Farm Walks Season 5 Ep1 - Olsen Farms & Smokey Ridge Meats

This is the Farm Walks podcast brought to you by Tilth alliance and the Washington State University Food Systems Program. I'm your host, Keith Bacon. You might know me from podcasts like Field to Fork and Always West Seattle. Or you might not. In any case, I've been tasked with producing an all new season of Farm Walks and I'm super excited about it. 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 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. How about them apples? In this episode, we're heading out to the northeast corner of the great state of Washington for a story of two independently owned food businesses that worked together like meat and potatoes, and one hardworking couple behind them both.

I am Brent Olson and this is.

My wife, Kira Olson.

We're the owners of Olson Farms and Smokey Ridge Meats.

Welcome to the Farm Walks podcast. I'm Keith Bacon and I'm sitting here with Brent and Kira Olson at Sarah Smokey Ridge Meets in Chewela, Washington. Thank you both for joining me today. We've got a lot to talk about and I'd like to start by talking about the farm story, which, Brent, is your heritage story. Well, let's just start by setting the scene. How many acres are you currently farming? What do you grow and raise and where is that farm located?

The Home Place Farm is about an hour north of where we're at here in Chula. It's north of Colville. We're in a beautiful mountain valley there. I started off with about 200 acres. In the early days, I was interested in growing mixed vegetables. So I had about a 2 acre vegetable garden that was supplying restaurants and stores in the Spokane area. From there I was interested in growing hay and started to do that. At the time. My grandfather, who lived to be almost 101 at the farm, he was like, you gotta get some cattle, Brent. And so I, I got about two calves and he was like, well, that's not a herd. So he helped me out and grew it from there. So I had cattle going, vegetables, hay, and about that time, Smokey Ridge Meats, where we're at now, was ready to start trying to do USDA processing because I Was selling some cattle like halves, holes and quarters.

Right.

But I was direct marketing. Meanwhile, I was in Seattle, finally selling, selling potatoes, primarily about 15 to 20 varieties. And I thought, I want to add meat to this. I wasn't eating much meat and I was like, gosh, I want to know where my meat comes from. And I sensed that. So did other people want that? So I worked towards purchasing Smoky ridge meats. I started leasing it to buy it In, I think 2007 ish. At that point we had the smokers and all that. And I thought, we gotta add some pigs to this operation. People like bacon and ham. So I morphed the. My direct market farm into meat and potatoes. So we currently grow about 20 acres of potatoes. I run cattle on several hundred acres and grow probably 3 to 400 acres of hay. We put up all our own hay for the cattle.

That's a lot.

Yeah, it keeps us plenty busy.

And you're in several different locations.

Yeah. So we're going down the Aladdin valley, north of Colville is where we're primarily at.

Cool. We're going to talk a little bit more about Smokey Ridge meats in a minute. Getting back to the farms, I'm curious about the potatoes. You grow over 15 varieties of organic potatoes. How did you zero in on that?

My sister was working on her doctorate down at wsu and she's a world famous potato scientist right now.

Oh, wow.

Shout out Dr. Norals. Very proud of her. But I couldn't grow lettuce and things like that to support me year round. I really wanted to be a full time farmer. That was a big deal to me. So I thought potatoes something that I can try to market all through the year.

Right.

So I was really trying to push myself into that. And I loved it. It was a little bit like at that time how the apple industry, every variety had its name and where potatoes were just like, oh, it's a russet or a white potato, red potato. So all these fun names. German butterball, Desiree Huckleberry gold. And we brought some excitement to the game. And my first time I remember going to it was 1999, the market down at Pike Place. And they would, on labor day, they would shut it down just for farms. Taste of Washington, I think they called it. And the reception we got from the food press there and from customers, I was like, I didn't even know there was this many $20 bills available. And we drove back being like, all right, this is great and amazing. So we have this beautiful rack and we had all the potatoes polished up and. And the response is great. And then we just really thought, okay, this is the way I want to go.

Do you have one most unique or popular potato that I stumble when I.

Get asked that question all the time.

Because, like, they're all your favorite.

What's your favorite child? You know, it's like. But we sell a lot of German butterballs. Yukon Gold's always popular. It just stores so well for us, the binche, the Dutch frying variety. When, like about this time of year when we start to run out, that's one that people start to panic. Are they going to be back? I'm like, yeah, give us about a month. But we do try to pack potatoes. We got a great storage unit just drawing a cool map, mountain air. So we can sometimes market potatoes 52 weeks out of the year. We come close. So yeah.

Cool. You talked about when you added livestock to the Olson farm operation. Can you tell me a little bit more about the animals you raise and how you raise them and maybe what your goals are for livestock operation related to environmental sustainability?

I was not eating that much meat at all, but I did see, like having this one animal putting grass in front of it and watching it turn into this really high quality meat. The other end of it then was having a processing facility small enough because a lot of that is like low stress on the animals. Deal to us. We really tried to vertically integrate ourselves that way with the cold potatoes. The ones that don't make it for the market, we put in the potato bins for the cows and those turn to cows and we take them and the back of the truck, the cattle come running. They just are there in the snow just munching on those and it's very satisfying. That's awesome. So we really tried to be where everything that we were growing at the farm went into the animals.

Gotcha.

Being as sustainable as possible.

And with your crops, do you do much experimentation and rotation or do you mostly stick with the known hits?

Usually I drop a few varieties and add a few varieties for a year. And the great thing about direct marketing, I can see what's popular, what I can grow, what stores well, what seed is available. And then we do rotate. We're about on a four to five year rotation. So we'll go into alfalfa after potato crop to try to fix as much nitrogen as possible.

