I am Katie what my oldest daughter was home from college last summer and she got a job at Addie Camp cool, and you know, that's one of probably the best restaurant in town. I would agree. Yeah, I

So she was a server there and I enjoyed sometimes just going for breakfast, just me, just me. And I would go down and I'd put my hat on and go down and have a Sunday brunch just because I enjoyed so much sitting there. And I'd order a coffee and I'd just put it like this, make sure my phone was off and I would just sit there and listen to her and just watch her work. And I had done that a couple of times and ⁓

the owner of the restaurant came up to me and said, you're Katie's dad. And I said, I am. And they said, well, we want you to know that she's probably the best employee we've ever had. I said, well, of course. Like I said, of course she is. She's a rancher's daughter. Show up, show up early, give a damn about your work, do the best you can. I mean, it just filled me with such a sense of pride to hear that. And I know that I knew that about her already, but to hear that out of the mouth of somebody else.

⁓ And she and I chafed and fought and screamed at each other about the farm. She hated the farm. She hated the cows. She hated Alaska. She hated me. And ⁓ I said, I don't care.

You're going to do this and you're going to learn to ranch and you're going to learn to take care of these cattle and you're going to learn, we're going to work and we're going to build this barn and we're going to clear this land and we're going to do this work and you can hate me all you want, but one day when you're 50 years old and you're sitting in some bar in New York City and you tell people how you grew up in the wilds of Alaska carving a ranch out of the boreal forest, people are going to look at you like you have two heads. I do not care. Work. And it's already come back to me in spades because she's this remarkable child.

And, know, again, I speak mostly of her just because she's in college and she's the most advanced. But my two youngest children are also amazing. But being in high school, they don't, they're not quite, you know, as advanced in terms of where they want to be and their activities and that sort of thing. But all three of them just turned out to be these children that are going to contribute to society. I shared with you earlier that I grew up on a dairy farm in Central Valley, California.

hour and half north of Harris Ranch, is one of the most giant ⁓ cattle ranches in California, maybe the country. don't know. They produce a lot of beef. they're a big one. So growing up, it wasn't uncommon to see my dad get up super early to go milk the cows. He immigrated from Portugal when he was 11, ⁓ but been around cows his whole life, became a citizen, started a dairy with my uncle.

That hard work or that work ethic is ingrained into the lifestyle and I watched my dad do the same thing ⁓ He said cows don't go on vacation so we don't go on vacation, you know twice a day in milk them

You know, I remember as a kid him dragging me out there because just another body to get the cows into the wash barn was a big deal. I remember waking up in the middle of the night holding a flashlight because the cows got out and we're trying to get them back in. And I'm like eight years old thinking like, what am I going to do if a cow comes this direction? know, push it in. Yeah. Push it. Memories of cows being put down, of cows, you know, calving and having to be yanked out, you know, from their their moms, you know, calves dying. That whole world as a kid, you know, this is probably I'm

Like from the time I was born to maybe I think I was 10 or 11 is when we actually were really involved with the dairy life. I remember that. And even after that, my dad got into like milk transport and was driving truck but the whole dairy life was a part of my upbringing. And I can say with full confidence that my dad may have fallen short in many areas as a father figure. One thing that has transcended all of that is his work ethic. And it's something that when I look back,

in my relationship with my dad, I have a strong work ethic because he exemplified that every day of his life. Dairy farmers are probably the hardest working people that there are. funny, you reminded me of something. I was working, I don't know, a couple years ago.

and my daughters came home from school and I was with one of my guys and I was doing something. I don't remember what it was now. And my guy turned to me and he said, Ben, have your daughters ever come home and not seen you working? I said, I don't think that's true, Kurt. I mean, that's just seven days a week, just every day. I mean, there was, building the ranch, I'd certainly never worked less than 80 hours a week. And I, last calving season, I counted them. did 122 hours in one week. And that's just what it took.

So, I'm not saying that to brag because trust me, I'm not recommending it. But when you have cattle that are calving, they don't give a crap if you're tired. They don't care that you don't want to be there. They do not care cows come first. And that's not only is it a huge investment, but it's also my responsibility to care for those animals. So, I did. ⁓ So, I shared that story about my upbringing just briefly because I wanted to show that from my, from the beginning, it was part of life.

Right for me, but you were a successful lawyer in California, ⁓ you know, making a ton of money, ton of money. So at what point were you like?

Yeah, starting a ranch in Alaska, that's the dream. That's the new dream. That's what we're doing. Was that something that was brewing or was it some like pivotal moment that you're like, this is what we're going to do? Well, when I went to law school, you remember how I said earlier, I chafed against the urban life in Victoria. I went to law school and I said that that time to the person that has turned out to be my best friend for 30 years and my law partner, I said, I'm only here to make enough money to become a farmer.

So that was your attitude going into it. that was my attitude going into it. I've just always been interested in growing food and farming food and taking care of things. And as you and I briefly mentioned or talked about earlier when we bought our coffee for you before we came over here, as I've gotten older now, I've become more more interested in the whole science of nutrition and longevity and all of that. And so it's not just the act of growing food, but how my food can actually be used as medicine to further my life and the life of my community. So

⁓ That's something that's always kind of nibbling around the edges, but it's certainly become to the forefront as I've gone into my 50s now. ⁓ But how did it happen? I mean, it happened again by fluke. ⁓ My life is filled with messages from the universe. I bought this piece of land in ⁓ Alaska here, and I built this ridiculous house, which should be its own podcast. In fact, I had a professional film crew follow me for months. was building that house was

insane, this giant timber frame house that would took a crane and it was its own journey. And I cut down the trees and I made this house on my sawmill. I was working full time and I mean full time as a lawyer and another 40 hours a week in the wood shop to build this giant 6,000 square foot house with a castle. I've seen pictures of it. Yeah, it's pretty epic. Yeah, it's an epic house. So we built this thing and at that point I didn't really know what I was going to do with the rest of my life because the house was at least

mostly built and I had this and I wasn't practicing law anymore and I had enough money that I could if I was careful and frugal I probably didn't need to do very much ⁓ but the the identical nine acres came up for sale next to me and they wanted in my opinion way too much money for it and I said nope I'm not overpaying for that and they said fine and about I don't know five or six

Months later, I got a call saying, okay, well we have an offer on your property next door. It's a couple from California and just wanted to give you a chance to meet it. And I said, I'm not living next to people from California. Sorry, I'm just not doing it. There's many fine people in that state, but I've lived there long enough to know, why are you burning wood? Is that a gunshot? Your dogs are over here. Why are you running four wheelers at two in the morning? Like, just, no. And I said, nope. Yeah. No. I said.

I tell you what, whatever they are offering, I'll beat it by five grand. I don't care. I'm not having neighbors from California. No offense to them, but I'm not doing it. So I bought it. So then I had this extra nine acres now, which isn't very much in terms of cattle ground, but I thought, well, I have nine acres now. I had better do something with it. Maybe I'll get a few cows. And that two or three cows turned into well over 250 over the next couple of years.

As I developed infrastructure and as I got better at growing beef and as quite frankly my reputation for growing incredible beef grew, I just had people wanted it and wanted it and wanted it and I just had a hard time saying no and so I kept buying cows and buying cows and building infrastructure and building infrastructure and buying cows and grazing cows and breeding cows until I was way over the top. Flying high on cows.

So I want to show you a picture real quick of one of the first pictures you've shared on your social media, on your Facebook page.

