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Let's talk about ranching. Specifically, what ranchers are doing to set themselves apart as well as improve both their enjoyment with work and profit of the business. My guest today is Jared Luhman from the Herd Quitter Podcast. Jared is a busy man with a day job, ranching job, AND a cool podcast focused on, you guessed it, ranching! The Herd Quitter Podcast is all about learning from ranchers around the world that are thinking outside the box and going new and exciting things to both help their businesses turn a profit as well as increase their happiness on the job. In our interview today, Jared and I talk about the biggest lessons he has learned, stories of ranches diversifying to the extreme and being super successful, and how it's important to shift the business even when you think you can't.
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Show Notes
- Herd Quitter – Farmers and Ranchers that do things differently.
- Harmony of profit and enjoyment
- How hard is it to be profitable with a ranch?
- Ranchers all over the US, Australia
- Biggest current struggle of ranchers and how are they succeeding?
- How are ranchers diversifying their operations? – Gary Don Episode – early episode… "What is your unfair advantage?" Turtle Hair farm
- Gabe Brown…Book: Dirt to Soil
- The Turnaround: A Ranchers Story by Dave Pratt
- Working Cows Podcast
- What are ranchers doing to address sustainability?
- Episode 24: Kit Pharo – Building a Network – The importance of Networking -What is Jared's advice on building a network?
- What have been the biggest takeaways from your interviews?
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Trevor: All right. Well, Jared lumen welcome the farm traveler podcast, man. How are you doing?
Jared: Oh, I'm doing great. Thank you so much. Yeah. Happy to be here, dude.
Trevor: Yeah. I'm excited to chat with you. You're a fellow podcast or you've got a cool podcast called the herd quitter. Um, so I always like to geek out with fellow like ag pod-casters and stuffed it.
I mean yeah. They figure out what your, what your niche is, how your podcasting journey is and all that stuff. So, yeah. Uh, before we kinda dive in about your podcasts, kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of your.
Jared: Sure. Yeah, no, I, I would love to it's it is fun to talk to other podcasters. I I've had conversations with people and stuff on the side just to like, yeah.
The, the nitty-gritty things of how they're doing, what they're doing. So I'm excited to get into that. But, um, my, my background, so I grew up right here. This, the house I live in is my, it was my grandfather's house and our family has been here on this land. For quite a while. Um, the farm we're on, we got in the 1960s and our family has been farming on this street, [00:01:00] uh, for over a century.
So I've been in farming. My family has been in farming and agriculture for quite a while. Um, we. Weren't always kind of doing what we're doing now. I would say my grandfather was a fairly progressive kind of a conventional commodity based farmer. He was farming like a thousand acres, 140 beef cows milk and nearly 200 cows and a couple of hundred sheep back in like the seventies, which was wild for its time.
Like very progressive and big. And we had, uh, a foreign exchange student who actually came to our farm back then in, in. The late eighties, I want to say, or something like that. Uh, the mid, mid eighties who was at our place and just flat out told my dad and my grandpa, uh, you guys are doing this all wrong.
Like why, why are you working so hard? You, you should, you know, you're 15 years behind us over in New Zealand. Um, and so. My grandpa, you know, could have easily taken offense to that. But instead of taking offense, he actually sent my dad kind of encouraged my dad to go over to New Zealand and learn [00:02:00] what he was talking about.
So my dad went over to New Zealand, worked on a gray grazing based dairy and another grazing based beef and sheep station. And that's kind of changed the trajectory of our family farm for. You know, for decades now. And he came back home and started a grazing based farm. And, and today now that I could spare you all the details of the 30 year transition to where we are now, but now, uh, we're.
Uh, primarily pasture based operation. We raised red, it registered red Angus beef cattle. Uh, we sell seed stock or bulls through Farrow cattle company. My wife and I own, uh, uh, the grass fed cattle company, which is kind of our direct marketing enterprise for our farm. And we market pasture chicken that we raised on our farm and grass fed beef, and then pastured pork.
We get from another farm. Um, and that's kind of what my wife and I have been doing to kind of add on enterprises to our farm and add profitability and also to, you know, really, it's just a lot of fun to be able to connect [00:03:00] with consumers. It's gosh, some of the, the relationships we've developed with our consumers has been a blast.
So. Um, yeah, that's fun. And then in addition to the farm, which keeps me pretty busy, I also work for the sustainable farming association of Minnesota as their soil health lead. So I do a lot of consulting and networking with farmers all across the state of Minnesota to help educate farmers on soil health and, and how they can use and implement soil health principles within their own context and on their farm.
And then, uh, yeah, I think that's most of it, our farm, our marketing enterprise, the podcast and the soil health or the soil health lead for the sustainable farming associate.
Trevor: So a little bit going on, it sounds like just a little bit.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. We stay busy, but it's all, it's all, you know, the cool thing about it is that I love everything I do.
And there's a lot of truth to the statement. I mean, it's cliche, but if you work, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. And so I definitely stay busy, but if I enjoy every bit of [00:04:00] it, then it's pretty.
Trevor: Well, that's good. And kind of going back to that soil health. I mean, if you're, I feel like if you're, um, doing like rotational grazing and just grass fed beef, I mean, your soil health is going to be like the most important thing you've got to pay attention to.
Yeah. And that's a big reason why we kind of have been transitioning to the grass-based agriculture. Um, I, there in that long history of our farm, my dad went home. I'll kind of briefly summarize it. My dad started a farm of his own, uh, doing a grazing dairy. And then in early 2000, when my grandpa was ready to back out of the home farm, we came to where we are now in the home farm.
And he stopped doing the grazing dairy. We still had beef cattle, but we started organic crop farming and. Over 20 years of doing that, our family, my dad taught my grandpa or my grandpa taught my dad. My dad taught me always. We want to leave the land in better condition than we found it. And with all of the tillage that was required to manage weeds in that organic cropping system, we didn't feel that we were advancing our soil health [00:05:00] in the direction that we wanted to go.
And so that's really in the. Five years we've started. And in the last two to three years, we've really started to accelerate this transition to a hundred percent perennial pasture based farm. Um, for that reason that you just mentioned of, you know, wanting to improve, improve our soil health and we've, while we've been.
For many decades. Anyway, it's been kind of on the side, like on the grazing acres, not so much on the tillable acres, but we've seen the benefits of it. I mean, just production increases, erosion decreases, you know, just soil seems healthier, more green, lush, plants, more everything. And we wanted. Continue to grow that across our farm.
And so, yeah, we've made this transition now to where, with the exception of one farm that's down the road, that we haven't figured out how to get cattle there. Uh, we, we rent it and we're not sure about installing the infrastructure to make it grazing with the exception of that. And now the whole farm.
Perennial pasture, [00:06:00] and we're really excited about it and what it can do. It's a lot of fun to it. It definitely, I always joke. It was kind of odd. I grew up wanting to be a crop farmer. I loved sitting in a tractor and when I was in high school, it was probably easier because when something broke down, I'd just be like, Hey dad, you know, I'm gonna head out with the friends you fix this.
Let me know when you want me to sit in the tractor again. But when I got home to farm full-time and then when something broke, it was no longer. I'd call him dad. And he would be like, well, fix it. You're working for the farm. So fix it. And all of a sudden, uh, cattle seemed a little more appealing to me and that along with other reasons, we really do enjoy grazing in livestock.
And so it more aligned with all of our goals.
Trevor: That's awesome. And so kind of, I guess this kind of involves your podcast a little bit, but kind of that enjoyment, I mean, with your podcast, herd quitter, you're kind of talking with ranchers, um, That are at, they're doing a really good job. It seems like of being both profitable [00:07:00] and enjoyment, like enjoying what they're doing.
And so how hard is that? I mean, from, from your perspective, how hard is it to not only like turn a profit with. But also to enjoy it where you don't get burned out. So how hard is that?
Jared: Yeah, no, that's, that's a good question. It is a challenge. Um, you know, it's interesting because as we made this transition to more grazing, the problem that we saw was not that the income wasn't there to sustain both my dad and myself on our farm.
The problem was there all sudden there wasn't enough labor or there was enough work for the labor we had. We, we had. I like to joke that kit feral got me fired kind of in this philosophy of low input ranching, all of a sudden, Alison I wasn't necessary anymore. So it increased our lifestyle to the point where we really, that didn't really make sense for me to be around here.
Cause the life, you know, there wasn't there wasn't enough work and that's kind of what led me off to do some of these other things, you know, the job and the podcast, uh, came have come since that transition. But it can be a challenge to, [00:08:00] to do so many things. And I would say that it's, it's a challenge that I fight with today yet is that I have this desire to always do more and do more that I enjoy.
Um, but especially since the birth of our baby boy, Colton, back in June, I'm realizing that there's more to life than work and, and, and that the work side of, you know, this maybe isn't the most sustainable long-term and that, uh, you need. And the limits, I guess I need to learn to say no better. So you're right.
It's a real challenge.
Trevor: Um, yeah, that's awesome. I mean, not only you got the business, you got the job, the day job, the podcast, also a dad. So that's, that's probably a little bit hectic. I can imagine juggling all that stuff.
Jared: Yeah. Some days get wild, but I've got an amazing supportive wife. Who's an amazing mother and partner in all of these things as well.
Uh, with the exception of the podcast, she helps in the farm. She helps in our she's very, uh, vital in our marketing enterprise. So definitely not a solo act.
Trevor: No, I believe you. Yeah. And I mean, kind of relating to the whole podcast thing. I mean, I think it is definitely a struggle, like turning a profit and also enjoying it.
Like I started this podcast, I think, like I was telling you earlier, like two and a half years ago. And I think after two and a half years, we're like $25. Profit this month so far, like, or no of the year, which isn't bad. And so we're getting there and I'm also like enjoying it, but I mean, sometimes you get burnt out and you like compare yourself to other podcasts out there.
