Ep. 12 - Track Your Expenses & Moving Towards Regenerative Agriculture

In this episode, Anna continues with her financial tips with how to track monthly expenses. If you're not tracking them, they are likely higher than you think.  Tyler discusses regenerative agriculture and how it looks like there is going to be a push for it in the future. 

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University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Website

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Transcript

Back again, Stone County Extension saves the world. I don't know how well we're feeling today. We were going to record yesterday and it was just kind of like, we've got to do all this end of year stuff now and it's kind of like, I need to work on that. 

Let's, I don't know if now's a good time. 

Let's, Anna's studying and I was like, well, you want to just record tomorrow? And it's like, yeah, let's do it. 

Let's do it. 

Well, we're here today. You prepared, ready? You gonna teach us something? I am. 

Well, so our last time, our last recording, we talked about doing your credit reports. And I was really excited. I got a phone call from one of our people and one of our volunteers in extension, and she had done her credit report too. So if you've not listened to the last episode, listen to that one, do your credit report, and then we're gonna talk about spending tracker. So tracking all those expenses today? 

That's probably real important. I mean, I know that we... I wouldn't even want to say how much we spend on streaming, but. 

It's a little bit. 

It's a little bit. 

A little bit. 

We're like, man, satellite cable, that's expensive. 

And then you've got 5 streaming services. 

I've got 5 streaming services. 

Yeah. So I have a stat. I love a good stat. So A 2020 Stress in America report from the American Psychological Association showed that 64% of adults say money is a significant source of stress in their life. So over half of the American adults in the United States are stressed by finances. And then another couple stats is only 39% of Americans could comfortably cover an unexpected $1,000 expense with their savings according to a 2021 survey carried out by a financial publisher in a comparison service bank rate cited as young 2022. So 39% is all that could comfortably cover an unexpected $1,000 expense. So that leaves 61% who could not comfortably do that at this moment. And then in addition, according to the Northwestern Mutual's 2019 Planning and Progress study, 92% of Americans over 18 said nothing makes them happier or more confident in life than when their finances are in order. And this is all from an article from Montana State University Extension. So 92% feel it makes them happier. Nothing makes them happier or more confident in life than when their finances are in order. 

So what you're saying is if you're having a lot of stress worrying about money, once you get them in order, you feel a little bit better? 

You're going to feel better, yeah. 

So it is something we all probably need to think about if we're not already tracking our finances. This would be a reasonable, steps to take to. 

Yes, absolutely. In order to under, you've got to know what you're spending to know how you're going to save or pay off debts. Like you've got to figure out, you know, where you are. And I was thinking, you know, this isn't just for your household, you know, your farm. Do you know how much you're spending on your farm? 

Budgets are a big deal in farming, so. 

Yes, so. 

If you don't know what you're spending, you know, you don't know if you're profitable, you don't know if you're losing money. I would imagine a lot of people don't know what's going on. 

Probably not. And there's probably more people working to farm than realize that they're doing that. 

Yeah, like you're going to work doing some other job trying to make money so you can. 

Fall in and have cattle. Yes, like maybe you're feeding costs. And one of my friends, they were in a situation where the parents were unexpectedly gone and they were left to figure all of this out. So, just be thinking about how this affects you and your household, how this affects you and your business and your farm, your hobby farm, anything if you have a little hobby, what are you spending on that hobby? Or what if, let's say, like I like to make soap and I've sold it at different craft fairs. How much does it cost me to make it? Which actually I went and knew exactly how much each bar of each kind costs me to make at one time. But you need to know that because if you're not making any money off of it, that's fine if you're doing what you're enjoying. But at some point there's a break over there. So yeah. So I was thinking about that. And so one of the first steps in order to figuring out your expenses or tracking your expenses is I've got the spending tracker and I got it off of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And that's a great resource if you're needing a resource to start with some financial stuff. And it has education for you, for younger ages. And that's a resource I use for some of my consumer education. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They can also help you with some other things and just kind of been clued into them through extension, led into who they are. and they're a resource for you out there. And we'll get more into what they offer later. But one thing they have is a spending tracker. So you can download this off of there if you need a place to start. Otherwise, you know, you could do your own spreadsheet, but I'm good. I like the old fashioned write it down. Something about writing it down makes it more real. And I can also visualize how it looked and remember it that way. But one of my goals is to build up my emergency finances back to what I used to have. And so that's what I'm rooting for. But I understand people are at all different levels and different goals. And so one of the first things you're going to want to add and keep up with your expenses, how much do you owe on your credit cards? What are those minimum monthly payments? And so then we're gonna look at our, we're gonna go through and get all our debts. Like what's your house payment? Do you have a car payment, a side-by-side payment? Do you have a furniture payment and all that? We're gonna go through and we're gonna track up with that. Do what? 