What's been that's been a few years. It's it's 13th of November 2021. So almost to the day you shared this picture right here. ⁓ yeah. Big Mama. So if you know I'll put it on the screen for people watching but just if you're listening. What is that a Highland cow? It is a Highland cow. Bull? No it's a cow but her name was Big Mama. Big Mama. So in I don't know two feet of snow ⁓ icicles coming from her chin snow all over her face. You took that picture.

where was your heart at at that point? Was this, was ranching in Alaska a dream? for sure. I mean, well, ranching was. I'm saying had the nightmare, had the nightmare started easing into that at that point. No, because obviously I was naive. I had no idea how much work it was going to be and all of the losses and death and fear and stress I would face. And obviously having, I think that first winter I might have put

I think I might put 15 or 16 cows through the winter. And I look back at that now and laugh and laugh. I have 67 cows right now and it's a part-time job at best. ⁓ I need it, you know, because last winter I put almost 250 through the winter and that almost killed me. We can talk more about that. But no, that first winter was fantastic. I mean, I was still riding high on the idea of... ⁓

of ranching and I looked back and I had no infrastructure at the time. I had no barn. I was feeding the cows out of these 55 gallon barrel drums that I had cut in half. was starting to feed them root crops because I had researched that, but I was grinding all those by hand. ⁓ I mean, I was just doing everything just on a ridiculously labor intensive, no infrastructure sort of way.

and trying to look after these cows, get them through the winter with nothing. And I was crazy. Yeah. It was crazy. with ranching, is it something that just perpetuates on its own? Or did you, after that first winter and you're like, this was a lot of work, it wasn't terrible. You know, do these, does it grow on its own just through calving or did you go out and get more cattle? Like how did it start to grow and grow?

Like it did? Both. I started calving and I enjoyed the calves because calves are probably my favorite creature on earth. ⁓ And then I started buying cows and because I'm not completely broke, people obviously started approaching me with opportunities, you know, and I ended up buying herds from people because they wanted out or they died or whatever. So my herd started accumulating and I discovered quite frankly a very deep abiding love of cattle that I did not know.

that I could feel that way about, you know, my fellow creatures. I just, like cows. I like looking. I mean, to this day, I was just telling Jeremy, my best friend of 30 years, I've been feeding cows now in Alaska for five years. And despite all the BS and the heartache and the death and the loss and just all the crap, the river of BS that I have gone through, to this day, when I get up in the morning,

And I look out my bathroom window and I can see the cows lined up with their feed trough. I still love going out and feeding my cattle first thing. I look forward to it. I love the process of it. I love how grateful they are for it. I just love the way they smell and the way they sound and their breath in the cold air and feeding them and just that. I love it.

I have fond memories of after I moved away from Gustine's where I grew up in California. I've been in Alaska now for 13, 14 years, but driving back there to go visit, ⁓ the smell of cow manure, it smells like home. I know it's off putting to many people, ⁓ but growing up around it, being around it, ⁓ that smells like home and it's not off putting at all. ⁓ One of the things that you've shared before is that

You know, people say that you don't have enough experience to be a rancher in Alaska. And yet, I think you've also said in the same breath that that's also a benefit is not having any experience because you're open to learn. You're not taking anything into it ⁓ that could, you know, pollute me. Yeah, that's a good word. Yeah, pollute you. Exactly. There's no preconceived methods or ideologies. You're basically an open book.

Who is Ben Adams now versus who he was, you know, in 2020 and 2021 when it comes to ranching? Like, what have you learned? Well, I went into it completely new. And as I said many times, the one of the the worst things about being a new rancher is I don't know anything. But the absolute best thing is I don't know anything. That's it. Yeah, that's exactly what I always say. And I've caught a lot of flak from my fellow agricultural community in this state because they somehow have interpreted that, which is

a utter source of irritation for me that that statement somehow translates into arrogance. That because I don't know anything and I'm constantly searching for answers that that somehow means I'm an arrogant rancher because of the I'm proud of the beef that I have somehow produced from not knowing anything which I think is such an unfair characterization it just makes me want to scream. And once people I think sit down and talk to me they hopefully that gets alleviated somewhat. But

I had to learn from scratch not only how to care for these cattle, but you have to remember that in the ranching world down, especially down below, for example, you might have a complete, you might have somebody that's producing feed. You might have a cow-calf operator. You'll have a backgrounder. You'll have a finisher. You'll have truckers. You'll have a processing plant, right? You have all these things that are at least somewhat separated. I had to do all of that. Yeah. There's a whole logistical network that's already established there versus you doing it all.

And I mean, at the same time, I was trying to feed pregnant cows and 500 pound calves and finished steers all in the same time at the same place. you know, and arrange for, I had to get into the hay business. I had to get into the trucking business. I had to buy the meat processing plant in Palmer. I had to build a butcher shop on the ranch. I had to develop the market. I had to do everything from nothing, from literally raw boreal force to having one of the biggest cattle herds in the state. And I had to do all of that from the ground up.

And I had to supply all my feed, all my labor, all my cattle, all my inputs, you know, and move the cattle to summer grass and all of that. so luckily, one of my strongest, besides my work ethic, one of my strongest personality traits is I am a professional problem solver. Farmers naturally are, lawyers certainly are. And so I was able to put that skill to work and to figure out how to

make that happen. So to answer your question more precisely, who is the rancher now, you who's the person now, I'm not going to say I'm an experienced rancher because I've only been doing it five years, but the amount of life that has been condensed and jammed into me of five years of ranching in Alaska. It's funny because when I visited or talked to other ranchers down below, the amount of man hours they put in per cow versus me is not even a close call. Like I go visit these people and they have time to go for lunch.

And they, you know, they talk and they go shopping and they go to the Mexican restaurant for three hours and they do that. What? Your cows are out on grass. I'm not saying rather ranchers and stuff don't work hard. Please don't take me wrong. I'm simply saying that when I look at the numbers, like just keeping my cows alive through the winter here is such an insane amount of work that

If I go look at ranchers in California or Washington state or Oklahoma or whatever, you sure do they work? Of course they do. But compared to what I do, it's not even close. They're not dealing with 20 below and four feet of snow and 18 hours of darkness and they're having all of their feed being four hours, just four hours away. Just the trucking alone to bring all my inputs in here is such a source of stress and such a logistical nightmare and such an expense. mean, my trucking bill last year was probably a quarter million dollars.

Just in trucking? Yeah. Geez. So, you know, that's why I'm obviously seriously contemplating doing this job somewhere else because quite frankly, I'm jealous of the ranchers down below. your due diligence in seeking people out that are doing it, you know, lower 48. I think you went to Montana. Did you go to a ranch in Montana for a little bit? Is that where it was at? No, Columbia.

Was it British Columbia? ⁓ To go see how they were doing it. ⁓ You've definitely looked into how to be, how you can make the ranch successful here in Alaska. Is there anybody in Alaska that is doing well ranching with the numbers that you have? So more than just a hobby farm. I think so.

I think so. Obviously, I'm not privy to their finances, so it's hard for me to say, but are there people that have been in business a while and seem to be doing alright? Yes, they are. Yes, there are. ⁓ But you see, the mistake that I made was that I chose the absolute crappiest place in the whole state to do this. Worst by far, the central Kenai Peninsula. Because the problem is here is that if you look around, why don't you tell me

How many fields and pastures you see for cattle in this area? You don't see any. No, you don't. It's forrest And if I was in Palmer, or if I was even down in Homer, or if I was in the interior, I mean, think about some of those farms up in Delta Junction where I think some of the successful farmers are. I mean, they have farms up there that are literally 5,000 acres. I think Bob Green farms something like 35,000 acres. They have areas up there that are fenced that, you know, 1,800 acre pastures, for example, fenced.