Right.

Four years out. And then we don't have really any buildup of Colorado potato beetles. Keeps us in pretty good shape. Cool.

Seattle area farmers markets are a big Part of your business.

They are.

It seems like you might be at all of them.

We are.

In fact, we've been. I think I'm the oldest farm at the Ballard Farmers Market. We have been there since its inception. I don't want to jinx myself here. Where's that wood to knock on? But we have not missed a market at the U District or Ballard, I think since 2009 or so. So pushing like a thousand plus weekend. So we're a mainstay there. First farmers market ever did was in Spokane in 1996. And I remember I made $25 or something. I'm driving home, but I was like, this is great. And I just would. My whole day would memorize, like what every customer bought. I'm interested in what people want and what they don't. And it does really give you a good game plan for how you want to grow the next season or where you want to keep taking it.

So is that based on your customer interactions?

Exactly, exactly. So you can read stuff and say, oh, this or that. But it's like just micro for me or my crew now. We talk to thousands of people a week and we get a good idea what they're looking for, what they're not. Packaging size now, cuts of meat, varieties of potatoes. It's pretty fascinating, really.

And did meat take off in a huge way as soon as you started doing that at the farmer's market specifically, or.

It did. At first I was. I thought, we'll find out, you know, if people are coming back to get more burger than. That's a good product. So it did really kind of blossom. I really love selling potatoes. That's kind of my. My thing. But the meat kind of came along and it's been a great sidekick. So when people are like, oh, meat and potatoes, I get it. And I'm like, well, we don't. We don't mess around here.

That timeless combo.

So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Oh, you talked about how being at the farmer's market helps you inform your decisions about what you're going to raise or sell. What are consumers most interested and related to? Maybe your livestock production practices or about the quality of the meats. What kind of conversations do you have with people at the farmer's market about that?

I think they really enjoy just buying locally and not from a larger chain. And I think a lot of people, customers understand that. We do own Smoky Ridge meat, so we kind of have a vertically integrated chain here. A lot of it's just a connection. I think people in the Western side of the state. And here they want to know, like, how was the past coming over? How's your weather there? It's a lot of just this geographical connection too. Even outside of the livestock or the potatoes and even like, how's your irrigation going? So I think it's a lot of just relationships on my lifestyle.

Right.

What we're doing right. Yesterday was a tough day. Irrigation problems and cattle problems. But I'll go to Seattle this weekend and people will be so appreciative for what we do. And it rekindles my spirits and gets me fired up. And it's. It makes it exciting like on the truck. And it's wintertime. It's like, I gotta get to the farmer's market. These people are depending on me. So it's a really. It's a really big deal to me.

And that's cool.

Exciting.

So it's a win win really when. When relationship and very personal. It goes back into a different time from before where people have those kinds of relationships with their farmers and providers and things like that.

Yeah, it really does.

That's really cool.

Yeah, it's really neat. So. Yeah.

How do you build trust with customers.

In the first days? That was really important to me was quality. You gotta have quality if people are gonna come back.

Yeah.

And consistency was a big deal because I'd see some farms if you were a restaurant and I could get you something one week. But I was like, I gotta have this to scale enough so I can bring Keith this bingy potatoes every week if he needs 10 pounds of them to make french fries. That was really important to me. I think then people really came to trust us that it was gonna. We're gonna show up right? And have it there. It's always my saying that we market potatoes about 52 weeks out of the year. But if I ever run out of potatoes, like there's maybe a couple week window.

Huh.

It's. I get so depressed. I just go sit in my truck and pout because I'm like, terrible. Like, when's the new crop? And I'm like, they should be the water if the weather's better, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I just go hide a potato pout. Yes, it definitely is. Definitely is.

And you also have some working relationships, I believe, with several notable Seattle restaurants, including Tomo in White center and the Art of the Table. How did you cultivate those connections?

It's all really just been grassroots there on the streets. Again, my love for the markets, because you don't know if you're $1,000 day. Who you met. Did some chef come through that? You're going to have a great relationship for years. I've been really fortunate. I haven't had to beat on people's doors.

Okay.

Which has been great.

So they're coming to you.

I think a lot of that just being on the streets consistently out there. Lots of different markets. That was another goal. When you said all of them was to hit as many neighborhoods as possible and then be in those neighborhoods and get people. And we wish all the market neighborhoods stayed open year round. Yeah. When markets started to go year round, that was like, hallelujah. And if you're shopping in Columbia City and it ends, hopefully you come up to Seattle.

Yeah.

Shop with us. So that's a lot of our goal to get people to. To go year round. And then with the chef. Sorry, back to that. Was somebody who's a sous chef or working in the kitchen somewhere, they would see our product come in, and when they were elevated to another restaurant or head chef. So the spinoffs, like Brady at Tomo was like, he was at Canlis during the pandemic. Amazing timing. Yeah. He and Kira were on the speed dial, and together we were like, so much meat and potatoes. And it was pretty fascinating time. Yeah.

They really mastered the pivot.

They did. They did. I think it was funny. It was the day that on Friday the 13th, March, when they shut down, I got a call. I was just leaving the Canlas parking lot, and I almost got on a wreck on 99 because my mom said my kids weren't going to go to school anymore and they're shutting the farmers markets down. And I was like, what? And so I was like, I'm not taking that. So we. And a handful. I just drove my truck there the next day, and we basically just parked at every spot to keep a footprint there. And I think that was a huge thing, too. People really appreciate us just being out there on the streets again. Like, it was pretty. Pretty rugged. But people, they needed us, and I needed them. So it was a great time.