Medical payments, that's what I got. 

Yeah, any medical debt. So I just try to think of, you know, those debts first. So we're listing our debts, we've got our credit card, and then we're gonna get into utilities. So what do you owe for water? And then I actually forgot about trash. do you pay for a trash pickup? If you're out of the city limits, what's your electric bill? And then I wrote TV and internets. So what's your internet bill? And then how many streaming services do you have? You're going to want to list and go through that. And so you're feeling like you've got a few. 

I don't know, we've got a few. 

So you want to list those. So that's like your entertainment. And then don't forget, your house insurance, your vehicle insurance. And then I even put in life insurance, even though mine's quarterly for my life insurance for us three, I went ahead and listed because I'm trying to do like a six month emergency savings. So I need that information. And sometimes those come as a surprise, like you forget about those. And then hello, here's your quarterly payment. And then you want your randoms, like do you pay for Canva? Do you have a music subscription on your phone? So don't forget that. And then do you have how much is it for your cell phone each month? And then so I put health insurance if health insurance isn't deducted, but it's deducted out of ours. But if it's not deducted, you're paying, you know, separately. You want to make sure and listed that. And then if you can, And I don't know necessarily, I know this is more a budget line, but kind of anticipate some of your health payments. Like if you're doing monthly things like orthodontist or like you might have to be paying off. Like when I had Whitney, I had to make monthly payments on her. I was on a payment plan. And so we want to list that, your prescriptions. So how much are your prescriptions each month? And then groceries and things like that. So grocery bills, how much are you spent in eating out? So you want to track that. And I'd mentioned the TV subscriptions and the cell phone bill. And that's a good time too to review. Are you being charged for something you're not using anymore? So if you have. 

Yeah, for those of you that made your New Year's resolution is to join a gym, you joined the gym and you haven't been since. 

Might be a time to just go ahead and cancel that, not let it charge you for six months if you're not going. You know, go into the Gym. 

The Gym. The Gym. 

GYM. And yeah, look for those subscriptions or anything that you just don't recognize on your accounts. Now's a good time to really, you know, look through your statements, your accounts. If it's easier for you to save all your receipts, if you're a cash person, I'd be saving your receipts. So do this for a whole month. Spend your whole month going over it. And I've gone over mine because I'm doing this along with everybody else. And it was more than I expected. I was kind of like, okay, well, I. 

Need to make more money? 

Well, it's like, you know, Or spend less. Or spend less is typically going to be the answer. because some, more money, more problems. 

Yeah. 

But anyway, so I want you to go through if you're following along and wanting to do this and track your expenses for a month and try to be very, very thorough to have a really good idea of where you're at. 

Okay, figure out, yeah. So tracking your monthly expenses and you figure all that out. Do you want to talk about? Maybe where you're going to go next. 

Yeah, I think I'm really leaning towards some budgeting and building your emergency savings is really where I'm headed next. And I didn't want to overdo for this time because I was kind of thinking about really going into emergency savings. But if your expenses are not where you can at this moment, you know, how do we, how do you start that? So, that's kind of more of my next time is is ultimately we're going to talk about budget and emergency savings. But I first really hope that you spend this last week or this next week or next month really getting it sorted out how much you're spending on things. Because I did and that was more than I expected. 

Any programs you got going on are coming up. 

Well, right now, my Extension Get Fit group, we're collecting dues for the new year and we have a lot of newbies. So now's a great time to come to Extension Get Fit. It's an exercise program for midlife to older adults. and it's only $16 a year. And we meet in Mountain View Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 9 to 10. We're usually done a little before 10. And it's mainly focuses on strength and balance, but it's an excellent program and they've been at it for years. This is before me or you started, some other agents had brought the program to Stone County. 