Of course you can make money doing that or be more successful. But unfortunately, because this is where I built my house and where I wanted to live, I chose a place where not only did I not have access to the land that I needed to support my cattle, but it means all of my inputs had to be constantly trucked to me. Yeah. My hay, my grain, my potatoes, my barley, my alfalfa. Everything had to come to me. And I had no ability except in the summer to feed my cattle. And in the summer, by the way, I had to truck my cattle to Point Mackenzie.

which is five hours one way. And that was its own nightmare. That was a total disaster for me. I remember a couple years ago I told my wife, said, you need to call 911. I said, I could feel my teeth throbbing from stress like I thought I was gonna die. Just from, because I kept getting calls, my cattle were out. Oh, hey Ben, you have 180 cattle on the road. Good luck. And I'm five hours away one way. What am I supposed to do? And they're disappearing into the woods.

My entire herd, half a million dollars worth of Yeah. So, and not to mention all the dead cattle there, there wasn't anyone to watch them and I went up as frequently as I can, but I lost an amazing number of animals and I just, was a total. And the lesson that that taught me is that when I ranch again next time, if I ranch down below, is I'm going to make sure that I have enough landmass for myself to actually support my herd without having to truck.

Everybody back and forth just expense of that. Trucking 15 cows at a time to Point Mackenzie 10 hours and then coming back and doing that for 250 cattle. Yeah. Unsustainable. Totally broke me financially. Totally broke me. I mean, my best estimate is I'm probably a million dollars poorer for ranching in Alaska. Geez. Yeah. You talked about being a problem solver.

What are some other problems that nearly broke you? Well, there was the trucking issue. And obviously the biggest part of that is that it's the winter trucking because in the summer, of course, feeding cows is easy. It's funny, you know, because before I became a rancher, December and January used to be two of my favorite months here. And now I absolutely despise them, despise them.

⁓ Because of course the winter is the hardest time of the year for me now and I have to do the trucking and of course, I mean just in towbills last year I think I probably spent 15 or 20 thousand dollars just for my truck that would go off the road going back and forth to Palmer for feed. You know, it's just a nightmare in that regard. And broken equipment and trucks going through the ice and just ⁓ just one thing after the other. But in terms of the logistics, I mean terms of ranching here, I mean had the trucking issue.

You know, having to bring in all my inputs, that was a big problem. Having to transport my cattle to summer pasture and then back. Having to transport animals to slaughter and Palmer, which is something that cost me money, which has not been a cost I've been able to pass on to the consumer. That's been an issue. ⁓ Obviously the complete lack of infrastructure here. I mean, my ranch was literally nothing but raw boreal forest. It was so thick, it would take you half a day to walk.

a mile because it wasn't just trees. People think of Alaska as trees. Do you have any idea the number of crisscross dead spruce that was on that that you literally could not walk a hundred feet without being exhausted because you had to, know, I mean it was so dead and thick. was insane. It was impenetrable. It was impenetrable. It took us a bulldozer and excavators and skid steers and I had a crew of men and it took us three months to maybe clear.

Five acres? Seven acres? Because there was so much. Yeah, I could have just burned it all or whatever, but trying to be a little bit more careful with the wood. Sure. Because if you've ever, if you've, I don't know that you've been to my ranch, but if you, if you have been, you'll see that much of my ranch was built from the timber on the property. The fencing, some of the barns, the gardens, the chicken house. I mean, I, you know, a lot of the, my greenhouses, everything, I had a sawmill, so I was purposely trying to keep.

as much of the wood as I could rather than bulldoze it into a pile and burn it. Gotcha. Which would have been cheaper. So the lack of infrastructure and then quite frankly the farming community. The farming community in Alaska is a challenge. I found it a challenge at least. Part of that may have been that they perceive me as being somewhat successful which I think is hilarious. But ⁓ and so that's obviously brought its own level of disdain.

from the ranching community here, farming community. So, like, not being supported, not having, like, you know, you don't have people that are in your corner in that world. That's right. In fact, it's the opposite, you know. There was one of the bigger ranchers up in Delta Junction, ⁓ kept giving me a hard time on Facebook and saying negative things about me and liking and supporting negative things that were said about me. And finally, I'd had enough of it and I confronted him and I said, what exactly is your problem?

Why are you doing this? He says, well, you charge too much for your beef. I don't think you're adding to food security in Alaska because I was charging a couple dollars a pound more than him. And I said, you asshole. You live in Delta Junction. You have no property tax. My property taxes are more than a thousand dollars a month. And I have to truck all of my feed down here. And I'm not saying you're trucking bill is zero, but it's darn close to zero. Mine is a quarter million dollars a year. And instead of supporting me and saying, you know,

Ben is a couple hundred head of cattle and he's trying to have, you know, raise the awareness of local beef and do all these things. We're to take every opportunity to just crap on his head and to say negative things about him and to support negative things about him. That was a typical example for me that grew very exhausting because I had to charge a couple dollars a pound more because without it, I mean, I'm already losing money, but without that, it would have been completely hosed. You know, and so there's this, the problem I think,

What the Alaskan agricultural community is, Alaskans, while you live here, you know how this is. People move here and it's Alaska, rah rah rah, I'm independent, I'm strong, you know, we're Alaskans by God, we don't have to cooperate or be friendly or be nice or any, I mean there's that tinge of things because those things are almost seen, I think, I don't know, maybe it's a sign of weakness or I'm not exactly sure what goes through people's minds. But I can tell you that when I have traveled outside,

or have spoken to farmers outside because it's very flattering by the way. I get calls occasionally. In fact, even more than occasionally now from farmers outside that come across my Facebook page or ranchers and they call me for advice. Me! I don't know. I've only been ranching five years and they call me for advice and I often spend 45 minutes to an hour on the phone with these people no matter how busy I am because

just to have that conversation with a fellow rancher who's interested in what I have to say and doesn't automatically assume I'm a piece of crap and you know, some sort of challenge to the, to the hierarchy in Alaska and a competitor to them and all this other nonsense is so refreshing and so welcoming. mean, it almost makes me want to cry. You know what I mean? So I think that that farming community here, and I'm not the only one that mentions this, lots of other farmers have, have

pointed this out that everyone has to assume, you know, their own little island, their own little island. And by God, the minute, you start, if they see you over there trying to build a little rowboat, well, they are going to crap all over you because they don't want you anywhere near that island. It doesn't matter, by the way, that Alaska imports whatever that is, 95, 98 % of its food, and we should all be working together. If they see you as being successful or growing a good product or any of those things, my experience, at least, has been nothing but negativity.

And I think that's a massive problem for growing food in this state. Yeah, I agree. Someone who I had on this show early on, her name is Shelby Oden. She's got multiple businesses in Kenai. She poses the opposite because I think she's aware that that can happen in business, that if you have another business, then you're immediately the enemy. I think she's trying to change that culture to where ⁓ if they're successful, if the business next door is successful,

then that's going to bring more traffic into my area, then more people are going to be stopping by my shop. There's a collective, a community perspective when it comes to business to where she's trying to support other businesses because their success could influence her success and her businesses. And I really love her perspective on that. It sounds like it's completely the opposite in what you're sharing when it comes to ⁓ agriculture and ranching in Alaska, that it's not.

we're looking out for each other, you're kind of pitted against one another. It's really been my experience. Not everyone, of course. And what's even so much more frustrating about that is I've always... It's been a little bit of a blow to my self-esteem because I think I'm a pretty decent human being. I work hard, I produce a superior product, I give to charity, I look after my family, all those things, know, standard things you'd expect from a decent human being. And so to be constantly...

belittled and downgraded by my fellow ranchers has been definitely hard on my self-esteem, but it's even more, more, more frustrating for me because one of the priorities for my ranch was to support Alaskan Ag. So for example, I could grow an amazing beef on corn. We all know I could and I can bring in corn from outside. But instead, what I did was I researched how I could feed my cows on beets and carrots and turnips and potatoes grown right here in the state instead.