But, yeah, they still had to get their food somewhere.

They did, exactly.

Out in the streets. Probably the best place.

But Brady and Canlas. Yeah, the pivot was amazing. I had one gal who worked for me at the time. She goes, are they going to save the farm? Because trucks go in there. But that was pretty neat.

And do you hear about those restaurant connections from your customers at the farmers market?

Yeah. A lot of them will say, oh, we saw you on the menu, or we had your potatoes at Union Saloon or wherever, wherever they might be. So, yeah, it's great. It just makes a big city or community feel like a smaller community.

Gotcha.

Really. I mean, I used to be a lot of my Sundays up on Capitol Hill at the farmer's market up there, and I'd walk down to get. I tell that story.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, so I walked down the street in this big city up there to go get ice in the morning. I would say hi and talk to 20, 30 people. Be like, hey, Brian, we'll see you in a few minutes. So, yeah, it's really, really special thing.

That's awesome. Talking or thinking about just Olson Farms right now. What would you say are the biggest challenges facing that business?

Always weather is an issue, but we can mitigate that. I used to be able to get away with growing my potatoes dry land, not even using irrigation at times. And that's virtually impossible now. I was doing a lot of rain dances then at the time. Come on cloud just so. But labor is just so critical to me is in the early days when it's smaller, I could be like, I'll just try to do everything. I was trying to do everything. And now I've. I'm really dependent and I love all the people I've met and worked for me or work with me. It's been great. But there's always a lot of kind of pressure of we have enough staff for everything, and that continues even down here to Smokey Ridge. But am I going to put together enough of a crew to get the harvest out in time and equipment, something breaking and just trying to do a million different things? You know, sometimes I wish time would just slow down.

Yeah.

It's funny. People will complain about the weather in the winter time and sounds like there's nothing better when things are a little bit slower. Yeah. Enjoy the winter. Fair enough.

I think one way that Olson Farms rose to one of its challenges was by purchasing Smokey Ridge Meats. And let's talk a little bit about that, how that came to be. I mean, this is a business that was in operation since the 90s.

I maybe, yeah, it could have been.

It was a different type of operation.

It was more like custom cut and wrap. We still do process wild game for people, so there's a lot of hunters and then ranchers bring in some animals here.

We do custom livestock as well. Kind of combination of USDA inspected and custom. What they call custom exempt, which is still requires permitting, but from the ws, the Washington State Department of Agriculture So that meat is just meant for people's own consumption, or they can sell it to just a small handful of people, but not market it like, one piece at a time, like the USDA product. So it was custom shop and mobile slaughter truck.

When they finally got usda, but not the slaughter, I was bringing a couple animals here, and they were just going under. It's not. It's a tough business to make, whether, again, labor and equipment and the margins are just non. Existent.

Yeah.

But the. The thing was, I was like, I got to keep this thing going was really critical for me. I was like, because we serve such a big region, and for myself, I was stakeholder in it. So that's why I thought I got to keep rolling. Now, if I can segue back really quick, how. Because Kira really is amazing. Really has turned Smoky Ridge into what it is today. If I didn't have Kira here, I would be in trouble. But. So I'm at. So the Farmer's Market 2010. And I was just a Norwegian single bachelor, you know, married to the farm. Yeah. And Alan Worthington, gentleman worked for me forever and passed away several years ago. But a great guy. And he was my. What do you call that? Your. When you help people, meet people. You're wingman.

Oh, you're wingman.

My wingman. So Kira's a little younger than me, so she's a manager at the university farmers market. Oh, okay. And so Alan's Kira seems great. So I thought, I'm gonna ask Kira. I thought he's. Let's just see if she wants to go out and get a beer with you or something. So I'm going to pay at the end of the day. And I was like, hey, do you want to maybe go get a beer or something? And she says, no. You know, she says, I got.

I didn't say no. I said, oh, I have something I have to do. Which was true.

Right?

Which was true.

So I thought the next week I was like, I can't bother the manager, so I'm paying. And she says, hey, so are we gonna go out for that beer or what? I was like, oh. So my guy Alan was like, well, I'm not going with you guys. So I was like, great. So Kira and I go out, have a nice time. The next day, I'm at the Broadway, the Capitol Hill farmer's market. And Alan asked me, did you and Kira have fun? I said, oh, yeah, it was great. We had a great time. And he goes, what are you going to do now? And I said, see her next Saturday. He goes, no, no, no. He goes, the kids love texting. This is 2010, the kids. So I remember at the back of the truck, he's trying to teach me how to text. You got to abbreviate stuff. And so I thought, okay, whatever. So out at the home place of the farm, cell service out there. So I was in town on a Wednesday going to the bank and I thought, maybe I'll send Kira a text. So I sent. I remember abbreviated, like, how about next sat for like Saturday? Very cool. So at that point, I had 20 head of cattle that were like missing on the Colville National Forest. So it was a crazy scene. So there's this beautiful drive up on top of Bonary Ridge. And I thought, we'll take that way and see if I see the cattle up there and up on top of the mountain spot where I love. All of a sudden my phone pings in and it was Kir responding. Wow, look at you. Text message or something. Oh. So I was like, wow, that's a.

Big deal for him.

Yeah. I told Al. I was like, wow, that does work. So anyways, so Kira and I, yeah, we fell in love and it was kind of a hush hush at the farmer's market. So anyways, Kira moved out here in 2012.

