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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Whisky, Water, and Family Farming with Joe Dawson
Joe Dawson is the kind of guy you’d want to sit down and have a drink with. That’s what we did. Enjoy the show.
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These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me. I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, dect. If you don't know DECT?
Speaker 1:They make bomb-proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy. Don't be that guy. They also have a line of storage cases that fit perfectly in the drawers. We use them for organizing ammunition, knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. You can get a two drawer system for all dimensions of full-size truck beds or a single drawer system that fits mid-size truck beds. And maybe best of all, they're all made in the USA. So get decked and get after it. Check them out at deckedcom. Shipping is always free, so you're trying to collect a bottle of scotch from every region of Scotland that produces it. Yes, how many regions?
Speaker 2:are there? Oh gosh, off the top of my head. I should have just pulled out the map. I think there's about seven, yeah, so I mean you have Speyside, which is where you know Glenn Fittick, glenn Livet, those guys are. You have Huge fan, huge fan of those ones. Yeah, you have Highland region, and then there's a northwestern region called Orkney I think I'm pronouncing it wrong, but that's where Highland Park is from and then go over to Isle of Skye and that's where Talisker is out of, and then Isle of Isla is where Lagavulin and Lafroix are, yep, and then the real peaty scotches. I love them.
Speaker 1:Right, but I think it's also the scotch that a lot of people get introduced to, and it's not the starter scotch.
Speaker 2:Oh God, no. Yeah, like Macallan is probably like the easiest one to like introduce a bourbon fan to it's like, just try like Macallan. Yeah, like it's not overpowering but it's kind of a good intro into it. Yeah, and then work your way up, yeah.
Speaker 1:And Glenlivet Like that's. It's solid, that's the F-150 of.
Speaker 2:Scotches Exactly. That's actually the perfect analogy for that.
Speaker 1:It's just easy. The daily driver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually that was a distillery. We stopped by because when we went to Scotland again I was God early 20s and it was in March, so it wasn't really tourist season. So we went by Glenlivet they were closed but Glen Fitt fittick was open and we did a full tour of that one and it was a blast I mean because I was the only guy on my crew and the four of us that like scotch. So at the end when they gave us a 12, 15, 18, I ended up getting four of each because it was like that's just isn't my thing.
Speaker 2:Um, and then, uh, then we went to another one with uh chevis regal, uh-huh, and that one cracked me up because we pull up there and they're like we're not doing tours. I'm like, well, why not? And they had a gift shop there. They're like, well, we had a bit of an accident. And so what happened was there was a clean-out mechanism for their stills to go into the public sewer system. Well, somebody accidentally hit it when it was full of scotch and like nuked the city um, um septic system. So, uh, they're like we're, we're not gonna make money this year, but uh, so I bought a bottle from there. I got a cast strength um glenn libbett 17 and smuggled it home, uh-huh, um, obviously at that age I didn't realize customs and um sure got away with it. So I got it back home, yeah, but that was a good one and that was kind of my first introduction to cast strength ales. So our scotches sorry, not ales um, scotches, yeah, but but yeah, what about you? What region is kind of your favorite?
Speaker 1:you know I'm I'm a big fan of the glenfiddich glenlivet um. Some of the highland scotches are great too. But uh, yeah'm going to go there in August with um, with Rob Gearing from Spartan Precision, and do some stag hunting on an old estate there so excited for that.
Speaker 2:No kidding. So what region is that?
Speaker 1:Um, I believe that'll be uh in Northern Scotland.
Speaker 2:Okay. So are you guys flying in, like Inverness? I have no idea, okay, cause I think there's direct flights now from Portland to Inverness. Really, yeah, and I, I really liked Inverness. It was on the Northern coastal region and it was a really cool city, yeah, um. But when we went um and I I would not recommend this cause I, you know, we're in our twenties, so we fly into London and just tried to like road trip it. So you're kind of like in London for a day, then you're in here for a day and you kind of just whip through it and if I were to go back like I would have probably spent several days, um, in Edinburgh.
Speaker 2:Edinburgh was a cool city because, there was like this medieval layer where there was a cool castle up on top and all the statues of you know, scottish philosophers, everything like that. Food was great. And then there was kind of a modern era down below where you know great restaurants, great hotels, um, that was kind of a cool region. And we went up to St Andrews, which is where the um, you know, the birthplace of golf, right, so they have the big PGA tour. We got to walk the whole course. That was kind of neat to see, yeah. But I really like driving through the Highlands Like I would recommend driving through that it was just. It was just amazing setting. I I kind of felt like home. I don't know how else to describe that. I mean, obviously it was a lot more, uh, moist than here, but it was just, you know, I kind of felt comfortable there it was.
Speaker 1:it was a great region yeah, there's so much, so much history and tradition on on that side of things. It's older, it's way older. You know we talk about the age of sort of european influence here in wallowa, county right 100 years yeah, not much, right yeah uh like, when did the dawson's show up here?
Speaker 2:um 1904 okay that was a tough time to show up in wallowa county well, and and again, and like the problem with family history, but it's not written down. It's, like you know, separating myth from fact, or myth from legend, right? Because that one I was able to trace back a bit. So my great-great-grandfather was out of Pennsylvania and he fought in the Civil War for the North. He was actually in Gettysburg and I found evidence of that and there was thoughts that he was probably a POW a couple of times throughout the Civil War region. And then his son, george, is the one that came out West in 1904. And I don't remember. I mean one story that I heard is you know what was the old story where had to dry or climb it right.
Speaker 1:For tuberculosis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I never got that confirmed. It was kind of one of those myth or legend runs, right, right. So anyway, he ended up here in 1904, and then that's where he met my great-grandma and then they were in the timber sawmill so they had Dawson Lumber Company. So his sons, george which was my great-uncle and Malcolm ran the sawmill and they were kind of partners in it. And then in 1950 is when Malcolm went out to the farm.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then actually, but my grandma, so his wife, jean, um, so she grew up over in La Grande on booth lane and she was a Jasper, and they had the lineage from McDonald which came out of Isle of Sky.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's, and obviously you know typical story met during world war ii and yeah, you know, then had a bunch of baby boomers. Yeah, now they're running stuff well, and how about you?
Speaker 2:because, like, you're one of the few centuries farms in willow county, yeah, and from what I understand, there's quite a bit of like documentation requirements for that as far as, uh, genealogy and all of that. So what's your kind of backstory of ending up in the county?
Speaker 1:So I also started with Scotland paused for Civil War. But which side? Yeah, I think both. I think.
Speaker 2:I've got family on both sides. Yeah, super common.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I do think that the Macalester side fought for the South. Okay, from from what I can tell, we still have a rifle, um, a family rifle from from the civil war, and it was one that got converted. So it started out as a musket and then had the breach cut later on and hinged so that you could put a cartridge in it. So a really pivotal moment in firearm history, right when we went from muzzle loaders to breech loaders. That's a huge deal, probably one of the one of the bigger steps forward. And war advances all kinds of technology and not just, you know, military combative technology. But I talked to a doctor recently and he thought that the civil War progressed medicine by 100 years. Okay, so they learned so much in this short time period, especially about trauma and disease, that they were able to just have that many repetitions and so much requirement that medicine moved forward by leaps and bounds during the Civil War.
Speaker 2:So was this like the germ theory thing of, like you know, using utensils on one wound of one soldier and going to another and then realizing it's?