And there was a point, I have less cows now, but there was a point where it took six, count them, six farmers to support me. Six. Because I was bringing in millions of pounds of feed a year. Millions. Hay, turnips, beets, carrots, barley. And one of my priorities was to make sure all of that was Alaskan grown. And I kept all my farm dollars in state. Every dollar I could.

And I had people, had guys that were working for me and you know between the trucking and the meat plant there was a point where I had, I think it was like 25 people or something supporting my ranch and that doesn't include those farmers. My budget was almost two million dollars a year, most of which I kept in the local community. And so to have that treated as somehow me being a bad person doing a bad thing was something I just never could get used to.

And I just don't quite frankly want to, I'm just not going to tolerate it anymore. And I don't need to tolerate it. Cause again, I'm not going to say everybody outside is great, but I know that my experience with farmers and ranchers outside is very, very different. They welcome my ideas. They support my work ethic. They like my, my conservative values, those sorts of things, instead of being treated as some sort of competitor. And there is no competition in Alaska. There just shouldn't be. One of the things that you,

talked about. not only is ranching in Alaska difficult, the location that you picked, you know, almost the worst possible place, you know, to try to have a ranch, but then you discovered the policies and the laws that are in place that are kind of pitted against you. Do you want to talk about kind of what you discovered in that realm? Well, the one that was most frustrating at first was the fact that the Kenai

had one of the only progressive, I'm going to call it progressive, even though that's a twisted adaptation of the word, progressive taxation policies when it came to farms. In almost, if not every other locale in the United States that I could find, farmers obviously got an ag break. Because farmers need a whole bunch of infrastructure in order to keep cows alive, especially here. But if you think about the property taxes here on the Kenai,

The way that they did it was instead of saying, okay, you're trying to grow food for us, you're even doing that as a loss and you're working yourself half to death, so we'll give you a tax break for your farm. What they did here was every time I built anything, my taxes went through the roof and there was no real, there wasn't any support for ag. So when I built my barn, for example, my taxes, I think went up five or $6,000 a year just for building a barn. Key, but jerks, if I don't have that barn,

my calves and my cows are literally gonna die in the mud. I've seen it happen. Do you want me to start crying about my damn calves dying in the mud? Because I need this barn. I can't even say it without getting all kind of weepy because when I think about my poor calves. So I built a barn to protect my cattle and now you're gonna come to my land and tell me that I have to give you another $500 a month for the privilege of keeping my cattle alive? That was unacceptable to me. So I worked with Senator Bjorkman and some other representatives to

to change that and they brought about a very imperfect change but one that was better than nothing to allow farmers who were actually producing and growing food to, as long as you're doing that, to get some sort of tax break because obviously we need more infrastructure than my neighbors. I have to have

ten more buildings than my next door neighbor just to keep animals alive. But I don't use any more services. So why is it that my tax bill is fifteen or twenty thousand dollars more a year than my next door neighbor who has a house in a garage. But I have all these buildings to keep my cattle from dying. But somehow I have to pay ten times more in property tax because of it. Is there any reason for that? Right. That's absurd. Yeah.

And it's especially absurd because you think about Delta Junction where all the big farms in the state are the unorganized borough and their property tax bill is zero. So people would call me and say, well, gee Ben, your beef is more expensive than beef from Delta Junction. Okay, but Bob Green is farming 35,000 acres and has a zero tax bill. I'm farming 18 and I paid over $1,500 a month. What do you want me to do? Yeah. Yeah. So that was an unacceptable

⁓ policy that needed to change. And like I said, it somewhat has been ameliorated by some changes in the law that reduce that now and support farmers a little bit more. And the only reason that happened was because I kicked and squealed and fought and clawed and screeched like a banshee about it. And because I'm fairly well-spoken, I'd like to think, and because I had some resources and I had my Facebook platform and other things, I was able to convince Juneau that, if you want an ag industry at all, you got to stop breaking it off in us. Yeah.

One of the things that was proposed, I honestly don't know where it's at right now. Governor Dunleavy wants a Department of Agriculture in the state. What is your take on that? Do you think that's something that is going to be beneficial to you as a rancher or do you think it's?

getting government involved and there's no way that that's gonna end well. I was always opposed to that. ⁓

I mean, I know everyone has a different view on things, but I'm very much a libertarian and I am trying to think of any instance where the government has been any benefit to me at all. ⁓ If they would get out of my way and stay out of my way and leave me alone, I will grow more food and I will be more successful than if they start getting involved and start telling me what to do and how to do it.

I don't need somebody in Juneau sitting in a 70 degree office telling me about cattle when it's 20 below pitch dark blowing snow and I'm out trying to bed them. Go away. Yeah. I don't need them and I don't want them. So I was always opposed to that because the problem with the apartment is maybe they have the best intentions at first. They only start with eight bureaucrats, but now eight's not enough. Now they need 10 and they got to do this and they got to do this and they got to interfere and they got to pass this regulation.

Look, Alaska is already in a lot of ways a crappy place to live. Let's be honest. There lots of great things too, but in some ways it's a very crappy place to live. And so, for example, we have the lowest taxes in the United States by far of any state. And the reason for that is because if you tax this like California, nobody would live here. Right? It's a hard place to live. It's a hard place to live. And so there has to be the flip side to the being a hard place to live has to be more freedom.

There has to be a benefit other than just looking at the pretty mountains. There has to be the ability to carve out a good life for yourself without interference. That's what Alaska is supposed to be about. And if you remove that and you start taxing us and regulating us like we're down in California or down in Houston or down in Miami, people are not going to put up with it in my opinion because there's no reason to put up with the hardship of Alaska and all the crap that comes from being taxed and regulated to death.

So that's why I thought that the department was just a terrible idea. And I can't think of a single thing that the government has ever done to help me. Not once. Not once. They didn't build my barn. They don't feed my cattle. They don't support me in any way. And that's fine. I'm not asking for them. But then don't interfere either. But that's my own personal political views. I can grow food. I can raise beef. Just leave me alone. Yeah.

I think that's what most people want. I mean, that's what I want. how did it come about for the opportunity to buy the USDA plant? Well, I can tell you that was probably the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life financially. But that being said, you know, it came up suddenly.

that the thing was going to shut down. The pig farmer that had it at the time was done with it. He was losing money every month and decided suddenly just, okay, I might close it, I don't know, next week kind of thing. It was not a bunch of time to think about it. And this, you got to remember this was about a year, year and a half ago and I had a lot of cattle to process at the time. And at the time I thought I was going to be in Alaska forever. It was the winter, it was last winter that broke me by the way. So this was, would have been the fall before that.

And it just, it needed to be done. It wasn't for a price tag that was outside of my ability. It wasn't a fun thing to pay. And I've lost a lot of money on that plant now that's just gone forever. ⁓ But it was something that the opportunity presented itself. I could technically afford to do it. It was an important part of the infrastructure. And as far as I know, nobody else was going to step up to the plate. It was me or nobody.