And that was right after you purchased.

It was right about the time we were just pulling the trigger from renting to lease.

Okay.

I blame it on her.

She said, but it was just at that point he had purchased the business, if that makes sense, and not the physical property.

I see.

So you were in the process of purchasing the Smokey Ridge name and all the equipment and stuff inside the building. But it was sort of this segmented deal where then we had more time to decide if we were going to buy the building and the 21 acres that's here and finalize all that. And it was another year or more before we actually decided to do that. And I did contribute to that decision, but I was also, in those early years, I was having babies.

Okay.

So, yeah, so I wasn't able to be down here regularly right away. As Brent mentioned, he continued to employ the previous owners to sort of manage the place.

Right.

Because he had zero time. He was already filling all of his time, seven days a week with farming and marketing. So I think the first thing I started to do to be involved was I took over the bookkeeping because it was something that I could do from home with the kids. And then we just started to, oh, just feel like we needed to have a Little more control and take the business and not like I was really looking for something to do.

You had your hands full.

Yeah, but that was. I had more time than Brent did. And we did have a amazing and very notable level of support from Brent's mom, who lives with us, or we live with her. And she had already been helping Brent with Olson Farms for many years. Bookkeeping, customer service, all that kind of stuff. But she was available to help us with the kids, too. So I started being down at Smokey Ridge more and more until it got to the point where I was here pretty regularly.

Gotcha. I appreciate the shout out to my mom, Myrna Olson. Super amazingly important. And we talked about restaurants a lot of times. Now we're in this age of artificial intelligence, but people would say, is your mom real? Because she was just on the phone and every, like, the most pleasant conversation every Tuesday morning when she called the restaurants for their orders. So it's pretty neat. So she's incredible. But yeah, Kira's right about that.

That's awesome.

Kind of free cure up to spend more and more of her energy here.

And what were some of your priorities when you started getting more involved, Kira?

I mean, it was certainly a steep learning curve because I have. I mean, neither Brent or I have any background in meat processing. And in fact, when Brent and I met, I was what he calls the recovering vegetarian, or even I was even actually vegan for some period of time.

There whole another podcast, I had just.

Started eating some meat again that I was getting at the farmer's market, some from Brent, some from other farms. And so occasionally I'll run into people that haven't seen me for many years and like, wait, you do what? Like, last time I saw you, you're a vegan idealist college student, and now you're soldering. So, I mean, obviously the first thing was because I was doing the bookkeeping, like, getting that in order. And as Brett mentioned, this business, and not just this specific one, but this type of business is very difficult to operate and stay out of the red and carry on functioning with all the different challenges. So that was the first thing I was doing, was dialing in on making sure that the money situation was okay.

Gotcha.

And then those first few years, the farm was helping Smokey Ridge, and there were some tough times. Some of the biggest challenges are very on par with what Brent talked about being challenges at the farm, both labor, staffing, and equipment. Yeah, at Smokey Ridge here, we rely heavily on multiple types of equipment that if they break down, we Cease to operate temporarily. Whether it's refrigeration units, like that's disastrous. It can be saws, grinders. If these things aren't working right, we have to stop and find a solution before we can carry on. There's the pressure of we're dealing with perishable product and then the labor question is always there. We're very fortunate now. And actually it's a weird feeling to have sort of benefited from the pandemic.

Yeah.

But we did in a way prior to it. Smokey Ridge was a very seasonally imbalanced business where we would be very busy in the fall to an uncomfortable degree. But we were just trying to jam as much in as we could because that's when the demand was there. And then we would hit January and it's like we didn't have jobs and we couldn't retain people year round as well. And then the pandemic really shifted the whole dynamic of the small scale meat industry. And all of a sudden we had more of these small farms and ranches making appointments to get animals processed because they were like getting on the bandwagon and market locally.

Right.

Instead of taking their animals live to the sale, they were developing different marketing plans. And so we shifted completely to being relatively busy on a more year round basis. And that helped us to be able to maintain. Yeah. And a better quality of staff, for lack of a better word, people that weren't being fired from other jobs and looking for seasonal jobs, people who would stay. So there was a time prior to the pandemic when I was here a lot because I felt like I had to be to mitigate disaster. Because I mean, to be frank, we didn't always have a reliable crew that we could feel was going to do things correctly and be even showing up to make sure that everything happened the way it needed to happen. But now I'm usually here two days a week, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But we have some really integral players here that hold down the fort. And some of those people have now been here for several years and this is part of their lives.

Right.

And they're invested in this business and kind of personal way. I mean, never to the level that we are, but sure. But in a way that's really valuable to us.

This episode of the Farm Walks podcast was funded by the USDA National Institute of Agriculture, AFRI grant number 2022-68-00637269. Complexity and trade offs in animal agriculture Sustainability. Building awareness and trust between producers and consumers.

How many people do you employ here at Smokey Ridge now? And are you where you'd like to be with staffing?

15 to 20, depending on the season. So right now I think it's closer to 15. But yeah, I mean, it does ebb and flow. And we do unfortunately sometimes have really valuable people have to leave. And of course, occasionally people that have to be fired try to avoid that, obviously. But yeah, so 15.

15 to 20.

15 to 20. And some full time, some part time. And most of people are part time, are kind of voluntarily part time. That's what works for them. I have one woman who works here who drives a school bus. So she drives her route in the morning, comes in, helps wrap me, and then leaves in the afternoon to do a route again. And that works fine.

