Ep. 9 - A New State Park, Sustainable Gifts, and Winter Feeding Artwork

Stone County Extension Saves the World

Stone County Extension Saves the World is an educational and humorous podcast hosted by Stone County Arkansas, County Extension Agents: Anna Harlan (Family and Consumer Science Agent) and Tyler Caston (Agriculture Agent). They work for the University of Arkansas Systems Division of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service. They cover a wide range of topics in the mission to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices.

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Stone County Extension Saves the World

Ep. 9 - A New State Park, Sustainable Gifts, and Winter Feeding

December 10, 2025 • U of A System Division of Agriculture • Season 1 • Episode 9

In this episode, Tyler and Anna discuss the news about Blanchard Springs becoming the 53rd Arkansas State Park and Tyler's time working as a cave guide. Anna gives some ideas for being more sustainable this holiday season. Do you know how much more waste is produced this time of year? Tyler talks about a few best management practices for feeding cattle this winter.

Welcome to Stone County Extension Saves the World Podcast. I'm Anna Harlan.

I'm Tyler Caston, and it's good to be back again.

Yeah, it's Tuesday. How was your morning this morning?

It was frustrating. We had they'd asked us to do the, they do the IT, I guess, is the IT department that does the Tech Tuesdays where they go over, some new technologies or what's cool or what's happening that we can be using here in extension and they wanted us to come on and talk about the podcast. We practiced yesterday and then practiced before this morning, pulling up PowerPoint and then gets to our turn and I go to share my screen. And I get to talking, going through the presentation. Tyler, could you? And I feel like I spent about our whole time.

Which he didn't.

It was probably a minute, a minute and a half at most. But it was ironic because it's the Tech Tuesday podcast.

Tech Tuesday and then the technology fails me. It worked and then it wasn't working and I had no idea what to do.

Yeah, turn off use presenter view on your PowerPoint, by the way.

And finally they figured it out and we got. started doing it. And then I felt like we were going too long. And Anna got to a part where she was talking. I need to tell you something.

You cut me off. Cut off 3 bullet points.

Well, I was like, we need to speed this up. And she got to a little break. And I was like, well, next slide.

Which the whole thing ended up going over just a slight bit. So, you know, I guess. You were worried about it. was good.

Yeah, anytime they've asked me to do one, like present or talk at one of those deals, I feel like I'll just bomb.

Oh, no, not even fun.

I feel like it's just like they get this guy.

No, what did we say in the debrief? We're relatable.

Yeah, they're like, it's fine, you're relatable. And it's like, well, if we can not, if we can.

But it's one of those things, if you've not had something like happen to you, then you've probably not done very many, you know, and that kind of the rule of thumb.

If you say you never missed a deer. Yeah.

Say you've never had an issue happen during a presentation. You're either a liar or what?

You're either a liar or you haven't done it long enough.

But so I kind of was. And then apparently we had the Logitech system that they'd got us. And I was like, getting ready before we were going to talk. And I was like, dang, I think I need some coffee. And it is going to be like 20 minutes before we talk. So I go over there and start washing dishes. Well, apparently that thing followed me. At least like where all only the presenters could see.

Which is still non people.

Yeah, non people saw me get up and wash dishes and make some coffee. when I'm supposed to be sitting there being a good attendee, a good presenter, listening to the guy.

Well, we weren't, you were, but you were making coffee. One thing that was funny, I didn't really think about us giggling after ours was over and I was telling you, cut me off and we're over there laughing and cutting up. One of the other presenters probably saw that too. Oh, and then it cut back on and you were looking at your phone and I reached over and I nudged you and There it was on camera.

You probably wouldn't even notice that I was glancing at my phone and then Anna like smacks me and I like.

It was not quite that.

I just kind of set it down real awkwardly. That's like the guy that walked in and caught me with my feet up on the desk. And so like we were sitting out here talking about something and I was sitting at the desk and kind of just leaned back and put my, I put my feet up on the desk. And I'm sitting there and you can see when someone's coming, well, rather than just like take my feet off, like they'd done seen me. And so to kind of be tricky, like I move real fast with that momentum put me to where I was going into a stand-up motion and I like jumped. So he definitely saw me and he meant comment and he's like, gotcha. I was like, yeah, busted.

I remember that one time Martha was over and we were talking and. And you just totally fell over. You disappeared behind the desk.

Yeah, what happened? The chair, the back.

It was that one chair. I don't trust that chair to this day.

Yeah, it just broke or fell over.

I think the whole chair fell over.

Yeah, that's what happened. This is like I'd lean back too far and then the wheels just. Christmas time's coming up. You got your gifts.

Not all of them. I've made good headway. I'm worried about one making it in time. I kind of drug my feet. It's having a hard time how to figure out. You know, sometimes when you're trying to get something with your name on it, your last name, is it Harlan? Is it Harlan's? Is it Harlan's with the apostrophe? So anyway, I was trying to solve that mystery.

What is the correct grammar?

Well, it depends on the situation, but for this particular sign, it needs to just be Harlan. So that was difficult. It depends on what you're doing and what you're trying to convey.

But anyway, I can't say more.

I've already given away one gift on here. So can't give away another. But I have been working on working on my gifts and I was trying to think about what I wanted to talk about today. And I come across a topic that brought up a lot of other things that I don't really think about intentionally as being sustainable. So it's just kind of tips to being more sustainable this holiday season. And one of them was trying to minimize gift wrap and reusing gift bags, which I'm big on reusing gift bags because I don't want to buy a barely used gift bag.

They're like 4 or 5 bucks a piece.

At least for the even the small ones. And so I reused totes, reusable bags. I've done tins before, boxes that you can use again, and I keep those if I see them. One thing it had mentioned about wrapping, it said old maps, newspapers, grocery store bags, and even fabric. And so my mom and mother-in-law used to wrap and sometimes still do wrap gifts with funny papers.

Have you ever seen that?

I've seen that. They look cool.

Yeah, it's nice. Like that's a great way to reuse some paper and And then I've reused burlap Christmas bags before. And I like to use kraft paper. So you can get 1000 linear foot roll of just brown kraft paper on one of the major retail websites. And I've used that for a lot of things, but I'll wrap all my gifts in that pretty much. And then I'll have Whitney draw little drawings on it. And then it works great as a fire starter. So I feel like I'm using it all the way through. And then one thing that in my memory that made me laugh about using, reusing boxes is my aunt would wrap, would put in cereal boxes. They ate a lot of cereal. See, I grew up, well, I'd get the cheap cereal in the bags, but she'd get the boxes.

And one birthday, apparently I was real little and I'd take all the paper off and I go, cereal. Like I was, I thought my gift was cereal.

You gotta act grateful. Oh. Thank you.

I think I was too, but there was never cereal in it. There's, mittens, gloves, different hats kind of things. So sometimes I'll wrap things in a cereal box just to remember my aunt for doing that.

I've done the, like, get a bunch of boxes, like one year, like Keso got a little something and I put it in like four or five boxes and he had to open them all up. And I'm not good at wrapping, so.

After the 4th or 5th box, I was like tired of rapping. So it was just like, how mad was he?

Or did he enjoy it?

I don't know. He just, I can't even remember. I think he was too little. He was just like, what, another box?