Speaker 1:I think it's some of that. I think it's also surgery. Yeah, I also and I'm probably I shouldn't say this because I'm probably wrong but I think that's when blood transfusions began as well. Oh, no kidding, you know, prior to that was a lot of bloodletting like, oh, you're sick, we're just going to cut your arm and bleed you out a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're swollen. Let's just open this up real quick and let that out, it's like, yeah, glad we were born when we were born.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we still had a long ways to go, but yeah, so they came here and I think that they probably would have and I don't have documentation to support this, but I think they probably would have homesteaded along the way. It wasn't like you leave St Louis, you get to Oregon and you start your farm or your ranch. I think that you go a little ways you stake out your homestead, you build a cabin, you till up some ground and then you sell it at a higher value and then you can buy a little bit of land in addition to homesteading the next time you stop. And a lot of people went all the way to the Willamette Valley, sold that for a lot of money and then came back to eastern Oregon and then were able to buy bigger chunks of ground and have some capital to be able to get going with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's interesting. You say Missouri because you're not the only family that I've heard that had that lineage from former Civil War veterans that came out of the Missouri area. Yeah, there are several families In fact. I think like the Scenic Barn like was one of them, they're on the highway in Enterprise and Joseph Like that was one, and I knew several other families too. I always just thought the post-Civil War period was interesting, of like what motivated those groups to come to certain areas and why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Probably just talking to each other. You know, I find that I was just in, uh, in a place in Baja Mexico and I'm not even going to name the place, cause it was awesome and I don't want everybody to go there cause right now they're not going. That's kind of how I feel about Wallowa County.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, it's, it's there, Just I won't tell you where Sure.
Speaker 1:Well, wallowa County is a great equalizer, because winter wrecks people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just need harsh winters to drive out the weak ones. Yeah, and it works.
Speaker 1:It works great. We have the same population here as we did in 1900. Oh, yeah, we're doing fine. So we've got the great white equalizer that comes in and crushes souls in January and February and then, yeah, folks leave. But yeah, so the Sixth Ranch was founded in 1884 by james w mcallister, and they were journalers. Um, so we've got all the journals. We've got journals of weather on a daily basis for decades, uh, and we've got the, the prices of, of commodities and everything that was going on, just in little bits, and a lot of it was very uninteresting. Some of it is very, very interesting. For example, for a long time Lostine was the party town, like that was. The happening place was Lostine. And then, you know, when we were growing up, lostine didn't have nothing going on.
Speaker 2:Well, I was just going to say kind of making resurgence with Emcro and Lustine Tavern. Like every time you drive by Friday night, it's like man, this is awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got Emcro, we've got Z's Barbecue Like Lustine's happening again and they're awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like both of them, Fantastic. I want to thank all of them. Resuscitation it's like oh, that's cool to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then it's also interesting, I think, looking back at both of our families, at how they sort of adapted to what businesses made the most sense at that time. Oh yeah, and you and I are still doing that. You have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's kind of like the lesson our families gave us is like, if you want to live here, like just how do I say this? Just be prepared to be dynamic and figure it out. Yeah, cause there's not a really a one size fits all. So what's your job? Uh, I don't know. Several things I still.
Speaker 2:I still manage the farms, so both family farms, um, I do real estate brokerage as well, um, and then I'm also just involved in several different boards and yeah, so that's kind of the bulk of it, um, but you know also typical ranch in Willow County. You know, the secret to any successful rancher is having a wife that works in town. So that helps make it work. Um, cause, you know, when I came back here, I, you know, went to college. All my roommates were going Portland, seattle, denver, san Francisco, and I was like I don't, I don't care what I have to do to get back to Willow County, I'll figure it out. Sure, you know, I'd go back to, I'd go back to doing construction if I had to, you know, just to find a way to make it work, because it's ultimately where I just want to be. Yeah, um, did you kind of feel similar on that too?
Speaker 1:Oh, totally, and I feel like that with with the bulk of the folks who live here, it's easier to live someplace else. I've I've said this many, many times it's easier to live someplace else. So the folks that do live here do so on purpose and they understand that there's a sacrifice involved in that, and I think that that is part of what makes our community so strong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you have people that genuinely want to be here and trying to figure out a way to make it work. And speaking of what is, what exactly is your job now?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Other than podcasting, and you know guiding.
Speaker 1:Podcasting. I'm an outfitter. I'm a brand ambassador, so that means that I work for these different brands in the outdoor or automotive industry and represent them and help out with marketing and social media. Product development is something that I'm really passionate about, and that's one of my favorite things about working with these brands is like getting your fingers into an idea of a product that might just be an ethereal idea or a 3d printed prototype, and then tweaking on it and then carrying that all the way out to to market with a marketing strategy, uh, and then continuing to use it and improve on it afterwards.
Speaker 2:So in that, are you kind of doing testing and feedback, in that, oh yeah, okay yeah. So it's like we try this out, you know, maybe there's tweaks here and here to make it better, and then it's easier to market, where it's like. You know, hey, we thought about this Totally and then I've got buy-in with it as well.
Speaker 1:So there's, you'll see a lot of people in sort of that social media space who are just cheerleaders and that's fine, right, and they're like this is hey guys, this is the best thing since, you know, sliced cheese or whatever. And uh, they didn't have anything to do with the conception of that product or its development. They're just, you know, trying to to promote it and I don't want to take anything away from those folks. For me, that's not very satisfying when I get to be involved with something from the very beginning and, you know, like, like, you have skin in the game. Sure, like decked, for example. Decked is a sponsor of the podcast. I'm a brand ambassador for decked. The first time I got a decked product, I bought it at retail price, you know, and I used it and I liked it and then later on, I developed relationship with the company and then, as they develop new products, I was part of part of all those conversations and I love that.
Speaker 2:That okay, so what does decked make then?
Speaker 1:they make a drawer system for pickups okay and they make a bunch of different cases that can go in or on top of those drawer systems to protect and organize the stuff that you carry around in your truck, so that your backseat isn't a perpetual disaster of 17 different types of gear yeah, yeah, my wife complains about that if you get in a wreck you're gonna get hit in the back of the head with one of your coffee mugs and you're gonna die because of it.
Speaker 1:I'm like yeah, that's what I know probably not how we're gonna go out, but you never know, yeah, just anyway yeah anyway, so it's a mess, yeah so I probably could use something like that.
Speaker 2:So you have quite a social media presence, sure, sure. Do you like that?
Speaker 1:You know it's really interesting. I was looking through some comments on a video that I posted earlier this week and I have a hard time not taking some of that stuff personally and I want to engage with people not taking some of that stuff personally and I want to engage with people. A lot of people are just there to argue or kind of spit very vitriolic stuff, and that's not my thing. If somebody is like looking to have a conversation, man, I'll talk with them about the most controversial subjects that there are and I'll talk about my experience and my opinions and the the facts and data from which those things were born.
Speaker 2:And you know, see, if there's a common ground there and if there's not, that's okay too no, because, like you said, there's just so many people on it that are just but, like they, like the drama. Right, sure, and and actually truth be told. I mean, that's why I don't have a social media presence. Yeah, I mean, I deleted my Facebook back in 2020. It might have been election related because I was just like enough, I can't take this anymore. I just can't. It's too much yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the election stuff is what drove me out of Facebook as well.
Speaker 2:Oh God, it was terrible yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like my least favorite. Yeah, it is pretty brutal, yeah, um, you know, there's there's been months where, uh, like I'll reach like 90 million people on on an account. Yeah, and that's a lot of people and they can. 90 million opinions can really gang up on me.
Speaker 2:But you also learn to have kind of thick skin and try, and you know, use it for good and not evil evil and that's a crazy part of like the I mean the internet today is just like imagining an audience of 90 million people. I mean, I can't conceptualize that of like if you were in a stadium surrounded by 90 million talking about something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what's really like. It's tough for me to like really imagine. You know, visualize that.
Speaker 1:And I try to talk with folks about that too like, say they're they're just getting started and they're wanting to build up that, that type of presence they're like. Well, you know, I only got, like you know, 900, 900 views on this video. That's a lot. Can you imagine 900 people showing up to hear you talk physically, like that would be incredible.
