Farm Walks Season 5 Ep2 - Ramstead Ranch

This is the Farm Walks podcast brought to you by Tilt Alliance and the Washington State University Food Systems Program. I'm your host, Keith Bacon. I've been tasked with producing this all-new season of Farm Walks. Thanks to Farmer Nicole and everyone on the team who first brought the Farm Walks podcast to life. Speaking of origin stories, Farm Walks the podcast came about when in-person farm walks were put on hold during the pandemic. Those on-site state visits for farmer-to-farmer education are back in action, and you can learn more about them at our website farmwalks.org. For this new season of the podcast, we're also going back to those boots-on-the-ground roots and recording every interview in the field or in the barn or wherever I can get a moment with our very busy, hardworking guests. In this episode, we head up to the Selkirk Mountains area of northeastern Washington to reach Ramstead Ranch, where they're striving to define the highest standard of regenerative agriculture through a pasture-based ecosystem in synergy with nature, honoring its rhythm and abundance.

I'm Stan Hayes. I'm an owner-operator at Ramstead Ranch. I've been here since the inception and enjoyed the journey of the development of this ranch.

And I'm Eileen Napier. I'm also an owner-operator here at Ramstead, also been here since the inception, and my main job is, is marketing, but I've been part of every piece of building the operation from the ground up.

Cool. Let's talk a little bit about the inception. How did Ramstead Ranch come to be?

It started very modestly with raised bed garden boxes. We wanted to eat better. We had a family member in the medical community that was watching patients get fatter, sicker by the year, getting things going wrong at younger ages. We realized that the nutrition was a huge part of that, the food supply. So we started with raised beds, did a lot of canning, had a lot of fun, decided we'd try some proteins. So we started with 50 chickens just for ourselves. Soon after that, we added 5 sheep. This was on a 2-acre piece of ground within the city limits that had animal rights.

Okay.

But it was a pretty modest start. That proceeded on to buying this ranch, which had been clear back to a childhood dream for each of the three of us— my wife, I, and Eileen— which shared a vision each independently from childhood. Ended up looking for a long time, found this ranch. Then we bought a small herd of 10 cows from a guy that wanted to retire, all to process our own food. That at some point we had too much to consume and had other people asking us and interested. So we started doing a few farmers markets and it just one thing led to another till it over the years has developed into a pretty major going concern.

What is Ramstead Ranch today? How many acres and what are you growing and raising?

So we're currently on 240 acres here in the Pend Oreille Valley, about 70 miles north of Spokane. And along the way, we've done it all. We've done cow-calf, we've farrowed pigs. We raised and processed our own chickens, turkeys, etc. And as we've grown and scaled, we've started to partner with producers who do the same— pasture-raised focus, grass-fed focused. And so now what we do here at Ramstead, we focus on grass-finishing beef steers and pasture-finishing pigs. And then we have continued to partner with other pasture-raised poultry producers grass-fed lamb producers like that.

Bison. We outgrew what we could do ourselves and we're getting way too far into the traditional ag model where we hadn't been anywhere for 5, 6 years. Yeah.

Hadn't left the ranch.

Couldn't leave the ranch, especially at the same time.

Yeah.

We created a situation that was overrunning us. So we looked at it and thought, we love what we're doing. We don't want to back off or stop. Affords us the opportunity to really share a lot of good things with a lot of people. So we looked at it and decided we can still do the same thing and even more by going to a different model where we go to some partner producers. Like we got a mother-daughter that raised lambs for us. We got a father-daughter that raised bison for us. We have, well, I think when we made the shift, we were doing 6,000 chickens a year by ourselves. Wow. So we have a guy that loves chickens. That's all he does. And it's all the same standards that we were doing on our own, the same feed qualities, the same moving every day. So they're always on fresh pasture, the whole thing. And it's been pretty rewarding in that we could bring a lot of other small producers with us as we grew. Most people in the ag business don't want to sell things, right? They want to love up on their animals. Love up on their land. They're in a kind of a work-for-yourself business because they're not big people people, right? In a lot of ways.

And they're out here for a reason.