A lady used to come in and tell me, she's like, yeah, we got a 90 year old. And they were walking in using a cane, and now they don't even need the cane, and she's bragging on it. 

Yeah, it's amazing. I've seen people after a stroke have the progression they've made. And then we've had, I know Red Top, when she was in her accident, they had told her muscle mass helped keep her from dying in her accident. And we had a 90-year-old that got in a vehicle accident, and And they all attribute their bounce back to the strength training that they've been doing. And just simply maintaining is a big deal. And what's fun about the class is everyone has a great time. It's peer-led. I'm only there just to help, you know, help fill in so we don't have any volunteer burnout because that's a, you know, now that Red Top's passed on, we miss her. She was our fearless leader. And and she was so much fun and but she kept it going for many years and so. 

She's could what was it she could do she could like stretch. 

She was very very flexible and she could stand up and grab her toe and hold on to it and fully extend her arm and leg it was so impressive And so she scared me a little bit when I first started. When I first, the first. 

She was an intimidating lady. 

Yeah, and I mean, I'm 5 foot four and she was about 5'10 and she always, one thing I did like about her, she'd say she'd want all the tall people to stand to their full height. She'd be like, don't slump, you know, just own that you're tall. Well, so the first week I started, I had on just not shoes for exercising. And I think I had on jeans. I had on like nice pants. And she's like, well, why don't you come over? And so I went and she grabbed me some weights and noodle. And I was like, you're staying exercising. So me and my. 

What was that like? 

No, I. Was it bad? No, it wasn't. It wasn't bad. But I am smart enough to know, like, you don't go grab a 10 pound weight if you hadn't been lifting. So I think I had fives. Thank goodness. But I was sore after that first day because I hadn't been doing, I hadn't been lifting weights at that time. But it was just, it was funny. I was gonna, I was going to exercise that day. 

Yeah. 

But she was great and we miss her. But we're very thankful that people have continued it through the years when different leaders have left or gone on or different reasons. And it's a very important program in our county and they have so much fun. So I think that's what keeps everyone coming. It's good music and a good atmosphere and peer led and $16 a year. It's a great, and I hate it when I hear, I had no idea. And I thought, I try to tell. I try to tell. So that's one thing we hope about our podcast is, you know, we say it's just another way to try to get information out and just know that this is an option for you in Stone County. And And I know several of the counties around us have it also. 

Yeah. If you're listening, need your restricted pesticide license, February 24th at the EHC building, Stone County Fairgrounds. We're going to do a pesticide applicator training. It's just costs $20, what we go through and teach you. information about how to handle and be safe with these restricted use pesticides, understanding the label, but you have to have the license to purchase and use restricted use pesticides. And so I have many people, it's never fails that, I don't know, it's funny because they'll, I'll have one like, have one February 24th. Guaranteed February 25th. Someone will call Wins and Wins next pesticide applicator training. 

One time you're in the middle of teaching it and someone called and I was wondering what it was. 

Yeah, it never fails. But if you need restricted use pesticide in Stone County, we're doing the class February 24th, EHC Building Fairgrounds. We're also doing, me and the master gardeners, we're going to do a, not a composting, the composting class will be in March, but we're going to do a cool season gardening type class. And I haven't kind of figured out if I want to do like seed starting, like the hands-on seed starting class that I do, and do it with cool season vegetables or I'll figure it out closer. But we're going to do a workshop about cool season gardening. Likely you'll get to start your own seeds first. And what date is that? It's going to be, you shouldn't have asked me. 

Is it February 6th? 

It's A Friday, February 6th. Yeah. 

It's Whitney's birthday, so that helps me. 

Yeah. We'll be out at our Master Gardener Greenhouse. I think we call it the Star Greenhouse, the Stone County Teaching and Research Greenhouse. When we first got that thing donated, that's what somebody said was the star, S-T-A-R. 

But I just call it the community garden. 

I call it the Master Gardener Greenhouse. 

I should call it the old ball field. 

But yeah, it's out at the old football field in Mountain View. If you're interested in learning about cool season gardening, we'll be doing that. And then we'll be doing several classes. 

Several hort classes. 

Several hort classes coming up. One thing we've talked about, and if you're listening and interested, is maybe we'll start making some videos, like how-to videos with Dr. Can you want me to come prune your fruit trees out of your place? 