Speaker 2:That gave time to hear your opinion on something that's still a lot.
Speaker 1:And that's what happened. They just didn't show up physically and you were able to reach people wherever they are around the world. Yeah, I think that that's pretty cool and interesting, but yeah, it can be used for evil or good, just like a hammer or rifle or a tractor.
Speaker 2:That's the whole thing with the internet. It's kind of what you utilize it for. I mean, it can be a gigantic time waster or you can learn a lot of random stuff, and that's kind of where I'm at. With whatever thing I'm interested in, I'll just do deep dives in because you know, it's kind of like reading a magazine or book and but I also, you know, going back to like why I deleted social media, I felt like I was just wasting time on stuff. You know it's like McDonald's for the brain, where it's like oh, why do I care? Num, num, num, Like why am I reading this? It's just bad, like reality TV.
Speaker 1:Something I did a while ago is I found that, when I was opening my phone, I was automatically touching the part of the screen that took me to Instagram, so that I could respond to people's messages, cause I do. I write back to everybody, um, everybody that I can, and, uh, if, if it's questions, if it's fan mail, whatever I'm, I'm trying to write back. If it's a kid that just, uh, you know, shot their first deer or elk, I'm going to like make a quick video and telling them congratulations. I, you know, I really work hard on that, because I got ignored for a long time when, when I was trying to get started, and I didn't like that. So, if I can be there for people, I do it. What I? What I found, though, was I was automatically having this Pavlovian response open my phone, check Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like you see your black screen and you see this one dot. That's obviously hit a lot, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what I did is, uh, I took a Duolingo and I put that icon where my Instagram icon was. So now, when I automatically open my phone and my brain makes my thumb hit that part of the screen, now I'm going to something where I'm going to start working on my Spanish and I can spend five or 10 minutes doing that, rather than five or ten minutes of, you know, scrolling brain rock.
Speaker 2:I downloaded uh babble for that reason like to try to just you know, if I'm gonna waste time on something, maybe I should just try, you know, because it's kind of embarrassing being an adult and it's like I only know one language. I should probably work on that, yeah, yeah my.
Speaker 1:My language skills are, I don't know, kind of a mess right now. I was very fluent in Norwegian after living there for a year, but that was a pretty useless language to know because Norwegians are wonderfully fluent in English, so that was pretty academic. It did help me more than anything to understand and love the English language because it made me reconsider our own sentence structures, what the syntax of our words do to our patterns of thinking, and it made me reconsider the meaning of our words and how that just changes the way that we think and communicate.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's challenging because everyone that you talk to, phrases mean different things. Even in the English language, like it's, you know your audience changes by based on the person you're talking to, and you know one conversation with one person requires one sentence syntax to get you know one point and another person that's like, okay, I have to reconsider how I do this Right and I still suck at that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like that anyway. I mean I, I, it's one thing that I want to improve, cause it's like I, you know you have a bad conversation and it's like they probably took that the wrong way and you know how do you go back and try to revisit that with that person or that person with that kind of mindset on it, especially with controversial topics. I mean, yeah, it's like a tightrope you're walking on with everyone.
Speaker 1:Words mean things, words mean things yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, weird.
Speaker 1:And you know, one of the really beautiful things that I learned about language as I got closer to being fluent in Norwegian was you go from a point where you're just trying to translate like, okay, you know hello means hello in English. You know what does the equivalent word mean in. You know Hawaiian or Spanish or Norwegian. Whatever, pick your language. Eventually you're going to realize that aloha means something different from hello, like you can translate it as such, but it is its own word and comes with its own nuance and meaning. Um, and that's. That's really cool, and you can start to get the feeling of these words and, rather than doing the translation, you're actually bringing to bear the nuance of the difference that that word is using yeah, I think it's awesome and that takes a ton of practice too.
Speaker 2:I mean an experience which is, you know, and I feel like that's kind of tough, of like learning a language here is because you don't have a whole lot of people that you can engage with speaking on that one. So you're kind of like you know, you use it, you lose it. Yeah, because I did italian in college and's like that's the one that I was trying to learn again, cause that's one of my bucket list travel areas, but, again, no one to practice with. So I'm kind of just going from scratch and then, if I ever make it over there one day which I want to I can maybe, you know, be good enough to order like a meal or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's also less intimidating than what you might think. So somebody who has a large vocabulary within their own language probably knows about 40,000 words. Mm-hmm, most people know about 20,000 words. Most people only use 3,000 words in any given month, right? So if you know 3,000 to 5,000 words, you can get along just fine. Just fine, and that's not that big of a lift. It's just not. If you can learn 50 words a month, you can be there pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, like you can be there pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so I think that learning languages feels intimidating. It's like oh man, I have to learn all the words Like no you don't.
Speaker 1:You need to learn enough words that you can get along, and then more words will come, just in practice.
Speaker 2:And the more you talk to people, the more you kind of yeah, yeah. Oh, especially different dialects. I mean because every I mean, like I've always heard German had very distinct dialects throughout the whole country. Yeah, I can see US does too. I mean, if you go to the South it's and around the world, and around the world. Yeah, oh, yeah. No, that was definitely like in Scotland. I, yeah, I can believe that. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Australia was tough, but after a couple weeks I was hanging in there, you know, yeah, and I could at least understand everything that people were saying after a couple weeks. But man, they use different words for everything. Oh yeah, there's way more difference between Australian English and what we speak than, say, norwegian and Danish or Norwegian and Swedish. Way more difference, oh well.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, yeah, I, I didn't know that. I again, you know, you get, uh, obviously, movies that you watch Australians on and it's kind of a, but it's totally different when you're immersed into it. And same thing with, like Scotland, like when I was heavy into that, like we were in a small town at a bed and breakfast and I was like it was tough to like understand the dialect at all, uh, but you make it through, it was fun.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about farming a little bit, all right. What kind of farmer are you?
Speaker 2:Um, so we primarily do alfalfa and Timothy. Okay, um, and I run yearling cattleling cattle with McLaren's on my place every year, but most of the majority of what we do is Alfalfa and Timothy. What is Alfalfa good for? Alfalfa? You know, depending on your grade, quality, it can be anywhere from. You know local buyers for cattle operations here in Malau County. Depending on your quality, you can also go to dairies in the Northwest and you can also export it. You know the Northwest Um there, uh, and you can also export it. You know China is becoming a big buyer of alfalfa as well. Um, timothy grass, most of its export is a good dollar. So that's Japan and Korea is where a lot of the Timothy grass goes to and I think it's mostly for cattle operations up there. Um, I think there's a few farmers here that um have markets for like, horse operations as well, but you know, predominantly we're in cattle on that for the hay production.
Speaker 1:Alfalfa lasts for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, four to five years, yeah. And alfalfa, I think in my mindset, for us it's kind of like a. It's a way to like really clean up the field of all, um, uh, invasive grasses before you do a Timothy stand. So it's a good way to, you know, clean up the field but also, uh, have a nitrogen boost for your Timothy crop for when you do that. So we kind of do a four to five year cycle on alfalfa. Then we jump into Timothy, um, so I kind of uh transitioned, cause when I first got back into farming in 2011,.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, we were doing it all. My mom and I were, um, I was doing custom work for combining and harvesting and drilling and seeding kind of all over the Valley, um, and after I got married and had kids, I was like I'm really not seeing them that much in the summer. So I I kind of got burned out on the custom work. So I got out of that and then, you know, kind of started crop sharing with Mark and Anna Butterfield for Timothy and I learned a lot. I mean, they're phenomenal.
Speaker 2:What's crop sharing. Crop sharing is basically, you know, roles and responsibilities are split between the parties. And then on the overall sale, you know the percentage price of the overall sale goes accordingly to. You know, one party with their responsibilities and another party with their responsibilities.
Speaker 1:Would that be like you do the planting and they do the swathing?