And so I think you just gotta focus on like being better than you were last month and just kind of enjoying it. So, but, but I mean, again, this is just like a small, small hobby, I guess. So there's not as much.
Jared: Yeah. And with the podcast, I don't know how you, you know, how you started, but I started thinking this may or may never be profitable.
I don't know. But I saw it almost the biggest part of it was like, Hey, this is a great excuse to call a lot of people that would have thought it was weird if I called them otherwise, you know, if I call up some of my kids [00:10:00] out of the blue and said, Hey, can I ask you some questions? Y, who are you? Why? No, by instead I say, Hey, I've got this podcast.
I'd love to interview you. And they're like, oh, sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to do it. So it's an excuse to get, to meet people and build a network that I wouldn't have otherwise had, whether it was profitable or not. It was a heck of a lot better, more affordable education than I ever could have gotten through university and other things.
Trevor: that's a good point. I mean, cause yeah, it is weird if you call them out of the blue and they're like, first off, who are you a, why should I talk to you? And you're like, Hey, I've got a podcast. Like I, as well as my listeners want to learn from you. So let's chat a little bit. So that's such a good point.
Jared: That's funny. Yeah. I figured that, you know, for, for them it's like, yeah, they get to share whatever they're doing. And it's probably like. I mean, like when you reached out and stuff, it's like, yeah, I'd be honored to talk about what I've learned, whether I have anything to share really or not. You know what I mean?
So, yeah, it definitely makes a little bit easier. The approach to some of these pretty incredible people who have some pretty incredible.
Trevor: Yeah, that's true. [00:11:00] So going off of that, your podcast heard quitter, um, your tagline is awesome. It's about farmers and ranchers that do things differently that are going outside the norm, trying to turn a profit, trying to be different.
And so what I mean, what have been the biggest takeaway so far from doing your podcast? Like what have been the biggest lessons you've learned? And I mean, I know there's a bunch. Um, so what are, what have kind of been the biggest takeaways?
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. So like, you kind of mentioned the name, the herd quitter podcast, and that phrase, it wasn't my own.
It came from kit, uh, who we raised bulls for and stuff like, and I talked to him and. The idea of this herd quitter, for those of your listeners who have cattle, is we probably all, they've probably all moved this group of cows and there's the one cow that's fighting her way back, you know, trying to go the other direction and just drives you nuts.
Um, but she's, she's that herd quitter cow. And at first, at first glance, you think that's pretty, just an annoying animal. You really don't want her there, but if you really think that. Of this herd of [00:12:00] whatever 200 cows, 500, whatever it is, that is the only cow who's thinking for themselves and like truly thinking for themselves and doing their own thing.
And you gotta respect that really. I mean, that's, that's pretty neat. And so that was my goal out of this is just to interview people. Are not afraid to be like that cow and think for themselves, even if the people pushing them in the other direction, don't like it, even if all the cows are pushing by her, you know, pushing her the other direction, you know, they're thinking for themselves.
And so your question of like, what have I learned? It's been really like, just thinking of all the interviews, kind of a common thread that I would say with everyone is like true intentionality with every decision they make. I would say it's probably one of the bigger ones. Like they're not, they're running their business.
They're not letting their business run them. They're not just doing what they've always done because they've always done it. They're intentional about every decision does, does in the question, thinks they look at what their dad and grandfather didn't say. Does this make [00:13:00] sense? Look, let's look at current market conditions.
Look, look, let's look at our context. What are our resources? What are our advantages and disadvantages and does doing that make sense? Not because the neighbor does it or my grandfather did it, but does it make sense today? A lot of them maybe found that certain things didn't make sense. And then the thing that kind of goes along with that intentionality is then the ability to act, you know, the ability to, to do something different, to seek out something different.
And you know, I'd say, so it's kind of an overarching theme mindset. I mean, it's all over. Uh, very little of it has to do with what we're doing day in and day out. It's it's the, the mental ballad battle to be willing to think differently and then act differently. If you find that maybe what you had been doing doesn't make sense.
Trevor: Um, yeah, so I've heard from a lot of like old, old school farmers that, I mean, quote unquote, they do it just because this is kind of the way it's always been done. So do you think that's [00:14:00] kind of like an old school rationale?
Jared: Yeah. You know, and it's so circle, you know, every, every farm probably does things for their own reasons. So I never liked don't want to paint with a broad brush and say, everybody does it for one reason, but I do think there is, you know, there's definitely something to tradition and doing, you know what, we've always what we've always done and maybe not even doing it intentionally because that's what they've always done, but just not even recognizing that there's a different way to do it.
Um, I mean, I think a lot of us in this. Like a credit to the industry are incredibly hard workers and they spend a lot of time working in the business day in and day out. And so they never have the time to think to work on the business. I think this is that's kind of the work, what we versus what would be like working in the business versus working on the business, kind of goes through the ranching for profit, I think has kind of who came up with that.
But, um, If you don't have time to really think about it at all, because you're spending [00:15:00] all your time doing your job, your, your, the daily jobs and stuff, you'll never be able to make a change. And so, you know, I can't say if the true source or the root cause of, of not changing is because it's just like a desire to do what we've always done, or just like a lack of time to think differently or something.
But, uh, you know, that's, that's a good question because if we could figure out what the, the, the challenge is, the reason why. We'll never change or won't change people don't change. You know, we could address it and make some pretty big changes pretty quick. But the, the ag industry, they say changes one funeral at a time, which is kind of maybe the, a little bit of a sad statement and stuff is that a lot of times it takes a generation, the net, you know, passing to let the next generation have the ability to start doing things, to do.
Trevor: I haven't heard that, but that does make a lot of sense. I quote, um, yeah, I mean, you brought up something like ranching is such a 24 7 job. I mean, if you find out that there is a different way of doing it, I mean, that's going to be stressful. That's going to take you so [00:16:00] much time to implement those changes.
I'm sure. And so, I mean, that's, I mean, like you said, it's probably a reason why a lot of people didn't change. Like it was just so much that they had to do to get to that step.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of the things that. The w we talk about that the guests that I've had arm talk about are our ideas that just to a person who's done it one way or more of the conventional way, their whole life.
And then for generations seem ridiculous. I mean, for one, for example, To Kevin May and June. We'll just take that as an example, uh, CA calving in may and June is what we recommend for multiple reasons. I mean, you're aligning your you're calving season, w which is the time when a cow needs the highest nutrient requirement with when the environment produces the most, the highest availability of high quality nutritious feed.
In spring, we have the spring flush of grass and abundance of grass when the cow needs it, it makes sense to me, but a lot of people's mindset is. Uh, we're trying to sell pounds, total pounds [00:17:00] of meat. And the earlier that I can have a calf, the longer that a calf has to grow during the year, the more pounds I'll have to sell them a fall when we sell meat.
Um, that, so for them to think I'm going to move my cabin back to three, four months. Is mind blowing. I mean, just, just, it's just a challenging, a lot of these things, maybe aren't even infrastructure changes or, you know, work changes. It's, it's mental barriers to thinking, you know? Okay. That maybe could make sense.
Um, that's one example. There's so many that could make sense to like another example. People, a lot of times will have their cattle and pastors spread all over the countryside. Or if they've got, you know, say a thousand acres, they'll have them broken out into 150 200 acre paddocks and have a group of cattle.
Each paddock and they spend all day checking every group, checking every water. When in reality, they, they could just put them all in one group and move them daily. But the, the idea is if I had all these cattle in the group and I have to move, I have to move cattle every day. That sounds ridiculous. Why would I move cattle every day?
Instead they just [00:18:00] spend all day going and checking 10 different groups every day. And so not only then does that benefit end up reducing workload by moving them in one group, um, versus checking 10 groups. There's tremendous land and soil and grasp, uh, production benefits that come along with moving cattle more regularly.
And so I do think that, you know, a big part of it is just that some of them, some of the practices that some of the folks that come on, my podcast that I've talked to, it's just so contradictory or counterintuitive to the production model that they've been doing. That it's almost the barriers, just, you know, mental, you know, we can't do that. That doesn't make any sense. It won't work here.
Trevor: Hmm. That's interesting. Yeah. Um, yeah. So talking about your guests and it, it was funny. I had no clue you'd bring them up, but actually listened to your episode with kit Pharaoh, talking about building a network, kind of the importance of that. And so, I mean, you you've interviewed a bunch of people around the U S around Australia and stuff like that. So when you're talking to them, what are kind of some of the [00:19:00] biggest struggles that all of these ranchers are facing, whether it's environmental factors, market factors would have kind of been. I guess the most common struggles that they faced.
Jared: Uh, that's a, that's a good question. It's probably one that I need to focus more on. I'll be honest. It's as probably to the wrong side of my, my podcast is that I focus on the things that they're doing well, and I need to focus more on their struggles. Cause that's where we all need. We can learn from the most, um, you know, it, it seems like the majority of the things that they're struggling with or.
Things that they were struggling with. I keep going back to this mental challenge for the longest time. A lot of these folks will just have thought that something different wasn't possible and they find out after practicing or trying a little thing that it was. But as far as challenges for the whole, you know, the whole industry that a lot of these guests faced at one point probably a big one is the cost of production.
I mean, in agriculture, [00:20:00] I don't know that. Like looked at the cost of a tractor recently or something or a combine. I mean, it's skyrocketed, it's wild. I mean, I was just watching a YouTube video the other day of a, and this is a grain farm. They had five S seven 90 combines and the person was talking about the value of it.
And I was just doing the math in that field. That farmer had three and a half million dollars tied up in just combines and corn. Alone, just in that, in that field. And that's, you know, the cost of production is, is wild. And so if you are in a business model, which the majority of agriculture and the majority of ranchers are in have a high input system. Um, where you, your thought is based around selling as many pounds as possible. Um, the only way I can do that is by, you know, high inputs, high expenses, you know, that's a tough game to win because you're competing against people who have way more and kind of can, can compete on scales of efficiency that I can never dream of, you know, on my farm where now we got little over 200 cows and there are people.
