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The Whole Farm Podcast
The Whole Farm Podcast is brought to you by CHONEX.
Whole-farm planning is at the center of regenerative agriculture and at the core of the conversations on this podcast. Each episode explores how soil health, nutrient management, crop performance, and farm economics are interconnected, and why managing them as a system matters.
Featuring growers, agronomists, researchers, and industry partners, The Whole Farm Podcast focuses on practical, data-driven insights that support long-term farm resilience. From nitrogen efficiency and soil biology to regenerative practices and operational decision-making, these conversations are designed to help farms function better as a whole.
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The Whole Farm Podcast
Regenerative Ag Isn't Low Yield: Russell Hedrick’s Approach to Better Farming
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In this episode of "The Whole Farm Podcast," Michael Pisciotta and Les Riley sit down with Russell Hedrick, a first-generation farmer from Hickory, North Carolina, and one of the most progressive young farmers in the country.
Russell farms JRH Grain Farms, LLC, where he has built a reputation for challenging conventional assumptions about yield, soil health, nutrient management, and profitability. His operation includes corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, pasture-raised beef and pork, and several value-added ventures, including Regen Mills, Heritage Ground, Soil Regen, LLC, Revolution Drones, and a partnership with Foothills Distillery to produce the first bourbon in North Carolina since Prohibition.
Russell shares how he got started with no-till and cover crops, how he began setting biological baselines on his farm in 2013, and how those practices eventually helped him set a North Carolina soybean record in 2021 and a dryland corn record in 2022 with more than 459 bushels per acre.
The conversation covers what Russell has learned from more than a decade of testing, trying, failing, adjusting, and refining practices on his own acres. He explains why he believes the future of agronomy has to move beyond standard NPK recommendations and into better timing, better testing, and a deeper understanding of soil biology.
Russell also breaks down how he uses tissue testing, nutrient demand curves, foliar feeding, potassium acetate, micronutrients, biologicals, and drones to make more efficient decisions in-season. He explains why timing matters, especially during key windows like VE to V4, V6 to V10, and R2 to R5, and why small, targeted foliar passes can deliver a strong return on investment when used correctly.
The episode also explores the business side of farming. Russell talks about building markets for non-GMO and open-pollinated corn, turning grain into higher-value products like grits, flour, cornmeal, whiskey, and bourbon, and why improving soil health and crop quality can help farmers move beyond commodity pricing.
For growers who are “regen curious,” Russell offers practical advice: start small, test on your own farm, use a portion of your acres to experiment, compare results across your best and worst ground, and only scale what earns its place.
About Russell Hedrick:
Russell Hedrick is a first-generation farmer in the foothills of Hickory, North Carolina, where he farms JRH Grain Farms, LLC. He has been featured in Top Producer Magazine, Furrow Magazine, RFD-TV, Ag PhD, and National No-Till Farmer for profitably farming by reducing fertilizer inputs and using soil health practices on cash crops. In 2017, he won the North Carolina Corn Yield Contest, becoming the first person in the state to win using regenerative practices. Connect with Russell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-hedrick-a9a323b0/
Listen to the full episode to hear how Russell is using soil health, technology, foliar nutrition, and value-added marketing to build a more profitable farm system.
Resources:
https://www.agsoilregen.com/
https://www.regenmills.com/
https://revolutiondronesusa.com/
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Welcome to the Whole Farm Podcast brought to you by ChonEx, where we explore soil health, nutrient management, and the systems that help crops and farms perform better over time. Each episode features conversations with growers and industry experts focused on practical insights you can apply in the field. Whether you're managing nutrients, building healthier soils, or looking for data-driven ways to improve outcomes, this podcast is built to support real decisions and real results.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to another episode of the Whole Farm Podcast presented by Tonex. I'm here today with a very special guest, and I have Les Riley, one of Tonex's sales agronomists who's doing a great job trekking over and seeing uh different progress we're making in the field. And so, Les, I'll let you take it away and intro our special guest.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we've got Russell Hendrick with us today. Uh Russell and I have known each other for a number of years. Um, I don't really know how we made it somehow through regen added circles, through some mutual friends or something. Um, you know, and we we talk periodically about some of the stuff he's doing. Um so Russell is a first generation farmer uh in North Carolina. I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit more about himself. And he's got his fingers in a lot of different things that uh that I think would interest farmers around the South and across the country. Uh so Russell, um, one thing that's that's pretty interesting. Um when I first came across you, you were doing that video from like 2014 with Ray Archer letting them about adopting cover crops. Um I think it's called Farmers Undercover, and I I watched that. And so, you know, in a lot of people's mind, um we have uh we have guys over here that are regen ag oriented and then guys over here that are kind of high yield guys. Um, and you've somewhat shown that to be a false dichotomy. Um and so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and uh how you got into cover crops and then how you went from there into uh holding the world record on corn.