And I didn't want to be, quite frankly, I also didn't want to be a hypocrite. I earlier complained about some of the attitude of my fellow ranchers not, you know, not having attitude that the rising tide lifts all boats, which is my attitude. So I felt part of me that if I didn't take this opportunity, then I was going to be hypocritical because here I am saying, why can't you people do more to support fellow farmers and ranchers? And turn the opportunity, and turn down the opportunity to actually make a difference.

And I can't stand hypocrites. It's the one trait that I will not tolerate in myself and I will not tolerate in my life. And if it cost me money to be true to that, then it cost me money. So I bought it. And we kept it alive and the thing is steaming along now. And I'm out of it now because I've handed it over to other people. And part of the reason I did that was I knew that I was going to be leaving Alaska and I didn't want to be an anchor on the place. And I felt like my

my departure was going to be an anchor. because unfortunately I've probably, we can talk about this, but I'm probably going to be, you know, leaving Alaska to ranch somewhere else. I do, I do want to talk about that because I think that is, like I mentioned earlier, it's the, it's the Netflix docu-series that people are invested in at this point. want to know how this story ends and it sounds like you're like, yeah, well, let me know. But before we get into that,

We've talked a lot about the struggle, the challenges that ranching in Alaska has presented to you. But I want to talk about the product because this is where I think what you're doing actually does shine. I mentioned earlier, I kind of laugh when I see pictures of cows eating beets and blueberries and they're just got it smeared all over their face. you've taken an approach with ranching that is

pretty unique, not only in location, but just in your method, your ingredients. You say your cows have like what, four or five ingredients? What you say? is it? Feed, water, salt, and sunshine. There you go. And the sunshine sometimes is... Well, we're talk about that too. Good Lord. But... I should say rain, I guess, but... So, you went out and...

You had someone kind of as a consultant talk about nutrition with cows that you kind of had their ear, but then you went out and got your beef tested. Do you want to talk about that whole process and what came of that? Well, you kind of got the timeline a little bit backwards there. I only hired consultants after I'd already done it. Yeah, backwards. I tend to do that in my life. Again, because I knew nothing, ⁓ I began to ⁓ research how to feed cattle and how to feed cattle

in an unconventional way. And perhaps it was my law background, but I'm very comfortable going to the original source for data. I'm not much for looking at AI and saying, AI tells me to do this. So for example, I tracked down the actual studies from Idaho and Prince Edward Island, which is a province in Canada that grows a lot of potatoes. And I read the actual studies that talked about feeding potatoes to cows. And I learned that you can feed up to about 50 % of a cow's diet in potatoes.

And of course one thing that Alaska grows well is potatoes. And I actually reached out to some potato farms in Palmer and got shot down because they were either given to someone else or they didn't want to do business with me. But I reached out to another new farmer who's been just wonderful with me. Three Ladybugs farm. He's a new farmer. Maybe that's why he doesn't have a chip on his shoulder. And he had was feeding a lot of his called potatoes to the moose and had no market for them. And I said, well, I'll take them. So he started giving them to me.

And I started grinding those up for my cows and that was a, what a process that was. I had no infrastructure at the time grinding these things by hand because you can't feed them to cows whole because they'll choke on them. And I recognized fairly early on that because potatoes, they ferment quickly in the room and that it seemed to alleviate some cold stress. And so I noticed that my cows were much more comfortable when they had the extra carbs and they had the potatoes.

And of course, cows are just a giant fermentation vat. So I've noticed that my cows would lay in the snow and they'd sit there and they'd look comfortable. ⁓ that's interesting. So as I became more and more interested in the other root crops, I said to the next year to Garnett, said, how about beets, buddy? So he put in a five acre field of beets for me. And what about all your call carrots? can we get turn? And had another farmer in Sutton. I asked him to start growing me turnips. And so I started doing these things. And I realized that you think about modern farming.

We have our tractors and our artificial inputs and our fertilizers and our herbicides and all this. But how did those farmers in Scotland a thousand years ago keep their highland cattle alive when they lived in a hut? Because they sure as hell didn't have a baler and a John Deere tractor. And one of the ways that they did that was with root crops. And it's the one thing that Alaskan  can grow despite the fact that we often don't have much sunshine or anything. Potatoes grow well here and those root crops grow well here.

So I just started incorporating them in a big way into my cow's diet. And one day I got a phone call from, was it the University of Utah or Utah State or anyways, I can't remember, it's been a couple years now, but some university in Utah saying they were doing a study on ⁓ nutritional density in beef and they'd heard about the way I was feeding cattle and what I like to participate in. So I said, hell yeah, I would. So I sent them a few rib eyes.

And it took me forever and I was just anxious. It took me about a year to get those results. They must have hated me. Because every few months, that's, are my results? You're killing me over here. Please, for the love of God, can you let me know how I'm doing? And then finally they got sick of me and they said, tell you what we're going to do here for you, tiger. We're going to do a report just for you. We've never done this before, but we want you to see this. And they prepared this report just for me. And I sat in the kitchen that night and I just cried and cried and cried because

Turns out that my beef was off the charts, nutritionally. And looking at what I had done and ⁓ all of that work and all of that loss and all of that death and all of that cold. And here I had produced a beef that they compared it to 25 other hundred samples in United States. And I was in probably the top 1 % of beef in the United States in terms of nutritional density. ⁓

It filled me with such an unbelievable sense of pride that it's hard to even explain because not only did I do that, but I did it in a place where we really shouldn't even have cows. And to produce a beef that was not only that nutritionally dense, but many people had told me was the best beef they'd ever had. And I still hear that all the time, that my beef is the best beef people have ever tasted.

It was quite the thing. Something to be proud of, for sure. And I can't imagine what that would be like to be in the trenches for so long, day in, day out, 80, 100-hour work weeks, ⁓ uncertainty, bleeding money, and then on top of it, people criticizing you for the cost of your beef or that you're doing it in ⁓ different unconventional kind of way.

and to get the result and be like, hey, you got a quality product. I think that moment either it would either uplift or completely devastate because I don't know what would have happened if you would have got the results and they would have been like, hey, Ben, your beef is absolute crap. I would have been unbelievably devastated. I didn't think that was going to be the case because obviously I

You know, Jeremy always asked me, says, what do you do for fun, Ben? And at the time I said, well, I work. And then when I'm utterly exhausted from working, I sit down in front of YouTube and I watch videos about cows and how to feed cows and how to take care of cows. So I was fairly confident that the way I was feeding cows, because I was feeding them flax seed oil and black oil sunflower seeds. I still do, by the way.

And all of those vegetables, especially, you know, there's a lot of purple carrots and there's these beets and all of these vegetables that are just filled to the brim with antioxidants. And I could not imagine that the way I was caring for my cows and they have a barn that plays Mozart and here I am grinding carrots for them and all of this rest of this, that that wouldn't have translated into a higher product. But I didn't know for sure. They could have just crapped all that out as far as I knew. Like I didn't know.

But obviously it was extremely uplifting. But it was also, by the way, in a way very frustrating. Because it was frustrating because I still to this day don't make any money with beef. And I have to remain competitive with other beef that's in a far less, I guess more conventionally, but I think is far less nutritionally dense and flavorful. The problem is I think that a lot of people,

Alaska is such a small area that a lot of people see, you know, beef down at Fred Meyer or at Three Bears and it's $5 a pound and it's a hard leap for them to say, why should I pay $10 a pound for yours? And so that part is frustrating to me because here I am producing this ridiculous product, but I don't live in an area where I can use that knowledge and that ability to really make a good living. And if I was say,

Southern California for example, outside of San Francisco, well they might want to pay $20 a pound for my beef, right? Yeah. So that thought also kind of went through my head too. Like now that I know I can do this and I know how to pound the nutrition these cattle and produce this incredibly flavorful and nutritionally dense beef and treat my animals in a way that's, they're almost like dogs. Yeah. How can I translate that into some financial success? Do you think if

you had the connection with that market, with those money marketplaces where people are willing to pay a premium for beef. Do you think you could stay in Alaska, produce the quality that you're producing? Just hearing you talk, I feel like you're one connection away from someone saying, hey, I have access to this whole big market over here where people are willing to pay for premium beef.