One year, Brandon always makes fun of my rapping. It's pretty pitiful. And we took the Kraft paper and he crunched it all up and put to the Grinch, which was from one of my cranky family members, who shall not be named. But that was a funny thing he did with the Kraft paper.

One time I got Lauren, like a, I bought like a mop bucket. Got like a new broom and a new mop and 6 sponges. And I got a bunch of cleaning supplies. I think I got her that for like Valentine's today though.

How did that go?

Fine. We needed this stuff.

So I was like, man, that could be an expensive gift though.

I was like, here you go. We've probably, yeah, I mean, the kids went, it's probably spent about maybe 100 bucks.

Yeah. I bought some new cleaning supplies. We moved in the new house and I spent over $200 on just new brooms, new like a spin style mop and bucket and stuff. And yeah, it was about a $200 buy. But I don't know about that as a Valentine's gift. I don't know if I'd recommend doing that.

I didn't learn from the best about gift giving.

Oh, you mean Lewis? Is it a A1 gift giver?

He don't care about giving gifts.

That's not his love language.

Has he given many gifts?

I don't know. Mom usually did probably all the gift buying.

He seems like somebody would be like, here's a load of gravel, Merry Christmas, which would, I would take that gift right now.

He's probably like, well, I'm feeding you. Your mama can buy you the gifts. I'm letting you, allow you to survive and live. Probably what he thought, especially with me as a child. trying to get me to do anything. It, like I used to have to feed chickens and they'd pay me $5 a house and I hated that.

That's pretty low pay, but you're lucky you got paid anything, I guess.

Yeah, like I'd get up and I'd go. I remember doing it.

Are you talking about when they were baby chicks and you had to do those trays?

Yeah, like the first two weeks with the trays and like.

And the older they got, the harder it is to pull the wagon through there. It was really, yeah.

I like got to where I, when I, as I was filling up the feed, I'd try to get as much, see how far I could go. You know what I mean?

Try to, as it's filling up, like go to feed and I could get about half a half a time.

Oh yeah, I bet you could do quite a bit running.

By the time it was running. And so, I remember one time me and my sisters were put in charge. I don't know. We weren't feeling it one day. And I think it took us like 6 or something hours to get it done.

Did your mom and dad have three houses?

They had three houses. Two of them were shorter and then one was a little bit longer. Like more up here.

Yeah, I don't think mom's houses are as big as your dad's bigger house.

I remember having to go washing the trays was terrible.

That was my main job was the poopy feed trays. And dad would usually try to get like a couple stacks soaking, but if you didn't have any soaking, it just like it took forever. One of the biggest spiders I've ever seen to this day come out from underneath a feed bin concrete when I was washing. I was spraying him with a water hose and he was still walking towards me. I mean, it's burned in my memory.

Big wolf spider problem? No, I don't know.

It wasn't a tarantula, but it was huge. But that was my main job. And my dad didn't want me to be a chicken farmer. So he was trying to give us the worst jobs to do. It built character. It's good.

It did build character. Yeah. I remember.

And burn your sense of smell.

Yeah. I still like the smell of chicken litter though.

It doesn't bother me. When it's been at the correct temperature, it actually has a really nice smell. They say cattle think it's like chocolate or something. I don't know.

Something about it. Smells like money.

Smells like money. I remember chicken houses. My dad, he asked me if when he had to update, like I was graduating high school, and he's like, well, do you want me to update them and you can take care of them? And I said, no thanks.

I'll go live in a box. Not really, but.

I think it would be enjoyable to do. The thing that concerns me is contract length and debt rate, but that's, just something you have to weigh.

I've always thought about it. Like if I wanted to get into farming, I think that's like, if you want to be a farmer around Stone County, that's probably the route I would take is.

Poultry houses.

Poultry houses. build up your revenue, build up your capital, and then, buy you some land every now and then, use the litter to, as your fertilizer source, and then throw cattle out there to.

I can't imagine anything helping Stone County more agriculturally than the poultry houses that used to be through here, the broiler houses, because every little hill and hauler had one. Like if I decided to grow, I'd be You should do it. Or 4th. I might be 4th generation when he'd be 5th. But yeah. But my dad didn't want me to. Yeah. But it's funny because he loved it. He loved doing it. He worked as a broiler service man and had two houses and enjoyed it very much.

A particular type because I mean, You're not going on vacations. very rarely. But that's how we got the swimming pools, because we can never go anywhere. And so dad was just like, well, I'll build a swimming pool at the house.

Yeah, it's hard to plan to go somewhere a year in advance when you have those different dates that you're going to be out. Yeah, we didn't get to go places too often. You really can't be over an hour away really from them.

No. It'd be interesting to see how it is now with all the computers and stuff. I don't know much about it anymore.

Yeah, no curtains. Yeah, we grew up with the curtain houses and yeah, the cool cell and the tunnel and everything's different, but.

All right, what were we talking about?

Rallying back, we were talking about, we grew up in chicken houses, so.

Jobs your dad got you doing, I guess.

But so rallying back to sustainable holidays. So holidays bring parties, fun decorations, extra time with families, but a lot of trash. So how much percentage more trash between Thanksgiving and December do you think that we generate during that holiday time?

I'm going to say, I don't know, 5%.

5%, it's 25%. In some places, even more than that.

That's a lot of trash.

That's a lot of trash.

So, you know, like I had already brought up, trying to use different materials for your wrapping or your gift bags, that can reduce a lot of trash. Reusing boxes or having reusable top containers, you're wrapping your different things in. One thing you can do also is There's a lot of people, I know next door they save packaging because there's an individual who does a lot of shipping or different things and they reuse that packaging for stuff. And we keep our packaging here and reuse it whenever we're shipping some of our samples.

Yeah, I didn't like to keep a lot of like the packing material for when I send off soil samples and I don't have like a complete box. I like to, it's easier to stick that old those little plastic fills in there with them.

So if someone who, even if they have an antique store or some type of store, they may have to wrap a fragile item, they may want to reuse some of that packing material or you might for something you're doing at your household. So consider that. You can decorate with natural items. So that's one thing mentioned. There's a lot of pine cones. There's different neat little berries that are in the holidays. So you can decorate that way and then you can just compost those materials. And then another thing is instead of using all the throwaway dishes, you might just employ a few helpers to wash the dishes you already have instead of just all that plastic ware or those. Or you could do compostable type plates or bowls. And they've gone to compostable bowls at Bean Fest. And so they've mitigated a lot of waste for that in Stone County. And then trying to reduce food waste, which that's not always an issue for everybody, but for some it might, you may have too much of something. So I got to thinking about what one of my high school classmates would do when they would have extra turkey. And he would always make like a gumbo with that. You could shred that up, make enchiladas, you know, just repurposing it instead of just eating it over and over. You could even freeze that.

Do you like gumbo?

We, and that's funny I mentioned.

You think you'd be good at making it?

Well, so we had our first attempt at making gumbo. We had a bunch of crawfish bowls, which Brandon is excellent at those. I think we've got that dialed in.

He does. He's got that down.