SPEAKER_02It was kind of a funny story. I always say that uh God looks after the uh the innocent or the stupid. And uh I'm not innocent, so maybe he's looking out for me just in a different way. But um it was all it was all grease, happenstance, whatever you want to call it. Um we started looking at you know, farming, we started talking to local farmers, and we couldn't afford some of the equipment for conventional right off the bat, so no deal was kind of a fit for us. Then I ran into the NRCS, DC, Lee Holcomb, learned about cover crops, and all we were trying to do was eliminate winter weeds and winter erosion. That was it. And then, you know, you stumble forward into you know Ray Archuletta and David Brandt and Ray Styres, and you start learning about nutrient cycling and building soil biology and all these different facets of different you know managements and regenerative ag. And it it was really probably five, six years before we had a even a minute understanding of what was going on. Um, and we started luckily setting our baselines all the way back in 2013. So, you know, this year, this will be our 11th year, you know, that we can continually see what practices affect soil biology or weed pressure or nutrient cycling in the plant. Um, you know, it's really helped us hone in what we use before corn and what we use before beans. And and so we're really looking at that that scientific method that you know David Brandt raised tires and them, they didn't have the technology that we do now 40 years ago. So with all the monitoring and mapping and and uh testing methods that we have now, there's there's no reason that my generation and I can't do a better job than what the previous one did. That's kind of been our motto.
SPEAKER_01Was it 2022 that you set the world record on uh on dry land corn yield?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 20, let's see, 21 we set the state record in in beans, and 22 was was corn.
SPEAKER_01So that was 450 something bushels, is that correct? Something like that.
SPEAKER_02459 and some change, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and you are not in the, you know, you're not in the Midwest, you're not in the Mississippi Delta. And if I remember right from our personal conversations, that field uh that you set the record on was the uh was one of the worst fields you had before you started working on the soil biology and your organic matter went through the roof. And didn't you tell me that that year was a drought year in your area and county average is like a hundred bushels?
SPEAKER_02So the year that we set the record, yeah, we went through two really bad dry spells. Um, you know, I I think they might have been classified D1 or D2. You know, it wasn't as bad as what this spring has been. You have the yield potential there, and and that's some of the stuff that we picked up from David and and some other guys is the yield potential is there, you just have to you have to keep it. And you know, looking at water holding capacity and all these different things, yeah, we've we've really turned that ground around in the last 12 years.
SPEAKER_01You and I talked on the phone right after uh uh Damon Mason was interviewing somebody about the importance of scale and how scale is what was going to save ag. And not Damon, but his guest made the statement that uh he's found that 500 acre farmers just generally aren't good businessmen, good farmers, you know, it's primarily 10,000, 15,000 acres. Well, how many acres were your farming the year that you set the world record?
SPEAKER_02About 1,100.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So and and and you average anywhere from 750 to 1,500. So you're not a big farmer, you just focus on doing what's right on the land you have, correct?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I'll be honest with you. I think smaller farmers are better businessmen than big farmers because I don't get the cut in seed cost, chemical cost, input cost. Um I think the smaller farmers are making every dollar count so that they actually have a decent income, to be honest.
SPEAKER_01You've got um you've got your farm, and then you've got um soil regen. Um and you've started a drone company, but before you did that, uh you've got this little thing called uh uh regen mills. And so you're doing uh you're doing some value-added stuff with uh with bourbon and with uh flour and grits and things like that. Tell us a little bit about how you're getting more value out of your crop than just selling it in the commodity market.