At that point, is it still worth it to put yourself through the work and the sometimes hell of ranching in Alaska? Maybe. Let me tell you a thought that's been rattling around my noggin. You need to get on Joe Rogan. I'm just saying, like, you have a Rogan-esque story. I mean, I'm privileged to even sit here and share the table with you with the experiences that you've had. That's kind. But seriously, that's the kind of stuff where you have something crazy like that, and then it just needs to get in the right ear. And then you're like, oh, wait, holy crap.

Maybe I could just keep doing what I'm doing and then the money will come. Couple things. First of all, like many farmers and ranchers, the money is almost secondary ironically. I mean, if it was all only about the money, I would have quit four years ago or three years ago or two years ago. And as you watch my, if you see my tax returns and you see the negative returns every year, you'd be like, what are you doing? But so it's not only about the money, but clearly

subsidizing the ranch with the other my other assets that I have to sell off just to ranch and work 80 hours a week is not sustainable either. So it's not about I want to make it clear it's not about getting rich and driving my Ferrari down to my yacht but I at least need to get something for my time. Right. Please don't ask me to work. I'll work myself 80 hours a week because I love my cows and I love my land and I love the work but don't ask me to sell off my retirement to do it. So that's a clear distinction. But the thought that's been rattling around my noggin is this.

The thing that almost broke me was the cow-calf operation and having to try to support the pregnant cows and then the calving and the calving losses and all of the rest of that. And what many other ranchers in Alaska do quite frankly is they bring in feeder cattle from outside, say from Alberta, and they bring them in in the summer and they fatten them up and by November they're in somebody's freezer and they get to do whatever they want all winter.

And I chafed against that for years. thought, you cry babies, you pussies. How dare you? I said that my product is Alaskan grown from start to finish and I'm controlling all of the rest of that. And in hindsight, that was a little arrogant of me, I think, because it's too much to try to have to control every part of the supply chain. So if I could find a way to do something like that, which is get high quality seed stock from somebody else, preferably from Alaska, by the way,

and bring them to my ranch and finish them using my tools and my resources and my connections and my feeding methodologies and my passion and send them out the door at a reasonable time of the year so I didn't have to work when it's blowing snow and 20 below and pitch dark you know the entire winter and I could go get some sunshine on my skin I would put a lot of wind in my sails dude I bet I would put a lot of wind in my sails and I've certainly thought about that because I have the infrastructure

I have the knowledge, I have the passion, I have the market, and I'm not complaining about my fellow Alaskans, by the way, because they buy my beef as fast as I can produce it. Unfortunately, I need to juice that up just a little bit to make it profitable, and that's where the pinch point is. But they certainly, I certainly have a huge amount of community support, like a ridiculous amount of community support. But if I could find a way to get that seed stock and then use what I have and just turn it up a tiny bit.

So I could at least make just a little bit. I would be tempted to stick it out. Yeah. And I cannot believe I just said that. Well, I do. You bring up a good point, though, because you do have a tremendous amount of support in this community. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Alaska, you have people. Recently, you were like, hey, I'm taking a break from updating. And there was people that are like.

I don't know how many days it ended up being before you updated, but there are like people like, my gosh, Ben, we missed, you you sharing your thoughts or what's going on because people support you. People are, we talked about all the haters, but there's plenty of people that are rooting for you. There's plenty of people that want you to succeed. The hard part though is it like you can only do so much as one person that's, you know, can support you buy beef or, you know, support you on social media or just talk about, you know, what you're doing. And I hope, and I hope this really

fuels that fire more of people seeing what you're doing and coming along beside you. And who knows, through whatever connections ⁓ or whatever way this works out that... Because I know you said you do want to leave, but I'm not trying to change your mind here. But I do want to talk about those people that are supporting you because, I've seen people where you're looking for extra help. People are like, hey, I'll be there. You don't have to pay me. I'll go and help out.

That's uncommon. do you want to talk? It's way deeper than that. I mean, it's way deeper than that. There have been times I can think of some instances, for example, where I have been, I hit a brick wall and I stopped and I'm just, I there have been, I remember one time last year, I had two pieces of critical equipment that broke within an hour of each other. And it's so-called, and I remember standing out and just sobbing, just sobbing outside. had no idea what to do. I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know how to take care of my cows.

I I hit a brick wall emotionally and physically and I did, I put it out on Facebook and I said, I'm in trouble. And within an hour, I had people rolling down my driveway with tools and fixing my shit. I mean, my stuff. ⁓ And I just, I mean, that sort of support was, mean, I feel almost undeserved in some ways. But in any instance that I've needed to sell something, fix something,

buy something, transport something, get an emotional support, get a virtual hug, whatever it is, the page has been and the community has been ridiculously supportive. And I'm blessed for it, there's no question. And I think again, maybe that's just the way that I've told my story. Maybe that's the nature of the people here. I'm not sure, but

I have zero complaints about that. And quite frankly, that is a very, very, very, very difficult thing to leave behind because in Alaska, I'm kind of like a big fish in a small ocean, right? In a small pond, right? When it comes to ranching, there's not many of us, not many of us telling our story. Nobody like me, as far as I know. Yeah, same. Right. There's nobody. It's me or there's nobody. And so, but if I go to Texas or Oklahoma or Montana and I'm a ranching,

Welcome to the club. cares? Yeah. Okay, dude. Good for you. Yay. You got some land over there. You have some cows. Who gives a crap? Yeah. Right? And so not that that that I don't want to make it sound like I'm ego driven here, but there is something incredibly satisfying about telling my story, having my story well received, being able to help the community and being able to produce a product which is not subjectively just superior, but objectively superior.

Raising cattle, using a lot of unique ingredients that I'm able to source locally, help my local ag community. I mean, that's a pretty nice way to live. That's a darn nice way to live. It's special. It's special. And ranching in and of itself is already amazing. The last couple nights, the Northern Lights have been out, as I'm sure you know. Yeah. And I've been out feeding cattle and I've been taking photographs of me and, you know, me and my cows out underneath the Northern Lights and the frozen trees and like,

Where else can you do that? You know, it's like, oh, you know, what do you do with this? And but at the same time, I cannot. mean, last year I had to sell some cryptocurrency I'd held for ages. I had to sell a piece of land. I had to sell some stocks. I had to sell a house I own, just to ranch. I cannot do that. Yeah. So I'm in this horrific emotional conundrum of in many ways loving my job, liking where I live.

loving my cows, enjoying my community, but being forced to leave because if I don't, I'm gonna be bankrupt. Because the cost of doing it here is ridiculous and I cannot compete with outside beef and beef from Argentina and I can't even compete with beef from Delta Junction. And I don't want to compete with them because I don't want to just throw them some hay and say good luck.

I want to produce a product which is so ridiculously superior from cows that are so unbelievably well treated that it is a world-class beef that belongs in steak houses in New York and Milan and Rome. I mean, that's what I've always tried to produce for little old Soldotna in Alaska.