Yeah. Yeah. They don't like selling stuff. But we looked at it and we were coming out of other corporate backgrounds and so forth. And we realized that if for this to work, somebody's got to really take responsibility for the marketing and do the sales and take it head on and deal with it like a business. So we decided we would do that. And it afforded us the opportunity to bring a lot of other people with us too. So that's been pretty rewarding.

Yeah. I'm curious, what corporate backgrounds were you coming from?

My wife was in the medical business. She's a physician, was— she's retired, but was in the medical business for a long time.

Okay.

I was in the building business. Eileen was in the building business with me. We're building like high-end custom stuff. So we were used to keeping projects like large projects on budget, on time, interacting with our clients and a lot of subs and keeping everybody happy and all that. So we had a lot of experience with how to run a business. We understood, you know, top line, bottom line, protecting the margins.

Yeah.

All what it takes to make a business work and be sustainable.

And it seems sometimes that happens in reverse where a farmer is learning to do the business stuff, you know, after the fact. And you were coming into this industry with a strong business acumen, I would say.

And yet we're still learning every day. Yeah.

There is no finish line.

That's right.

That's right.

I want to talk to you about your production systems and how you raise your animals. I believe you call it regenerative agriculture. What exactly does that mean?

Yeah, that's a great question. We define regenerative ag as raising animals, raising food in a way that harmonizes with nature instead of drawing out of nature and reducing it. So it's tapping into the synergistic systems of nature.

It's not just sustainable. You hear sustainable, but it's way beyond that. A pretty basic example is we have a— oh, one of our fields is 35 acres. 5 years ago, it would quality finish grass-fed, grass-finished 50 beef. 5 years ago. Today it will do 100 beef. So the biomass is that much more robust and healthier. It's producing that much more.

Wow.

It really comes down to the microbial health of the soil. That is where our primary focus is. There's more microbes in a handful of soil than there are people on the earth. It is an alive, thriving intelligence. Whether you can see it or not, it's there and it's working and it mines vitamins, minerals, nutrients, micronutrients from the soil. Trades it to the plants for sugars for their community. And that puts all of that nutrition in a bioavailable form for the animals and then for us. So regeneration is— the ground is healthier all the time behind us. It's on the build all the time. We're sequestering more carbon, we're holding more water, we're building soil, the microbe-rich soil. We have no chemicals, no herbicides, no pesticides. No commercial fertilizers. It's all done naturally with moving the animals, the migration of the animals. They move every day. They tromp, they leave nutrients, and then the ground rests for at least 90 days if we even come back to it.

Interesting.

But that rest period's critical as well.

It's as much about raising animals as nature intended, which I think is something I did see on your website, as it is about the soil. That's really fascinating.

Yeah.

Well, it is. They get to live free. They do what the bison did. They come through, they move, and they wander. They get to live free. They drink out of springs. There's a lot of satisfaction in the quality of life we can afford the animals versus their other option with more industrial commercial processes that are available to them.

Yeah. I'm guessing I might know the answer to this question already because of what we just talked about, but what are your top priorities related to sustainable livestock systems?

Stan mentioned it, and it is that rest for the ground. You know, it's incredibly important when we come in, we graze, we let the animals take one bite of grass and then move on so that that grass and therefore the ground beneath it can rest, regenerate, grow, feed itself so it bounces back stronger. The roots can grow deeper, the microbial community can flourish before an animal comes back around and takes another swipe with their tongue to take a second bite.

I had a little different take on the question. Our priorities are we're dedicated to no animal having a bad day while it's here. They just do not. We just treat them well. We'll move 50 cows every day and we call them. They come better than most people's dogs. So, you know, they're treated well when they do that.

Yeah.

Every day we do welfare checks in the pigpens, which are like 5 acres of grass, and they forage and do their thing. And they'll pester you all the time you're in there. They're untying your shoes, they're nibbling on your pants. You know, they're very comfortable interacting with you. They're— yeah, they're treated well. They're loved upon.