Yeah, I'm finding a way to get my trees pruned for me is what I'm doing. 

We thought about we could make a video and put that out there. So if you If that type of stuff would be interesting to you and you'd watch that type of content, be sure to let us know. 

And be looking. 

And be watching out for it. 

I do have a ServSafe class on February 23rd and 24th. It's the manager certification course and exam and that comes due every five years. If you have, if you're a food service facility or you have, like you're feeding a lot of people at a church camp or concession stand, a food truck, any type of food service business, you'll need the certification in February 23rd and 24th in Stone County. And typically I'm the lowest price, cheaper than online. So please give me a call. I've got books ready for you if you need to get a book now and start studying. So please, get that now. I don't plan to have a class for a while. 

And so I think that's the update for what we've got coming up. I guess We move into what I was going to talk about regenerative agriculture. 

What does that even mean? 

There's a lot of definition. No one has a set definition. So what they talk about, what their goal is, to, well, there's a big push for regenerative agriculture. I heard they're going to, the USDA is going to give funding. If it's right, it's $700 million across the United States to promote regenerative agricultural practices. And so what they call regenerative agriculture is a conservation management approach that emphasizes natural resources through like soil health, water management, and just the natural vitality for the productivity and prosperity of American agriculture. That's the definition that they give to what is regenerative agriculture. But there's not really a set definition. Most people kind of lean that. They want to minimize inputs and promote soil health is a real big part of it, to get where we're using less, say, outside inputs like fertilizer. And I've heard that possibly there'll be some cost share assistance to maybe establish some of these management practices. So what they're kind of trying to push is, or say how you would have to do it, it's going to be through the Natural Resource Conservation Service or NRCS. And we've talked about maybe getting one of them to come over here and be a guest. So that may be sooner than later. 

Sooner than later. 

But what do you want to know? What do we, what should I talk about it? Because I need to kind of get on. 

Okay, so they're going to have money come out. 

Yeah, so and cost share. 

So what are some of the things that you're thinking that might possibly? 

Might possibly that would work for us around here. in Stone County, again, we don't have a lot of row crop. We're mostly livestock and forages. And then, say, if you wanted to get into growing vegetables. I got this paper here from NRCS and they kind of have a list of some of the conservation practices. Something that would fit into ours, maybe like if you have say woods or forest, there is some forest harvest management, forest stand improvement. nutrient management would probably fall into like a practice to where you're looking at your nutrients on your farm to prevent runoff going into the waterways. 

So basically keeping what you have. 

Keeping what you have. Like there's one practice, pest management conservation system. Prescribed grazing is probably the one that is going to be available to us. And that's kind of what I want to talk about is trying to think what regenerative it regenerates without us putting in extra input. So what the goal is to get our soil healthy enough that it can produce what we need to do or produce the yield that we need to produce with minimum inputs. But the way we're going to do that is building up nutrient reservoir in the soil, building up soil microbes. And we do that through diversity, maybe some rotation of crops, plant diversity, not having just say a mono crop out there where I've got just a warm season or Bermuda grass out there. Maybe I have Bermuda grass and then I'm able to come in with say some cool season annuals and overseed that to increase my grazing that I'm going to have. But one cool thing, I've had a guy come in and talk to me, which is interesting, if it, if it works out, is using the virtual fence system now. It's not official that I hadn't heard if there's going to be any cost share. I heard like some rumors, possibly there might be cost share available for like establishing virtual fence, but that's not a thing yet. But if they were able to get that done, that's going to help. I would imagine it would help a lot of guys. Just think about the terrain we have around here. And rather than going through and building the infrastructure of putting up like a barbed wire fence to contain cattle, how these virtual fence systems work is we put a collar on the animal and they have them for cattle and say small room and it's like sheep and goats. And this collar, it's almost like a shock collar that they would have on a dog, but you got to get them trained to it and you set a boundary. So you do all this from like a computer and you can set, you know, this is what I want my fields to be for, say, I'm going to start implementing rotational grazing. And then rather than having to go through and put up, say, temporary poly wire or electric fence or building your own fence, you can plug it into that software, I think. And there's like a little boundary area that, say, they're getting close to it. It'll start beeping and it may vibrate. And it's supposed to train them to, as they come back, keep them in that location. And I think it's. 