What's keeping you from selling it all and moving to Thailand, riding into the sunset? Do you think that ranching's roots are so deeply ingrained into your soul and your life that you can't give it up? Here's the dilemma I'm having right now. I just went through a divorce and I keep calling her my wife, but it's just from 20 years of marriage, but my ex-wife is going to be moving back east and you're going to connect with a...

somebody that she's met there. And I have met somebody else as well who has her own career and ⁓ isn't willing to give it up and who happens to live in Northern California, which is not a place I particularly want to live. California is wonderful in many ways, but it's also awful in many ways. And I just don't want to do it. And so, one of the major emotional struggles that I've been having over the last few months is that conundrum of what do I do now?

Because if I want a relationship with this woman who is remarkable and who, I mean, wow, is a non-negotiable for me, ⁓ then I may have to end up going to Northern California. And if I do that, am I going to ranch there? Can I convince her to leave her lucrative job? Probably not. So, what prevents me from just selling out? I mean, don't tempt me.

because it is, you we're going into the dark 75 days here as I like to call them, you know, the next 75 days are going to be awful. And I'm not broke. My ranch is currently listed for sale for $3.2 million. You know, I could take that and live very nicely in a hut spearfishing in Thailand and not have to ever deal with this again. The problem is, is I would go absolutely bonkers. I need to work. I am a farmer and a rancher. I mean,

There's my hands. I mean, look at them. I need to build. I need to create. I need to produce. I need to feed people to be happy. And I'm going to end up somehow doing that. So I don't have all that figured out yet. You know, maybe the ranch in Alaska should be taken off the market. Maybe I should just finish beef here for four months of the year and spend the other eight months of the year recharging my batteries. ⁓ Commuting back and forth to California or doing something else.

I know people sometimes good naturedly, I think most of them, least 99 % of them, rib me on Facebook about how I feel like, you know, like I'm bipolar or something, because I'm here and I'm there and I'm here and I'm there and I'm here and I'm there. But people need to understand it's genuine confusion on my part. I genuinely don't know because there's no easy answers here. I love Alaska in lot of ways. I love my cows. I love ranching. Yeah.

I'm totally in love with somebody who lives 4,000 miles away, who's the most remarkable person I've ever met in my life. What am I supposed to do with all of that? Yeah. When you love something deeply like that, in those different capacities, it makes it complicated. And I think that's normal. I view your diary, as you call it, on Facebook as just a real representation of that. When you love something deeply,

it does make it challenging as you're trying to navigate your life around that to make it all work, especially if it's difficult, like with ranching. And I think people relate with that. I told you earlier, I was like, don't owe an answer to anybody on what is Ben Adams going to do next. But I think people are curious about the future specifically with ranching because it's something that they've come to kind of, I don't know, not even come close to fall in love with the same way that you have.

but it's definitely been intriguing to follow. And I think people want you to win. I think people want you to succeed. And I think really at this point, people want you to be happy moving forward with whatever it is. I agree. And that's been a real struggle for me the last few years. Between the marriage which fell apart on me and between the financial stress of this. You know, one of my fellow renters, his name is John O'Dea.

and he ranches down in Nebraska and he just posted something on Facebook about how 95 % of people in this country could not emotionally handle being a rancher. And that really struck a chord with me because I know it's true. The work and the death and the loss and the struggle and, you know, the commitment that it takes to do this job, the average person could not do. And there's a small group of people in this country that keep everybody else fed. 95 % of people just, I mean, are you willing to work seven? I mean, I went two years and 11 months without a single day off.

Not one, not ever. Most people aren't willing to do that, right? So, I think that that ⁓ definitely goes towards the tide of people that have seen that struggle. They remember those days when I was working like that and they want me to be happy and I want that for myself too. But between the divorce and the work of ranching and quite frankly, the weather here, it's been a challenge for me. And one thing that I've learned as I've got older is that the

The lack of sunshine here is something that just grates on me. And I, whatever I do in my future, I'm going to make sure to give myself more frequent breaks because I noticed that when I go to someplace that's warm and sunny, the hormonal balance significantly shifts in my favor. And I feel better and I'm happier and all of the rest of it just to be warm and to feel the sun on my skin. And I feel like I need to have that frequent boost.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm going to try to be happy, obviously, and I don't know, I just genuinely, right now as I sit here, you know, as God is my judge, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen to me in a year from now. I have no idea. And that's both exhilarating and terrifying to be 52 years old and to not know what I'm going to do. And unfortunately, a lot of that depends on other people.

You know, what happens with my relationship, my new relationship? What happens with the sale of my ranch? You know, what happens with, you know, how my ex-wife ⁓ transitions somewhere else? What happens with my beef market? Are my customers willing to continue to support me? There's a lot of unknowns for me that I just don't have figured out. I think no matter what comes next, there's no doubt that Alaska has been the forge for you. It might not be the destination.

But I think, especially if you take ranching and go do it somewhere else, the experiences that you've been able to compile, the challenges, the problems that you've been able to solve, I think you might go find happiness at a ranch somewhere else and be like, holy shit, like this is way easier because of what I went through in Alaska. No question. Zero question in my mind in that. And I know that because again,

Because I'm a rancher and I watch other ranchers on YouTube, I watch them on Facebook, I talk to them in person, I visited their ranches. Again, I'm not belittling what they do. I hope nobody takes it that way. But you people have it easy. If you think that what I'm doing in sub-Arctic Alaska with no infrastructure is the same as ranching in Oklahoma, you're out of your goddamn mind. It's not the same thing at all. I know it will be easier. The question is, is it too easy?

Because what's one of the things that many people have said to me after they got to know me is, you're going to go crazy here. Like, you're not going to be happy because there's not enough to keep you busy. You put your cows out on grass and you move them around and you do some things and you ranch and all that's great and I know that's work and it's important work. But compared to what I'm used to doing, you know, and that's something I've also considered. ⁓ I like the idea of the challenge, which is why, of course, I did this in the first place. Yeah.

So the real question is, can I turn what I have built so far into something that allows me to be happy, is at least lucrative enough that I don't feel like quitting every single day because working for free is not fun and certainly losing money is even less fun. And can I keep the people around me that are the relationships that I have and that I want to have happy because obviously, for example, you know, if

If this woman that I'd like to have a relationship with says, I'm just Alaska's off the table and I have no interest in being there part of the year, well, then I'm to have to make that choice too. So it's, I just genuinely don't know. What a nightmare. And it's also exhilarating. It's also exhilarating. In the fact that that's where you're at right now, I appreciate you.

coming and even having this conversation with me. Because most people would think, I have to have all my crap together before I could even go and talk about something like this. that's part of why this is so intriguing is because it is open-ended. It is like the to be continued that nobody knows how it's gonna unfold. I appreciate just your honesty with it. And I think that's what people appreciate just about you and how you present ⁓ just your life and what you do.

I do want to find out though, are you still taking orders for beef? Can people still buy beef from you at this point? Just, you with you, you're kind of downscaled right now, but how do people do that? And like when, how does that timeline work? Well, I actually have a fair amount of beef right now and I shouldn't have, but I do. And the reason for that is just that what makes my life even more complicated is that I had sold my ranch, I thought I had sold it.

And ⁓ one of the contractual obligations that I had was that my buyer was going to bring their own cattle in. So I was contractually obligated to source their feed for them. So I ended up spending about a quarter million dollars pursuant to this contract to source winter feed. Turns out that they had no intention of buying my ranch and the whole thing was just a joke. So that sale fell through. So I got stuck with this conundrum of I now have a quarter million dollars of the feed stacked up in my barns. What do I do with it?