Yeah, I would say both of those answers are interesting and valid to that particular question. Your focus on health also extends to how you run your business and take care of your employees. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, we use what's called a Scrum or Agile system. Scrum is a rugby term. When they're all interlocked and pushing to advance the, the group effort. Yeah, it's a system of management that restores dignity and a voice to every position. So everybody here has all the education they need, all the authority they need, all the resources they need to do their job and do it well. And then we do a lot of cross-training. Everybody does everybody's job so that it builds the humanity of the team. Where you understand that if I don't do this correctly, it makes it harder on my friend tomorrow, that sort of thing. But it's a system where we communicate every day. We have a brief meeting, 15 minutes or less, every day where we have an identified objective for the week. And everybody states, here's what I did since yesterday. Here's what I'm going to do before tomorrow. And here are any impediments I have. Any impediments get brought to the group. So we either swarm it and solve them, or somebody in the group knows, I know exactly what to do with that. So it's a very supportive, nurturing workplace where everybody has a voice. We really work hard on developing— we call them SOPs, standard operating procedures, so that you could come in the first day, and if you would go to the clipboards for whatever that job was, you would have a good understanding of what to do. You could contribute immediately. We're careful to make sure the new people understand they have perhaps the most important set of eyes on the place that we can get caught up in. That's how we've been doing it for the last year and go to sleep on something and the new person might walk in and go, why are we doing that? If we don't even do that step, it's faster and easier for all of us anyway. So it really brings dignity back to each position from the newest guy to the longest guy. And on the other side, from the management side, it's relieving because we're not expected to have the best right answer every time something comes up, right? Nobody has to come to us every time they want to do something. Like the silo system, it flattens the organization and distributes the power and the authority, and it's much better for everybody. And it is amazing what your employees will know how to do that they weren't hired to do, but they'll know how to do that they can contribute when you can give them the freedom to do that.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

I'm also going to raise the, the idea of rest again, because that is, that's another big piece that we encourage. You know, we're all work hard, play hard, rest hard kind of people. So it's, it's similar to the way we talk about regenerative agriculture, resting the pastures. You come to work, do your job, but then if you take vacation, you're expected to go and not have sort of one foot still in work and having to check in or having to answer questions while you're gone and that sort of thing.

And it's huge.

It's a true like, yeah, take a break. You've got to, you've got to go away and unplug and truly rest and regenerate so that you can come back fresh and regenerated, revitalized.

Yeah. Some of the power of that system is To date, and we're coming from not having a day off for years type thing, no vacations. To date, I've been gone 31 days this year. She's been gone 21 for like continuing ed, a week skiing, extended wedding thing. I mean, some pleasure, some work, some education. But 21 of those days, we've both been gone at the same time. And while we've been gone, our phones have not rang. Wow.

So you got a team that's taking care of the day-to-day. Yeah.

The team's well-trained. What to do, is empowered to solve their own problems. And that doesn't mean things— it doesn't make your business problems go away. Yeah, but everybody has the confidence to solve them, to move forward. We've often come back to, you know, a pretty big mishap, something going wrong, right? The team solved it. They made decisions that we were totally fine with. It's a good system.

That's very cool.

It's regenerative in terms of the community. We're in one of the most economically depressed counties in the state and we're able to bring a lot of payroll to the community. So we're able to economically and employ a number of people in an area that doesn't have a lot of employment options.

Right.

So it's healthy all the way up and down the line. If things are better for us having been here.

Do you have any sense of how the economics of your approach might differ from a more industrialized approach? How does your approach pencil out for you?

We're involved in a great group. It's called Ranching for Profit, where the target is to help educate and empower farms to organize themselves to be profitable. And so in that aspect, we've learned a lot about the industrial or the traditional model leaves many ranchers land rich, but broke at the bank. And some of the hidden, quote, costs are lost in like depreciation of vehicles, of things that break down that don't get replaced over time that, you know, perhaps need to be replaced. Another way to think about it is just generally worn out. The equipment's worn out, the people are worn out. And then the next generation who grew up in that looks back and goes, I don't want to return home. You know, I can get a good paying job in the city that I'm not going to be exhausted when it's time to retire. And so looking at that model, that's been our exposure, 'cause none of us were born into agriculture. Our families were not agricultural background. It's like, okay, how can we do it differently? And so we've done our level best to create a business model that, you know, is financially sustainable. It is paying for itself, or we can at least see a path to where this particular division or this particular enterprise will pay for itself someday. That, you know, when we were first starting out, it was like, maybe it won't be profitable day one, by year 5 or by year 7, right? We can see where this is going.