Speaker 2:Or like I'm responsible for fertilizing all the irrigation. You know there's certain day-to-day responsibilities I'm responsible for and then you know they have. They had two sons come back, michael and James come back to the farm and they're all working. So they cut rake bill stack and they have. They have the manpower to do it. And that was a challenge with. You know, doing custom work is like. You know, it was me and my mom trying to manage that everywhere and it was uh, you know I wasn't at the capacity where it's like I wasn't able to afford like a full-time guy. So I was like, okay, I got to restructure this to make it work. So that you know, one, it works for our operation, but two, it kind of also worked out well when I started having kids, cause I uh, yeah, I kind of wanted to see him.
Speaker 1:Your mom's kind of a legend. She's a badass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a total badass. Yeah, I mean she's uh, oh I better not say her age on air but extremely healthy and driven person. I mean she's one of those. I'll show up on a Sunday and I run into my sister. I'm like where's she at? She's like, oh, she's tearing out a fence somewhere. And she's like I just think that quarter mile fence needs rebuilt. And she's just out there doing it. And I'm like, oh my God, but I'm really fortunate on that one Cause like she's just super physically capable, she's like healthy, but she's just wants to go, go, go. And I was cracking up when we transitioned into a crop share and I got a custom work. I was like, yeah, good, I'm going to be like a good son and my mom can kind of like chill out and maybe kind of semi retire. Sure enough, she takes a job with the Butterfields the next summer to start running Swather for them all summer Cause she's like.
Speaker 2:I just was bored, I didn't have enough to do. Oh God no, and she won't. And that's like kind of the coolest part about her and her siblings is like they're all that way. They just have to like be doing stuff and they're just kind of driven that way and then you know, they'll make up projects to do if they have to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Was she into athletics?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So she grew up in Sunnyside and she actually played basketball at Gonzaga and I think she went to Seattle Pacific. I'm sure she'll tell me if I'm wrong, but anyway, so her family I don family grew up in um in Seattle. I think they were there in the 19 teens and that's where they got their start. And then my grandpa was actually out of Arkansas, or, yeah, arkansas, and then world war two happened. You know he was a captain, got stationed up in Alaska and then um I think as a story goes he was kind of later in the war went over to Europe and actually met her brother, I think.
Speaker 2:And anyway they got connected and then they managed a big cattle feedlot operation. He was a cattle broker, salesman and that's kind of how they discovered this area. So they he bought Jay Dobbins place right next to my dad's family farm in 67. So when my mom was done with high school college she'd go back to the farm and you know, as legend has it, one romantic day changing pipes. That's how my parents met. And then they had a lapse in judgment in their mid-30s. And here I am, if you can change pipes together.
Speaker 1:You can do anything together.
Speaker 2:If you work cattle together, you can do anything together Sort cattle for sure. Oh God, the family fights on that day. It's like why is dad so tense?
Speaker 1:I'm like I know the meanest things my sister and I have ever said to each other have all been while sorting cattle 100% Me too.
Speaker 2:And then it kind of gets over and you're like, okay, sorry about that, we good, we good. Alright, you know what I'm going through right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny, magically people get along pretty well at Branding's for the most part, but sorting and and doctoring man you you.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I agree with you, branding was way more fun, cause it's kind of like we're going to barbecue after this and it's kind of like you know, and, and then branding was way easier to get friends to come help, because it's like, oh, I kind of want to help out and experience this, so you have more hands on deck, you know, for better doctoring, before you kick them out to pasture or like you know, or if you have those, oh God, or if you have those like midsummer ones where disease starts going through, those ones have got to be like the worst because it's hot, it's dry, it's dusty.
Speaker 2:Everyone's not happy to be doing this anyway, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah and yeah, cows being out, yeah and uh, yeah, cows being out. One of my, uh, deep joys in life is when my little sister's cows are out and uh, and I can call her and tell her about that. The opposite is when I call her and say, hey, your cows are out, and she goes, sweet, I'm, you know, out of town delivering beef or something like that. Now you got to go fix it.
Speaker 2:I, I'm like ugh, the worst it is yeah, but you know I'm always like pretty fortunate, like in our area. I mean like neighbors kind of always help out on that too. Like you know, like my neighbor Jay, it's just like he'll call me up. He's like I saw three yearlings out. I put them back in for you. You know, never take for granted having awesome neighbors. Yeah, like that's huge, especially with cattle.
Speaker 1:Well, right here it's kind of you know two ranches and then the rest of it's farmland. Yeah, so cows being out on crops is a big drama. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, still to this day. Yeah, I mean cause, uh, you know, especially with Timothy grass, like you can ruin your exporting quality if they find you know shit in the field. Yeah, like, so it's a high stakes game where you know. But at the end of the day, that's where, again, I'm fortunate to have my mom. That I do is just like she likes building fence. She's really weird, but it's. It kind of helps with that security to find the balance between farm and ranch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's awesome. Yeah, yeah, always been super kind to me. What has changed in technology and farming between when we're kids and now?
Speaker 2:Oh man, where do I start? I think irrigation is probably the biggest Um, but I can't underplay like the technology that's come on to, like tractors, sprayers, seeders, harvesters, I mean those things have gone huge. I mean you can drive through the whole Valley and most lines are perfectly straight. Well, cause they're all on GPS. Um, so that's made, those things are just huge. I mean it's to the point now where, like you know, running swathers, people have GPS hooked up on their swathers so that the rows are perfectly consistent and the same, and so that's been a big deal. But, as you know, I'm I'm biased towards irrigation and that has made a lot of um, that's made a lot of steps, you know, as far as, like, manually going out and changing pipes, as opposed to now I have fields I can run from my phone. Yeah, like it's just wild what the last 15 years has done on that.
Speaker 1:Well, when you got here snowing. Right now we've got some snow on the ground. We're watching the storms kind of kick around the mountains here outside the studio and we're talking about what you know is just kind of a default, which is you say, well, we need the snow because we don't get rain here in the summertime. We are wealthy in rivers but we're very poor in summer summertime precipitation, so we need snow that is going to stay as that water bank and then gravity which is going to bring it to us throughout the summer of bring it to us throughout the summer from where that snow is now in the mountains. What happens with it between there and it getting into the ground as far as irrigation and crops?
Speaker 2:um, you know every winter is different because you know if we get like a snowpack now where there's I don't know 17 new inches or whatever it is, and then we get a hard freeze and it melts in really hard, it's frozen really hard and then you layer on top of that, it affects how it melts off in the springtime. So I've seen it where it's kind of light snowpack that was not really frozen down hard and then if April, may is warm and rainy, it can come off in a heartbeat and then that's affects it. But if it's really hard and frozen then you know it kind of like sustains and slowly melts off from, you know, april through June and you can kind of plan accordingly. So most of our basins that we look at are, um, for the irrigation district is Mount Howard and aneroid, because those are what flow in and fill up the lake every year. So we do have a storage capacity at Wallowa Lake and that's.
Speaker 2:We track snow packs really tightly as well as like weather patterns going into the spring, because you know you can only store so much, you can only have so much going into the river without having flood issues. So we track that really closely to try to plan for our whole summer. So starting, you know, really next month we meet about it and we talk about it every month of, like, you know what's the current snowpack, what's the water equivalency, what's the you know weather patterns look like for the next three months going into summer. What do you mean by?
Speaker 1:water equivalency.