That to me is a really exciting technology. 

I think it's gonna be cool though. 

As that progresses and its ability, I just think, especially those small ruminants and being able to move animals, I didn't really think about how it could work with the rotational grazing. I was just thinking how nice that would be to not deal with the fence, but yeah, you could really move them through your pastures. 

Yeah, you could say you had like a 40 acre pasture rather than putting up a bunch of Little temporary electric fence you could. create boundaries with that virtual fence and have different paddocks and that'll keep them here for a couple of days and then you just rotate them. Why we want to promote practices like prescribed grazing or rotational grazing? It's managed grazing. We're doing grazing management, forcing our livestock to utilize more of the grass that's there and then rotating them around, allowing that pasture to rest and regrow before we're coming back on there. That will help the little microbes in the soil. It'll help spread out the nutrients through, you know, as they're grazing and dropping the manure, spread that out more evenly throughout the field. And what we're trying to do is increase our soil health, get more organic matter in there. And A good point to say this is if you don't know where your soil fertility or soil health is before you start doing anything, trying to grow anything, the first step is to take a soil test. It's easy to do. 

And how much does that cost? 

It's free to do unless you want to add, if you want to know how much organic matter is in the soil, that's like a $10 test. 

But still, $10. 

But what it'll tell you is, it tells you your pH. pH is important. I've talked about it, I think, on here before. 

Yes, you have. 

Most of our grass wants to be somewhere around 6.365, but like a 5.8 to like a 7 is a good range for growing grass. But if your pH isn't there, it can absorb the nutrients. It can absorb the nutrients as well. I learned that on this point. 

So it sounds to me like a lot of it's about increasing efficiency. 

It's increasing efficiency and just getting these practice, getting producers to adapt these types of processes. One I looked on here, it's called strip cropping. What do you think that is? 

Wow. 

Yeah, when I first saw it, I was like, strip cropping. 

Taking all the crops off. 

Yeah, my first thought was somehow the farmer ends up naked, but it's that's not what it is. It's planting, different strips of different crops. I was like, strip, strip cropping. It's like strip grazing. 

I've heard a story about a guy that some people I worked with do that would garden naked. He garden naked. 

He garden naked. 

He liked being naked in his garden. 

Man, that's one of my biggest fears is showing up to somebody's house on a farm visit. And there's naked grandma out there and grandpa. I'd be like, I don't know. Whoa. Whoa, man. What would you do? Would you act normal? Would you take off your clothes to fit in? 

No, I'd back out and hope that nobody saw me. I'd just like, you know, just blend back into the bushes. 

Well, it's like walking in the lady using the toilet. I didn't know what to do and just had to. You just panicked. I just had to act like nothing happened. So. 

Naked grandma. 

Naked grandma. 

Well, I don't know who that guy was, so. There's always a chance. 

With this, once they start, it's called the regenerative pilot program. They say there's some requirements. There's a part of that is a whole farm assessment where they're going to look at all of your resource concerns on your farm and try to address them through practices. They're going to have planning criteria, but then you have to have one, at least one primary practice that is in this regenerative agriculture. So for instance, we could, they're gonna come out, look, say if you, say you have like a pond or a creek or something where they drink out of, they may put in like a heavy use area to prevent where they all kind of gather up to drink, they're going to trot and it's going to erode over time to prevent erosion. So think of, I want to protect the natural resources I have, soil, water, and the more likely that you're able to address those resource concerns, the more highly you're going to rank, more likely you're going to get funded. But reading this, it looks like you can add additional practices where I'm going to do, say, I want to maybe adopt prescribed grazing where I'm going to start rotational grazing. Well, involved in that, maybe they also add in establishing some sort of cool season, warm season type pasture or something as another practice. It says that you'll have five years to complete these practices. If you've ever messed with it, you get a contract with NRCS, sign it, and then they'll have like dates of when you have to have these. 

Like assessments and different. 