We do take a lot of pride in that. Just the job creation that.

Yeah, I was.

I was curious.

These skilled meat processors are an increasingly rare breed. So are you doing sort of training programs or how are you attracting people to these jobs?

We're unfortunately, we've had some skilled cutters, so when the younger folks come in, there's somebody to mentor them. It's neat. I was just reading that Oregon State starting like a meat cutting school or some interest down at WSU for that. So hopefully, you know, all that stuff becomes cool again. And there are more people who want to be involved with that. They're smart and want to do something and usually can get somebody to where.

They need to be.

Right?

Yeah. Most of the people who work here are local people. Many of them grew up here and didn't choose to leave the area. And that is a challenge that we're in a rural location with a limited pool of people to pull from. Like, we're just far enough away from Spokane that it's too far of a commute. I mean, a couple times we've had people that were living in Spokane work here, but not for like long term periods of time. Like, most of our staff lives within a half an hour, which here, that's close enough. When you're out rural, you're. You have to get used to driving around a little bit further. Yeah, I think right now maybe we only have one person who works here that had previous experience with meat cutting and in food business. So most people have learned here. But some people came in with a level of comfort handling me and handling animals because of the rural lifestyle that they grew up in, that they all grew up hunting and cutting up their own game meats and handling livestock on their family's ranches. And so it's not, it's not so much a foreign experience like it might be for some people who have grown up in more urban environments.

Gotcha.

And I mean, for better or for worse, pretty much everyone is comfortable with knives and guns. And we don't use, we don't use many often any more regular guns here now that we're in our indoor kill floor. There's different kinds of specialized equipment for that. Certainly knives.

Yeah.

Knowing how to sharpen a knife, that's a life skill.

Less than 101. Let's talk a little bit about your customers for Smokey Ridge. I mean, part of the reason you purchased this business was to process the Olson Farms meat. But you're not just processing your meat here. Who are your other customers here?

We have, I think if we went down the customer list, hundreds, like over the course of a year we probably serve. And I did calculate these numbers at some point a couple of years ago. It's 100 or so different customers. Now some of those people are just making an appointment once a year to bring in like their own animals that then they're just going to put the meat in their own freezer.

Right.

But a bunch of those customers are small farms and ranches like us that want to market their meat in a way that requires USDA inspection. Whether it's at farmers markets, grocery stores, restaurants. Online now is a big one. And that has come with some learning and flexibility about how we package and portion the meat so it's more ready to sell online where someone's not there with a scale being able to weigh each piece and.

Right.

Farms are right around here in Stevens county and we'll see where they're marketing their meat in different ways. But we are serving farms and ranchers that come from the west side, a couple that come over from Idaho, which isn't too far from here, but.

Right.

So I mean some. Sometimes we have people come pretty far distance just because there, there really isn't a lot of options for small scale.

Geographic region by having the USDA stamp here is critical. I think Kira's kept that alive for us. The other thing too, it's a pretty neat program that people are involved with is the school lunch program. So we're doing a lot of meat for different farms and ranches that even ourselves serving potatoes and meat to like lots of the small rural school districts, which is pretty exciting to see that they're getting like purple majesty potatoes and grass fed beef in Chilean. I mean that's a great thing.

That's really cool. I imagine with the services that you provide here at Smokey Ridge being in such demand, you probably don't have to really advertise or market your service as much. How do you connect with customers?

We haven't done much advertising, although we have just this last year or this year and last winter. We did slow down a little bit to the extent that we thought about we should promote ourselves in some way. We didn't really actively do that, but we thought about it.

That's step one.

Just do the best you can, have good customer service, do a quality job. And then you're like, hey, where did you get your steer processed? And so a lot of word, word of mouth.

Huge.

Yeah. And because we are one of the only USDA inspected small processors available, I mean, not to say that people come here because we're the only option because there are other options.

Right.

We still have to do the best job we can to give quality products because people can go elsewhere.

And another great program that Kira's got here is our smoked meat program. Does a great job of the hams and the bacon. Not everybody has that option. We make a lot of meat sticks for ranches that we're marketing jerkies and sticks and stuff. So we do give all that kind of added value options. Right. For people.

Yeah. And there, I mean, we do, like I mentioned earlier, we do custom exempt processing also.

Okay.

So we might do some USDA inspected product and some custom exempt product in the same day.

Okay.

So there's regulations we need to follow with that. We're always starting with the USDA and then moving along to the custom.

Right.

To follow regulation. But there's tons of little custom meat shops around. I don't even know about all of them. There's tons. People have a lot of options for custom meat processing if they're just going to consume it themselves or they're going to sell it by. I think for beef, you can sell down to a quarter of a share or, sorry, an eighth of a share and still be under the custom exempt WSDA program.

Right.

But some. But we do have custom exempt customers because they like our smoked meat. There's a lot of little custom shops that don't have smoking equipment at all.

Okay.

So they might. They don't really want to process pigs. And if they do, then they have to find somewhere else to bring the bellies and the legs to get them brined and smoked. But then like Brent said, like, we're obviously have some competition and even if we didn't, we still want to strive to provide the best product we can. And not to say that we never make mistakes. We do. And actually, I think one of the most important pieces of building relationships and maintaining the trust is how we react when we do make a mistake. Someone will come and pick up the order and we've made a mistake with the crate count on the number of crates that we should be pulling out of the freezer. And if somebody leaves here and we realize that we've missed a crate, I am going to try really hard not to make them come back. Unless they live right up the road.