Speaker 2:Like snow, like water, content of the snow right, because not all snow is created equally. Uh, like snow, like water, content of the snow right, cause not all snow is created equally. It's not, you know, light and fluffy versus wet and hard. You know those are different variables on that, but we try to like gauge it on, like you know. When's the lake going to fill when? What week is that going to hit that peak? What do we need to plan? Do we need to store some? Do we need to let some out and kind of like reservoir, and then, summertime, it goes into Wallowa river and then you have points of diversion that kicks it into our ditch systems and that's how we irrigate from May through September 30th.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So who owns the water in Wallowa lake? So the stored water is owned by what's called the Wallowa lake irrigation district, which used to be the associated ditch company. Okay, so that's who owns the Wallow Lake Dam structure and that's who manages it and it affects our irrigation district is about 16,500 acres, but the John Williams at the state OSU extension office. You know they did studies on it back in 2010, 2015. You know they did studies on it back in 2010, 2015. And because we're at the top of the basin and the top of the river system with return flows, you know that storage water in the system probably affects 37,000 acres throughout the whole county of irrigated ag, just with the way water flows downhill Right.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how much stored water is in Wallowa Lake Well? So currently we're in the process of trying to rehab it to get it back up to full capacity. So currently we're at a 72% capacity limit with the current condition. So we rehab it, we get back up to full capacity. Oh my gosh, I should have looked at this number before I came in. It's 48,000 to 52,000 square feet-ish. I'm giving you a range because I can't think of square feet of acre feet.
Speaker 1:Acre feet, yeah, and what?
Speaker 2:is an acre foot of water. Uh well, just imagine, you know, looking at an acre and adding 12 inches onto it. That's one foot of water, you know, across the acre. Just to kind of give you some what of a visual on.
Speaker 1:Gotcha and an acre is a football field with both end zones Pretty much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a foot of water on top of that. So, like historically, you know, when water in the West I mean prior appropriation. So when settlers came in and they're starting to farm, you know they'd file for a water right and they would ask for a certain amount that they would irrigate with and divert with. So you know, older priority dates have basically the first in line. So if there's water restrictions, if there's low snow packs or whatever, those oldest dates matter because they are the top priority and water rights can go from late 1800s to I don't even know, like you know, 60s on up. So the guys in the 60s are junior compared to those guys from the 1800s. So if there's water shortages, the junior guys get shut off first and the older guys get to keep going.
Speaker 1:Right and one of the things from my perspective that's interesting about that is that our water rights here on the sixth ranch go back to 1884. They're very, very old water rights but we're also at the end of the line for the ditch system that we're on here. So we've got senior water rights but there's people who can take it with gravity before it gets to us and oftentimes that turns into conflict. And you know, a very common line is that whiskey's for drinking Waters for fighting, waters for fighting.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mark Twain he was right. Waters for fighting. Thank you, mark Twain, he was right. Well, and you know I'm cautiously. You know I'm optimistic about Wallowa County just because of the way our river systems work, because you read of other regions in the West who are, whether it's like irrigation wells, live flow Pulling out of aquifers. Aquifers, like it's going to be a very relevant topic in the whole West, oh man, you know, especially with fluctuating snow packs. I mean because even my tenure of being on that I've seen 72, I've seen 110.
Speaker 1:I've seen last year I think was 82 to 85 percent. Yeah, so it's constant cycles.
Speaker 2:So it's just constantly fluctuating and um, you know that's where, like the irrigation, um, modernization stuff is a big deal because you, you know historically when they're all doing, because all you could do was flood, irrigate, there was no electricity and all that. So you know a lot of the water, right, acres throughout the Valley, you know they're five to five and a half acre feet per acre throughout the summer is kind of what a lot of the rights are structured around, which is a lot of water, which is a ton of water. But that's what he had to do right in that time period. But so, with the irrigation upgrades, like doing a pivot, you know we're using now 16 to 24 inches of water throughout the whole summer. So we're using, you know, two acre feet and there's multiple reasons to do that. I mean a lot of it. For me personally was it was a labor issue. You know, back when we were in high school we probably had six or seven pipe changers. And now what?
Speaker 1:is changing pipe Because you know we're talking to the whole world. Right now there's people in 100 countries that are going to listen to us.
Speaker 2:Way to intimidate me on this. So changing pipes is, it's a method to get your field wet with water. So typically in our situation there's a pump station on the water source whether it's an irrigation canal or river or whatever but most of mine are on irrigation canal, so they're not on the river and then the pump irrigation pumps goes into a mainline, underground buried, and then every 120 feet or so there's a hydrant that comes up and then you hook up your valve to that hydrant and then physically move either four inch hand line pipe or we have what's called wheel lines, which are above ground. They have a motor in the center and you move it across the field and that's how you irrigate your field and these say that, say we're talking about four inch hand line, the og right, the og um.
Speaker 1:How long are these pipe sections? What are they?
Speaker 2:made out of uh, they're made out of aluminum. They're 40 foot long and you know, depending on how long the branch of pipes are, I mean it can be five pipe or it can be 40 pipe, depending on your field, right. So back, you know, back in our day, there was a lot more hand lines and you know, few wheel lines and, like I said, we had six or seven high school kids out there changing pipes all summer long yeah, and a lot of times.
Speaker 1:You're changing these pipes a couple times a day. Yes, 12 hour sets. So this is what I grew up doing as well. So to to break this down even further, we move this valve to a hydrant that's 120 feet away, and now I'm going to go and take one section of pipe and I'm going to pick it up, hopefully in the middle, so it balances, and then I'm going to walk 120 feet, I'm going to hook it up to the hydrant and set it down while water is flowing through it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's if you're good at it. Gotta have a little bit of water otherwise it doesn't work right.
Speaker 1:And then you go back and you get the next section and you work your way across a field that might be a quarter mile, half mile long and you've got your 40 or whatever sections of hand line on there. You put a cap in the end of the pipe. The pipe pressurizes, the sprinklers start to spin around, you hoof it back to the beginning, turn your valve all the way on, and now the sprinklers are going to go around in a circle and irrigate that strip and in 12 hours you're going to come back and do it all over again and you're going to do that all summer long, on every day that's not raining and doesn't have lightning in the sky yeah, I kind of always imagine purgatory being, uh, me just changing pipes for eternity.
Speaker 1:If I end up in purgatory, you know yeah, and you're probably running because the mosquitoes are real or or you just had you know hard-ass bosses like my mom, and it was like why is it?
Speaker 2:taking you so long, so you're just booking it, but it is a good weight loss program.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna lie, dude when the when the pipe changers showed back up, for, like high school football you could tell, just had these yoked out arms, you know, and their backs were super strong and you know all the the kids that that didn't change pipe were just struggling to get through daily doubles and the farm and ranch kids were like, oh thank.
Speaker 2:God we get a break. My parents were telling me about legends from the 80s that were like cross-country runners that would sprint in between pipes and they would crush it when they got into the fall sports.
Speaker 1:Well, there are two schools. There was the getting paid by the hour guy who would just kind of lollygag along and walk, and then there was the paid by the section guy.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I was a paid by the section guy, so I got 20 cents for every section of pipe. You want to know what?
Speaker 2:we're up to now what?
Speaker 1:is it?
Speaker 2:Like over a buck a pipe.
Speaker 1:Really yes, inflation.
Speaker 2:Yeah or motivation. I think that's more the reality of it. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy for all the kids that are ambitious and want to go get jobs, but I get it. Do you want to go change pipes or do you want to go work at the go-karts and stare at tourists all day?
Speaker 1:I get it. No, I mean, I think that that's part of the reason that I started guiding when I was at such a young age is that I didn't want to change pipe anymore. I was over it.
Speaker 2:Oh the irony. I thought that too, and here I am still changing pipes. But it is a weight loss program. So as I'm getting my mid-30s I'm like, hey, it doesn't shut off like it once did. Yeah, yeah, no Facts.