Yes. And so we had to think about 3, at least three at our house, and I saved all the heads and all the parts and pieces. And I put them in my big roaster and cooked stock and froze stock from these three different crawfish bowls. And so it's taken over almost my entire little freezer, all in the hopes of us trying to learn how to make gumbo.

It's a good idea. I hope you all become successful.

Well, Rue attempt making number one. So I don't think we realized it was scorched, first off. I think we did. And then we didn't know that while you're cooking it, it's gonna get darker when it cools. So we're thinking, let's get it super dark because we love Houdats and Bald Knob. And I'm like, life goal to have a gumbo at least similar to there, because it's my favorite. It's the best that I've ever had. And so he just keeps cooking. I'm like, I think that's probably enough. I think that's probably enough, like 20 minutes after. And then he leaves to go hog hunting. And is it okay to go hog hunting at night?

Yeah, on private land, yeah.

We'll leave that in. Like I said, I'm thinking we'll just leave all this.

I think it'll be fine.

Okay, well anyway, he went hog hunting on private land. And while he was gone, it was cooling and I was cutting up all the veggies and prepping all that kind of stuff. And it got black as coal. It was so dark. And I was like, me. So I was working all that up and I had crawfish, oyster, shrimp, chicken, all the good stuff. And I'd cook down my, the Trinity, they call it, those veggies and had all that in there going. And was getting my stock hot and adding that root to it and it would not stir in. It would not. And if you can imagine when the old tankers sprung a leak out in the ocean, like that's what all that looks like.

Yeah, big old oil slick.

Yeah, and it just would not go into the water. So then I'm like, well, I don't know about all that. So I ran it through my little sieve and then I poured the stock in the big pot and started cooking it, hoping maybe that dissipated and Brandon gets on me, he's like, that'll cook in. It takes that big old glob and just slings it into the gumbo pot. Well, guess what? It stuck to everything. It was bitter.

Oh, man. But I saw I went through and...

If you'd have invited a Cajun over, they'd have probably cussed you.

They probably should have. So I don't think I'd invite a Cajun over on night #1 of gumbo, Megan, unless he was going to help me. I could have used a Cajun during the roommaking process. But anyway, I'm going to have to watch that. You remember that older guy, Justin Williams was his name. And he's like, hey, Jane Cook on TV. I was like, we're going to have to watch some videos of him, I think, and try to learn from there. Because I don't trust TikTok people.

When I've watched the videos, you got to, don't you?

But we were. I think we turned it too hot. And another thing, I've got a new gas stove. I mean, I've had it over a year now and I didn't have pots made for this hot stove. And so I'm trying to convert over into something with a thicker bottom. Whereas the electric stove, it didn't make a big difference, but it really is on these hot, my burners run hot, which is nice, but you know, scorched the roux. So anyway, it adhered to every vegetable and piece of meat. So I picked out all the meat in there because I thought there's no way all these crawfish tails and shrimp and all this like So I did a whole new broth and dumped them all in it. And it's edible.

That's good. But didn't go to waste.

Didn't go to waste, but man, should have done. poppy seed turkey or something?

What are there other sustainable like food waste practices?

That could be helpful to us? Yeah, so if you've got a lot of extra mashed potatoes, I grew up eating potato cakes. My grandma would make that out of extra. I don't know if you ever ate those. are really good. Or you could even do a shepherd's pie with leftover veggies and and do the potatoes on top. A ham bone would be great to make a pot of beans. So just trying to freeze things.

Do you ever see that show of Arrested Development where they're like, they're like eating steak or something and it's like a little bit of bone and he like goes to discard it and the guy's like, oh no, there's still plenty of meat on that bone. You can make a stock with that. And it's like, they picked it and he's so, what would you, know, cheap or? What's the other word for cheap? Frugal.

Yeah, I guess. He's so frugal that he didn't want to waste that little piece of bone with the, he's like, still plenty of meat on that bone. You can make a good soup.

I like, if I do steak, I like T-bones, but I hate to eat them in front of people because I know the bones.

I know the bones.

Yeah, but people don't know the bones. And that's the best. I think meat that's on the bone is the best. I'm sorry. That bone adds flavor.

I was just not. Those Vietnamese people said to us, it's like, you Americans don't like bones. We like bones. Y'all don't like bones. We're like, we like bones on our meat. I'm like, oh.

Yeah, on. And they had made they had country ribs sliced different.

It was Korean style.

Yeah, it was Korean style. Yeah, Vincent Ahn cooked for us. They cooked for the Seoul concert or the conservation district rather. And we were lucky enough to get to eat with it. But they're super nice.

It was amazing. They made Korean style ribs and then some wings.

And they had the bone in the country ribs, I think is what it was.

I'm still hoping they bring us some of that pho. Pho.

Is that how you say it?

Pho. Pho, yeah. I won't say how I remember.

Is it the King Restaurant?

Yeah, it could be the King Restaurant.

Yeah. Well, we tried to tell them we would love to eat at a restaurant if they would start it here, but But they have some, I think, layer houses out in the Highway 5 into the county. But we were fortunate enough for them to cook for us. But enough about leftovers and bones. But anyway.

Anyway, so, and just try to reduce your packaging if you can buy things and request minimal packaging. So hopefully one day I wish they would ship things with less. packaging. But anyway, and then my next favorite thing is edible gifts. So we're fortunate here as we oftentimes get a tin from Susan Carroll of the best Christmas cookies ever.

And she's in EHC and she brings her cookies and she makes one, looks like a little Italian flag and that's probably my favorite one.

Yeah, that one's good. what was I going to say? Wasn't important, I guess.

I was going to say something about an edible gift. Oh, I was going to say about those Asian persimmons.

Yeah, that would make an excellent gift.

We had, what were they, the giant? Yeah, Fuyu. Fuyu.

Giant Fuyu is what I bought. I think that's what she said hers were.

And if you've never had one, like probably the best fruit I've ever had of any fruit.

Yeah, Stone County Master Gardener brought one. I immediately bought 3 trees to plant. It was so good.

They were really good. Yeah, I've never had one. They're not a stringent, like a, you know.

And they don't have a bunch of, it's, when you get a, like a local persimmon, the seed to flesh ratio is really high. Whereas this, there's not really much of A seed. It's like an apple and persimmon mix to me is what it tastes like. It's so good. You got to let them ripen, of course, but that's with any fruit.

But they don't have to be soft.

No, they were still good. Yeah, that was a good gift we got last year. Appreciated that from Deborah very much. One other great gift is homemade candies. So I make the cinnamon broken glass candy. And a lot of my mom's family does. And Brandon's family loves getting that as a gift.

I've had some of the stuff you've made. It's really good.

Yeah, it is good. And it's not easy to make those candies like Divinity or James family makes the pool candy and a lot of that depends on weather. So you don't want a weather front coming in or you might set some sugar on fire.

Do you know why?

I'm not totally sure. It may be pressure. I don't know, but I can confirm. I'd always heard that and I didn't believe her in it and it boiled over and caught on fire. And I've never done that using the same pot until that happened.

What was it she'd say?

She would say if it's cloudy or like a cloudy day's coming, don't do not make candy.

And you had. And what did you have to happen?

So I've made it, I had made it several years and I guess I got lucky in the same pot, same amount. And then I made it with a front coming in and a cloudy day and it boiled over and then it caught on fire. And sugar on fire is terrible. And I did put it out with baking soda. So I did pull a good one on that. was a good choice. Not water.