You have to have some of these. You have to have these things met. So that's something farmers need to keep a lookout for is The US government seems to be like they're wanting to promote this regenerative agriculture, and it's something that many guys around here could do. And so you mentioned what does regenerative agriculture mean? It's one of them buzzwords, and sometimes buzzwords with these old farmers, they're just like, you're trying to tell me what to do. But They are some good best management practices that we probably need to adopt. And you may think, well, they're just kind of trying to restrict what I, need to use fertilizer. Maybe they're going to say how much fertilizer I can and can't put on. Well, that comes into part of the nutrient assessment. You know, how much nutrients do you have running off? How much are you losing due to not being able to get into the soil or it's leaching out of the soil and it's going into the waterway and then flowing down, because that's a big deal right now with, poultry. 

Poultry houses and water. 

Poultry houses over in Northwest Arkansas is Oklahoma. I think it was Oklahoma sued them because of the nutrients running off from the chicken litter being applied to fields. And that's Something farmers need to think about how much, just because this fertilizer has this amount in it, use urea, for example, it's 46% nitrogen. Urea is really volatile anyway, but you put that out, spend all the money on it, and then lose a percentage of it. 

And I think too, a lot of us are thinking like a visual runoff. Well, we're thinking of we apply it and then we see it get washed off and go down the waterway. I don't think it's quite that obvious. I think it's there's a little more to it than it just visually washing away. 

Visually washing away. 

So I think that's something to think about. You know, there's more to it than just that. So. 

Yeah. 

And I mean, I don't want my stuff washing off down to the Mississippi. 

Yeah, don't want, it's pretty much your money's washing away. Farmers hearing about this, the regenerative pilot program, and you're like, well, that might be a good idea. I want to move that way to get more into regenerative agriculture. How do I sign up? You'd want to go in, talk with the guys at NRCS, but also you want to get your farm, have a farm and track number, and you do that by going to the Farm Service Agency or FSA here in Mountain View. They're pretty much in the same building, just on one end. But you can go in there and then The assistance will come through. I think part of it's going into the EQIP program and part of it into the CSP, and that's the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, EQIP. And then the Conservation Stewardship Program is where the funding will come out of. If any of y'all have ever done that before, I'm sure most farmers have messed with NRCS. at some point or another. But if you haven't, that's who you want to go through. And we have people all the time coming in here. Are you all the guys that give out the grants or we're needing funding? And it's like, you're not wanting us. you're wanting to go to NRCS. 

And even if you're not sure or you may have something a little different, go visit with them. Go see what they have to say and work through it. the worst they're going to say is no. I mean, I definitely think it's somewhere you need to check out and they're always really happy to help. 

Yeah, and I was saying, you know, farmers think with these buzzwords, sustainable, regenerative agriculture, organic, that They're similar, but they're different. So organic, it's say I want to become organically labeled certified. It's through the USDA and they have these standards and it's typically at least three years without putting on any of the restricted anything. Like it has to be organically part of the organic practices, three years without any of that stuff or for doing three years of organic practices on it. And then you contact like a certifier and they kind of walk you through it to get, they'll come up with a plan and get you certified. 

To do any of this program. 

To do, say, organic. Okay, So organic's really just a marketing term, but what they're trying to do is reduce any unnatural type, using any unnatural. 

And you're saying this could be an element of this program? 

It could be an element of Redrin or Trip Agriculture, but it's Not just like organic. You say, well, I'm more of a conventional guy. I'm going to use, I use, commercial type fertilizers and I know that, those aren't used in organic. How can I do this? Well, yeah, the goal is over time to build up your soil health, build up your soil nutrient reservoir to where you're minimizing those commercial inputs, commercial fertilizers or pesticides to where over time, it's something we're working towards. If we show up to your field and you've soil test and we look out there and it's, 50% weeds, no good grass out there, you're likely going to have, it's going to be, you're going to have to probably use some of them like commercial type fertilizers and probably some pesticides. But we can use those tools, think of them as tools. We can use that to work our way towards regenerative agriculture. It's not like a, you know, I'm going from using these inputs on my farm to where I don't use them at all. It's a slow build, but that is the goal. And as a farmer, Those are probably some of your highest inputs. And if you can work towards getting those lower, it's going to be real beneficial to you. 

I mean, I would think a reduction in inputs is always a positive. 