Speaker 1:But that was irrigation then there's still a little bit of that going on. Uh, you know I've done entire episodes on on irrigation, so we don't need to beat this to death. But the way water moves around from these winter storms to fields and out of aquifers and rivers and whatever wherever the water source is, that is going to play a bigger role in everyone's future than probably anyone can imagine right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, huge. I mean, like you know, all roads lead to the Columbia River, like in our stance on a lot of the Northwest Mississippi of the. West and you have massive municipalities along those rivers and you have massive yeah, no, it's going to be yeah, it's going to be an ongoing, I shouldn't even say debate. It's just going to be something to pay attention to.
Speaker 1:Well, we can't create food without it, without irrigation.
Speaker 2:Correct, and people can't live without water.
Speaker 1:And everybody needs food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and everyone needs food and water. No-transcript. But the flip side of that is you know, like you said, like I said, the numbers earlier, you know we're using, you know, a fifth to two fifths of the water that the original allocation was for flood irrigation. So I think I'm excited about the conservation side of it. And again, I'm not pushing on this because I get flack from people that who still flood irrigate. They're like oh, you're trying to make change your operation. I'm like no, no, no, I don't care what you do. Like you do, you it's your operation. We still flood irrigate Exactly.
Speaker 2:No, no. And, like I said, there's not a one size fits all for every area, Because I know what you're talking about. Along the highway, Like just does not make sense. But where we were at, you know, with the lake being like held at a 72% capacity, like if we didn't do those conservation measures, like and I'm not saying we as a district, I'm saying we as individual farmers, Like all of us just started doing it deal with fluctuating snow packs and kind of still be able to grow the crops we need to do throughout the summer without you know having to you know go through like massive restrictions and kind of sacrifice crops why is the lake held at 72 capacity?
Speaker 2:uh, so it's just currently um, oh gosh, uh, so anyway, the original dam. Let's just go through the history because that's fun it is so so 1905 was the original dam and then it was expanded upon in the water rights were, I think, about 1918, as it was raised again and it was raised again a couple more times in the 1920s, like the actual dam was lifted or just added on to you know, because there was one that was a power station that used to go by the old Joseph City Park.
Speaker 2:So anyway, that happened prior to 1930. And then in 1970 is when in the West the Teton Dam failure happened, so we got labeled as high hazard. So in the 90s is when we were kind of restricted down to the 72% capacity, and then that's when that generation started to really try to find ways to rehab it. And we're still working on it to this day, I mean so what's wrong with our?
Speaker 2:dam. Um, it's spillway. I mean, because if you have a maximum flow thing, you know it doesn't get clogged and all that and so and it's just, you know it's time for time to do some tlc to it. Yeah, so how much the lake is um.
Speaker 1:The deepest I've actually found with my fish finder is 282 feet. Oh, yeah, yeah, so it's a very deep, glacially formed natural lake. How much water does the dam actually hold back?
Speaker 2:Like I said, I wish I had that number in front of me, but I thought it was 52,000 acre feet-ish, so about 28 feet of elevation from of elevation added onto it is about what the dam would do at full capacity.
Speaker 1:At full capacity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when I'm diving out there, when I'm getting close to the dam, the deepest point I found there is 17 feet in the, in the springtime, when we're at full pool. Okay, so I think that and I know it gets deeper as you get closer to the dam but I think that if we lost 17 feet of water right now that where it necks down kind of where the beach makes a point right there that would get dry if we lost 17 feet of water.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that makes sense.
Speaker 1:And again I wish I was an engineer, but I'm not.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean I don't know like the topography of how that works and you know, because typically in the summertime, when we're storing and stuff like that, I'm not at the lake.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, you're always going to have sediment that builds up as well right. Yeah, that's natural right whatever, whatever it naturally was when that dam was built, like the bottom has come up since then closer to that dam.
Speaker 2:I'm not God. I wish I had those notes in front of me. I bet I don't, but I know what you're talking about. I mean, it's just that's the way water like rivers, everything flows that way, on that.
Speaker 2:But anyway, no, I mean, everything flows that way on that. But anyway, no, I mean so it's still work in progress. You know you have a diverse group of stakeholders and I'm still optimistic. It's just, you know, it's just work Like that's just the way getting people to work together to pull it off is going to be key A diverse group of stakeholders is not a way to get things done necessarily. But they're there yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean mean they are you have. It's real. But it's also part of the reason why we haven't been able to to get the damn fixed. Well, there's too many voices well, I, I think it's because hasn't the money been allocated?
Speaker 2:before there is and then pulled no, it's not polled. Okay, they're just there. It's just working out the final bit of details, because you know, and they have a, I understand it. I mean you know it's like you're in fishing too. I mean there is a dynamic between irrigated egg, water use and fish, and we have to like.
Speaker 2:Recreation, conservation, all of that, and so they're at the table and they have to be. I mean to make things work, to make sure that you know everyone's on the same page and find a good path forward that works. Do you need some more scotch?
Speaker 1:oh, of course. What? What are you into? Uh, more of the same.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know we've got some options here. We do have several. I'm impressed with your collection. I really am.
Speaker 1:Have you tried this Jefferson's Ocean, bourbon?
Speaker 2:Oh, man, yeah, let's in, I'm in. I'm trying to increase my palate on bourbon.
Speaker 1:So, my friend, and this is not a bit on trying to sell people bourbon, but my friend Tim Butler gave me this bottle and it's pretty cool. So, uh, this bourbon. They put the casks on um on cargo ships and they age it at sea, so I'm going to redo this. Um, it was 6.00 AM when ocean voyage 28 headed out into the restless seas of the Atlantic. The agitated ocean was steely gray and the red sky was ominous looking out in front of blah, blah, blah, okay. Um, it made its long run to anchorage in auckland, crossing the international date line, advancing the calendar one day.
Speaker 1:The seas were very rough, from auckland through brisbane and around australia to ferment. Fermental heat and humidity was replaced with sea spray and cold air. That defined our journey through the north australian basin headed for singapore. Air temperatures and wave conditions modified again in the south china sea ports in shanghai, masan, kobe, nagoya, yokohama and another place in japan were hot and the waters were moderate, giving us a chance to thaw out and regain our balance before crossing the north pacific to tacoma and down the baja peninsula through the tropic of cancer down the coast of central america. The air was hot and heavy, with moisture. Rain would have been a relief, but it never came.
Speaker 1:Our transit back through the panama canal was swift and smooth. While it remained hot and sticky, our final days through the caribbean and up the atlantic Coast were smooth and clear. The humidity, dramatic swings in temperature and ever-changing sea conditions had the effect of bringing balance and richness to the complex array of flavors and tastes you will find in Ocean Voyage 28. Isn't that cool? That's awesome. I think it's also genius, because one of the tough things that whiskey makers have to balance is they need Glenlivet 12 to taste the same on every bottle, when climate conditions would not be the same year to year. But with this, every single batch is going to taste different because of's the point, the sea conditions and climate conditions that it went through well, that's a great marketing thing, because it is yeah, it's like no bottle will be the same, but it'll still be good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which I like. Yeah, but I know you're talking about because I noticed that at the glenfiddich one, where it was like temperature controlled. I mean like the technology going into that to like just for consistency is kind of incredible. What people do and it's fun Like what a fun time to be alive that we can sit here in a studio and have a glass of scotch from Scotland, or a glass of bourbon that traveled all around the world.
Speaker 2:Well, and learn about it. It's cool, it's fun to think about. No, it is. I mean I even went through like a tequila mezcal, like research phase two, but it just cracks me up. You know, you imagine like the first people that are like that prickly thing might make good booze let's try this out, like let's see what happens if we let it get rotten and squeeze it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, why not like? So those stories are just cracked me up to see how they kind of evolve into it. Because obviously in Europe like it was beer and then kind of you know distilled and went from there and Russians with potatoes in their vodka or whatever. Maybe I'm wrong on that.