I've set a few fires before. We nearly caught our cabin, rental cabin, me and my brother-in-laws, Matt and Michael. We were, we'd done a fishing trip, I think, before one of Matt's, you know, Michael and Matt both had Same babies, same year to Chloe and Magnolia and then Claire and Clemmy.

Yeah, Chloe and Magnolia were within a couple weeks and then Claire and Clemmy about three months probably.

And I think this was before Chloe and Magnolia. And so Matt and Mike were like, let's go out before we're about to have our first kid. And so we went on like a weekend camping trip and fished. over at North Fork and just below the dam and stayed in those cabins there as you make the curve.

It's lucky they're still there.

Yeah. Lucky they're still there. But like we were cooking steaks one evening and Michael had seasoned them and I was, our eyes grilling them, but I think we're doing it inside because it's still springtime and I think it's kind of cold. And so we were inside a little, I don't know if we'd have had a grill at the cabins. But anyways, that grease caught on fire and like it's, we're all like, no, what do we do? And luckily I grabbed a plate and like put it over it and it went out.

Yeah, those grease fires are very dangerous. Don't put water on them.

Yeah, I've seen the videos.

Yeah, that's intense.

Have you seen when those turkey boilers go?

Yes. A guy, one of the owners of Noah Con was at his family's Thanksgiving or Christmas and his sister's house caught on fire and burned down. What happened was I guess someone either forgot to turn it off. I think it might have been a faulty. So I would recommend unplugging your gas source, you know, whenever you're doing that. So that things happen and that's terrible what happened to them. So on a lighter note, One year I canned a bunch of vegetable soup and pinto beans for my husband's granny. She was older and lived alone. And that was one of the best gifts I gave her. She really appreciated and loved that. So that's a good edible gift. And Karen's given out summer sausage that we've made. You can freeze those and thaw them when you're ready to eat. And you can do the layer jars. Madison's done cookies, pancake layer, and hot cocoa or different even dry soup jars. And then one thing, if you've got those college kids in your life or they're young and starting out and they just may not have, or you're, newlywed, you may not have a whole lot of funds. One of Brandon's aunts had made him a bunch of chili and froze it and portioned containers. And he's real hard to buy for. So that was a good gift for him. So edible gifts. Yeah, food.

Food is always a good gift.

Food is always a good gift. So some other ideas for sustainable gifts is, or sustainable things for holidays is digital gifts. So e-books or subscriptions. And I do not have one of my favorite TV subscriptions right now because I didn't want to pay for it. So I think that would be a great gift to consider.

All of them are getting high as can be. It's like paying for cable now.

And they're spreading all the sports out on different apps and subscriptions and that's getting on my nerves. So I like to watch my football.

Yeah, I didn't watch football all season, really.

Because of, yeah.

I didn't watch college at all, I don't think.

Well, there were some good games this weekend. But another great gift idea, I guess it's sustainable and also good gift ideas is appliances. And so you may not want to buy someone a washer, but if they need a washer and everyone in the family buys, puts a little bit of money towards that, appliances are a great gift because I like my washing machine or when we got married, people did that for us to get a hot water heater. And that's a rather important thing in my household, it's hot water. So that was a great gift. And then sentimental gifts, you know, those are hard to beat. And we're in such a digital world now, it's hard to find those printed out photos or books and stuff. And that kind of worries me sometimes that those are lost. So consider printing out some photos. You can always give stuff you already have. You've got a family heirloom that someone in your family would love to have.

You know what Addie and her buddies did?

They like went through and made a gift basket for each other of all the toys that they didn't play with anymore and then just traded, gave them as the gift to their friend.

Did they really?

Yeah. Addie come home and she's like had a little stuffy thing and a box full of goodies.

Was she happy about it?

That's not a bad idea if they're not playing with it.

That's like a, that's like a white elephant.

That's what her and her friends did. And I'm like, what? Why are they not going to want it? year old trash that you don't want anymore. She's like, they're giving me theirs. I was like, okay.

Spreading the trash around. Winnie gave a few of her little friends ball and jacks.

Ball and jacks. Did they know how to play?

She was trying to show me. It didn't look like she really knew, but I didn't correct her. And I thought, gosh, that's, you can tell she's not had a lot of digital time. She's a more unplugged child. But so, back to the sentimental, quilts are great gifts, just items that you love. If you want to give me your Butterprint Amish Pyrex or your Jadeite, I will accept any gift in that way. And actually I've had people give me that, a few AHCs, so that's something I love.

Yeah. And then always shop local. That's a more sustainable, you know, if items aren't having to travel, you're already here. Stone County is a really unique place in that we have so many artists here. We don't even realize all the artists walking around in our community.

What was a couple weeks ago, they did like a, had a bunch of vendors over at the folk center. You could go in and they had their little, the craft shops open.

And they had Christmas market. And I can guarantee you that if you contacted any of those people that you know who are at farmer's markets or at these vendors, I'm sure they have items to sell you. don't have to just wait. for those markets. You can reach out to them. And then another thing I thought about is commissioning a piece. So I asked one of my aunts one time to paint my great-grandmother's house to give to my mom. It's just, it's hard to give parents gifts. And so that was a great We actually traded meat. I traded beef for that painting. So it worked out great.

Like a painting of a house.

Yeah, she painted my great-grandmother's house. And then she did like all the flowers that she loved, kind of framing the photo of the house. It was really awesome. And so we have several people that roast coffee locally. There's a lot of local honey. I love honey in my hot teas. That was actually one of my stocking gifts Santa left to me last year was some honey. local honey. And if you're not a baker yourself, there's a lot of like pop-up places and different people selling baked goods. You could reach out to them and just try to get more local items. If you're a crafter yourself, or if you make things, like I make soap, and so I've given that as a gift. If, you know, my sister and brother-in-law, they like the soap I make. I like the soap I make, and so I've given that out. I like a good antique. We've got a bunch of antique stores and stuff. Like, I think that's a great gift.

What if you give somebody soap as a gift, are you not saying you smell?

Well, gosh, soap is not cheap. I don't think it's saying you smell. If I make an essential oil soap, it's not necessarily the cheapest thing to make. I think that's saying...

If you handed me some soap, I'd be like, what are you saying?

Well, I bought you deodorant before. So, and that was meant to the full effect.

That was meant to the full effect. Take this how I meant it. You stink.

I forget it some mornings, like rushing around.

Yeah, you forget and then you go spray a pond and whew.

I smell like just sitting around. Like onions. The worst is like when you're just sitting around and you get sweaty. That's when it really smells. It smells like you've been at work and smell, but just sitting in your chair and your armpits got sweaty, that smells.

Today on hygiene issues, let's discuss.

Remember your deodorant. I just forget sometimes.

Well, I mean, if you wear deodorant, not everybody chooses to wear deodorant, you know, whatever you choose, but if you do choose to wear it, try to remember to wear it. So my favorite part of my section on sustainable holidays and ideas for gifts is experiences. So I was talking to James earlier and he's like, what are y'all doing? And so we're trying to kind of figure out what we're going to talk about on our podcast today. And he said, parents are difficult. And that's so true. I can't imagine buying for Lewis Caston.