20,010, 2000 cows for me to compete with them, you know, to own the same equipment, to feed my cows as them. It doesn't make sense. Um, I, I shouldn't try and compete with them on a cost of production, battle and stuff. So that's kind of why a lot of my producer, the guests I have on are focusing more on low input, high profit, as opposed to high input high production, which may or may not lead to profit.
Um, So, yeah, that's probably the biggest one and this model that we face or that we're trying to implement in that most of my guests are trying to implement as mimicking nature with. It's not it's it's dependent. Do you mean really your only cost of mimicking nature then is your land cost and your labor costs.
You don't have to worry about, you know, any other equipment and stuff. And so when we just get out of the, the rat race of trying to compete with some of these other guys kind of, I guess [00:22:00] another challenge you could say would be that kind of keeping up with the Jones's mindset, looking at the neighbors and what they have and what they.
They do and trying to compete. That's that's not worth it. Like you had mentioned about podcasts too. I mean, same thing. Looking at the next person's podcast, I'll never be a Joe Rogan. I know that. I don't even know how many podcasts listeners he's got, but, uh, I don't even bother. It's not worth it.
Trevor: Some of the millions, um, so going, going back to, um, your guests, so getting off of their struggles would have been like, what are some things that they're succeeding at? I mean, what are some things that have been like super remarkable to learn that they're doing that they're doing differently that have maybe helped, I don't know, maybe save their bids.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh, so I mean, kind of the, and I don't know how specific you want me to get into the ranching, you know, kind of business and stuff. They're very simple changes that all stem back to a simple mindset change, first of all, but. You know, a big one calving window, like I [00:23:00] said, I mean the simple thing of changing their calving window back allows them to reduce their winter feed costs tremendously.
Um, it also reduces their labor inputs. I mean, when you can, in January and February, first of all, you need to have building infrastructure, especially up here in the Midwest, I'm in Minnesota. Uh, you have to have infrastructure to keep them warm and to keep those cabs warm. And, uh, and, and so that's expensive.
Plus there's more cabin troubles in barns and in winter and stuff than there is out in pasture when they can kind of cab naturally and everything. And so people check their cows for calving and their heifers for calves every couple hours. And that's labor intensive and stressful. When I came home to farm, we were actually calving in March and I think it was.
Partially joking, mostly true, uh, that I would put on my winter weight all winter, and I would lose about 15 pounds in about six days of calving season, because it is so labor intensive and hard work. Um, you know, so that's a big one. Um, another guest that, well, a couple of guests I've had on Wally Olson and Doug Ferguson have been their topic, uh, has been really popular with a lot of my listeners of sell by mark.
Which is kind of just a different view on marketing. A lot of people in, in agriculture, in the, in the feedlot business or in the cattle feeding business, focusing on, uh, buying at a certain time at a certain way and selling at a certain time at a certain weight, everything is a very calendar-based, you know, strict strategy.
It's very systematic and the same thing happens every time. And what they're doing is, is just. The opposite. They're saying I'm not going to buy based on a certain desire if everybody's buying on the same thing, that animal based on simple economics is going to be higher value overvalued. When more people are interested in something at the same time, it becomes overvalued.
And so what they're saying is they buy the undervalued animal that not as many people want, bring them to, uh, you know, cheaply on grass, bring them to a weight that they're all of a sudden overvalued and sell them. It doesn't matter if it's. Two weeks or two months later. And doesn't matter if it's January or March there, they're always trading cattle [00:25:00] and just managing, buying the undervalued and selling the overvalued, as opposed to just buying and selling based on a calendar and a pre conceived plan or existing strategy.
And that, that philosophy I'm pretty excited to go. I'm going to be going to one of the classes of these folks here in a month or so to try and learn more about it because it, it really. Um, pretty unique and innovative thinking in this and it kind of goes, they both learned it from bud Williams is the kind of the originator of that idea.
Um, but that, you know, that's a. Another thing. And then these things can also be applied to cow calf production as well. You know, with cows, each cow has a depreciation schedule. They're worth more at certain times and certain ages than they are at other certain times at certain ages. And so being intentional again, back to that intentionality about buying cows at certain times when they might be undervalued and selling them at certain times when they're overvalued, before they begin to go down in value again, There's there's just, you know, [00:26:00] I, I'm just fascinated when I talk to these people about how much they think about business in ways that I've never even thought about.
It's like, I thought we're just out here to move cows and build fence and they're like, no, no, no. You mean, that's the $15 an hour, $20 an hour jobs. The money is made in the desk at the desk, thinking about what you're doing and being intentional and just, I'm just blown away by the intentionality of some of these folks thinking, you know, it's, it's.
Trevor: Yeah. I haven't heard of methods like that before, but I mean, it seems so different, but I feel like things like this might be the future where you gotta be intentional about when you're going to breed your cows, when they're going to give birth, when you're going to sell them. Instead of just kind of like, like you said earlier, kind of going with the flow and just doing what is normal and what's expected really.
I mean, so it has a lot of that been successes of trial and error, or have there been like, I don't know, some studies that people have been focusing on and practicing those studies and going.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, it's cool because I get to talk to some of these people that are kind of coming up with some of these ideas, like kit feral, for example, is kind of the original herd quitter. As far as this whole cow calf philosophy of low input cows, smaller frame, moderate frame cows, and we get to talk to him. And so there's some people who like I get to talk to who have suffered through the. Learning process those early stages of developing the philosophies in the first place. And they probably had more failures than a lot of us latecomers who get to benefit from the many years of experience, trial and error, uh, that, that those folks had.
So some of my guests are early. Early adopters. And, and some of them are people like myself who listened to a podcast and think that's an awesome idea. I'm going to try it. And hopefully, you know, podcasts like mine can help them have some resources to try it in a way that won't be a total failure, um, because they get to learn from somebody else's failures.
Trevor: That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I feel like going back to the podcast thing, I feel like my. Lessons that I've learned have been from my own failures and then kind of learning from people along the way. I mean, and even so I taught high school ag for two years too. And I feel like some of the biggest lessons I had there were through my own failures and kind of learning them and fixing them.
So it kind of goes back to that like diagram, you always see where it's like, oh, people think success is a straight line when your reality it's like all over the place. So you're failing, succeeding, failing, succeeding. And so you're never actually like improving unless you're tracking. And failing every now and then.
So, but I feel like that's every industry or every discipline or every job, but I think it's always interesting to watch people do it, um, in the farming and ranching industry, because I mean, they're failing their businesses depending on it. And so hopefully those are going to be little failures along.
Jared: Yeah. And that's, that's a big, I think that's a big part you asked about like w why some of these things don't necessarily happen more something. And some of the challenges is there's like this business is [00:29:00] very slim margin business, and there may not be a lot of room for error and trial and error. Um, so yeah, that, that's a good point, but I don't know who says it or how even the quote goes or something it's like, but yeah, if, if a person never fails, they, they're not someone to look up to.
It means they haven't tried enough or something, you know, Yeah, paraphrasing or something like that. I don't look to the people who've never failed. That doesn't really say much to me. It just says they're really good at staying comfortable,
Trevor: saying comfortable, being uncomfortable
Jared: and being failing and all that.
Yeah. I appreciate you being an ag teacher too. My wife and I just got back from national FFA convention and yeah. Ag ag programs were huge for us. Appreciate that. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Trevor: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I had a blast. I only taught for two years in Daytona and I mean, I was in an ag program in high school when I was a state officer down here in Florida.
And so went to, um, national convention twice, super fun. I was, I think, six rows away from Mike Rowe and he was giving like the, um, he was speaking at national. That was awesome. We
Jared: all went out whenever micro came out, I think at that convention, but I don't, I don't think I got that close.
Trevor: That's awesome. Yeah. I don't know if he's been back. I hope he does, but I mean, I honestly can't tell you how many ag classrooms I've been in, where the teacher's out and they're playing dirty jobs and it's always like a good educational episode. Everybody loves it. I mean, it's, it's such a cool concept and
Jared: everybody loves one. Yeah, no doubt. No, that
Trevor: does it. So, all right. So some of your other episodes have talked about like ranchers kind of diversifying their operation, whether it's with like agritourism or even like opening hunting leases on their ranch, which is such a good idea. And so what are some other, maybe some uncommon ways farmers are kind of
Jared: diversifying.
Yeah. Oh, that's a, that's a good question. This is one of my favorite interviews was Jerry . And I don't know [00:31:00] if you've listened to that one or not. Uh, in North Dakota, his family, like he had three sons, I think that came home and this was one of my early ones. So I'm going to be, I may or may not be wrong on some of this, but he said, you know, each of them.
Come up with something, bring some value back to this because it brings some value value back to this ranch, because there may not be room for you otherwise, and stuff. And so, um, they, they came back in and he talked about how I think. The first son said, well, we've been giving away hunting in this ranch for years.
Let's let's, uh, let's start selling this, you know, make some money on this. And so they started just leasing it out. Well, then they said, you know, rather than leasing out, let's do a full like outfitting business. So they started doing that. And then they said, we've got all these houses that used to be employed.
But nobody wants to live in the rural country anymore. So they're just sitting empty. Let's turn these into like lodges and start leasing this out. And then another son came back and turned the barns into like an event center and another son made a brewery. And so they're just doing so much stuff. And now they're direct marketing meat.
They're doing events, they're doing lodging and outfitting and it's just like mind blowing. And I think that's so cool. You know, and his kind of key was like, come up with what your unfair advantages. And that's what I've been trying to do here on our farm. And he said, you know, we're, we're our, our context, our resources. We've got this vast amount of open Prairie land. That's great hunting ground. We're 45 minutes from an airport and a big city, you know, this, this is something that we can tap into. And so they did, and we're trying to figure out the same thing at our. You know, what can we use, but some other to answer your question, cool.