SPEAKER_02So we started out with probably five percent of our acres in non-GMO or open pollinated corn. Um, it was not easy to build the markets. Um, it wasn't this huge, like available access to extra capital. But within the first three years, you know, supplying distilleries, um, you know, non-GMO corn is $10 a bushel, or open pollinated is $30 a bushel. Um, then we started getting into region mills, which travels around the country, goes to the farm, grinds up grits, cornmill, flowers. They can bag it as well and and use our branding if they want to, but um, you know, uh a bushel of grits is uh about $450 a bushel.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you don't have to sell a lot of grits to to really see a huge income.
SPEAKER_01And if a farmer is interested in something doing something like that, he can just find regen mills online and um look at what y'all are doing, correct?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. They can go to agsil regen.com or or regen mills.
SPEAKER_01And and then circling back around and and uh Michael, you can jump in whenever you want, but but I think we want to spend a little bit of time talking about what you're doing with um uh foliar feeding of biologicals and how uh how that's really helped kind of take you to the next level. But uh in addition to farming and having uh soil regen and regen mills, um and and we didn't even really get into you being a a whiskey maker, but uh let's um let's talk about your drone company a little bit. Tell tell me how you got into drones and a little bit about what you're doing with drones that's that may be different than some of the other other um efforts out there, and then um I'm gonna turn it over to Michael and let y'all get into some of the folio and biology.
SPEAKER_02So 2021, we started using drones. Um couldn't get you know the applicators to come out and do the custom work on the timeline that we needed, so we decided to you know purchase one for ourselves, ran into some issues with that because you know we couldn't get software updates or a hardware update or you know, things that we needed to fit in our scale of American AG. And this time we were also working on this AI program uh for foliar feeding, and the company that built our AI algorithm software um also had about 60 software developers and technicians down in Georgia, and we were able to contract with them. And and so 2024 is when we really launched Revolution Drones, and we started looking at, you know, first building the software and then you know making it compatible with the hardware. And, you know, by luck, we were able to partner with another company um that was based out of Brazil uh that has a bunch of manufacturing experience, and they've really helped accelerate us in understanding manufacturing and tooling. Um, and so we're gonna be launching our American-made components and drones uh September of this year. Right now, the drones are currently being built in a factory in in Brazil. Uh, I was just down there at the factory the last two weeks, and you know, now we'll be onboarding here to the the American-made parts and the American software, you know, the the end of this summer.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I'm gonna I'm gonna now shut up for a few minutes and let uh let Michael and you discuss a little bit more about what you're doing, particularly with foliar feeding and what we're doing and and how there might be some uh some things we can learn from each other and also help uh what what Michael likes to call regen curious farmers that uh that I think we can we can help really improve their their soil health and and et cetera. So Michael, I'll let you take it from here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, thank you, Les. Uh, you know, Russell, it's it's good that folks hear what your background is because ultimately, you know, you've you've made it with the acres you have, you're doing different things, you're helping lots of folks in different capacities. Um, you're helping a lot of farmers get premiums for what they're already growing. And also jump hurdles like custom apps. You know, uh I'll get into my kind of custom application story later, but you know, you mentioned 2013 was kind of setting your baseline, and I think Les kind of set me up nice because you know, I want to hit this region curious conversation first, because you've really been at the cutting edge a lot of these conversations related to changing your practices and thinking outside the box. And some people probably said, Russell, what are you doing? Like how I I've heard some of these people say things like that. And so when you when you started in 2013, really setting your baseline for where you are now with your fields and where you set the world record at in 2022, you know, what kind of what were some of the biggest learning lessons? Maybe if you have two or three that you could share along this 10-year, you know, this decade worth of baseline to where you are now. What does that look like for you, Russell? What would you say is the the couple big learning lessons along the way?
SPEAKER_02Man, y'all, y'all might get some haters on this podcast if I really start diving into some of these secrets now, just forewarning you here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, don't don't share trade secrets for you now. You know, we'll commit, you know, if people get some business, we'll make sure, you know, we share.