I bought him a knife that I wanted one time.

A knife that you wanted.

Yeah. I think that's...

Did you end up with the knife?

Yeah, it's sitting in my gun cabinet.

That feels a little sketch.

The thinking there.

I was like, here, oh, he'll love this. Yoinks. And I think I bought it for him when I was like 15. And then...

When did you get it gifted back?

No, I just took it probably at like 16. It's like, where's that knife I bought you? It's like a skinning knife. I was like, dad, where's that knife? And I just kept it.

That seems like that had a lot of motive involved in that gift giving. But parents are difficult. They have a lot of things. They're not always easy. And so when I was talking to him, we were talking about gifting memories and experiences. So they had, they're going to go on a bird hunting trip with his dad as their gift this year. And then his, yeah, and then his mom and And his mother-in-law and his wife, they're all going to go do mani's pedis and have a girl's day in Branson. And so, think about where does your parent or your grandparent or someone want to go? Like, why not maybe go do that for your holiday instead of if you can't figure out a gift, give an experience, and then you're going to have memories. And especially if you can involve multiple generations there, you all can remember those good moments.

Those are. Memories are probably the best gift, truly.

I was thinking about, it's hard to remember many of the gifts you've received from Christmas, but a lot of times you remember either the tradition of what you did with your family, but the memory of a lot of gifts is rare, truly, but you remember that experience. So.

Your mom, y'all went to a football game, didn't you?

Oh man, yeah. That was my gift. Christmas last year was an NFL game and it was a great game. We went to the Chiefs Stadium. I forgot what it's called. It's got an interesting name. Arrowhead. Yeah, but it's got a, the stadium has an odd name. But anyway, we went to a game in November and I saw, we saw Taylor Swift. We saw Flavor Flav, which Love Flavor Flav. I could get to talking to you about bad VH1 shows, but I loved him and I got to wave at him and he waved at me and it was, we had a moment. And then I had the best flyover and I love a flyover. And I really like football. So it was, and we were on the 11th row. We had good seats, had a great experience and the game came down like we thought they were gonna lose our team. And then they blocked a field goal and we won. And everybody went better than us.

I told them, I was like, they hadn't lost all year. I was like, y'all are going to go when they do lose.

Yeah, well, they almost didn't that day. And I was amazed by how big everybody is. You know, I went to a lot of college football games, but the NFL players, they're huge. And it was wonderful. I had a great time. I only needed one more thing on my bucket list because I've always wanted to see someone like run out onto the field. It didn't happen. If it had happened, I could have just died right there. And then we went and ate at a really cool local place the night before and that was a good experience. But we had a great time doing that. And that was a wonderful present instead of something. It was nice to get that experience. So we've bought family members NBA ticket NBA tickets before. I've received tickets to Cardinals games, just like baseball, basketball, football, whatever sporting event you might be into.

Season tickets to like Whitewater, Silver Dollar City.

Yes, I've bought Whitney amusement park tickets several times because you just get tired of a lot of toys.

And what was it you were mentioning, even like a pass to a state park or a national park?

Yeah, before we get into that, I had one, a couple more before we go into that one, because that's going to lead us into our next section. But yeah, amusement park tickets or season passes. I even thought a fishing license or a guided trip on the White River. That would be great, because a lot of people live here and they may have not gone trout fishing and they don't realize kind of what a great spot we have to go.

It is fun. Like it's a lot of fun to go trout fishing.

I mean, when you're catching, when everyone else in the boat is and you're not.

You got to get some sculpins.

You're kind of rubbing in. Some what?

It's a sculpin.

It's like a little fish. It looks, they're kind of weird looking. But our guide that took me and Matt and Michael fishing, that we're like, we want to catch like a big brown. He's like, oh, you got to get you some sculpins. And then We got some sculpins and we didn't, like we fished with the guide and tore them up. And then the next day, You were on your own? We went on our own.

No. Well, we bought some frozen sculpins, but I think we caught one fish all day.

What's A sculpin?

It's a little fish. Looks like a little fish. It's like a little fish.

Is it a lure? A lure.

A lure. It's like a fish. Like a frozen dehydrated fish or like a fish lure. It's like a, it's like an actual fish.

And I can't describe what they look like. They're an ugly little fish that they said. Browns like. You said if you really want to catch like the big ones that they.

I never really caught much browns. I'm just been on the rainbows. Winning and Brandon can tear them up and I'll just be like, I don't feel him buying at all. But I changed. Rod and it was better.

I like to use like a light or ultra light.

Yeah, I had to go to the ultra light to catch anything. The light I wasn't feeling, but the ultra light was good. And then another idea is I bought my daughter A fiddle one Christmas. And in Stone County, we've got a lot of music here. And it's important to continue that, I believe. And We have one of the best programs in the nation, music roots, in my opinion. And so that I feel like has saved the music scene in Stone County. So once you get of a certain age in our schools, then you get free lessons. But before she was old enough for that, I went ahead and bought her a fiddle and paid for lessons. And that's been a great Christmas present. And then in August for my husband's 40th, he didn't ask for a drum set, but I bought one. And.

That's been the best gift.

That's been the best gift. And so we've had a ball with that and Whitney's good with that. So I chose his midlife crisis and it worked out. But then we had talked about museum passes and we were going to talk about state park passes. So my mother-in-law bought state park passes to the Craft Village for the Folk Center. And her and she'll take my daughter Whitney and then one of their little friends, one of her friends, and they'll go to the different craft village and learn how to make corn shuck dolls and candles and all kinds of things. And so that's a state park here in Stone County. And we found out yesterday that we were getting another state park in the state of Arkansas.

Yeah, Blanchard Springs. It's the whole deal, isn't it? Like the rec area, the caverns?

From what I read on the governor's page is that it was going to be the whole rec area included.

Which is a big deal because we missed it.

I'd seen something that included Barkshed and Gunner Pool, but I don't know if that's for sure. But what it is, it was, it's a national forest, Ozark National Forest. And the Blanchard Springs Caverns, probably one of the prettiest caverns in the nation.

And it says it's one of the top in the world for the living cave systems.

I worked there a couple of years. It was like one of the best jobs I had. Like the people are cool. But we moved back here and started working at Caverns, being a tour guide, and I got good. I could lead you through that tour without even being there.

Do you remember any piece of it that you could give us?

My favorite part was the going through, what do you call this? That hangs from the ceiling.

Because it holds tight to the ceiling. Yeah, I've been through the tour. I know.

What are these coming up from the ground?

Stalagmites. They might reach the ceiling and then you get to the big column in the center and you're like, what's that called when the stalactite and the stalagmite meets?

Usually someone. would say pillar. It's called a pillar, but it's not a pillar. It's a column. It's what you call them.

But A column's what you call them.

A column is what you call them. But when I love this joke, it.

Is your favorite one.

My favorite joke is like, it's not a pillar. See, here in Arkansas, we sleep on pillars.

That's good. We do sleep on pillars.

Yeah, I liked that one. And then there was another one. I can't remember it right now. There were a couple of stops that I had a good joke.

Did you, how many tours did, there's Dripstone and Discovery.