Yeah, we've had good results with economics, with margins, with profits, definitely with growth. There are some great people on the leading edge of this. Gabe Brown is one that really talks about the economics, and he's bringing a huge commercial operation in North Dakota over to regenerative. Oh, and it's usually not a one-step process. Yeah, because it takes a little while to get the regenerative engine started. It's not an immediate thing. It takes 2 or 3 years to get everything happening, like to turn nature back on to its— what it does, right? But he's bringing a big operation slowly around, a percent each year, into production where his yields are better doing it this way than they were the other way. Wow. Especially when you start subtracting out hundreds of thousands of dollars of input.

Yeah.

Doing it the other way.

Fertilizers. Yeah. Herbicides.

Yeah. Yeah. So I can't say that anybody can take it and make the switch in one year because your yields are going to go down.

Right.

But as you get the soil healthy where you're holding the water, sequestering the carbon, then you're coming back up to speed.

Yeah.

The plant growth starts to kick in, which allows you to add more animals, which allows you to graze better and that sort of thing. In our case, all of that stuff happens slowly over time, but you can see it happening year over year.

You get out of it what you put into it, or maybe what you don't put into it.

Yeah.

And it's amazing, Stan. One of your common observations is nature will respond to the least effort.

Yeah, the least sincere effort, you can watch nature respond. It'll step right up and match you. It's almost like nature loves to give free rides. You have to learn how to plug in instead of trying to alter it and change it and dominate it.

So let's talk about your products. How do you market and sell your products?

Yeah, so from the beginning, we've been direct to consumer, has been our focus. And additionally, because we started this as an adventure to feed ourselves healthier meats from animals that we knew how they'd been treated. We knew they hadn't been taking antibiotics on a regular basis and been treated humanely. We started with, okay, we want to provide individual cuts to people that wanted, you know, smaller quantities for convenience, basically. And so that's been our model all along. We take our animals to USDA processors, so we're able to sell a package of ground beef. We're able to sell individual cuts of steak. Or bacon, you know, by the pound, that sort of thing. And we knew we needed it to be online. And so we've got an online store that is just a proper shopping cart. Customers log in, they place an order for individual items, or they can purchase small bundles at a discount, or they can choose the larger bulk options like quarter beef and half beef and whole pigs like that. And then as far as distribution, we do on-farm pickup. So folks can come here to the farm to pick up. We do a local delivery route where we drive a loop through the inland Northwest. Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, Sandpoint, and customers meet us once a month. We do 3 farmers markets in the local area, so the Thursday Market on the South Hill in Spokane, the Liberty Lake Farmers Market on Saturdays, and then also the Kootenai County Market in Hayden. And then we do home delivery, which ships out from the farm every week.

So, oh wow.

Yeah, so that— and that's the largest part of our business is just home delivery. So FedEx shows up, they pick up packages on Tuesday, and then they're to our customer's door by Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And do you have a whole separate facility just for packaging and things like that, or does— we call it our.

Fulfillment center, as if we were, as if we were Amazon or something, but we're not. It's a couple of shipping containers that Stan converted into this cool finished building where we pack orders, and it's just real homemade, but it's clean and tidy and our team comes and they assemble the orders every week. We put them into the computer and then they're off on Tuesday.

When you're doing so much delivery, how do you build relationships with your customers?

The farmers market is the best place to build one-on-one relationships. Obviously, that one's easy. But apart from that, it is all through social media. You know, we're heavy on Facebook and Instagram. We just got on with TikTok and YouTube as well. So we're educating and letting people see, you know, behind the curtain and behind the scenes here at the ranch. So they can see what's real, what's real about how their food is raised. And then also we do a lot of education through email.

Yeah, most of our exposure is educational— pictures, here's what's going on, recipes, all kinds of stuff. It's a lot more give than it is ask. We know that one of our biggest challenges and opportunities is to educate why we want to eat well, why it costs more to eat well, you know, try to communicate that whatever our genetics are individually, we want to give them the best opportunity to express at the highest level physically and mentally for as long as possible, and that nutrition is key to that happening.