Diversifications that people have done that I've heard about is, um, there's an individual in Northeast, Minnesota that, that. Just does kind of lodging as well. They built a year to actually at their place, uh, shout out to farm. Yeah. They built a, uh, and they have another house as well that they rent out and it's like, that's awesome.
I mean, they have a beautiful area. They're in a very, like, they recognize that they're up by Duluth and the north shore of lake superior, like a very tourist popular tourist location. They said, why not take advantage of this? And so they did, I mean, know your area, know your, your. W w what, what can you take advantage of in your region and stuff?
And, um, I mean, We're just lucky on this in agriculture, kind of a land-based industry to have unique things, to be able to do with the resources. People can come up with creative ways to utilize the resources that, you know, a standard, you know, person who owns a downtown building may, may never be able to do with their real estate resource.
And so. You know, if we can think creatively it's, there's the opportunities out there are endless and I'll have to think more intentionally on some of the, or think some more on what, uh, what some of the people have done on the guests, guests on the podcast. But that Jerry Dolan one jumps out to me immediately because they took, they didn't, they weren't settled with one, they just kept on going,
Trevor: oh, they hit the ground running.
I mean, a brewery, a lodging and [00:34:00] outfitting thing. I mean, that's awesome. I mean, you, you don't hear about that many. Um, I guess business ideas happening at a ranch, usually it's like one or two, but I mean, that's awesome. They kind of hit the ground running there.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like kind of a necessity too.
I mean, how many, fortunately. They were able to do that because a lot of ranches can't sustain three children coming back and that's a, that's about true. That's an awesome opportunity, but it's also a pretty big challenge to make a ranch that's profitable enough to sustain three separate families. Plus the older generation four separate families on one land base, they had to come up with something differently and prop to them for being able to.
Yeah, that's not
Trevor: bad. And I've heard of so many, um, ranches going direct to consumers. There's a ranch here that we've been, that we've had on the show, Boyd farms fresh, um, in Florida. And they have been selling direct to farmers a lot more, thanks to the pandemic. And it's great. They go to all these farmer's markets, they sell their meat right out of a refrigerator truck, and you can buy.
[00:35:00] High quality meat. Usually some of the best cuts on a cow that you usually can't get for that sort of price. I mean, you go to like a Publix or Walmart or somewhere, you can't get the kind of cuts that they have. And so it's cool that a lot of ranches have started selling more than.
Jared: Yeah, I love it. I mean, yeah.
You kind of asked the question earlier about what are some of the challenges that some of these people are facing and a big one is like the commodity market. I mean, we're competing against people. Even the commodity markets goal is to buy product as cheap as possible. And generally the big operations can produce product cheaper than we can.
And if we're trying to compete with them on a commodity. Uh, you know, we really can't. And so to your point about this awesome thing that's happening in the last year, especially if more farmers doing direct marketing, that's incredible. I love, I love seeing that because it's, it's people finding a way to adapt.
People thinking, you know, maybe this isn't a good long-term solution for me to continue to try and compete with these big operations on a commodity market. How can I [00:36:00] adapt to that and still do what I love of raising livestock and they're doing it by going direct to the consumer. There's, they're selling more than just meat.
They're selling their name, they're selling their relationship. They're selling their farm. Uh, that's what we do on our farm. Encourage and invite people to come visit it and experience it. It's part of our kind of mission and goals of, we want people to have a connection to their food that they would never get by shopping at Walmart, you know?
And so I love that there are more people doing direct marketing it's, it's exciting to me, and it should be exciting to the consumer because they get to experience food and a whole new.
Trevor: Oh, yeah. I mean, you literally get to see like the people that are making your food, where it's grown. I mean, especially if they visit your farm, like you're talking about like doing, um, agritourism.
I mean, I think that's so fun. Like you can literally go there and you can say, Hey, that guy was going to be a steak that I'm going to eat, and it's a couple of months, like you can, you can connect them. And, and I think that the closer the farmer and the consumer are like the healthier both are going to be.
I mean, you can take out that middleman. So it's going to be cheaper. It's going to be healthier for [00:37:00] you. It's you're probably going to eat less processed stuff if you know where your farmer is and if you're like, you know, buying produce or something from like a farmer's market or something. I mean, I think it's a winning idea.
So it's kind of been this, I guess, a success thanks to the pandemic. Like, because there's been this necessity of like pitch of pivoting a little bit. And so I think it's been kind of like a win-win
Jared: for them. Yeah. Oh, totally. And I, like you said, like you could point out a cow and say, that'll be a steak.
I'll share just a brief story that I once made the mistake of not knowing my audience or my customer wants it. There was an animal that was just giving us trouble loading on a trailer for some reason, just it happens every now and then nothing uncommon or whatever. And I made the comment to the person.
Yeah. I said, Hey, your beef was dropped off at the butcher this morning. We barely got it on the trailer, but we got it on the trailer. And she was like, she knew, he knew like that. She was just like, and it was like heartbroken that she thought the animal knew what was happening and where it was going. And I was like, oh, I got to keep my mouth shut.
So yeah. I scared her a little bit broke her heart, I think. But yeah. Know your audience know who's interested in knowing exactly what their stake will be. Cause some people don't want to look at that cute calf and know there'll be eating it next fall.
Trevor: Yeah. That's true. That's funny though. I mean, that's one of those things where you're like, oh my bad.
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Trevor: That's so funny. So I know, I know something going on now is like this whole push for sustainability. So like sustainability paying closer attention to our environment. So have you learned a whole lot of what ranchers are trying to do? And I know like crop rotation and there's a bunch of stuff, ranchers that are doing the tech to kind of address sustainability that normal, like consumers don't know about.
And so what have you noticed, like kind of interviewing all these people? Are there any. Very successful sustainability practices going on.
Jared: Yeah. So I could list practices all day. Cause like there's so many ways that people are doing this. I'm not, but I'm not sure if you're familiar with the [00:39:00] soil health principles, if you've ever heard of those or are not.
Um, gay brown is kind of an originator of this idea of the soil health principles. And I just was interviewing someone else earlier today for my podcast who rattled through them like a pro. And I told him whenever I try to rattle through them, I'll butcher it completely. And I know I'll forget what. But I'll give it a shot.
Um, the principles are diversify, you know, as much diversification as possible diversification of plant species, animal species, wildlife species, maybe. Had diversity monocultures are not diversity, so increased diversity. That's the number one soil health principle. And in any order of these might be, uh, minimize disturbance, disturbance, both tillage, chemically, you know, minimizing disturbance in, in, in any way that you can.
Um, because. Wasn't disturbed by a big plow regularly or chemical and stuff, uh, green and growing plant as much of the year as possible. This one's really cool because one of the best things that we can do for our soil is build carbon, build organic matter in the soil. And we build organic matter through [00:40:00] photosynthesis.
The more plants that are growing the longer they're growing and photosynthesizing, they're pumping carbon into the soil. That's great. It's advantageous, you know, let's do as much of that as possible. So, so that's, that's one. Uh, now here's where I, I know the fifth one livestock integration, because when you look back at nature and stuff, bison, elk, mule, deer birds were an integral part of nature and wildlife.
And so livestock integration was the other one. Um, and I knew the fourth one, I'm going to totally forget which I knew I would and stuff, but these principles. Uh, you, you kind of asked about print practices, uh, you know, a practice, like for example, no, till may or may not work on one farm versus another.
Um, but a principle like minimize disturbance, if that's the principal, you know how we apply that in any farm can be different or integrate livestock can be different on every farm. And so all of these principles need to be applied within the context of an individual's farm. Uh, if that makes sense, and these are kind of the things that I work with.
When I, when I, uh, go for my job for the soil health or the sustainable farming association, that soil health lead is I go to farms and I say, here's these principles that are proven to improve soil. Um, let's figure out within your, your context on your farm and your given environment, how we can apply these principles as best as possible.
Um, Yeah. And I, and I just looked up on my phone here to see what the other principal was. Cause it was bugging me and that's just keeping the soil covered. Um, whenever there's exposed soil, I mean, there's research out there that shows when soil temperatures hit like a hundred, 120 degrees or something, biology starts dying and it's dead.
Biology likes temperatures like we do in the seventies and eighties and stuff. And so we need to keep our soil covered to protect it from the sun and the heat, as well as from wind erosion and rain erosion. That's pretty neat too. I have a little thermal thermometer kind of gun thing that they, you know, check your temperatures with and stuff, but, uh, uh, if you do.
Just pointed at the soil surface when it's shaded [00:42:00] by grass or something growing, you know, if the air temperature is 80 degrees, that soil temperature might be 70 degrees. But even if the air temperature is 80 degrees exposed soil, the soil temperature might be 110 degrees. It can be way hotter than air temperature.
And so we it's so important to keep soil covered. Those are the five soil health principles and how people are applying them all across the farmer or across the country are different everywhere. You know, people are playing, doing no till strip till in wetter areas so that they can still do a little bit of tillage to dry out the soil.
But they're using that, uh, in, in agriculture and grazing, you know, rotational grazing as a way of keeping soil covered and keeping plants growing and integrating livestock. I mean, cover crops. There there's ton of different ways that we're practicing, implementing these principles, but those five prints.
Applied within your context is the main way that we can build soil. And it is pretty cool to see some of the impacts. I mean, in our farm, on our farm and in our state here in Minnesota this year, we had one of the driest years, since a lot of people talk about 1988, the drought of [00:43:00] 1988. And. I was fortunate to be able to get out on farms all around the state and see people who are implementing certain principles that by no means made us, you know, immune to drought, but made resilience to drought.