And they say, me and you'll drive them. Their meat not come back.

Exactly. I don't want them to have to come back and inconvenience them to come drive all the way back here to get the rest of their meat that we missed. So I will find out where they live or where's a convenient spot for me to bring your meat to you. You know, if we make a mistake with order, we don't try to cover it up. We're going to own up to it right away and talk to the customer about, like, how.

Kira's very earnest. You can tell.

I was like, what would be satisfying.

You're a lucky man.

Yeah. Because we want the customer to be satisfied with how we deal with the problem and. And in that, lend to that trust. So just the fact that we're admitting that we made a mistake, hopefully, is the first step in gaining their trust. See, we're not going to lie. We're not going to make up that something else happened or cover it up. We're just going to tell you, like, we did this dumb thing. Yeah, yeah.

Head on.

And how. What should we do about it? And sometimes that means, like, compensating people financially for product that they want to process a different way.

Yeah.

Like, oh, how much you charge for it? Basically, we'll buy it from you.

Could you give me, like, a rough percentage of customers between ranchers, hunters, and people who somehow just got their hands on a bunch of meat?

So number of customers would be a different question than quantity of meat.

Right.

So as far as quantity of meat, we're probably, especially including ourselves. As Olson Farms, we're probably well over half USDA meat that's being marketed direct to the public from businesses. And then game is seasonal. So it's really. I mean, I wouldn't think it would be more than like 15% of our sales or something like that. And that also can change from year to year. I don't know. What the factors are.

Yeah, that's a good rough estimate. And you were talking about building consumer customer trust. Are there some areas that you find that difficult or more challenging?

There is this age old, like no meat processor can avoid. There's going to be those people that are suspicious that you've taken their meats or switched their meat with someone else's.

Like, it's like, it's a thing.

Yeah, it's a thing. Yield. What? I should have more of this. I'm like, no, we really are. Like, you saw when I showed you around the facility here that all the carcasses are very clearly tagged with who they belong to. And we're tracking the hanging weights accurately with digital scales that are calibrated. And we're tagging all the meat all the way through the process, at every step of the way. Like, we have a USA inspector here on sale all the time. So even if it's custom product, if she walks into the cooler or the freezer and she sees a crate or a tray of meat that's not labeled at all, that's a problem. Yeah, so we. Everything is labeled with an identity.

The paperwork and the chain is.

So I mean, the idea that we're switching one carcass with another or something like that, I don't even know how we would manage to do that. Like, we would have to try to.

Mess up in this age of the fake news and all that. I remember listening to Kira talking to a customer and he was convinced that wasn't his steer.

It was not like that. The steak had not come from his animal.

It's just, okay, it is your animal here. And then he kept re. She goes, okay, we have to start a basis here. Yeah, that this was your animal. Because it's like where we are in politics now these days too. It's like, do matter.

No alternative.

So, I mean, that's a challenge. And then you are dealing with variation in quality of the product that's coming in in the first place. So you can have two people raising pigs and the quality of the meat is inherently dramatically different. It can be. So then of course you can run into problems where the customer might want to blame us for that, which there's some education involved there.

Right.

But like if someone brings in a super fatty pig, the bacon is made out of the belly slab and sometimes the belly slab is like almost all fat. So we'll sometimes, if it feels appropriate, give a courtesy call to the customer and say, hey, you know, your animal was really fatty. Do you still want us to go ahead and make the bacon.

So you're sort of proactive about logging these?

Try to be. Yep. This is really dry. Do you want us to add some fat in to make your. Your summer sausage higher quality?

Right?

It's okay. You can go either way. Yeah.

Let's go. Yeah. Back to curious customer service and learning the business. Yeah. Pretty valuable, but. And yeah, one pig will look different than another. And the quality of the meat does make a challenge. Where we're not in a facility where everything's just uniform shape coming in, machines do it. So even the cutters back there, like, they'll look at a super big steer, and the next month they're looking at a smaller animal. And so the cutting skills is really all over the board. I mean. I mean, challenge. Yeah, it's not an easy job, so we gotta really be able to be flexible.

It makes it a challenge also for the people who are wrapping the meat. Because there's so much variation based on what the animal ate, what breed it was. Sometimes the cuts don't always look the same. Like, the top sirloin off of one steer might look totally different than a top sirloin off of a different breed of cow. So the wrappers have to be aware of the variation, what things can look like, and get used to that, be on top of things. And they're also doing a lot of record keeping, so it's really not an easy job. So sometimes we'll hire people who haven't had an experience in this field before, and there's a lot of learning to do, and we depend on them to keep it all in their head.

And you developed an online system for meat processing customers. How did that come about? And how's that working out for you?

That's been great, actually. It's not perfect, but it saved a whole lot of time and energy in being on the phone, tracking people down, trying to get their cutting instructions verbally.

Yeah.

And then, I mean, the other piece of it is, you know, when we're talking about potential conflict with customers, it really enables us to say, this is what you asked for. Where in the past, we definitely had some experiences where people had a different memory and we might have about what their cutting instructions had been. I asked for steaks.

I'm like, thank you.

Ask for roast. But if we have, you know, it's in writing on the online system.

Right.

And we can just. I mean, Dorian is our office manager here, and she does a wonderful job of communicating with customers up front, providing them with all of our guidelines. And explaining to them ahead of time how our systems work, encouraging to submit their cutting instructions even before they bring their animals.

Right.