This episode of the Farm Walks podcast was funded by the USDA National Institute of Agriculture AFRI grant Number 2022-68006-37269. Complexity and Tradeoffs in Animal Agriculture Sustainability: Building Awareness and Trust Between Producers and Consumers. What do you find your customers care most about?

I would say it's a three-way split. They want to know that they're— that the animals are treated well. They wanna know that the land is treated with respect. And they wanna know what's in the food, that they're not taking antibiotics on a daily basis just to gain weight, that there's not all of these unnecessary medical treatments and whatnot happening in order to keep the animals healthy because they're crammed together in an unsavory lifestyle.

And that we're authentic, that we're not a big corporation somewhere with just a small picture of a barn. That looks homegrown, that we are here, we're here every day, we're the ones handling everything. So they want to know that, you know, there's no corn, no soy, non-GMO everything, no pesticides, no Roundup sprayed on anything, that again, that the animals are treated well and that we're treating the planet well, that the water is as clean leaving here as when it gets here.

Do you have a sense of what's been the most effective medium for you to communicate those things to your customers? You mentioned emails and having people hear. What do you think about that?

I would say email is still the most reliable. You know, we, we do put that information out on social media as well, but you know, on social media you're kind of at the whim of whatever the platform's primary target and motivation is. And when it comes to email, people sign up for it to receive your emails because they want to hear it, they want that information. And if they don't, they unsubscribe, and it's that simple. So that email system is still the best direct way to communicate. And then if they have a question, they're just able to push reply and they know they're gonna get a response. Yeah.

You know, we answer everybody. The most effective is probably farm tours where they come and see. And especially like we have school children come and some of them are second and third graders and some of them are juniors and seniors. And it is always very impressive the questions, the sincere interest in questions those kids bring with them. It's a different question with the little kids than the big kids.

Right.

But it's still that same intensity of really true interest in where their food comes from.

I'd say the little kids are maybe even a little less filtered. They're a little more direct with their questions.

They are. They'll ask embarrassing things.

They don't know. What a great way to build trust with your customers by just— they're here and you can show them everything. And then I just wanted to jump back that you said that you reply to every message. How's that relationship with your customers handled?

It's a giant quote inbox. It's our email, it's our phone. All of our social media platforms have, you know, direct messaging or whatever. And so it really is just a daily checklist of, hey, check all the inboxes and reply to everything.

Do you have like a social media?

We have team members who do that. And if they're not here, then I might pick that up. But it's definitely mostly other people at this point. That stopped being my main responsibility, I would say probably by 2021 or so. 2022.

Congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. I know it was a big— it was a big pivot.

But these are people that have been here, worked here. Yeah, they— it's not like they're sitting in an office somewhere and call center, don't really understand. Yeah, these are people that have been with Ramstead and understand all the ups and downs and all the ins and outs of it.

So you can give advice on how to cook a pork shoulder roast versus pork chops. And yeah, yeah, and which is still a lot of the customer service is, hey, I've got this cut, what do I do with it? Right, which is— it's key because, you know, pasture-raised and grass-fed meats can cook up differently. And so that's a big part of success. And you wouldn't believe how many former vegetarians or former vegans we have that come on board and go, hey, I— it turns out I probably should be putting animal protein in my diet. I'm going to try it, but I want to do it with somebody that raises animals right. And so I want to buy your steaks or your ground beef.

What product of yours would you recommend a recovering vegetarian to try first?

I would probably say ground beef because You know, you can definitely dilute it in lots of veggies and taco, that kind of thing.

So yeah, what are some of your most popular products, and what are some of your unsung heroes maybe that you want the world to know about?

Okay, that's a great question. Okay, so the most popular are— you could guess— some ground beef, bacon, chicken breasts, pretty much in that order. Yeah, and you know, steaks are up there. The grass-fed beef steaks are up there as well.

Yeah, bison ribeyes are over the top.

That's your— I would say that's unsung heroes. Yeah, yeah. And pork chops. Our pork chops are incredibly popular because when was the last time you had a pork chop that was delicious? For most people, it's a long time ago because they've just gotten bland and pasty and lifeless and tasteless.