It's a positive, but it's something we have to work towards. And so again, soil testing, knowing where our soil fertility is, starting out, and then slowly building that up. We want to increase the organic matter. We want to be sure that the, you know, Another part of it is minimizing soil disturbance. So let's say, I don't have any grass and I'm going to go in and I need to plow or something to, create a nice seed bed to then go in and seed. Well, you might do that your first year, but then after that, we want to minimize the soil disturbance because as that soil grows, think of it like it's We've got a bunch of microbes in there. If you've ever messed with bare ground, you know that bare ground typically likes to be covered with something. If it's not, it's going to cover itself in weeds, or if you're managing it, you can make it to where it's going to grow what you want it to grow. But we want to have ground coverage. If we take that away, go in and till, and say we do some deep tillage, We're exposing any organic matter to air. That's going to make it decompose faster. So we're going to lower the organic matter in our soil. We're also destroying the house of all those microbes. So we're lowering the population of those soil microbes. And their job is to like take those nutrients they feed on stuff and convert it to something else to make it plant available. And so if we can get more of the microbes in there, we can over time apply less nutrients or we can build up a nice nutrient soil reserve in there where we've got all the nutrients that are available and we don't have to add any additional fertilizers to say get our yield. Now, if you're doing something like hay, a lot of guys don't think about, but hay is one of the highest, really, it needs a lot of inputs to produce hay. If you're not adding any nutrients, say you're fertilizing after you cut hay, think about it. takes 60 pounds nitrogen, 15 pounds phosphorus, 60 pounds potassium to grow, say, an additional ton of forage. Well, we cut and we got a ton of forage off. We're taking all that away and we're not replacing. Well, your fertility starts dropping fast. And that's, there'll be a lot of guys have sage grass in their fields. Well, likely that's because maybe your pH is out of balance, but also more than likely is your potassium, your phosphorus. And I've seen it both where your potassium is very low, but the phosphorus is high, but there's, it's like there's hardly any potassium in the soil. And so to get that back, you need to add it. If you don't, that's when the field stops producing real well and we get all that other junk to come into the field. 

And so the phosphorus being high, could that be from litter? 

That's what I think just from, again, if grass doesn't take a lot of phosphorus, it's only like 15 pounds to grow a ton. So we're not pulling out near as much phosphorus to grow. And a lot of that chicken litter, so poultry houses used to be everywhere here in Stone County. And that's how guys, they would go out and they would fertilize with using poultry litter. They had access to it. Well, those phosphorus levels, there's in some of these fields, they're still off the charts and probably been. 

Which, you know, used to, there was, you had to do a clean out every time. And now they don't do that anymore. 

Yeah. There's still some that are sky high. There's still some that I can look at and be like, yeah, these probably had chicken litters applied to it for regularly, regularly. And it's been 20 years since it's had some and it's still, the phosphorus is high, but they've cut hay off of it. Phosphorus is still high, but the potassium is all like low or very low. So how do you know that? Well, check your soil test levels. And then you come up with a plan, because again. 

You establish that baseline like your expense tracker. You got to know where you're at. 

We got to establish a baseline and kind of figure out where we need to start and then work towards it. We talked about setting goals. I tell guys all the time, you know, pick one thing out and that's what you work towards to try to improve. And that's the goal. 

It's hard to do all the things. 

With farming is make those little improvements year to year that in, say, 10 years is saving you lots of money. So, but regenerative agriculture is something that we'll talk more about. So talked about it in like a livestock forage situation, but let's say we're going to move like around here, we got a lot of guys that might do horticulture. Something that's available, you can get a high tunnel also through NRCS. Say you're interested in wanting to plant some vegetables or some berries or strawberries. and talk to them. Maybe you could get a high tunnel built and say like a 30 by 90 or a 30 by 70 or 30 by 60 high tunnel. What we can use that for is to extend our growing season. My uncle, he does the fruit stands and raises, you know, vegetables. And a couple of years ago, he's saying, man, he's like, is there a way we need to grow squash and have it available early season? because that's what we're selling out of, is squash. And I was like, well, that high tunnel right there is how you can get it. It'll allow you, say, normally, squash is one of the shorter ones, probably 48, 50 days to reach maturity and be picking. So we could plant in a high tunnel With squash, just naturally here in our part of Arkansas, typically around the end of April is when we'd want to put out squash open to the air. We could probably back that up a month if we put it in a high tunnel and able to adjust this up and down of the sides. But with, again, building up a nutrient reservoir in our soil, say you have a ground that's covered with grass and you're like, well, I don't want to spread any chemical out there to say kill that grass. Well, I've seen some guys, what they'll do is they'll like lay down like a plastic. And one guy saw he had plastic is white on one side and black on the other. And they would lay it down for black to kill any grass or anything that's underneath it. And then when you pull it up after so long, a couple months or whatever, it's down to bare dirt. And then they'd plant in it and then flip it over to the white side. And that's what they'd use to increase the heat for germination. And but they were doing like they were organically certified. And so that was real neat. There's all sorts of little practices we can do that is in this regenerative agriculture. And it's even if you don't get into, say, this pilot program to where you're getting cost share, these, it's looking like these are practices that it's going to be a focus on. And so likely want to move that way anyway. And it makes sense. We want to lower our inputs and protect the resources we have, keeping the soil and water and... 