Speaker 1:I learned a little bit about making beer when I lived in North Carolina and there was a beer making like store just a couple blocks down from my house. So if I had dramas, if something wasn't the right color, if I had questions, I could go down and talk to this guy. And I was trying to be very precise in this in this entire process, and one day he's like, look, they used to make this in a hole in the ground, like yeah, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like, but I wanted to taste like a great pilsner I had a terminal gravity the other day. Like it's like nah, that's not the fun of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just go for it yeah, it was super fun, but I was also, you know, drinking too much beer because I was making it by the keg I have that problem too, because I do like beer.
Speaker 2:Um, so what part of north carolina? I was in your station there, correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, I was stationed there in camp lejeune, and then I lived on Emerald Isle, which is the southern end of the Outer Banks, and I also lived in Swansboro, which is on the inside of that, so it's on the intercoastal waterway. I loved all those places and I still go back to North Carolina as often as I can.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my wife had a work conference in Charleston South.
Speaker 1:Carolina.
Speaker 2:I had a blast.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, like I want to go back Beautiful Well in the history. Yeah, I you know, cause she had a work conference all day, so it was like I went to museums, like I probably walked eight miles a day just checking out that whole area and I I want to go back, yeah, but there's a lot in the U?
Speaker 1:S I want to go back to, but I I really enjoyed those coastal Southern States. Like I, I really enjoyed those, the the inside of the outer banks in.
Speaker 1:Eastern Carolina is incredibly rural. It's all ag land and typically when we think about the coast, we think about beach houses and their pastel colors and you know know people walking around wearing wearing either too much or not enough sunscreen. But there's this massive um sound called pamlico sound. That's between the outer banks and mainland north carolina. Okay, it's so big that when you're out in it you can't see land like it's. It's absolutely huge. Uh, the noose river flows into it and the mouth, the Neuse, is the widest river in the world. But that mainland shore is incredibly rural, very, very few people. They're growing corn, they're growing some really cool historic rice and it's just these little small rural communities and folks that are descended from, you know, retired pirates from the, you know, 16 and 1700s. They're cool people.
Speaker 2:And even that one was wild, like going to the East coast like just the established old money family, like in Charleston Cause it's like you know, I was bored looking around, I was like I just picked up a real estate book. I was like, oh good God, but but but I love those stories too where it's like it's just like even in wallowa county, like you know, your family being here as long as it has, it's like that's so cool, yeah, and over there it's like, oh, I had a couple hundred years sure like or go back even you know further to mainland.
Speaker 2:It's just that's kind of a cool part to see like the established families in those areas yeah, I mean in swansboro there are graves in the cemeteries from the 1600s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the streets didn't fit two vehicles because they were built for wagons. I love it. Yeah, that's great. I love it so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just turn them into one-ways. Whatever. It's fine, you just wait, okay. So where else would you recommend over in that area?
Speaker 1:I can talk with you about it offline, because I hate to blow up places.
Speaker 2:That's fair, yeah, totally fair.
Speaker 1:We can do this offline, but the bottom line is Eastern Carolina, whether it's North or South, is a fantastic place with tremendous people, and I love them a lot. Okay, and they know how to fry shrimp and chicken like nowhere else in the world.
Speaker 2:Oh man, my inner fat kid loved that area, like you know. You went out and it's like you couldn't find a bad restaurant. Yeah, yeah, no. Well, I'm obviously like that's half the reason why I traveled to eat local cuisine. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:It is awesome and it's so fun. Coming from food production, which is what agriculture ultimately is, it's are about getting food out of the ground or nature and getting it to people Like that. That's kind of where it goes.
Speaker 2:Well, and you appreciate the work that goes into it.
Speaker 1:So then when you go to a new place and you're like, well, where does your food come from? And then what do you do with it? And then how do I experience that, that's pretty cool. That's one of my favorite things about traveling. And this place I was just at in Baja. Man, it was a small town but there's probably 40 or 50 restaurants in it, and everything was homemade from scratch, so good.
Speaker 2:So good, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was eating like a fat kid and losing weight. It was awesome American diet.
Speaker 2:Dude yeah, yeah, oh man, that's funny.
Speaker 1:I think they're frying everything in animal fat, which helps.
Speaker 2:I think so too. Yeah yeah. No, I notice a taste difference. If you ever go to a restaurant and they have, like you know, deep-fryer beef tallow, as compared to you know, canola oil or whatever they're using, like there is actually a positive flavor difference in using that Beef tallow is the boss. It's so much better and I don't know the economics, I've never ran a restaurant before, but it's like, well, doesn't everyone do this? It tastes so much better. Well, I recently learned that most restaurants waste between 40% and 60% of their food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe that. So their margin on economics for their ingredients gets amplified by that number.
Speaker 2:Oh, I believe that. Yeah, no, I appreciate restaurants, but man, I could never do it Tough. There's no. It's like you might as well own a dairy.
Speaker 1:That's why we're so appreciative of the restaurants that serve our beef. We know that it's harder for them to do that. Yes, you know, they could just get their stuff from Cisco and serve-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do frozen patties and call it good. Go and serve frozen patties and call it good.
Speaker 1:Serve gray hamburgers and people would buy them and that's fine. But yeah, we love our restaurants for that.
Speaker 2:No, but it's part of like the selling point of it too, though. Yeah, because there is a taste difference. There is Like a huge taste difference. Yeah, it matters, yeah, oh. So when you're in Scotland, you should try haggis. Plan it on it. Good for you. I had a great. I liked it, did you?
Speaker 1:oh yeah why not?
Speaker 2:it was great. Yeah, well, go to a place that knows how to do it, because, like I've tried it at several different spots and you know, it's like going to restaurants in america, like there was some great quality ones and there was someone's like I can see the reputation of why people maybe were turned off by this yeah, if you pulled somebody out of kenya and sent them to america and you oh, you got to try a hamburger.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, you got to try a good hamburger, which one? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like don't go to McDonald's, Try, you know, go to this restaurant, try like a full, fresh, yeah, yeah, less processed one.
Speaker 1:Biggest challenges in agriculture for you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it's what everyone deals with.
Speaker 2:It's just, there's fluctuations commodity volatility it's, it's huge, um, and I mean we even saw here recently I mean you know, timothy, here, what two years ago, three years ago, they were, you know, 375 a ton plus or 350 a ton plus, and it was great. Sure enough, the next year it dropped $175 a ton. And if your input costs are, you know, not correlating with it, yeah, you're tightening your belt. The other side of that regarding input costs too is, you know, if you're doing irrigation pumping, you know we've all kind of seen power rates kind of consistently start to rise and you're trying to mitigate that as best you can. You know we kind of hashed out water in the West of having that in mind. But again, I am always optimistic on that because I think there's a lot of opportunities for efficiency projects to kind of like mitigate that as best we can. I mean, you're not going to solve all the world problems with one magic bullet, but you know it's better to be prepared for a low snowpack year than to being man. I wish I would have, um, but but I think a commodity volatility is, and I and basically I talked to my uh ag lender here the other day.
Speaker 2:He's like cattle and maybe sugar beets are about the only thing good right now. Everything else is just, um, it just isn't one of those cycles. Yeah, so I think that's the you know, but that's nothing new. I mean, you know you talk to your parents and egg, who have been in it forever, that happens a lot. I mean, it is like the old stories when interest rates were, you know, 20, 20%, and it's like how many people went out of business in that time period and the ones that struggled through it never forgot it Right, and we, all things considered, we're pretty blessed with like interest rates, you know, even though they're higher than they used to be. It's nowhere near what our parents had to deal with. Yep, um, but that's what I see. Most is just volatility on that, um, and then and there's going to be regions throughout the west that I think are going to have water issues I mean, I think that's reality.
Speaker 1:What about the age of people who are involved in agriculture? Average age of a farmer in the U? S is 57 and a half years old. That scares the heck out of me.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know where to go with this one Cause there's two ways I can go. It is a concern but I think there's a challenge for, like you know, if you were a young guy that wanted to just get into it, it's tough to find an opportunity to get into it. It really is. So are the older guys kind of defaulting to like?