And we, a lot of individuals fared better than their neighbors because of certain management practices that they've had. And it was really, you know, an awful. Experience. I mean, it was depressing sometimes to see this drought impact people. I mean, it was pretty sad, but then to see at least that some people fared a little better than others by implementing different practices.
It was really.
Trevor: I bet it was. And I think that point that livestock management is a part of the solution is really important that a lot of people aren't paying attention to. Um, I saw a study a few years ago. I can't remember what it was, but I'll have to look it up, but basically I think he was in the UK. Um, they compared grassland, that was just grasping. At, with grassland that had livestock on it, it was like rotationally graze. The livestock grassland captured countless, like so much more carbon than the regular grassland. And they're like, this is obvious. Like we need to kind of have livestock working in.
W with the soil to help produce or to help combat sustainability and stuff like that. But you have a lot of these people that are like anti livestock and they say livestock is causing it when they are literally part of the solution. I mean, you look back. I think like 100 years of robot, like 3 billion bison in the United States or something like
Jared: that.
Trevor: They were never the cause of climate change. I mean, nobody ever said that. I mean, but I think to say that livestock needs to be stopped, which w like a lot of opponents are saying is absurd because they are definitely part of the solution, which I think is very, very interesting. And I think more and more people need to realize.
Jared: Exactly. I mean, you're so right. And I just kind of a neat thing that we've seen on our farm as we've [00:45:00] solely picked up, you know, another farm or something in 2014, we got an 80 acre farm down the road that was in CRP for 15 years conservation reserve program. It sat idle in grass for 15 years, essentially.
Biologically dead. I mean, that soil was, there was nothing there. Grass would hardly grow once we got in livestock on it and started implementing some of these, you know, these, these, uh, practices and principles, um, that farm is now way more productive. I mean, so it's awesome. And to your point about like being able to sequester more carbon when grass is just, it grows up, I mean, cool.
Season grass is the done. Grass species now in the upper Midwest and stuff way up here. There's a lot of cool season grasses that grow really fast in may and June. And if you don't do anything with it, they'll grow up. They'll go to seed, they'll get mature and they'll die. And then they'll lay flat and smother out future growth.
So there's really no more. Growing green and growing plants the rest of the year. And those green and growing plants are what's photosynthesizing and [00:46:00] capturing carbon. And so an animal comes through and kind of acts as like a pruning tool, sets it back and keeps it vegetative and keeps it growing and allows that plant to continue to photosynthesize throughout the whole summer.
And you can, you can have a plant photosynthesizing. Pretty much, as soon as the ground thaws out, it's amazing how quick some of this grass starts to bring it up and growing until well into the fall. We're still photosynthesizing today out at our farm and stuff here, even though the, you know, the nights are cold and, and so, yeah, livestock are incredibly important to that process.
Yeah. Appreciate you saying that, sharing that if you knew where that study was, you should, I'd be curious to read it.
Trevor: Yeah, I need to find it. Um, there's an author that has a book out. I think it's called. Oh gosh. What is it? Sustainable dish, sacred cow, sacred cows. Name of the book.
Jared: I have listened to part of the audio book, but I've not finished it.
Okay. Yeah.
Trevor: I mean, not that put you on the spot. So I bought it months ago. I still have not read it. I really need to read it because I want to have her on the podcast. Um, but she really talks about it. How like livestock and ranching [00:47:00] cows are literally the answer to help the food system to help the planet.
And it's not the main cause. And so I think that's super. Important and, um, yeah, I mean, she had, there's a, there's a documentary out and I think almost had Ron Swanson, but the guy that plays Ron Swanson in parks and recreation narrated it, Nick Offerman, he narrated it. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. That's why I want to watch it just to hear his voice.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Right. I, uh, I haven't, I think, yeah, there was supposed to be a documentary that went along with the book and I have not seen it, so I'll have to look for it.
Trevor: I haven't, I don't know what it's not, I don't think it's on Amazon or Netflix or it's probably on one of those obscure documentary places or something.
Jared: Yeah.
Trevor: awesome. So what's the future of the podcast? What's the future of herd quitter? I mean, obviously you wanna interview more ranchers out there to kind of see how they're quote unquote quitting the, her and doing something different. So it's.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, it kind of just like you saying, carrying on hope, hope to keep interviewing more people.
What I would like to do that, I mean, challenged I'm [00:48:00] challenged in the amount of time that I have is, is build a more engaged following listening. You know, I I'd like to get more engaged on social media, start getting more. Listener questions, stuff like that. So that I can ask specifically, you know, if I have a guest lined up for two weeks from now, I'll put out what do you want to hear from them?
Kind of a thing or something like that. I've just been so limited in time that I haven't been able to really do that. I'm not sure if that's something you do or not, but yeah. I struggle with that, but that, that for sure, I want to get more of what my listeners want. I like to joke sometimes that this is my podcast.
I'm asking the questions I want to learn, but it is important to me too, for the listeners that we get, get them, uh, the, in their questions answered as well. And hopefully just continue to grow it and have more people learning. I mean really what the goal of it was is to share what I mean, these people I'm interviewing are finding extreme success in their businesses, by doing some of these things.
I mean, really big success and the story of ranching across the country. Right now, there's a lot of pretty [00:49:00] gloomy stories and stuff that people, people need, some something to change. And I'm just hoping that this gets out there. It gets in front of them. They can take a listen to some people and maybe learn something different and change, turn their story around.
And so that. They have a better life and future generations on their ranch might have a better life that, that maybe wouldn't have been possible if they didn't. So that's, that's the goal. We'll see where, where it goes.
Trevor: Well, so spring boarding off of that a little bit, I mean, obviously if somebody wants to learn more about ranching and how to diversify their operation, I mean, obviously listen to their herd quitter podcast.
Um, but what are some other resources out there that you might recommend? Um, maybe somebody like somebody like kit Farrow or somebody else, what are some resources you would advise people to use?
Jared: Yeah. So the podcast or kit Pharaoh, Pharaoh cattle.com is a great resource. There's blogs and things out there that that kit Feroz shares all the time.
It's Farrow cattle.com. He's got a newsletter that goes out once a week. And if you buy a bull, you get on his discussion group, which is an [00:50:00] amazing resource of thousands of people across the country who have bought bulls, who are just constantly cheering. Asking questions, sharing ideas from a wealth of knowledge of ranchers all around the country.
So that's, that's one. Um, as far as books and things like two books come to my mind is my favorite books. And one of them is dirt to soil. By gay brown, gay brown has an amazing story. Uh, in North Dakota of going through four years of total failure, crop failure and things that forced him to look at things differently.
I mean, he had hail, hail drought hail or something like that. And just right after he bought a farm, total crop failures and stuff, and it forced him to do things differently. And he is now one of the biggest names and kind of regenerative ag and sustainability. And it talks more about those soil health principles that I addressed earlier.
And then my favorite book now, after reading it is the turnaround a ranchers story by. Dave Pratt. That's like a business book that has so much great knowledge packed into a book. That's just totally [00:51:00] readable. I mean, I, I read through that love and it tells it and kind of a story format of a ranch family.
Learn this at helping another family who's needing the help. And so it tells it in a format that's very readable, but it's great content and a, and a great book. So I would check out those books for sure. Um, podcast, the working cows podcast is a great one. Um, I love clay Connery and what he's doing in his podcast.
He's kind of one of the big reasons that got me to do a podcast in the first place. So, uh, I would recommend that as well.
Trevor: Nice. I am going to add them on here. Making some notes, those sound like really good books. I have heard of the working cows podcast. I haven't listened to it, but I've heard a lot
Jared: of really good things.
Okay. Yeah, totally great. One clay does a great job. Um, and yeah, it was funny when I first learned what podcasts were I remember is at a wedding and somebody said, oh, you can do the podcasts. You should listen to podcasts. Like from that, that day, I just like searched. I got a podcast app and I started searching [00:52:00] cows, cattle, ranches, like trying to get as much cattle podcasts and working cows is one of the first ones I found.
I've been listening to it ever since. Just, just great, great podcasts. That's awesome.
Trevor: I've found it. There's a lot of, um, there's a lot of great ag and farming podcasts out there, but a lot of them are super focused on one particular topic. And that's phenomenal. I mean, like if you're a dairy ranch or if you're a dairy farmer or, um, like a beef cattle ranger, like there are numerous podcasts out there specifically for you.
Jared: It's cool. Cause I didn't know, like, I didn't know how many listens I'd have no idea how many listeners, the working cows podcasts get and stuff, but he's doing it still after a few years. So I was just like, you know, I dunno. I mean, if I get 10 listeners, is it worth it? I mean, is it a hundred lists? I don't know how many listeners I have to make a do worth, but it's pretty actually cool.
How many people out there, you know, will listen to such a specific podcast? Like you say, cause they are very specific. I mean, my audience is very limited. I'm not going to get someone from the city other than my aunt in Rochester. Shout out to [00:53:00] Cindy. She still listens to these. I appreciate that. Uh, yeah.
Uh, not many folks are going to listen to this who aren't involved in the industry. That's. Um,
Trevor: yeah, I mean, and that's just the way it is. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of people that, I mean, they find the podcast, they hook onto it and they just want to listen to it over and over again, like learn some stuff about ranching or about farming or about networking or whatever.
I mean, yeah. I feel like only few people can pull off the broad podcast ones like a Joe Rogan, but because they already know. That exposure really? And so they don't have to be super focused. I mean, they can cover basically whatever they want and they'll get
Jared: millions of downloads. But yeah, that is what it is.
Trevor: t's been the weirdest thing like the past year. I think our downloads have been down just a little bit, but word of mouth and feedback from friends and family and random people on the internet has gone up. And so I'm like, this is weird, but I like, I like it. Like, this is good. Like we were getting like a decent number of downloads and we weren't getting like any feedback or anything, but now I'm like, this is weird, unexpected, but great. So you never know what to expect on this. Podcast world journey
Jared: for sure. Well, I don't know where you were before versus now in your skill, but you're very talented guests or interviewer so far.