SPEAKER_02It's it's not a trade secret. Um lesson number one. When I wanted to become a farmer, I watched everything on YouTube that I could. I mean, you got to go back to 2011, and you know, YouTube was really where the information was, you know, that was cutting edge before TikTok and really Facebook ramping up and Instagram. And you know, we were always told um you put X, Y, and Z of N P and K, and you got, you know, A of yield. And the one thing that I have learned is our agronomy system even as efficient as we are on a per square foot basis in this country of growing food, it is outdated, it is a dinosaur. The universities are heavily entrenched in that understanding and knowledge, and um, you know, you could tell them the sky was blue and they would argue that it was green because you know, Millek one, two, or three is green and bray is pink, and you know, there's there's nothing other than than those tools. And those tools were developed in sugar sand in the 40s, 50s, and 80s. There's not a single farm operation operating today that's multi-generational that operated then that has the same operating procedures, the same operating nodes, but our most expensive input as farmers is still viewed from 80 years ago when we had open pollinated corn. And number two would be the way that we determine the 14 nutrients that are needed was done in 1936. And they they sterilized soil and then put nitrogen on one pot and not the other. And if the plant grew and made grain without it, well, it wasn't essential. And you know, once again, we're we're rolling up on a hundred years of that premise. Um, you know, that's premise number one. Um, premise number two is the soil is actually alive. Um when we started looking at the Haney test, I was like, what's a CO2? And when I talked to Rick Haney about it the first time, and he said, you know, this is your microbial activity, it respires CO2 out of the soil, and we can measure it. I was like, Holy cow, man, you're gonna get a Nobel Prize for discovering this. And then Rick told me, sadly, no, and he handed me a book from 1892. We were studying this in 1892, but didn't have the technology to do it fast enough and replicate it and put it over large-scale agriculture, and now we can measure CO2 in a matter of minutes and make a fertilizer decision in minutes. So that's premise number one, premise number two. And I'll wrap it up with number three you can put all the fertilizer you want in a piece of dirt, and you're never going to push the yield barrier past what is microbial available. If you don't have like the PLFA testing that we did in 2013 versus 2026, I can see fungi breaking down phosphorus, I can see saprophytics breaking down potassium, all of these different biological entities are what's actually feeding that root zone in that plant. And and then that's the mindset. You know, I'm not a purist. If guys need to till level a field, till it. If you don't need to, don't waste the money. Uh, we're trying strip till out for our second year now, and there is some ground that strip till is better than no-till because I don't have soil aggregation. There's a lot of different things that we can do as farmers that are outside of the neat box that the university recommends. So you may get some hate from me saying that.
SPEAKER_03No, we we're re we were ready for that already. It's all good. We've built this podcast to really teach folks about you know some other testing. And you just said that you did a PLFA test in 2013. I had never even heard of a PLFA test until probably three or four years ago, you know, out of Georgia. So, and I've been around agriculture a long, long time. And so, you know, I think that shows how far ahead of the curve you were. So when you look at that where testing is going right now, Russell, I know you've been involved with some some companies that are doing kind of next level, um even forecasting kind of nutrient demand curves. Tell us about what you see on the near term as of where this testing is kind of going.
SPEAKER_02Right now, let's take plant tissue. Plant tissue has been around for over 50 years. We have an American standard, and the problem with plant tissue is as it said you were either uh high, sufficient, or deficient. Well, that's great. Where's the management decision? Like that is why we started working on this AI program, you know, a subset of 50,000 samples across the country, because sufficiency ranges in tissue sampling hasn't changed in uh once again 30, 40, 50 years, depending on what lab you're running it at. And just because my corn, you know, a lot of farmers don't really dive into tissue sampling because 3% nitrogen in a V4 plant that weighs 16 grams versus 3% nitrogen in a VT plant that weighs 150 grams is a huge difference in 3%. And and the mentality of what farmers have been trying to use that test and understand how to use that test and affect those ratios, you know, one pint of potassium acetate at V4 is going to be a huge change in potassium versus that same time at that VT just because of the plant growth. And and we're taking a percentage of that plant, so three percent. Well, parts per million are the same, you just divide by 10,000. And you know, that's why we really got into the AI protocol, and then the AI protocol showed us another huge flaw in agriculture, is we're applying nutrients at the wrong time. Like when we started getting above 300, above 350, above 400 bushel yields, it's because we were paying attention to the nutrient curves, and modern agriculture has said peak peak nitrogen demand for corn is between V6 and V10. And everybody looked at the big huge peak at V10. Well, if we ground apply nitrogen, it has to go in the soil, and and we'll all agree with the university on this one. Nitrogen has to go through a cycle and it's done by bacteria. So that means one, we have to rain it in the soil, then we have to have the water for the microbes to convert it, and then the number one element they gotta have carbon. So if we don't do that whole process, and that nitrogen isn't available starting at V6 on that whole ramp up to V10, then you miss the whole window. You've wasted your money. That is more of a yield limiting factor than the nitrogen itself.