Speaker 2:I won't call it selling out, but, like you know, big corporate farms are getting bigger corporate farms, right, you've seen this trend happening and it's kind of happening all over the U? S where you know you have these large farming operations and the kind of the small family farm thing is doing away. And you know, sometimes that's because it didn't work out, sometimes they didn't have a succession plan where any kid wanted to do it again, Um, but but I do, I do kind of feel sympathetic on that one Cause it sucks where you know I, I, I would see, would see, especially like in wallow county. I think it would be very tough to like not grow up in a family farm situation and try to get into it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I really think it would be.
Speaker 1:It would be so tough to do that the amount of debt you would have to take on at the front end would scare you your entire life you, yeah, you would have like the sword of damocles above you the whole, your whole career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, unless you, I mean it's things, good things happen. You know, sometimes there is that old farmer that wants to give that guy a shot, and that's great, or that gal shot, I mean, and that's great.
Speaker 2:But but on like real estate side of it, it's like our land prices don't reflect production yeah you know, like, range land for cattle isn't being penciled out based on what the cattle can produce off of that land, and same thing with farm ground, which makes it even tougher. Um, so that, and I know you're talking about the average age of farmers, but like I, I'm pessimistic that I see this kind of going like you're just gonna see a lot more big corporate farms and do you think that those are going to be American corporations? Both yeah. I mean, I don't have that crystal ball, but both yeah.
Speaker 1:That's another thing that scares me is that it'll be foreign corporations that control agriculture in America.
Speaker 2:It does. But I mean, well, I guess it is happening because it's not just the land itself, it's the you know the distribution of, like you know shipping it and exporting it. They're also owning that meat processing. Oh, meat processing, yeah, that one's a whole nother bizarre, I mean, because what was the last time they did an antitrust suit against the meat packers? It was, I mean, what we're down to four now, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's ugly, it's ugly, yeah, um, so, yeah, no, I I have a concern about that one where you know, you kind of lose, like, the character of, like you know, the small family farms if they're just going to be big, corporate and consolidated and and, yeah, some of them are going to be us.
Speaker 1:But do you think your kids are going to want to run the farm?
Speaker 2:I, I don't know, Um, you know, five and eight years old. I have no idea. I want to make sure the opportunity is there for them, but at the same time, you know, I want them to figure out their life and figure out what they want to do for themselves you know.
Speaker 1:So we're coming up on the end of the year. This is going to be my last question, and I think that the end of the year is a good time for a reflection. If you could relive any year of your life, but you can't change anything about it, what year would you pick?
Speaker 2:Ooh, that one's tough, oh man. I mean it's tough for me because I think the most fun year where it was just like living life and it was just great, it was, like, you know, the first couple of years when my wife and I got together, like it was just a blast, you know, with all the shit going on with work and everything like that. It was just like that exciting time period where we're just getting your start in life and it's just kind of flowing. But I can't under like value, like current, you know, like just you know the way that, like my kids have kind of changed me, where it's like I can't exclude those years too, cause it's it's a blast in its own way.
Speaker 2:Um, and I and I do feel like I am a kind of a different person, but I would say probably that that that first year of my wife and I being together, like it it was just fun. Like you know, go conquer the world and go figure out life and have fun while doing it. Like that was just kind of a fun, unique time period that I'll never get back, but I enjoyed the shit out of it. That's a great. What about you this year? All right, yeah, so what's the reason why? I mean you only had a few things going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I, I really got to do a lot this year. Yeah, I got to. I got to travel a lot. I had good relationships with my friends and my family, met new people, saw new places, got to have a lot of experiences. I learned a huge amount this year. But I would also well, while I love your answer, I would throw it out there for folks that if their answer isn't also this year, then Try to make it this year. What are you going to change about next year?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, for sure. And that's where I feel bad. I mean, I had to go back to the nostalgia day of that because we were Actually it's funny we were hanging out last night, we were just talking about that time, time period of her lives and we didn't have things figured out. We were like, you know, she was getting started in her career, me too, but it was like kind of that fun growth year, yeah, um, but as far as, like I, this last year has been a blast. I mean, my daughters are just hilarious and in their own different crazy ways, and I'm excited to see what next year brings. I'm excited to see what next year brings, yeah, but as far as what I would do differently, I think I have to tell myself this every year. It's like just quit stressing out over stupid shit that doesn't matter, like that's. That's my mental, but that's also my problem, and my personal personality is like I. I get stressed out over things I probably shouldn't get stressed out about.
Speaker 1:I think most people run at the same baseline of stress, no matter what the triggers are. For the most part, oh, for sure. Sometimes there's peaks, but I found this between combat which is from the outside looking in, it's pretty stressful, to other times of my life where the stressors are nowhere nearly as significant. But I kind of feel the same amount of stress all the time, and I see that with other people as well. I think that there's sort of a median baseline of stress that people just operate at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that's. The sad part is I think that I get bored if I'm not stressed about something. It's a personality flaw.
Speaker 1:I think I kind of like having stuff to do and if I don't't, I feel unsettled, like I should be doing something, like what's wrong, like yeah, that's kind of the nature of ambition and and also that is a relic of growing up on rural farms and ranches where if, if you're not doing something, it means that you're avoiding something that needs to be done well and and you, like I said, on the family farm too, it's like when you deal with, like family tragedies and stuff like that too, you got to like conditionally train yourself to learn how to like take it on, yeah, and go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know, every one of our families have kind of like been through those hard times of you know, whether it's personal thing or financial or unexpected deaths. You know that's a fun one. Um, I'm obviously sarcastic on that, but, like you know, you have to figure out, like you have to train your resiliency and just figure out how to like make sure you keep going and keep motivated on it too and don't let it kill you, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So well, Joe, thank you so much, and I I hope that we get all the snow. I hope that your, your dam gets fixed, and I also do just want to take a minute. I've thanked you for this before. But something that so many people don't realize is that that boat launch that beach that so many people get enjoyment out of, that, that belongs to the Associated Ditch Company, or what is it called. Oh Well, Out Lake Irrigation District.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, so that was a fun history thing. So the beach is it's all irrigation district property, but I think it's ODF and W has the easement for the boat launch, and that was back in the 50s, I think, is when that was established, established and then I think they have kind of some kind of intergovernmental agreement with the county for the toilets and all that stuff. But but no way, it was funny you mentioned that because, like, when we first got onto this it's like I didn't know that, yeah, when I first got on the board I had no idea that was like.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, that's ours, like yeah, you know so all the people who have enjoyed that beach, who have enjoyed that boat launch, is because the ditch company granted an easement for the purposes of angling to the public back in the 50s and we continue to enjoy that today and that's a tremendous thing. And I don't see people stepping out to thank you for that, and they should.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, don't thank me. I think the forefathers before me that actually had the foresight to think of that kind of stuff. Um well, they're not around, but but it is. I do have to say on that one that that has to be like. My favorite volunteer thing is that board, and it's because there's awesome people on it. Yeah, like it's just a good group of people that are trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Pretty cool, All right. Well, thanks a lot man.
Speaker 2:Oh, cheers man I appreciate you coming or inviting me on. Yeah, merry Christmas you as well.
Speaker 1:The Six Ranch Podcast is brought to you by Nick's Handmade Boots, a family-owned company in Spokane, washington. For many of my listeners, you've waited and prepared all year for this. Whether your pursuit is with a rifle or a bow, early or late season, big game or birds, another hunting season is finally upon us. Nick's Boots and the Six Ranch want to wish you luck as you head out into the field. This season, I'm wearing the Nick's Boots Game Breakers beginning with the archery elk season.
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Speaker 1:I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.