So probably quality has gotten to the point where you get lots of good comments. So keep it up. Well, thank you.
Trevor: I appreciate it. Yeah. I, in the beginning, I would always like, after a guest would say something, I would always be like, oh, that's really cool. That was like my word filler. And so now anytime I do an interview, I have like notes pulled up and I have it highlighted, do not say that's really.
And so it's all I guess, adapting and learning to do the good things and not to do the bad things, but you definitely learned through doing.
Jared: Yeah. And that's the beauty of editing is I edit out a lot of my filler words. I ended up the guests as much as I can to it, but I ended out my own. So I don't sound like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, because I'm the same boat, same boat here.
Trevor: do you, do you find it painful to listen to [00:55:00] yourself while you're editing? Because I, I can never listen to myself in the edit. I'm like, God, just, just keep talking. Like it's, it's not painful, but it's just like
Jared: annoying. I would say the only reason it's not as, because I'm listening, like, did I make myself sound stupid in this statement?
Like, that's what I'm listening for. I try to try to do my best to pull that out. So
Trevor: Hey, there go. I mean, every, usually during an interview, if I'm interviewing somebody that's not on podcasts a lot, I'm like, Hey, the, the podcast is made in the edit. Don't worry. If you mess up, I can edit it out. I will probably mess up.
Um, but yeah, the worst edit though, I had to do, I, it was like the first one of the first 10 episodes. I think I had this farmer in south Florida. Um, and he was starting a tractor mid-sentence and I love sharing the story because he was starting it. And I couldn't hear a word that he said, and I was like, dude, can you redo that please?
And so I had to go back and edit it out.
Jared:Cause it was, it was hilarious or like not do field work while we're doing a podcast, please.It was so funny.
Trevor: I had, I mean, it's funny what you'll get, you'll hear dogs in the background and sometimes, or you'll hear people in the background, you'll hear a fan or phones going off all the time.
You just, you honestly never know what you're going to get. It's it's pretty bad. Have you had any, any happenings
Jared: like that? Just earlier today? I was my wife and I. Yeah in the hospital, actually the last couple of days for my, my son and we were out late and I ran to my mom's house to do this podcast recording with somebody that I've been really excited to interview, but had been putting out, trying to been struggled to get scheduled for months.
And so I was like not missing this random, my mom's house. And then in the middle of that, my stepdad came home and his dogs were barking and he walked in and like started tromping through the living room and started doing dishes. And it was like, you could hear it all on my end. Luckily I can edit out my style.
Yeah. So. 39 episodes or whatever. And I, I still can't, uh, instill can't do unwell yet, I guess, but I did get home for this one. So you don't have to deal with those issues. There you go. Hey,
Trevor: it happens. It's all struggle. All struggle. I mean, [00:57:00] that always just makes the episodes
Jared: more. You. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
Hopefully the listeners agree.
Trevor: I mean, as long as I listen to a degree, that's good. If they don't, then that could be no bueno we're there. This has been awesome, man. Chatting with you learn about all that you do about the herd quitter podcast. Um, if people want to follow you follow the podcast, obviously it's herd quitter.
It's on, um, apple podcasts. It's on Google. It's on Spotify and a bunch of other podcasts
Jared: players. Yup, yup. Yup. It should be everywhere. Most people listen. So. It's like, well,
Trevor: where, where else can they go to kind of follow you guys and see what you guys are
Jared: doing? Yeah. I heard quitter podcast.com or heard quitter podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or you can follow me Jared lumen on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Um, I kind of link through all those things as well, but yeah.
Trevor: Deal. All right. Well, Jared, I appreciate it, man. Good luck with the podcast. Oh, and also I forgot to mention this. I absolutely love your logo. I think it's awesome. The bowl, the very simple [00:58:00] text herd quitter with the microphone in it. It's, it's a beautiful, simplistic logo.
And I think there aren't nearly as many podcasts out there with a really good logo
Jared: and here's just one of them. So I appreciate that. Thanks so much. I had a great, great person put that together and stuff, but thank you. Thank you so much,
Trevor. Really appreciate being on.


text:
With the NBA draft lottery order set, ESPN has launched its latest mock draft.
The Oklahoma City Thunder took star Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs with the No. 4 pick.
Suggs, who was both a football and basketball prospect coming out of high school, chose basketball and chose wisely. Not even his five-star ranking projected the kind of season he had with Gonzaga.
He showed athleticism and explosiveness to the rim. He showed the ability to make ridiculous plays when it mattered the most. He helped lead Gonzaga to an undefeated regular season, a winning streak that did not end until they fell in the championship game to Baylor.
ESPN reporter Jonathan Givony wrote that Suggs could be a top-three pick.
"The Thunder would surely be thrilled to see Suggs, a strong candidate for many teams picking in the top three, fall to them. His defensive versatility, competitiveness and transition-scoring prowess would fit in very well with what the team already has in place on the court as well as with the culture Sam Presti is attempting to build in Oklahoma City."
Suggs would pair nicely next to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as another playmaker and scoring option. If the lottery gives the Thunder a top-five selection, a pick like this would potentially give them an All-Star backcourt.
The No. 5 pick, belonging to the Cleveland Cavaliers, was Jonathan Kuminga. That's relevant to the Thunder because they would get the Houston Rockets' pick if it ends up being fifth in the lottery. There is a 47.9% chance it lands there.
If the Thunder don't get the Rockets' pick, they'll receive that of the Miami Heat at No. 18. In Givony's mock draft, they used it on Arkansas guard Moses Moody.
"Like every team, the Thunder could look to bolster their wing depth with as many floor-spacing, multipositional defenders as they can find. Moody is an ideal 3-and-D prospect who happens to be one of the youngest players in the draft, having yet to turn 19."
Moody averaged 16.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game while shooting 42.7% from the field and 35.8% from 3.
He's a good shooter off the catch, and his 7-foot wingspan elevates his defensive potential. He's another guy who could theoretically switch between a few positions on the court.
This draft outcome seems as though it would give the Thunder two rotation players with their first-round picks.
This post originally appeared on OKCThunderWire. Follow us on Facebook!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Case Study
Halting horsemeat contamination
LGC, the London Government Chemist, played a crucial role in helping the UK government robustly address the 2013 horsemeat issue. The rapid development of reference materials for meat species alongside the provision of the first proficiency testing scheme for horsemeat in beef provided essential support for routine laboratories which contributed to resolving the incident and restoring consumer confidence.
LGC prepared and delivered meats and mixtures down to 0.1 % adulteration for horse and pig meat in beef. These were used as reference materials by Public Analyst laboratories analysing samples for the government horsemeat surveys.
The action taken by industry, government and LGC minimised the disruption to the ~£3 billion/year UK beef market and ultimately helped to restore flagging consumer confidence in processed meat products as quickly as was practically possible. Within a year, beef consumption increased to pre-horsemeat issue levels despite a £95 million drop in consumer spending during 2013.
Further information can be found on the LGC website.


text:
SHORT STORY: Transposition
Preface: Evolution is inevitable, its outcomes deterministic based on myriad social, physical and environmental factors contributing to change. For thousands of years, homo sapiens have ruled the animal kingdom not because of physical size and strength but due to the cognitive abilities granted by a relatively large prefrontal cortex. For thousands of years, males have dominated the social hierarchy of homo sapiens not by cognitive abilities but by the very factor that predominately establishes hierarchy for all animals except for homo sapiens, ironically physical size and strength. This physical advantage males have over females is in large part due to dissimilar levels of a single hormone, testosterone. Is this physical advantage without end? Given the unpredictable nature of evolution is it reasonable to assume change is possible at any given time? What if?
Pure power. Decisive, unapologetic decision-making. A decision taken that asked for no opinions, sought no clarification and summarily dismissed months of hard work. "NO," the boss vocalized the foregone conclusion. Unsurprising as the decision was, the single syllable sunk into the skin, through the skull and into his subconscious mind, providing additional confirmation of Philip's utter impotence, further diminishing his self-worth.
Philip left the meeting room, hunched in defeat. Was the hunching organically reactive or was it an ingrained posture automatically assumed concluding these "meetings"?
Is the hunching conscious? Philip wondered.
No, and far from it Philip. The question itself is rather puerile, honestly. But Philip didn't realize this, trapped in a maelstrom of thoughts, thoughts whipping nauseously from deep introspection to paranoid self-consciousness. The teetering between the emotional counterparts left him raw, hyper-vigilant, so when he found himself holding what he believed to be the smallest, most incapable penis in the known universe he quickly aborted his attempt at emptying his bladder. He imagined his penis, shrinking flat with his abdomen, then inverting quickly into another dimension. A wormhole to his quickly receding penis, then a penis black hole into which his body (standing at the event horizon) was sucked slowly into the swirling nothingness creating by his infinitely tiny sex organ.
No, he realized, this urinary flow won't come now. Distracted, insecure, nervous. Too much mental energy allocated to the process of labeling himself an inefficaciously functioning entity in the universe. NO - dismissive in its flippant brevity. Philip and his non-existent penis agreed to a five minute rendezvous after lunch at the same urinal for a second go at pissing. "Success comes with dogged determination" was probably what our hero wanted to think. However, Philip seems to have suppressed motivational sentiments from leaking into the ether leaving this narrator to speculate. Perhaps Philip would feel lame for attempting to self-affirm? Perhaps Philip knows he utterly sucks and forced optimism only underscores the magnitude of his perceived suckyness? Either way, flush Philip, flush! At least make your bathroom visit appear legitimate to the world, or at least to your bathroom companions waiting for the formal confirmation of your successful completion of task number 1. Whoooshhh! Attaboy, chin up.