Yeah.

And you have to drizzle them with some kind of crazy marinade or something. Yeah, great. But our pork chops on the grill, salt and pepper, will knock your socks off. It's heritage breed pork that is rosy, robust, reddish in color, even when it's fully cooked and it's just rich. Yeah.

That sounds good.

It's amazing. Yeah. But unsung heroes, lamb shanks, hands down.

Really?

Oh yeah.

People just aren't getting on board with that.

So flavor comes from motion, from muscles that have been in motion and those muscles that are lower on the animal that have done the work, like your chuck roast, those shoulders that do all the work or the lower leg that does the heavy lifting. That's where the flavor develops. And you got to be in the camp that knows how to slow cook and is okay with long wait times on, on preparation.

Interesting.

And the flavor is just amazing. Fall apart tender if you do it right.

Do you develop recipes here for your content to be like, hey, if you're curious about lamb shanks?

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. There's like the entry-level recipes that are good for everybody, but then there's next level that's like, okay, you want to try something new? Try this one.

We've got a pretty robust recipe section on our website. If it's not there, reach out and call us or email us. We'll help you.

I have a submission.

Yep.

So it's a— it's an amazing story of everything that you've built here at Ramstead Ranch. What are some of the biggest challenges facing you right now in this moment?

We have grown quickly. Like, our growth is 40 to 80% a year, and with that comes cash flow challenges always because we sell 50 animals, we have to buy 80. And it's an— it's a business where all the money goes out up front. You got to buy the animal, you got to take care of the animal, you got to process the animal. It's a while before it starts coming back, right? So just a general cash flow of any business that's growing, it's any industry is the same, right? It's always a challenge to bring more A-players on board. We're always looking for A-class team players that really understand we're here to pursue excellence, we're here to push power to each other. Yeah, humor at somebody's expense is just not part of our culture, that kind of thing. A lot of the things that you're— you see everywhere just don't live here. It's just not part of our regenerative culture. So, you know, we're dedicated to enhancing everything we touch. If you work here I want you to leave being a lot better for having been here. And hopefully you stayed long enough that you can go out and do your own thing if you want. You know that much, that you're as good at it as we are.

How many employees do you have right now? And is it close to where you want to be?

When we're really fully staffed, and a lot of that is part-time, like farmers market people may work 1 or 2 days like that. But there we could have up to 15 people. On the payroll, but that probably equates to maybe 6 or 7 full-time employee equivalents if you broke it all in just hours. So we're not a big organization. Yeah, we do need to scale a little bit more to make the numbers work.

And that's also part of the challenges. Likewise, with— you've got to invest in product before you need it. You also have to invest in employees before you can afford them. And I don't think that's unique to our situation by any means.

But that's a good point.

It's a real, you know, it's a real thing for any business and that you've got to plan for success, stretch your neck out to bring more people on than you think you can afford, and then you got to follow through with the sales to help pay the bills. And that's a— it's forever a learning curve for us.

So we really don't have any issues that are unique to us other than maybe educating the public. That is an area where we're, you know, educating against a juggernaut of money and lobbyists and advertising, advertising, the whole system. That is huge for the conventional food system. And we're a little voice out here saying, this is an investment in your long-term health. You know, it does cost more to eat well. A conventional system will finish a beef in 16 months at 1,500 pounds. It takes us 30 months to finish that beef. To 1,300. So we've got less pounds to divide the expenses over. We've got another year in that animal of care and feed and nurturing it along.

Right.

And it, that, it does cost more to do that.

Right.

You know, if we're working on your house and it is a 1-year project, it's not going to cost the same as if it's a 2-year project. But just, you're there longer, it takes more resources. So educating people as to why you want to eat well, to invest in your own longevity and your own mental acumen as long as possible. And then it costs more, but it's a gift you give yourself.

What about related to processing? Do you have any particular challenges in that area that you're dealing with right now?

Processing for, for ranchers, if you're doing direct-to-consumer sales, it's one of the major pinch points in that it's limited. The number of processors that are around, particularly if you want to go the USDA route, But I think we've done our homework to source the best processors in our area. We respect what they do and we respect that we've got to work with them, that they're a business partner. It's not a one-way street. And we really are lucky in this region in that we've got some really high-quality meat processors.