And people say, just sell it. To who? Yeah. You name another rancher within 300 miles of here. Yeah. There isn't anybody. What am I going to do? Sell one bale of hay at a time? So I either let it rot, which I'm not going to do, or I start feeding it to cows, which I enjoy doing, I'm good at doing. So I ended up buying a bunch of really high quality seed stock from Delta Junction and trucking them down. These are animals that have never had anything except an ear tag pierce their skin.

very, very nice Angus. And so I ended up getting a bunch of them to use up my feed supply. So now I've been, I am selling beef, but I now have to sell my own beef that I had as well as those cattle now in order to get some of that money back so my feed didn't go to waste. So the answer is absolutely, I've got beef for sale and I don't, until that runs out, I'm going to have it. I'm charging 10 bucks a pound hanging weight for that. And objectively, that's a couple bucks, probably more than you're going to pay for supermarket beef.

And you know what are the things that I've stopped doing is apologizing. For the first couple years I apologized to people for it. And now it's like take it or leave it. Yeah. If you think you can get a beef like mine anywhere around, good luck. I mean, I still to this day, I'm still washing vegetables by hand. Today, I'm going to, you know, we still wash, we got, we have crates of turnips that came out of the field dirty and I'm not going to feed my cows dirt. So we wash them by hand every day.

You know, it takes hours and hours and hours to do that. And I love doing it I want to do it. I'm just saying if you think that the beef that you get in the supermarket is anything like what I'm doing, good luck to you. So that's what I do. And I'm lucky enough that I have support in the community of people that say, know what? Yeah, it's going to cost me an extra grand for half a beef, but you get what you pay for and I'll take it. One of the last things I want to talk about is no one

No one can spot bullshit better than a cattle rancher. Is there anything that you want to set straight that maybe people's opinions about you that are completely off base ⁓ or things that have been said or you've been accused of or anything like that that you're just like... Because you said people, share stuff on social media, but people really have little to no idea of what your life is really like. Is there anything where you're like, I want to set the record straight on something? Well,

I think it's important for people to realize that the... I don't share everything on social media, but what I do share, I'm not necessarily seeking validation or permission from people. And I think that's one of the mistakes people sometimes make on social media is they feel like I'm... Like their input... How can I put this? You know, I present the problem and then people present possible solutions to me, but that I'm seeking their permission to...

live my life in the way that I want to live it. And I think that one of the mistakes that people make is you need to understand that by the time I've put something on Facebook, I have analyzed it, thought about it, talked about it to death. I don't throw things out there randomly. My mind automatically solves problems.

And so when I put it out there, it's something that it's more of a journaling of what I'm doing, not necessarily asking for the public's permission to live my life the way that I want to live it or that I don't haven't thought about it. And it drives me bonkers when people state the obvious. Well, have you thought about this? Well, no shit have I thought about. What do you think I've been thinking about for the last week? I have a problem. I'm solving the problem. This is my solution. That being said, I will tell you.

that one of the things that amazes me about that my Facebook community is how many cogent, thoughtful ⁓ answers and responses that I get of sometimes things I've never thought about and that are just helpful beyond measure. So, I guess the thing that to just say is that please don't necessarily judge everything that you see on Facebook as my entire personality. Remember that I share

maybe 10 % of what actually goes on in my life. I've certainly thought about those issues before I present them and that at the end of the day, you know, I'm trying to be as real, as honest as I can. So for example, recently, you know, I've definitely been struggling with my mental health. That's not an easy thing to admit and certainly not to the public, but it's true. Ranching is tough. Ranching in Alaska is tough. Living in Alaska is tough. Going through a divorce is tough. Watching your house empty out that you built is tough.

Being in a relationship with somebody 4,000 miles away is tough. The lack of sunshine is tough. And so I struggle with those things. And I admitted those things. But at the same time, I just hope that people can bite their tongue just a little bit before they comment. If they're tempted to be negative or cruel or not understanding. If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up. Just you don't need to spend the time because then I have to read it and then I have to deal with it. And unfortunately,

Facebook comments and that, they take a toll on me. They do when they're negative or they're cruel. I know they shouldn't. I get all the theory behind it. But it's difficult to be there, be admitting you're having a problem, be sometimes on the verge of tears and saying I'm really struggling and have someone say, haha, asshole, I hope you choke to death on it. You know, that's not good. That's the downside to the social media. know? Yeah.

So, agree. But 99 % of it's great and positive and I wouldn't be sitting here with you if it wasn't for that page. And I wouldn't have the support that I have. And so, on the balance, if I went back in time in a few years and said, would you do it all over again? Absolutely. In terms of the Facebook presence. And I'd put up with the abuse and the BS in exchange for the support and the kindness and even the love. Like when I went offline a few days ago because I was having some mental health issues, the number of private messages and texts were messages that I got from people saying, just checking on you.

If you need anything at all, let me know, dude. Was almost overwhelming. I don't know these people. And yet they're taking time out of their day to pray for me or to check on me or to offer their support or their ear. That's as good as it gets, For sure. as good as it gets.

I do want people to know how to be able to buy beef from you. So, where do they go? Do they go to your Facebook? Do they go to website? What's the best way for you? Text me. Just text me, 907-394-5619. I track all my orders via text. I wish I had some fancier system. just don't. ⁓ And they just say, hey, I want this much.

burger, I want this much steak, like what details do you want or do you follow up with them once they reach out? Yeah, if they get a hold of me, I can tell them what I have and what their options are and we just sort it out that way. cool. Anything else you want to share, Ben? I'll just say this really quickly, which is support your local farmer folks to the extent you can because you have to remember that the average age of farmers in this country is now 58 years old.

We are being squeezed and pushed and the United States up until about 2020 used to actually be a ⁓ net exporter of food and we have now reversed that and we are importing food to feed the American people and even things like beef we're importing billions with a B not with an ⁓ billions of pounds of beef a year just to feed people here and even when you think about it you have all these men and women who are in their late 50s on average

and whose kids have zero interest in shoveling cow shit or picking lettuce or pruning almond trees who are now sitting on all of this land which is worth a potential fortune and when they die, when we die, I can guarantee you that those kids aren't going to say, well gee, dad's sitting on six million dollars worth of land that the condo developers want, why don't we go shovel cow manure for free for the next 40 years? Isn't going to happen.

And so I think that this country agriculturally is in big trouble. I think, I don't know if that's by design or by accident, but I just ask people to be aware of what's on their plate and how it got there as they eat because I'm telling you, you mark my words on this, that as farmers and ranchers age out, we're going to be reliant more and more on importing food and more and more on foreign nations just to feed us, which puts us not only at a

from a national security perspective is alarming, but also the quality and the nutritional density of your food. And if you people want to have a choice as to what you shovel in your face every day, you better start thinking about something other than just price and start thinking about value. And those two things are not the same price and value. And if there's not some changes, I'm genuinely worried about how this country is going to feed itself because younger farmers are

They're not coming in and the older farmers are on their way out and I don't know what's going to happen to their land and their cattle and their equipment when nobody wants to do the work anymore. So something to keep in mind folks. Well you heard it from the man himself, Ben Adams, 4T % ranch. Thank you so much for coming in today. You got it. Thank you for having me.

Manny (1:42:37)
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As I prepare to apply and begin graduate school next year, you may notice fewer episodes each month. I know it's kind of a bummer, but I hope you'll bear with me through this transition, because now more than ever, I believe sharing the voices of our fellow Alaskans matters. And I will continue to do this work for as long as there are people willing to sit down and share meaningful conversations.

Keep North Alaska, and thank you for joining me on The State I'm In.