Concluding his demoralizing workday, Philip's brain launched into a personal inventory process, emotional force majeure, a process spawned by a physically superior man passing by, disrupting his periphery. Philip's insecurity demanded undivided attention be given to the obviously superlative specimen: crisp jawline, broad shoulders, a comfortably fluid gait exuding an easy confidence. Fingering the sparse stubble of his doughy chin, Philip wondered why he was condemned to walk through life constantly measuring the transition time between his steps, his arm swings. Inane, distracting self-observations, critiques. His ridiculous choices with respect to how far he let his arms swing upward (Christ Philip, are you marching to the store??) or how much distance permitted between footfalls (Really Philip, are you competing with someone?). Philip's inventory continued even as his rational mind confirmed that self-critique is a rabbit hole floored with punji sticks. Why don't I speak up? Why do I doggedly fear the unknown? Why do I always choose to self-deprecate, hat in hand, when I pursue something that I seem to want? Why did I just use 'seem' in that thought. Did confidence ever exist?
Shaking from his stupor like a wet dog, Philip looked around at adjacent cars, wondering if their driver's perceived his head movement choices as too generous. This was the precise moment that Phillip realized he was still holding his penis. There were no cars. The work day was not over yet. He zipped, flushed the toilet a second time and washed his hands in the hottest water possible so that he could relish the steamy odor of clean hands. A reward of sorts. Poor Philip's brain.
On the actual ride home, Philip felt the world closing in. Not in an apocalyptic manner, but in what he perceived to be the banal, very normal whittling-down of possibilities associated with mid-life. Both death and inertia creep into the heart of aging man. Tomorrow, Saturday was a predetermined outcome of oddly blessed comfort. To a minute the day would be reflective of the past fifty Saturdays, the precise moment at which any discrete event would commence and conclude was calculable. A precision so comfortably restrictive, so invariant and known, that Philip basked in momentary reverie beaming fatuous grins to his last-week-self just ahead of cue. Sunk in daydream, Philip only came up for air when his phone tinkled. His partner.
"Hi hun, how are you?"
"Fine dear, look, we're out of milk, get some on your way home."
"Sure, no problem honey."
"Also, just get the rest of groceries for the upcoming week, that way we'll be good to go for Monday."
"But I think we,"
"Just do it, it'll save time, see you at home."
Fear? No, this is my wife! Subservience? No, we are a partnership. This is cooperation. A diligent management of domestic tasks. Philip, the master rationalist.
A text from wife. Running late, you get Sophia.
Beep, beep. Bump, bump. Boom, boom. Elementary school.
"Hi sweetheart, how was school today?"
"Just fine?
no response
Who did you eat lunch with today?"
no response
"Sophia? Honey?"
"Ok. Did you have gym class today?"
no response
"Sophia, did you have gym class today?"
no response
"Honey, did you have art class?"
"Well, what special class did you have today?"
no response
"Oh ok, that's nice. Did your class sing songs today?"
no response
"Soph, did you sing any songs in class today?"
Philip decided to end the inquisition fearing a nosebleed may cause him to lose control of the car, veer into oncoming traffic. In a corner of his mind, he wondered whether little Sophia had already come to realize his relative lack of authority in the world. So young, but perhaps she's capable of interpreting the small, unspoken social cues? Have the vast differences in physical size crystallized in her brain causing her to associate legitimacy with greater physicality? Worse even, has Pat pulled her aside and explained, in the most elementary context no doubt, the reality of unspoken social axioms? Does a rich baritone trigger certain synapses in a child's brain, elicit more acquiescence? Has Sophia noticed that her eight-year-old-foot is nearly the same size as daddy's (and what do the implications portend)? No Philip, ease up, you're back on a paranoid train-of-thought.
Grocery store. Irritatingly ironic that the most embarrassing item I'd like to snatch from the shelves, hide in the cart, is smirkingly located beyond reach on the top shelf, Philip thought. One could bitch about shelf design, a less-than-customer-friendly experience or even something as esoteric as the subtle reinforcement of power paradigms through tiny (seemingly trivial but loaded with meaning) product position choices. But, vocalizing such things is to encourage scorn, or worse, to encourage the opposition to exact a modicum of sadism at your expense. With this rationalization, Philip took the logical next step.
"Excuse me, ma'am, would you be kind enough to grab me that box of condoms up there?"
She retrieved it obligingly, happy to help another person in need. Her opportunity to exercise the muscle of heroism we daydream about. No, she's wasn't ripping the face off a terrorist, or saving a child from a pool's watery death, but she was assisting Philip in a task he was unable to perform. Only, her eyes, Philip thought. It wasn't judgment, that would be unnecessary. It was an underscore, a "you're welcome" before the "thanks". Philip felt the weight of the gesture, it's potential implication, but brushed it off as the latest paranoia in a day filled with them.
"No, I'm sorry, the smaller box, green on the left," Philip said.
Her smile, insinuating, it seemed to Philip. It's as though she wanted to pet me, perhaps put me on a shelf during next week's dinner party to show off to her guests..."Look everyone, look at this cute little man I helped get rubbers for in the store today! Isn't he just the most.....oooohhhhhh!, I just want to eat, him, up! Cute little thing."
She traded knowing looks with Sophia, told her what a big girl she was, touched Philip's arm with an endearing goodbye. A goodbye touch that tactilely conveyed her real desire -to condescendingly pat Philip on the head for being such a sweet little charity case.
Philip worked his way through the grocery store, careful to yield right-of-way to the larger specimens, knowing full well they tend not to realize the actual extent of their physical selves, oftentimes bumping or knocking unsuspecting passersby. Bosoms like watermelons. Hips swaying menacingly. The clop-clopping of draft horses' metal shoes. Last weeks' toe crushing incident had Philip on high-alert, vigilance was required for survival.
Distracted by internal dialog, Philip recognizes familiar tones dripping into his consciousness. Tones requiring immediate response, or else. "I'm sorry sweetheart, what did you say dear?"
"Honey we're nearly done here, we'll be home in a jiff and we can get a bite there, ok?"
"No. Snack. Now."
For the first time in his daughter's life, Philip realized this was more than a simple request for inter-meal sustenance; the day's cumulative events made it abundantly clear. She was coming into her self. Precocious yes, but the physical size, the self-assuredness - her awareness was gaining.
"Honey, daddy's in hurry, we need to get home, get dinner going."
Philip diligently went to work constructing his hedge. He saw no nascent tears, knew the hedge was a critical strategy for conflict avoidance in the event the issue was pressed. Would she lash out? Actually become physical in the store?
"No. I want a snack now."
"You know honey, we have some pretzels in the car, let's grab a few of those in a minute OK?"
"Dad, I'll have my snack now."
Have?...the fuck is this??? Of course Philip didn't say this, nor did he actually think it. Rather, he begun to process the thought then realized it's futility, regrouped, trashed the notion of his pretzel hedge and came up with a response that sounded an awful lot like,
"Whatever you want sweetheart, you grab it and we'll head to the checkout."
But Philip wasn't ready to label this exchange capitulation as he was still certain he could wrestle Sophia to the ground (literally physically) if necessary, and subdue her (this year anyhow) if required (though the tactic would come with all sorts of nasty ramifications). Again, Philip's brain did not actually think this thought. We are left to speculate that if he was inclined to further ponder the exchange with his daughter (rather than just dismiss it outright in a bid to protect his wobbling mental state at this point in the day), he most likely would have arrived at the aforementioned line of reasoning. ----Oh Philip, now your insecurities are causing the narrator to bend through odd mental gymnastics to glean character insight otherwise unavailable and hidden inside your paranoid, protective brain.----
Home. Philip has made it home. Sophia, licking the last of her parentally-unapproved snack, most likely didn't hear Philip's stern request that she take her shoes off before going in the house. Pat has a tendency to not remove her shoes and this behavior seems to set the tempo for how Sophia responds to shoe removal requests. Regardless, Philip's content in believing she simply did not hear him, was far too focused on ensuring the drippy ice cream didn't mess up the floor. Good girl Sophia, good girl. As he lays down to bed tonight, Philip will experience a little difficulty falling asleep as he replays this particular exchange over and over in his head wondering if perhaps he intentionally softened, to the point of inaudibility, his voice when requesting the shoe removal.
"Ah shit, what a day!"
Somebody had a bad. That somebody is Pat. Pat had a bad day. Poor Pat.
"What's wrong dear?"
"Everything! Horrible day at the office. Like pulling teeth all day long,. Some days it seems that brute force is the only way to get things accomplished. Leverage, pressing in on people, bootstrapping motivation out of veiled threats. Exhausting, all of it! The less-than-artful executive dance."
"I'm sorry to hear that. My day wasn't the best either."
"You get the milk?"
Philip realized that an overworked mind, a tired body, sometimes lacks the awareness to engage in mutually-beneficial dialogue, one that considers the feelings and circumstances of both interlocutors. Pat is given a pass for her Philip-perceived insensitivity, she's tired.
"Yes, got the milk, the other groceries honey. They're in the car. It's just that we had this meeting and, well, you know how those things go. How your ideas get pushed aside, the people making decisions seem to wear ideological blinders, or rather, simply want to deliver dictates."
"Oh, and the Chamomile? Did you see that on the list?"
"Yep, I got that too. Like Richard, he had this great idea about..."
"Sorry to interrupt, can you make sure you get Sophia's school shirt pressed for tomorrow? She has that assembly and you know she'll be upset if she's the only one not wearing red."
"Will do honey. Like I was saying, Richard, he had this..."
"And dear, not too much starch. She got that rash last time, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, right, starch."
"You were saying?"
"Never mind." Philip swallowed his complaints, realized Pat was too frazzled and distracted from her day to soothe him with empathy. Maybe he could approach her later with his laments.