We've sorted through several, but we're down to the real Division I players that are as serious about their businesses as we are. And the product's good. They understand they're the last ones to see the product and it's important what they do. Yeah, we have to book dates a year ahead of time, so it takes planning.

Wow.

And it takes 3 or 4 years of consistent doing everything you said you were going to do to build credibility with them, and then it gets a lot better. Yeah, but they've had an army of people show up, tell them everything they're going to do for them, to not perform and disrupt their businesses. Yeah, so we've earned our way through a lot of the struggles you're probably hear about. Yeah, we've worked our way past that into good solid relationships where they know if we say we'll be there to deliver or to pick up, it'll happen. And they, they relax a lot when they know you're— they can rely on you not to interfere with their business.

It's a two-way street.

Yeah, they've got a tough job and they need us to be reliable the same way we need them to be reliable.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What is it that drives you the most, that gets you back up and at it every day?

For me, it's been the same since I was in college, getting frustrated with why do my food choices have to be a process of deciding which is going to do the least damage to the environment, to my body, to the animals involved or the plants involved? Yeah, for me, it's, it's still the same. Our food choices should be able to enhance our community. And not degrade it or degenerate it. And that's still it, is providing myself that answer and then also sharing that answer with other people. Look, this is food you can put on your plate that you can feel good about. The animals were treated kindly, the land was treated with respect, and all the hands that went along to raise it are empowered to have a better life because of the work that they do too.

I'd be very similar in a way. I really get excited about enhancing the land. It is fun to encourage it.

Yeah.

And to watch it respond. And pretty soon we're weed-free, you know, I mean, it's just amazing how it will work. I really like feeding a good number of people, especially the school kids. And I know that may be the best meal they get that day. I really like helping the other producers come along. And being able to pay them more than they could get on the commodity market and be reliable to them and let them grow and support that. I really like contributing back to a very small community, a bunch of payroll, and the animal side, knowing that what their other options are, that I'm providing hundreds, if you count chickens, it's thousands of animals opportunity to have a life that they would not have otherwise.

Right.

So it's really just the capacity to contribute on such a level in so many areas that it's exciting.

Yeah, that's cool. You've got a lot of good reasons to get up in the morning.

Yeah.

And now we're going to narrow them down a little bit with this barnstorming game that we're going to play. Are you up for having a little fun? Absolutely. Okay. So this is just sort of like a rapid-fire question thing where I'm going to give you two choices. And sometimes maybe more than 2, and you just tell me which one. And it's about keeping it fast and furious. And I should prepare you. You're going to have to make some tough choices here. So we're not, we're not playing favorites. We're just like your preference and maybe why.

Okay. You ready?

Ribs or roast?

Roast.

Roast.

All right. We're already in harmony. Burgers or brats?

Burgers.

That could go either way. They're both delicious.

I'll say maybe one season for one and one for another.

I'll say burgers.

Okay. This one's really tough.

There's more variety with burgers. We can have bison burger, lamb burger.

That's right.

Beef burger. Yeah. So I'll say hamburgers.

Lamb chops or pork chops?

Pork chops. Oh, yeah.

Lamb chops.

All right. It's good to stake a claim there. This is a tough one. Bacon or ham?

Bacon.

Bacon.

Oh, okay.

That's easy.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Uh, Spokane or Seattle?

Spokane.

Depends what I want to do.

It's your day off, Stan, and you can go to Spokane or Seattle. Where would you go?

I'd probably go to Seattle because I'm in Spokane a lot. I enjoy Spokane.

Yeah.

But I— if when I went to Seattle, I would do something out of the ordinary. At the very least, go do the usual Pike's Market thing and wander around through all the little back shops.

Yeah.

But hopefully I could find some great exhibit or something that we might not offer in Spokane.

Gotcha.

We went to a body exhibit where they had— oh yeah, all the nervous system and all that, like something like that.

Uh-huh. Would you ever do that with an animal?

No, I don't know.

Never say never, I guess. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Dinner.

Breakfast for dinner.