Yeah, be more efficient and maintain what you have and build. 

Yeah. But that's kind of, I guess, what I was going to talk about, that it makes sense. 

Yeah, I think so. 

I think so. 

It made a lot more sense than when he brought it up the other day, and I was like, what is this word? What is it talking about? 

Yeah. Well, that's exciting that there's something. And maybe we can get, once Zach and them find out more about it, I definitely want to get Zach in here. Yeah. 

If we can. 

I thought of a funny story when we were talking earlier. 

We've been not very funny lately. 

Yeah, I've been getting in trouble because I've kind of been. 

A little grouchy. 

Yeah, in a mood. 

I said, you know, you're not supposed to be the grouchy person here. 

And I have been, but I'm trying to be better. But what did up, what brought it, what made me think of this story was we were talking, and we're like, what, we need a funny story. And I was like, I ain't got nothing. funny has happened. And then you mentioned stroke, and I was like, that's funny. My grandpa, my grandpa, he had a couple of strokes before he passed away, and he'd had a stroke, and it kind of put him out of commission. He couldn't really walk without a walker, and he couldn't really talk very well anymore. but he still liked to be involved in the farming. And this is like right after I'd graduated high school and didn't know where I was headed in life. I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a functioning member of society or a criminal. So anyways, I was working on the farm while I was working in the rocks. And then he come and snatched me out of there to help him plant like his garden. And he's always like, go big. We're going big. 

Yeah, radishes. 

Yeah, or tomatoes. It's like, I grow tomatoes even if I don't make any money. Well, we're out there, like we had this little small 40 horse tractor that we used like in the orchards. And we're laying out the plastic to do like the plastic culture beds or the rows. And he's telling me something. So he's just kind of riding on the four-wheeler behind him or behind me and kind of telling me what to do. And I kind of had it figured out. And so I'm kind of like, okay, I got it. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. And he's like, no, you need to lift that thing up. And I'm talking to him out the back of. 

The- Do your, do the voice. 

I'll do it here in a second. He's, and so I'm talking to him out the back of the tractor, had the glass raised and had the plastic implement. hooked to the back of that and you can probably imagine where this is going. So he's, I'm going and he's kind of yelling at me, telling me what to do. Like, dollar, you gotta, you gotta raise that. I don't know. And I was like, no, it's fine. And I stopped and I was kind of talking to him and he kept kind of do this, do this. And finally I was like, okay. And so I lifted it up, like he said, and I just yanked it up. Well, it popped up and just shattered the back glass. And so I was like, oh no. Well, another kind of funny deal is so he'd had the stroke and he couldn't walk good and he's on the four wheeler. And so he's like needing help, needing me to like pull him. And I think it's me and my cousin Dustin were like kind of trying to push on him to help him stand up and get off the four-wheeler. And so he's like, all right, one, two, three. And we go to pulling and he goes to trying to stand up and he farted. And it was like, and it's like, and we just kind of stopped and let him, he kind of sat back down and we kind of grinned, me and Dustin grinned, and he just kind of went, and he's, oh, what did he say after that? He's like, he's like, I tried a little too hard. But I thought those were some funny stories from the past. 

From the farm. 

Yeah, what else did we talk about? We don't want to give them all away. 

Yeah, I didn't know what Clesson story we were getting today. 

Yeah, there's, I have to think what all we used to do. Well, anything else? 

I think that's good for today. thinking of some stuff for next time already. 

All right, well, thanks for listening. 

Yeah, have a great day.