There's the Dripstone, the Discovery, and then the Wild Cave tour. And the Dripstone is the one that was open all year round, the upper level that's real pretty. And then the the discovery tour was the one that went down to the lower levels and they close it out like throughout the winter time because that's the area where the bats are hibernating and so they shut it down so the bats can hibernate down there undisturbed and then that usually opens up Memorial Day and like the whole thing's open through later day. And so Dripstone is the real pretty, takes about an hour long. And then the Discovery was the one that has like a bunch of steps and you go down lower.

Which is the one that we went to with our 4-H group last.

I think we did the Dripstone tour.

And the Dripstone has the big cathedral room.

There's so many beautiful pieces in there.

And then I did the Wild Cave like That one wasn't my favorite. I don't know. I wasn't too into, some of the guys were really into, like they liked caves, like being back there. But we, when I do it, I was just kind of like worried, I guess. I was like, please don't let anybody get hurt. So I was probably more nervous and couldn't really enjoy it. But I do have a kind of a ghost story. from time working there. I just remembered it.

Oh, great. I just love ghost stories.

This is 100% really happened. So one thing about Blanchard Springs Caverns is they did find like a Native American, like from who knows how many thousand years ago, they'd found his skeleton in there. And so that was the big deal. Well, one day we were doing the wild cave tour, and it was me and Hunter Holt. And he was the lead and I was the trail guide. And we just had like, I think I was really just kind of learning it because we'd just taken two guys. And I think if it was three or less, you just, you could go with one guide. But if you had any more than that, you had to go with two. But me and Hunter took these two or three guys down in the cave. And so you get to a portion where you can sit over this, like it goes down to the stream, but you're sitting up high and we usually would turn out all our lights and just sit in the darkness. Well, so we're doing that and we turn off the lights and we're just sitting there listening and it hears, it sounds like somebody's down below us, like talking. Like you could just almost hear what they're saying. And we're like, and I've done it a few times and Hunter done it probably 100 times at least or more gone through. And so we're just sitting there like, he's like, I've never heard that before. And I was like, I think that's a person. It sounds like somebody's walking. And so we go on through the cave and we hear something else as we're going through. And finally the guys that are with us can get kind of spooked. And they're like, so they heard it too. Yeah. They're like, can we speed up? And it just sounded like.

Maybe a language that you couldn't understand?

Yeah, it sounded like muffled talking, but here's the weird, crazy part, because that, oh, we heard something in the cave. We come off the tour and call the bus, come get us, and we go up and go to cleaning, and we're telling people about it. Well, that kind of makes one of the guys think, well, what if somebody snuck into the cave? And so we call the ranger, and we're going to take him down to just see. Yeah, make sure. Well, as we're going in, like there's a tour coming out and they're like, whoa, they're like surprised to see us and they're like, we thought y'all were still on the cave tour because we heard y'all back there, but we'd done cut them off and been out of there for like 30 minutes. But they, there's a spot on the discoveries tour where you sit and you overlook the big flow stone and like the wild caves on back there. And sometimes if they're coming out, you can like hear them and they'll wait on them and say, hey, everybody, it's kind of a way to promote the wild cave tour. Well, that's what they had thought. And there is a part like if you get to this part just coming out, but if you're back here just sit there and be quiet. So, because you don't want to strike from the tour. Well, they thought we were coming out. And then we weren't there. We weren't there. And so we had to, that's when they're like, somebody's in there. And so we took the ranger, like the law enforcement ranger, to took him back in there. And he's just like, I don't know. We looked around. He's like, Must be a ghost. I don't know.

Which when they found the remains of that individual, they had lit different pieces of wood to light their way in the cave.

That was one of the kind of the talking points on the tour is like there were pieces of charcoal and that's what they'd done. It's like lit.

Man, I hope they keep that Jimmy Driftwood song too playing whenever the Mother Earth and Father Time.

I sing that all the time because I also sold tickets at the cave.

Oh, and you heard it all day.

And so they're playing that video there all day. And every now and then I'll just be like, well, he built a beautiful castle with pillars tall and round. And it's funny he says pillars, but it's called a column. But it's like pillars tall and round, the most beautiful castle in the world, and he built it underground, and they call it Blanchard Cave. I've seen that all.

Is that where, but is that the same song where he sings Mother Earth and Father John?

I'm pretty sure.

Man, that 1814, I don't, did he write that or just he wrote it? He wrote it and someone else made it popular.

Yeah, Jimmy Jeff Road wrote the Battle of New Orleans. Yes.

1814, we took a little trip down the criminal. Yeah.

He wrote that. We don't want to get a copyright strike.

Oh gosh, yeah, no.

We're just promoting our county.

Yeah, but he wrote that and then I think it was Johnny Horton saying.

Yeah, made it popular. But we have a beautiful caves here. And if you've lived here and haven't been, shame on you, because we're lucky to have something like this. We have so many great things here in our county that we're fortunate to have. And the thought of it being a state park, I hope that they're able to fix some of the issues from the flood. And we sure missed it with our 4-H group, because we have our outdoor day out there.

Yeah, a tornado come through.

Well, I think the flood really added to some issues. And we love the swimming holes. I mean, I grew up going swimming, watching people jump off the bluffs and all kinds of fun stuff.

But it'll be cool to see what they do with it being a state park.

Yeah, I'm excited about it and could really up more tourists coming here. And we already have one state park, so add another.

Yeah, what'd they say this will be the 53rd.

53rd. And it's not just the caverns that are there at Blanchard.

Yeah, they have a recreation area down there at the bottom. And you can actually drive and go see where the spring, Blanchard Springs comes out of the side of the mountain there into Mirror Lake.

And you can fish at Mirror Lake.

Yeah, they stock it with rainbow trout.

And it's a beautiful blue color. Usually it's so cold but pretty.

And then there's a little water, it goes over a little waterfall that goes into the creek and then there's swimming, a couple of swimming holes.

And then there's the old mill that part of my ancestors used to own, part of that area before it was purchased by the government, you know, maybe a forced purchase, but anyway.

But it's a beautiful area and there's camping. And so I'm hoping Maybe they can, with it becoming a state park, that they'll up the camping ability.

Yeah, that was one thing, like, I remember.

It's all primitive camping.

It's all primitive camping. But there's the lower, there's like one part of the campground that was shut down the whole time that I was there above the little low water dam that goes down to the lower campground. Maybe they'll get that up and running. I wonder if they'll those rocks, the big rocks at the lower, at the swim hole that we go to at the lower campground.

I put those there.

Wow. So if you're going through, just know who put those rocks there.

Yeah, you can say, I know who put these big old rocks there to keep people from driving down into the creek.

Man, I forgot about this story. We went camping there one time and I wanted the wildlife to come visit me. at our campsite. So I had taken- How old were you? I was real young, like younger than 10 for sure. And I wanted all the wildlife to show up. So I took a hot dog bun. I forgot all about this. And so the way our campsite was where we were at, it had kind of like a retaining wall behind it. And then there was our tent. And I took hot dog bun and put it all around the tent and the retaining wall. And I guess no one noticed that I did that. And so we had little critters all around the tent, a lot of the night. And I know it's just little.

Critters, no big critters.