And that can be a huge help in the, that online system can make it easier, especially now. Like, of course there's occasionally going to be some people like old school who, they don't use the computer, they don't even use a cell phone. Like they're just gonna come in the front door and write it down. And that's fine and that's fine. But for most people it's, they're actually more comfortable doing it that way on their own time. The system doesn't always work for the USDA customers who are asking for lots of sort of special things.

Okay.

Or who are asking for that secondary product like the smoked meats and. But they can always submit their instructions online and then send an email, follow up, like further explaining, you know, didn't give me the option for this, but can I have my short ribs like flank and cut or what? So they can always have follow up communication. But that, that has helped us a lot.

And you're hearing from your customers that they really like that system too? For the most part?

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. We haven't heard any complaints. And it does help because, you know, we are very sympathetic. We're dealing with busy ranchers like you call them in the middle of the day when it's. Dorian's work hours is not necessarily gonna be a convenient time for them to like get off their tractor and answer a bunch of questions about how they want their beef to be cut. So if it was me, I would be submitting them at 5 o' clock in the morning. Some people are submitting them at 11 o' clock at night. They can do that on their own time and ask questions later if they need to.

That's great. In addition to basic cut and wrap services, you also make sausages and smoked meats and other products. Is that something that was carried over from the original owners or is it something that you have developed more on your own?

Some of both, actually. I mean, this place is called Smokey Ridge Meats and that's largely because the previous owners, I think, were doing a.

Lot of beef smoking, were doing a.

Lot of smoking products and we're proud of that. We still use some of the same recipes that they were using then, but we definitely have added onto that and developed our smoked meat program to include new and interesting things or new flavors within the same category. And our friend and employee Seth has contributed to the, to that over the Years. And he works alongside Brent over in Seattle and he has a background in the high end meat industry.

Okay.

Or restaurant industry. Sorry is what I meant. So he, he has a different idea than we might have here out in the, in the rural area about what people are asking for.

And again, that's kind of neat too about being there at the markets around the street, you're hearing what people are interested and we're like, hey. So then we're always to Kira, hey, Kira, can we try this? Can we make this style or do that?

So that's hard to keep up on.

A lot of developments come from.

Interesting.

We've also shifted. We have several different kinds of pork sausages that we make. We used to use like all of them were using seasoning mixes that were already like pre mixed in a package. So you'd open your little package and you put it in 25 pounds of meat. And we've shifted a lot of them over now. So we're actually blending up our own seasoning and we'll make a bulk amount of it so that when it's time to make the sausages, we put the certain amount in all at once. So it's efficient. But Seth has helped us develop some of those recipes. So we've shifted away, been able to get some of the ingredients off of our label that some people question, like, what is that? Like, I don't know. Yeah, let's make one without it or we had developed a recipe for kielbasa and sugar was one of the ingredients. And then at one point somebody asked for it without sugar, like, okay, we'll try it. And we made it without sugar and it tasted no different.

Interesting.

So now we just don't have sugar in the kielbasa.

So that this is something you're hearing from your customers about customizing your products. And does it also maybe economically pencil out better? I mean, if you're not purchasing a spice mix and making your own, is that sort of an advantage to you in that way or it can be.

I mean, it's sort of an exchange though, of time.

I think the neat thing about is though that we can pivot that easily. We're our own, we're kind of in charge. So yeah, we can try to do that. Let's try to do that without sugar where you might not get anywhere. If you're asking some bigger place, it's doing that for.

Right.

So that's great.

And when we were taking a little walk around here, you were showing me a new addition that's coming soon. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure. So we. We have three different rooms in our processing facility here. We're cutting and wrapping me and doing all. Making all these products that we've talked about. But we have had sort of a component missing, so we were able to get some grant funding to help create a commercial kitchen. It's small, but it'll be big enough to make some additional products that we don't have the facility and space here already to do.

We're making, like, rendered fats, Tallow and tallow and lard.

Beef, pork, and lamb. Rendered fat and stocks.

All the stocks. Making a beautiful ramen.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. That's been popular.

So these are things. Brent's able to say that these have been popular, even though our kitchen here is not finished, because we've been able to make some of these things already over the past two years. Our friend Seth has been doing that, but using restaurants kitchens, which we've sort of outgrown and wanted to have a kitchen space of our own. So we're working on getting that finished up, and then we'll be able to have those products under USDA inspection and potentially offer making those to other farms as well. And that's increasing the income that we're all getting from each of our animals, but also reducing the byproduct and waste that our facility is having to handle, because that's a whole other challenge.

Right, right.

Another way that adding to your product base or listening to customer feedback is sort of maybe penciling out in your favor.

Yes. And once the space is. It's finished and we're kind of rolling on making the products that we're already planning on making, because we know. We know how to do it.

We have branching out from there.

Yeah. Then we'll have flexibility on other things that we can add and different ways that we can use that space.

Great. We've talked a lot about challenges in both of the businesses, but I'd love to hear. What do you love most about what you're doing at Olson Farms and Smokey Ridge? What keeps you going and getting up every day?

Like I said, just all the people. Just the fabric of how the day goes. It's never the same. It's always a challenge. It's like putting a puzzle together.

Right.

I'm really fortunate to, you know, like, my mom's involvement, my sister especially potato thing, giving me some advice and working with Kira and sometimes. Sometimes having a family business like that is a real challenge. Separating the two things. Yes, could definitely be, but it's rewarding. We're really lucky. Yesterday, so we were having a tough day, but Kira was like, gosh, we could be in a cubicle somewhere and you know, so, so we're fortunate we live in this beautiful part of the country. We were outside a lot watching how nature works and how seasons come and go and what we get out of it. And then again, then that, that cycle back that how excited people are at markets or restaurants and how much they appreciate it. It just really keeps driving it, driving it forward.