The neighborhood watering hole. Don was sitting there, his tiny body like a peel-n-eat shrimp curled pink around the bar's edge. Little hands wrapped around a mug, tip-toes straining for the brass foot-rail. Philip immediately proceeded to deconstruct every single one of Don's less-than-desirable physical attributes, compare them in-kind to each one of his slightly-more-desirable attributes, though he became entirely distracted from this analysis, thinking back to what he intended to tell Pat about Richard. Then Richard's less-than-desirable attributes started flooding Philip's thought process, until a passing memory from the day emerged and Philip couldn't help but reflect on the envious attributes that guy-with-the-really-sharp-jawline had and how confidently he seemed to move, swinging his arms perfectly, his legs taking casual yet smooth strokes across the pavement. This mélange of cascading thoughts muddied Philip's initial critique of Don. Panic! So, in order to arrive at his rendezvous in some semblance of a superior position (rather, the mental manifestation of a socially-superior position), Philip inwardly registered a super-fast critique of Don's limp, droopy eyelids on approach to boost his confidence just before extending his hand, remembering to smile, saying,
"Hey Don, how's it going man?"
"Yeah, not bad Phil, you?"
Philip flagged the bartender, ordered his usual.
"Typical stuff today, no sense in complaining," Philip said as he tested the beer foam's resiliency with a gentle blow. "How's Frankie?"
"Working late, again. Some big roll out, flies to London next week for the whole week. Looks like I'll be alone with the kids, again."
"I see. Could be worse, Frankie could be home all week."
"Eh, you're right." Philip didn't believe this, much preferred the cathartic Don. The Don who kindly took up the task of bitching about his own partnership problems thereby allowing Philip the ability to go numbingly quiet, lament vicariously through Don's articulate bitching. Philip was a lazy griever, a drowning sort of personality.
"Anyway, 'member how I was telling you Charlie wouldn't lay off with the jokes?"
"Sorry, Charlie?"
"The bossman."
"Oh right, yeah, I remember."
"Just kept pressing the shit, over and over and over again. Nothing directed squarely at me, but the innuendo was pretty damn clear. Now, if I were to retort, you know, get aggressive about it, it would be really easy for Charlie to take a single step back, claim I'm being overly sensitive about the matter and brush the entire episode off as me being paranoid, of course making me look silly, ignorant even, in the process. So the immediate thought about the whole affair boiled down to... just let it go, let it roll off Don."
"Yeah, I hear you. Pick your battles, blah, blah." Philip's highly tuned sense of workplace malfeasance was able to generate, by his rough count, twenty such similar incidents within the last year. Philip was a born commiserator.
"But then, yesterday."
"Yeah man, really took a turn for the worse."
"Ahhh, alright, let's hear it."
"Was sitting there, plugging these inane numbers into some goddamn forecasting spreadsheet after lunch, half awake mind you. Charlie strolls up, towering over me. Asks if I had a few minutes for a quick meeting. What to say? No boss, busy updating a spreadsheet, piss off."
"Probably not a good idea."
"Exactly. Anyhow, I followed. We head over to the big corner office. Shiny nameplate on oversized door, small army of servile assistants pecking away out front, expansive view of downtown, you know the scene. We're in the office, door's shut, curtains lowered."
"Yeah, lowered. Hang in there, it gets better. Charlie's now leaning on the desk, leg propped, this sort of expectant, smug look to where I almost feel as though I wasn't supposed to even be in the office. Does that make sense?"
"I think I understand."
"Right, so Charlie starts right off by bitching about this small mistake I made on a report last week, trivial shit. It was corrected even before the report went to print. A tiny error we had already discussed twice. So I'm a little defensive right at the start, but I hold it in, apologize again for the mistake. Done. Charlie then brushes it off as if it shouldn't have been brought up again anyway and now were both just standing there, me of course, cranking my neck something terrible to keep a professional eye contact. I'm a man! Twenty-some years in the industry! I know how to comport myself. This is nothing new."
"Right, yeah, go on."
"Or I think I do. Charlie takes this deep, contemplative breathe, blows it right in my face like a person who grew up in a goddamn animal crate or something. Fine, a little booze on the breath, the charred stink of recent cigarette. Eye contact, these heavy eyebrows, weighing me, weighing the situation. Odd, you know, it was just weird."
"First time with this sort of stayed eye contact?"
"Yeah, yeah, first time. So I'm like, what the fuck is this? Anyhow, Charlie then gives this strange little series of nods while staring me directly in the eyes, proceeds to walk to my side, does a little circle around me, stops right in front of me after the circle, looks me up, then down, then square in the eyes. Then, grabs me right in the nuts. Squarely in the nuts, fingers start working them independently like a couple of goddamn baoding balls. I actually felt like coughing, but I didn't. I stood stock-still."
"What?" Philip masked his immediate understanding by feigning disbelief, leaning in, lowering his head a touch, wincing through the manufactured fog of misunderstanding. "You're joking right?"
"Nope. Very real my friend. Eye contact the whole, entire time. Asking me, beckoning me, to give some sort of response and I'm just incredulous, don't know what the hell just happened. I'm scared right, like, all of sudden everything is laid on the line. I'm vulnerable six ways to Sunday and Charlie's just standing there as if my whole situation didn't just get really complicated."
"Wha..., well what the hell did you do?"
"Nothing. Not a damn thing. I just kept my eyes on Charlie, was shaking a little, just wanted to maintain presence, make it clear that I was there, in the room, fully aware of what just happened. I didn't say a thing, I didn't push the hand away. I was a brick wall, a silent, observant brick wall with a hand on my nuts."
"Well, what about HR, a formal complaint? Did you speak to coworkers, see if they had a similar experience?"
"What and risk everything? Ridicule. Disbelief. Dismissal? I can't afford that, and what would Frankie say? Oh, by the way hun, lost my job today...ahh, you know, Charlie grabbed me all up on my nuts, I complained to HR... I want none of that."
Walking home from the bar, Philip's brain dithered between comfy inebriation and chilly fear. A prisoner of his vague mind, the reveries took over. Snuggling on the warm couch with little Sophia, a pricking sensation in his hand, he looked down to find a bloody stump, red smeared on the mouth of a ravenous child. Walking naked down a busy, city street with cookie-sheet-sized feet, tripping over and over again. Sand as air, then blood, working into all the tiny crevices in his body tickling every nerve ending and clogging every passage. Philip was coming unstuck.
The Wednesday night dance. Philip noted that the lighting was perfect, the music soft and welcoming. Temperature just right, even the humidity of the air (something that Philip suddenly realized he had never really considered in the past) was perfect, didn't play off the skin clammy, itchy or otherwise. Pleasant. The satin was clean, pillows fluffed like little clouds into which your head would slowly fall forever. Positioned in the very center of this carefully crafted nest lay Philip's Pat, splayed in a tempting yet false vulnerability. Resigned, his tiny hand goes into hers. Her massive, enveloping hand feigns a crushing squeeze, tapers quickly to a cuddle. Philip realizes, for the first time, that this hulking woman's thighs had a girth easily twice that of his body. Twice Philip thought. I never even realized. He always knew she was much taller, one and-a-half but probably closer to two feet if not even a little more. They all were, these Pats.
And as the dance progressed through its ritualistic turns and steps, Philip's mind regressed into the day's earlier inventorial state. Pat's foot, a size 18. Pat's driver seat, my toes nowhere near the pedals. Pat's jacket, an ocean of fabric. These things, these values, he never really considered or put into acknowledged buckets. These Pats, all these Pats and the quantities, somehow missed. Philip's mind fixated on the quantities, their implications as Pat's massive hand gripped the entirety of his waist. Philip, a mere instrument for her enjoyment, his floundering body bouncing unwittingly as his mind finally caught up to reality.
Philip found himself back at the office, realizations from the previous night barely perceptible like tiny spent coals choking under a pile of powdery ash. A new day.
"Boss wants to see you," said Jon. Jon a petulant, servile little toady disseminating messages through the cubicles like a snake winding through the weeds.
"Got it Jon (you prick)."
Still raw from the previous day's meeting (utterly shutdown, publicly no less!, with a single NO!) Philip trudged to the corner office. Inside, facing Pat (oh the irony in a name!), he cranked his neck up but his eyes couldn't sustain it. Philip broke eye contact, looked down to the ground, defeated as time slowed to crawl. Creeping in from his periphery, the massive hand moved toward its inevitable target, a slow-motion world for Philip, underscoring the gravity of the moment. A delicately manicured thumbnail of fiery, buxom red leading the charge with its four basket-like underlings cupped below, ready for the squeeze. In the little vacuum of slowed time, all the little sounds echoed cacophonously. A cough rat-tat-tating from somewhere. Her domineering laughter, overlapping onto itself. A phone ringing, shrill, and recursing ever-shriller. Until, Philip felt the testicular kneading, the abject physicality of subservience.
- all story images are taken from either pixabay.com or google images (licensed for reuse) and are free to use under creative commons
- original story - content belongs to Daniel Shortell
- Always proof-of-brain here at danielshortell.com - 100% upvoter-bot free, every time
Hello @danielshortell, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
Thanks for the up, will definitely give a look into @creativecrypto...excellent to see more curation/creative forums here on Steemit!
My favorite line:
"Don was sitting there, his tiny body like a peel-n-eat shrimp curled pink around the bar's edge."
resteemed to my mass followers
you're welcome.
One hell of a long short story. :-D
Hheheheh, yeah, probably too long for the steemit format. Going to try to post just my shorter work here. The other argument though is that people are upvoting their hard-earned $.01 here and I like to make sure I give good value (ie: quantity) for their money. (lol)
LOL For that very reason i re-steemed in the hopes to get a few more cents in your direction for all that hard work.
It's totally creative and complete story.
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