SPEAKER_03Man, that reminds me of like if I only had to drive forward with only looking in the rearview mirror, Russell. That's what that reminds me of.
SPEAKER_02Um and and then there's and then there's ratios there. So between V6 and V10, if you want to grow 400 bushel corn, you have to get 175 pounds of potassium in the plant in 14 days. Even in my most biologically active soils, I can't do that. And that's where the drones came in. That potassium acetate is the most available form of uh to potash for the plant. And we can go out there and make a foliar pass, go back in two, three days, make another foliar pass. And these are you know, pints, quartz. If we have a really huge deficiency or drawdown, maybe a half a gallon, so they're economical. And that's how we're able to push the yield without breaking the bank and really still looking at what is that return on investment going to be and is it is it paying for me to make these passes? Because every farm I have doesn't grow 400 bushel corn. You know, that's we've got two farms with that potential to really peak out above four. We've got some that we can peak above three, and then I've got some marginal ground that if we grow 150, 175 bushel corn, that's a good year for us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So let's let's go ahead and go there, Russell. So the drone conversation. Where on just the yield potential front, you mentioned the V6 to V10 kind of window as far as pushing potash. What what is your kind of uh you know experience, I guess, with pushing past that point into reproductive growth, whether that's a bean conversation or corn, we can kind of look at it two ways. And how does that relate to what you've done with the drone?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so if you want to start at the very beginning of the season, the number one yield limiting factor, I've been to 46 states and 13 countries now. I see this all over the world in the United States. Number one yield limiting factor, iron. Farmers, the biggest nutrient need for both corn and soybeans is iron from V E to V4. And if you're missing that iron window from V E to V4, you've already cut yield. Then you move into the next biggest uptake, which on corn is gonna be that nitrogen and potassium. Uh Going up at a one to one ratio between V6 to V10. And then the lowest hanging fruit that I think most farmers miss is from R2 to R5. We still have 50% of sulfur, 50% of zinc. We still have 60% of magnesium, and we still have 40% of copper. That I can put that in a drone for five to six dollars an acre, and that's easily seeing a five to ten percent increase in our yield at the end of the year. I mean, we're determining a lot of yield at that later reproductive stages that most farmers they put a fungicide on at VT and they go to the lake and hang out on the pontoon boat. So, you know, when you're talking about corn, if you can affect a 10% yield on 200 bushel corn, that's 20 bushels. And, you know, just take 450 corn this year, you know, if I'm spending five or six dollars to get that $90 an acre, that's that's really low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_03That's incredible. What what kind of other foliar tools other than micronutrients have you investigated, kind of seen success with over the past decade, Russell?
SPEAKER_02Uh success few tried all of them. Um we've used a product called Fish Head. Uh we foliar sprayed that. Fishhead has worked pretty good in furrow for us. It's also worked on a foliar pass as long as we get rain, you know, within a day or two. Uh, there's another product, uh, in soil algae. We ran that in furrow and foliar. Um, a lot of different natural plant growth regulators and biological enhancers in that product. Um, we tried another product actually sitting beside me here while we're doing this podcast, and it's it's made out of salmon. Uh, it's ground up salmon, and it's supposed to stimulate biology. We're trying that one this year. Um compost teas, verma compost extracts, uh, you know, like IMO systems with indigenous organisms, liquid litter. I mean, you name it, we've tried it. Um, anything that we can do, you know, if I can spend three to five dollars an acre and cut 20 or enhance yield, that's how we're going to make money in farming. Because right now, with input prices the way they are, the some of the basic agronomy stuff just isn't paying off.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's definitely uh pretty, pretty lively conversation. That's uh pretty good way to turn people sour pretty quick, is talk about agricultural economy and uh all the things that go with that. But, you know, I I really do love what you said about foliar because I do think that in the next five to ten years, foliar is gonna get a lot more importance put on it because I think we're gonna have to be a lot more efficient with our nutrients, our ground-aplied nutrients. And, you know, I don't really think that we've talked a whole lot about, you know, riding foliar nutrition into fertility programs from, you know, like a we'll say a USDR, USDA NRCS perspective. And I think I think we could be going there um pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02So um Well to give you to give you an economical example. So our smallest drone that we sell is a 20-gallon drone. The biggest one we have on the market right now is 40 gallons. That 20-gallon drone is doing 600 to 800 acres a day. The 40-gallon drone, we're getting 12 to 1400 acres a day. That's that's competing with ground rigs. Yeah, and the biggest thing for us is I am probably a perfectionist with my corn planter and my bean planter. You know, if we don't put it right in the ground, it's not going to be right all season. And the thing that made me the maddest is when I used to hire a co-op to come out and spray, if they ran over a whole row of corn for the entire length of the field because they couldn't drive straight, you know, you start looking at how much money did you lose driving that ground rig. You go through a bean field and our averages and university averages are fairly close, but we're point one or 1.5 to 1.7 bushels of loss of beans. And that's even if you run the same A B lines with the most sophisticated auto steer system. Well, at $10 beans, that's $15 to $17 an acre per pass. I can run this drone for five to eight dollars an acre. So I'm already $10 a head or seven dollars ahead running a drone that doesn't drive over my crop that I just spent all that money to buy seed fertilizer and plant.
SPEAKER_03Wow. I've never really thought about it that way, Russell. That's a really that's really good to know.
SPEAKER_01Uh we uh we talked about it offline a few weeks ago. It was only high volume product that you didn't think you could replace a ground rig with a drone, you could possibly do all your spraying with a drone.
SPEAKER_02I would agree with that, Les. I mean, you you can do high volume spraying. We we can do 100 gallons an acre if you want to, but if you're gonna do it efficiently, if you're looking at putting down your atrazines, um, you know, some of your white chemistry where you want above 15 gallons per acre, that's gonna be hard. Um, that's gonna be hard to do. And then there are a few chemicals that do not have aerial application yet. So instead of, you know, we've seen farmers this year, instead of buying a half a million dollar ground rig, they bought a hundred thousand dollar tow behind sprayer with, you know, 60, 90 foot booms and did their burn down with that, essentially parked that, and then they've switched over to the drone for their you know, the rest of their spray. And because we can do herbicide spraying with a drone, you just have to pay attention to how you set that drone up because we can have a C V value as good as a ground rig with a drone, so we don't have to worry about drift if you set it up properly.
SPEAKER_03Russell, here's here's my next question. And uh man, you got a lot of things happening on the farm. You got drones, you have you know, foliar AI analytics and forecasting happening. Um, how do you keep up with everything? What kind of practical advice would you give somebody that is, you know, maybe getting started, that's starting to really want to push, wanting to do a better job managing things, try some new things? What kind of organizational uh wisdom would you impart to them? Oh my.
SPEAKER_02Um I always challenge farmers to say if you can't take five percent of your acres, and I'm not saying it has to be one thing, but five percent of your acres and try a new foliar pass or try a biological inferro or a different type of nutrient management, if you can't do that and your farm survive. I'm not being ugly when I say this, but you're you're already too far gone to make it in ag. Um you've got to be able to do your own research on your own farm because I picked up things from people from here all the way to Almina, Kansas at Michael Thompson's. And I brought it back to my farm and I tried it their way, and right beside of it, I modified it a little bit to see if it would work better my way. And the results that I got on my individual farms, you know, I picked my worst farm, a couple in the middle, and my best farm. And it gave me four replicated samples across every kind of dirt that I'm gonna see on my operation, and that gave me the outcome that then either it passes and it gets more acres the next year, or it failed so horribly that we move it out of the program. And that is really how you dial in how hard can you push your ground, what products are gonna be best suited for your environment. Um, that's how we learned with PGRs. You know, PGRs we started out with five acres. Um, I tried to talk the local co-op into selling me ounces of a PGR I wanted to try, and they sold me a whole jug, which ended up lasting on the farm for like two and a half years before we got enough acres to really use even that one jug. And now we run that PGR on every single acre. Um, if you're in the south and it's hot and it's humid, and you know, sweat's rolling down your back, then those plants aren't going to be comfortable. PGRs are one of the ways that we mitigate stress on our farm. Foliar feeding helps us mitigate that stress. And um, you know, it it really it really does help us decide how are we going to progress on our acres and really what stays and what goes.