Yeah. I think my answer would be pretty similar. I'm not in the position to be interacting with the customers as much. But as far as people, I mean, it's also people that keep me motivated to both the customers that we serve here at Smokey Ridge that we're enabling to live the lifestyles they want to live. Just like we do at our farm. Being able to be outside and work with the land and animals, but also the people that work here that we, that we really care about. And if we didn't exist, they'd be doing something else. But I'm glad that they're here.

That's great.

And that we can work together to give each other sense of purpose every day and know that we're, we are important. And sometimes that is a good thing to remind people whatever you're doing right now may be mundane or maybe sometimes gross or whatever, but this is really important.

Yes.

That you're doing this for a lot of people out there that if you weren't, they couldn't do what they love.

What would you say you are most proud of with your businesses here?

One thing would be I've been proud that I've been able to be a full time farmer. That we, that's Kira and I, that's how we make our. All our income is from our farming businesses. I'm not invested in the stock market, I'm not investing any other companies. We're only invested in Olson Farms and Smokey Ridge and all of our resources come through that. And so I'm proud of that. Yeah.

And I would imagine that is also something that your customers appreciate as well. When people are talking about the sourcing of things or the minimal processing things and stuff. And if it's all happening here, that I would imagine is something that is appealing to your customers too.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

That's great. Okay, one last quick thing. It's a new thing that we're doing called barnstorming. And so I'm going to name two or multiple things and you Are just going to tell me which one. Which one you want. And you can add, like, a quick. Because of this, we don't have to go deep into it. And I've never done this with two people and a married couple at the same time. So this might be kind of like a Newlywed Game episode. So let's dive in. Does that sound like fun? All right. Okay. Hash browns or home fries?

Hash browns, home fries.

Okay. Our first division. Gosh, I hope this is going to work out. Brat or burger?

Burger. Okay.

Lamb chops or pork chops?

Pork.

Pork chops. Hard choice, but the pork chops are so good. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Bacon or ham?

Bacon.

Bacon.

Excellent choice. Being a bacon.

Yes.

Like, I have Spokane or Seattle.

I have to say that. Yeah, that's. Can I pass on that? You can pass.

You can pass. I mean, obviously, you have a great connection in Seattle with all of your presence there.

I love everybody. 509, 206.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Dinner.

Dinner.

All right. That's one meal you guys can have together. The catalog you can't wait to see in your mailbox.

Valley Vet. I do really do. I do really look through that catalog. It's cattle supplies.

Okay.

We don't order. I don't order very much. Yeah, but it's fun to see, like, what's there.

I don't.

You don't look.

I don't. Yeah, I probably don't look at catalog.

He breathes the capital press. That's what he looks for in the mail.

Okay.

All right.

Good answer.

Shout out to that.

The one tool you couldn't live without.

Sledgehammer.

Yeah, I did use my hammer. Five pound hammer. The bailing twine. My truck. How about my truck?

Oh, does that count? Okay. I was thinking small.

Yeah.

Think big.

Yeah, Think big.

I hate to say it, but probably like a computer.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a. An important part of the process here, part of the processing. The start of a perfect day.

I like just a nice, crisp morning. Sometimes when I get home, I really appreciate, like, just the fresh air and just that you take that first breath to get out of the truck and it's like, ah. Ah, it's good. If I feel that if I'm cognizant of that, I'm like, it'll be all right.

You're good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How about you, Kira?

Yeah, I like to get up early. I am always the first one awake at the house, sometimes for a couple of hours. And it's nice to have a reason to go outside during that time. This is one of the reasons I enjoy the summer when it's already light out at 5 o' clock and if I have a reason to go outside and just there where it's peaceful. And I also always eat immediately when I wake up in the morning. So sometimes I go to sleep at night thinking about what am I going to eat. I wake up in the morning.

Yeah. I used to meet my husband. Right last one. Winter, Spring, summer or fall?

Summer.

It's a good song.

Here is summer.

Summer. I'm going to say winter. I'm going to stay true to my Norwegian roots.

I do enjoy the winter too, especially since I've moved out here where you got sunshine and snow in the winter and it's not gloomy.

We do though I will say I'm driving. Yeah. Across the state over Snoqualmie Pass every single week. The winters I used to be like fearless over the past and now that does make me think a little bit more. Sure. Same winter. The best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It gets a little dicey up there. Thank you both for taking the time to speak with me and Farm Walks today. It's been a real pleasure getting to know both of you and can't wait to see the new things that are coming and see you at the Farmers market. Thanks again.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Appreciate you coming out.

Thanks again to Brent and Kira Olson for making time to share their stories with us. You can learn more about Smoky ridge meats at smokyridgewa.com and Olson Farms at olsonfarms.com and in the grand Norwegian tradition, that's Olson spelled.

Oh.

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. Could be a great icebreaker for that cute person you've been seeing at the Farmer's Market. For transcripts, show notes, episode evaluation and and more information, be sure to check out our website@farmwalks.org behind the scenes logistics and wrangling by Brahmi Pugh and Ray Russell of Tilth alliance and Kate Smith of WSU Food Systems. Farm Walks Website Logo and Podart by Riled Up Goats Field recordings and audio engineering by Made with Bacon Productions. I'm Keith Bacon with We'll see you out there.

Thanks for listening.