Oh yeah, excellent. Well played. Uh, the catalog or magazine you can't wait to see in your mailbox?

Oh, good one.

Everything's on the internet now.

I know. Well, we gotta— we're supposed to go rapid fire.

It's okay. It is a weird one. Like a seed catalog or a— That's good.

Yeah. High Mowing Seeds.

Yeah.

I like Grass Fed Journal.

Yeah. Grass Fed Farmers Journal.

It's got good articles.

Yeah.

I'll have to pick that one up. I've never seen that one.

Yeah.

The tool you couldn't live without.

Oh, this is good.

I actually think— SkyTrak.

The SkyTrak. That's awesome.

What's that?

It's a telescoping forklift. You see them on construction sites, but it's in play all the time.

Yeah.

A four-wheeler would be another one.

Mine is a trucker's hitch. So it's a rope knot that you can cinch down and tie down a load snug.

Yeah.

Good for farmers markets, coolers. It's good for fence posts.

She's good at it. She could rig something to roll.

Good to know. Your favorite time-off activity?

Skiing.

Yeah, that was easy. Where do you like to go skiing?

49 Degrees North is great.

Is our local one. But a couple of years ago we went to Tahoe for a week. This year we went to Big Sky for a week. We've got some friends out of Chicago that it's their big getaway.

Gotcha.

So they like to pick somewhere different.

Oh, nice.

And it's good to get— it's good to truly go away so that we're.

Off farm and— Yeah. They're making noise about Switzerland. So we'll see. Oh, wow.

All right.

Wave that magic wand.

What do you love most about this particular area?

It's the outdoor beauty of it. It's an undiscovered little valley.

I like to say it's on the way to nowhere. And that's not to say that Nelson directly north of us isn't really cool. Yeah, but it's just not trodden. There's not a lot of traffic. Yeah, people don't know it. People either know it and love it or they've never heard of it.

Yeah.

And that's really cool.

The airport's small. It won't land business jets, so it should stay small. I'm from Colorado originally and I watched Aspen, I watched Telluride get discovered.

Yes.

And it changes them.

Yeah. I've never been out here before until this trip and it is spectacular. And yeah, there's nobody here.

Yeah. Yeah.

The start of a perfect day.

On the deck, coffee, sunrise.

That's good. I'm going to say meditating and stretching. Yeah.

Oh, that's good. Good for you.

Yeah. Like about an hour and a half of total alone time.

Uh-huh. Motion is the lotion with the stretching. Last one. Winter, spring, summer, or fall?

I enjoy them all. Winter's awesome.

Yeah.

With the skiing. Playing with the four-wheelers in the snow, pulling inner tubes.

And it sounds like that might be your quieter time of year as well, right? Where you can just sort of regenerate your energy with your family and friends.

And yeah, it's the C-suite time of the year when we're going through projections, planning, margin calculators, enterprise, all our, all our spreadsheets. If you can think it up, we got a spreadsheet on it. We're pretty geeked out on all that.

That's awesome.

I don't know how many of them are useful, but we got them.

A great place for meat and spreadsheets here at Ramstead Ranch. Stan and Eileen, thank you so much for being on the Farm Walks podcast. Thanks for hosting me here at Ramstead Ranch. It's been really fascinating to learn about your processes here and get to know you both personally. So thanks again.

Yeah.

Hey, thank you for including us.

Thank you. Yeah, it's definitely a privilege.

Thanks again so much to Stan and Eileen for having me up to Ramstead Ranch for that fascinating discussion and a delicious lunch. You can learn more about where to find their grass-fed meats or get them delivered to your door at ramsteadranch.com and follow Ramstead Ranch on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for more of their story. That's it for this episode of Farm Walks. If you like what you heard, you can rate, review, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And be sure to share this episode with someone you love, or even just like. For transcripts, show notes, episode evaluation, and more information, be sure to check out our website at farmwalks.org. Behind the scenes logistics and wrangling by Brommie Pugh and Ray Russell of Tilt Alliance and Kate Smith of WSU Food Systems. Farm Walk's website logo and pod art by Riled Up Goats. Field recordings and audio engineering by Made with Bacon Productions. I'm Keith Bacon. We'll see you out there. Thanks for listening.