SPEAKER_03Man, that's that's awesome. Les I'll turn it over to you.
SPEAKER_01And we we've covered a whole lot of ground. Um tell me about you selling whiskey to all those people in North Carolina.
SPEAKER_02So uh 2013 uh got a phone call um about our grain, our grain quality. Um, you know, my my family uh back in the day, not anymore, made some bootleg bootleg moonshine. Uh started partnering with a distillery called Foot Hills Distillery, um, Tim and Zach. And we started with Moonshine, then we decided to make the first bourbon in North Carolina since Prohibition. So we started using our grains to make bourbon. Uh that's kind of really changed. I mean, there's bourbon, whiskey, started working with other distilleries like old Nick Williams. Um, so we're you know working with several different locations and now foothills. Um and it's it's a good market to be in. It's not it's not like they're buying two tractor trailer loads a day like you would see out of Tennessee, but you know, if you can add if you can add an extra $10 to a thousand bushels, well that's $10,000 for the same same good corn that you were growing to begin with.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that and that before uh before Michael wraps it up, that that kind of transitions into um you mentioned that that they asked you about your grain quality. And so a lot a lot of people would like to get more for the grain, but I I think the the approach you've taken when you improve your soil health, therefore not only you're improving your yield, but you're improving your quality of grain or your quality of your product growing, and that's uh uh something you can demonstrate and test, that opens doors for for getting more value than just selling a commodity. I I think a lot of people kind of want to jump over and get a premium for their crop. Um, and uh, you know, one of the things I think directions I think ag is going to go is we're not we're gonna be selling differentiated product in a lot of the world, they nutrition test and they can um they can demonstrate how their farming practices are improving not only the yield but the quality of their product and they get a premium for that. So I think that I think that path is something we can take from this is not only improving yield and efficiency, but improving the quality of the product we're growing, so we're not selling just a raw commodity and Michael that you take from here.
SPEAKER_03That's that's really good. It's really good, Lass. Um, Russell, we've never ended a podcast like this, but you're the perfect person for this. Uh, you're one of the most fascinating growers uh in the country. I really appreciate you jumping on with us. But I I I want to ask you this way if Russell Hedrick had a bumper sticker, maybe two bumper stickers, okay, what would you put on your bumper sticker? It could be any sort of farm mantra, it could be anything that you've done. You know, we're not talking about a resume, we're talking about a bumper sticker. So what would what would you put on there, Russell?
SPEAKER_02Man, I don't know. Uh I guess first thing that came to my mind would first bumper sticker would be farm hard. Um, you know, we we spend, I I don't know how my wife puts up with it. She still loves me and and kisses me goodnight when I come home at two, three o'clock in the morning. Um we we definitely put the most amount of effort that we can to grow the best quality food for people to have. Um and the second thing would be uh pass it on. Um David Brandt spent countless hours on the phone with me telling me about stuff that he tried and it saved me headaches. I wouldn't be here today. And at the advanced stage that we are, if it wasn't for the guys like David Brandt, Ray Styles, uh Nathan Louder, John Pickler, even Curtis Fur here in my home state, you know, I'd call them up and say, hey, I watched a YouTube video that purple top turnips are great. And I still remember to this day on a phone call with Nathan Louder, he said if you do that, your row units are gonna bounce like they're on a trampoline going across the field trying to plant into purple top turnips. So, you know, our biggest thing is is we we love coming on podcast and and doing the TV show that we do now so that we can give that education to other growers. So maybe it helps them without as steep of a learning curve as what the old generation had. And uh that's what I would say is be kind to other farmers and share information and work together because that's that's kind of tough to get into when you're surrounded by farmers that you're competing for the same land with. It just doesn't seem like there's really much uh exchange between between local guys.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that says a lot about you, Russell, and we really appreciate you being on the whole farm podcast today. Um, we're gonna close with that. Those are great. With that, we're gonna close this episode. But for Les Riley, I'm Michael Pescada. Thank you, Russell Hedrick, for jumping on with us. Y'all have a blessed day. And uh, as Russell Hedrick says, farm hard and pass it on. Thank you, guys.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the whole farm podcast by Jonex. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and share it with someone in your network. For resources or to learn more about Chonex, visit chonex.ag. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time.