I don't think we had a big critter. I don't think my sister could have handled the big critters, but.

I worked with your sister at the cave.

Yeah, Casey worked in the cave too. Yeah, you almost had a heat stroke.

I had a heat stroke. I was out mowing and weed eating. I don't think I drank any water.

I think it was 100 degrees, so that tells you how smart that was.

I just cramped up. I walked up there and they said I was white. And I was like, I think something's wrong.

She said you're a really abnormal shade. I think you were like clear.

Yeah. But Blanche Springs, it'll be cool.

And it's already been great, but with some of the areas closed due to those issues, we just really missed it and excited to have it back going in those recreational areas. And for my use, whether anyone else comes in or not, the local people will be thrilled to have that back. in that little special part of our county and over in 56.

And let's switch, speaking of feeding critters, you.

I figured, talking, I'm like, well, what could some farmers be doing this time of year? And it's like, really? Most of them are just feeding, feeding, doing their winter feeding, feeding hay. And that was one of my least favorite jobs. As easy as it is, was putting out hay bales for the cattle, just because they all come up there. They all get in the way. One time, like I thought I'd killed one of dad's cows, because like I went in there, cut the strings off, and then went to put it in the hay bale. Well, it dumb thing stuck its head in about the time I'd dump it. And oh, and you didn't notice. I was like, oh no.

I was able to lift it and he got out.

Goodness, they do silly things.

If you, know, you're like me and feeding hay is not the most fun thing. It's usually that we're doing it during the coldest times.

And it's dark earlier.

It's dark earlier. And so one thing to think about, and it's usually what our old forage specialist would recommend is plan out a year in advance. So if you're listening to this and you're like doing it while you're feeding hay and you're like, you know what?

I want to do something different next year.

Yeah, as he mentioned it, I hate feeding hay as well. maybe we can shorten the amount of days. We're probably not we don't have the climate that we can 100% get to where we're not having to feed any hay, but what we could do is extend our grazing season. You're too late if you want to plant like some cool season annuals, but... we still got another opportunity to plant those cool season annuals, get through December, January, but then February, March, we could get out something like rye grass or oats. Wouldn't want to do winter wheat that time because it has to go through the vernalization. But get out some sort of...

And vernalization is the cold period.

Yeah, it has to go through that period of cold for it to really germinate. Well, not necessarily germinate, but do probably to grow well.

And I don't... I'm not going to go into the weeds on that. Not going to go into the weeds on that because I'd mix it up and be like, oh, we can't put that out there.

Anyways, so, but well, we can plant some cool season annuals in the fall or in the spring to hopefully get some, you know, early season, early spring grazing. Also want to think about at that time of year when that flush of cool season comes on, probably want to put out like some sweet mag mineral, something with high magnesium in it because it's being so low. If you've ever heard of like grass tetany, something like that, can happen. It's due to the low magnesium. So making sure to have out high magnesium.

You are often are calving if you have cow calves and they're going to need more during that time.

Yep. And it's really a good general practice to always have out a complete mineral. Yeah, free choice, complete mineral for those micronutrients. It helps them process a little bit better.

We keep ours by the ponds. Is that beneficial to be near a water source or is just anywhere that you can have it available?

Probably nearby water source would be good. We were talking yesterday at our planning meeting and Brian, he was telling us a story. They had a guy They'd gone through a change and I guess ownership or a son or somebody, I can't remember the details, but what had happened is he had these cattle and all of a sudden they, or they had changed up the ration that they were getting and all of a sudden they just weren't performing, weren't performing. And I think this guy lost, ended up losing like 5 bulls. due to kidney stones.

And the reason why it happens is not what you'd think is because the phosphorus and calcium ratio got off and there wasn't enough calcium in the diet. And so they were getting kidney stones and it's causing blockages.

Which makes no sense because kidney stones are often a calcium.

Well, in cattle, yeah, in cattle, if that phosphorus nitrogen ratio, which what it is, or I guess I should say calcium to phosphorus ratio, 2 to 1 calcium, 2 calcium to 1 phosphorus is the ratio where you want to be. You can get too high. I think if it's above a 6 to 1 ratio, then you're out of you don't want to be there, but you need to have more calcium, otherwise they can get those kidney stones.

And so that's mainly going to be in the mineral that you put out.

Well, mineral or limestone, like, is how they solve the issue, just applying some calcium or some lime to the, to save like the feed ration and.

Wow, that's wild.

Lost 5 bulls when he could have, just put out 25 pounds a day of lime, which is relatively inexpensive.

Well, compared to five bulls, for sure.

So thinking about, our nutrition in cattle and another thing to mention.

And so I would say that sounds like it'd be great to check your rations. And that's something we do here.

Yeah, I've got a little program that I use and I can build you a ration and see.

We can test your feeds.

Or send them off anyway.

Do feed testings, don't, if you get like a big commodity feed, like usually when in my program it's based on averages. Well, if that, that's averages. You may be on the high end of the average or you may be on the low end of the average. You're not real sure. And some of this, you know, getting the right amount to help them to maintain or help them to gain a body condition score. We want to be sure that they're consuming enough of the food to get them to do what we want them to do. One thing I was going to mention is body condition scores. If you don't know what that is, it's kind of how we rank cattle on what condition they're in. One being like they're extremely thin, 9 being it's a 1 to 9 scale, 9 being very fat. Where we want our cattle typically is somewhere, 7 I guess is what they consider perfect condition, but For cattle, 5 to 6 to 7 for breeding, to breed back, probably breed back you'd want to be at least a six to a seven, but they could probably tolerate even being that five or say they calve at a six, and then over time they may lose condition while they're lactating and get down to a five, but we don't want them to get down to a four, three, or definitely not a two or a one. So mentioning that is cattle have different nutritional requirement based on what stage of production they're in. If they're lactating, like early in the lactation, say we're going to keep a calf on the mom for about six months before weaning, usually that first three months is when that nutritional requirement really skyrockets. And so If you've got a mixed herd out there of, all different Nutritional needs. All different nutritional needs and you're just feeding them all the same thing, well, you may be overfeeding one and you may not be feeding enough to another. Whereas if, you know.

And you'll see that.

You'll see that. And like I mentioned, how are we making money? A lot of guys around here, cow calves, selling back the calves. If they're not in that good condition score, they may not breed back and they may have calving issues. So what we can do is group our herd together into a closer nutritional requirement to feed them what they need. Also mentioned we do hay testing and feed testing so you can know exactly what the crude protein or the TDN, total digestible nutrients, which is going to be the energy. A lot of times what guys think, they're like, well, I need more protein, I need more protein or this feeds like a 12% or a 14% or a 16% protein, well, yeah, you're getting enough protein to them, but usually what happens is we're not meeting their energy and they're still gonna go downhill even if the protein, you know, you're applying it to them. A lot of times even the hay that we make covers, depending on the quality, like the lower quality hay or an average hay, I would say, Average hay, 9% on crude protein, and then maybe in mid-50s, like 53, 54 TDN, that would probably maintain like a dry cow. Like we could just feed her hay all wintertime and she'll just maintain the level of she set. Now we go around and feed that same hay to lactating. Their nutritional requirement is like going to be like they need 12% protein and probably like in the 60s of TDN. And if we're not meeting that with hay, over time, they're going to lose that condition. So we might want to supplement with something. And that's where testing comes in. What is the actual quality of my hay? Okay, I'm good on protein. I've got a 12% protein, but I've got like a 58. TDN. Well, I need to supplement with a little bit of energy to meet her nutritional requirements. So I might add a little bit of corn or add a little bit of this just to make up for it so they can maintain that condition. And so another thing, tip for feeding hay, one thing for talking about sustainability, And I know NRCS is kind of encouraging this. I think it's one of their cost share practices they do, but it's if you're unrolling hay to move it around, like, you know, don't just unroll the same spot every time because there actually is nutrients in that hay. You know, you've applied fertilizer, went out and built that field and all that fertilizer and nutrients you put out there that got taken away in the hay. you've taken it away. Well, we can go back and add that in. I think spread it across the field and unroll it and we'd get some kind of re- At.

Least keep those nutrients.

Yeah, and it's not going to be like, you know, I think in a typical bale, it's somewhere around like maybe 10 to 14 pounds, or 10 to 14% nitrogen. Maybe, I'm not sure on the phosphorus, but then probably about the same on your potassium. Because to grow a ton of forage takes about 40, 50 pounds nitrogen, 12, 15 pounds phosphorus, 40, 50 pounds nitrogen, or potassium. If we take all that away and never put it back, that's when we see a lot of the sage grass and unwanted stuff and bare ground pop up. But fertilizer's so expensive. Well, we can start rolling out that hay. That'll at least get them to depositing those through their manure at least. throughout your field. And as the hay that they waste starts decaying, it's going to decompose and add nutrients back to your soil. So that is a sustainable practice. If you're like, well, I got hay rings. Well, move those hay rings around your field. That would be a good practice. that's what we want to do with sustainable doing practices that we can continue to do that are cost-effective.

And that's a simple thing to do.

And easier on the environment. Well, we've done spent all the money in diesel to cut hay. Rather than just letting it set in one spot and rot, I can move those nutrients around my field and get some benefit throughout my field. Not only am I spreading those nutrients around, I'm also moving that manure around the field. One thing I practice we've recommended before is like if you unroll your hay, put like a hot wire up so they can't, it'll make them utilize the hay a little bit more. You know, say I'm cutting it close on the amount of hay I have. make it throughout the winter. Well, at that point, we want to increase efficiency. So you could put up a little hot wire so they can't just use it as a bedding and trampling in it and pooping and peeing in it and coming up on the winter time, having them in a good condition, you know, We want our cows to be healthy, our livestock in general to be healthy. And if they're in a better condition, they can better tolerate the cold weather that comes on. So making sure your cattle are in a good body condition score coming up for the winter, separate them into the nutritional needs. If that's possible, group them together to those closer nutritional needs. and make sure we're meeting it. And you're not going to know unless you're testing your hay if that's all you're feeding. You know, a lot of guys will just do it real simple as I'm going to feed hay in some range cubes. That may work, but it also may not work. That's where what we're trying to promote is doing best practices and being smart about it. I can do a $18 test to make sure on my hay to know the crude protein, the TDN, the fiber, and I can kind of figure out from that how much they're going to consume throughout the year and how we do it with our 4-H kids in a contest called Grasslands. And they got a scenario where they got so much in the herd of different production. They've got to figure out, you know, how much hay they're going to need. And it's a good kind of deal for a farmer to know. So a dry cow consume about 2% of her body weight A day. And 1000 pounds, that's 20 pounds of feed. And of 20 pounds of dry matter, there's not 100% dry matter in hay. It may be like a 80, 90%. So to get that dry matter, they may have to consume 25 to 30 pounds of actual feed A day. And so you can kind of figure that out. 2% for dry cows, 2 1/2% for lactating cows, 3% for growing calves, 2 1/2 for bulls, 3% on bulls if they're breeding is what they'll consume in their body weight. And we can kind of figure out, well, I got this many pounds of hay. And then I can figure out, okay, I'm going to try to get them to utilize 60% of it. And then I can figure out, do I have enough hay? Do I not have enough hay? This is just some little, doing some math problems and good record keeping.

Yeah, and you'll understand what your needs are going to be for that year.

I'll understand what your needs are going to be. It's time to, it's cattle producers, it's time to step it up a little bit, you know, actually caring about it, not just, they're not just, what does Cameron call them, pasture ponies that sit out there. They're not just out there as field ornaments. We want to get to where we're doing good practices and they're actually making us a little money. And if.

And we're efficient as possible.

And we're efficient and we're keeping them in good condition. Yeah, we can overstock and I can say I have, I've got 50 head of cows on 20 acres and they ain't got nothing to eat and you go look at them and they're skin and bones, it's like, well, maybe I could have sold a few of them, get my stocking rate down. There's so much stuff that I don't think many producers are thinking about as serious as they should, but that's what we're kind of hoping to do is I encourage people to pick, select best practices and work towards them. So this, we're coming up in January where we make New Year's resolutions. And I always tell guys, it's like, you know, pick you a practice, pick you one thing to change over the year and work towards that goal. And five years from now?

You've had five new practices.

You've got 5 new practices. You're hopefully improving them. mentioning grouping things together, it'd also be a good idea to work towards getting a shorter calving season so that we're producing calves that are more uniform. I always tell, say it, this little deal is like, think about it as if you have a 100 day calving season, so 90 days, 60 to 90 days, I guess, be considered short. 60 is real short, 45 is real short, and less than 90 days is usually what we're hoping to try to get people to shoot towards and then maybe shrink up to that 60 if they can. But starting out usually 90 days. Well, let's say we've got 100 day calving season and they're say they're just average gaining 2 pound per day. Well, that calf born on the first day It's going to be 200 pounds heavier than the calf born on the last day, and you're going to wean them probably all at the same time. And so you're going to have a lot of variation. And what buyers typically want is to have uniform cattle. Right now, depending on who you talk to, prices have kind of dipped here, and they typically do in the fall, but they'll probably go back up. Cattle prices have been, I would say, good. the best they've ever been as far as what the cost. I don't know, adjusted for inflation, what that works out to, but.

I don't think we want to adjust too much for inflation. It's sad.

$3, I'm selling them $3 a pound right now is pretty good. But let's say, you know, in 10 years, the market goes back down. Well, while things were good if we had adopted some good management practices, 10 years when the markets aren't as good, well, we're still producing a high quality calf or we've got, we've built our genetics, we've got them on a short rotation. Here in, yeah, maybe it's better right now to just, I can sell one when I've got one. I've got one that can go to sell and got one to go to sell. Well, maybe here in 10 years, they ain't going to be buying them like that. they're going to want them to be more uniform and you can sell, say, more calves and get a better price for them if they are uniform, if that makes any sense. But that's kind of my spiel for today, I guess.

Your winter feeding advice or recommendations?

Yeah, I think this is going to be a pretty long episode because I ain't going to do a whole lot of editing. Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, I think We're going to do one more episode this year. Yeah, this season. Get to 10 episodes. I hope you all have enjoyed it.

I'm excited about next season too.

Hopefully we got some new cool stuff for you coming up in season 2.

I think we will.

You got anything else you want to help?

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays.