August 22, 2024 • 32 mins
---------- Originally Aired on the Good Foods Podcast ----------
White Oak Pastures has been in Will's family for 6 generations and so you don't have to do the math, their place is a 158-year-old family farm situated in Bluffton, Georgia. Will Harris has been very blessed to have not only lived out his dream of taking over the family farm, but White Oak Pastures now boasts the fact that it's one of the largest employers in his county.
Will wrote A Bold Return to Giving a Damn and in it you'll live the history of his family and learn how he transformed how he approached farming and how that in turn, transformed White Oak Pastures.
It was an honor have Mr. Harris on the podcast and I hope that you'll enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed hearing his stories.
Start Here ➡️https://linktr.ee/whiteoakpastures
IG ➡️ @whiteoakpastures
Facebook ➡️ https://www.facebook.com/whiteoakpastures/
X ➡️ @whiteoakpastures
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
White Oak Pastures has been in Will's family for 6 generations and so you don't have to do the math, their place is a 158-year-old family farm situated in Bluffton, Georgia. Will Harris has been very blessed to have not only lived out his dream of taking over the family farm, but White Oak Pastures now boasts the fact that it's one of the largest employers in his county.
Will wrote A Bold Return to Giving a Damn and in it you'll live the history of his family and learn how he transformed how he approached farming and how that in turn, transformed White Oak Pastures.
It was an honor have Mr. Harris on the podcast and I hope that you'll enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed hearing his stories.
Start Here ➡️https://linktr.ee/whiteoakpastures
IG ➡️ @whiteoakpastures
Facebook ➡️ https://www.facebook.com/whiteoakpastures/
X ➡️ @whiteoakpastures
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. This is Wood Harrass, oder of White Oak Pastures,
Holistically maddaged regenerative ranch and farm. It's been in my
family for over one hundred and fifty years. Author of
a Bowl returned to get runger Down, One Fall, six
generations and the future of food And this is the
(00:22):
Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All of us are on a journey towards better health
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
In this episode, when I'm asked, what's supported to me
in terms of operating the star means that we support
the cycles of nation and when those cycles are operating optimally,
the land is teeming with life.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This is the Good Foods Podcast. And now here's your
host show.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Thank you for having it. Delighted to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Eighteen sixty six, that was a pretty good year in
the history of the Harris family. How did your great
granddaddy decide to settle in that part of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
My great grandfather had a fall about thirty miles from
here that he worked rout to the Civil War. Somehow
in the Civil War we lost the farm and I
don't know how that happened exactly. I've heard two three
different versions, but we did. He was very fortunate. He
(01:31):
had an uncle who was a medical doctor in Bluffton, Georgia,
which is where I am now, who started them over
farming here in eighteen sixty six, and he followed laying
all his life, followed by his son, My grandfather followed
by his son, and my dad followed by me, and
(01:52):
I have two of my three daughters heereed farming getting
with me today, same land plus some extra and between
the two they of five babies who have not helped yet,
but we got high hopes they're.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
In line already to take on the charge.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
If you don't work, you don't eat. We feed you
and educate you to a point, but at some point
you either doing work on the fog or you don't,
and it can be the water. I have a daughter
who chose not to come back to the fault, and
that's okay.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
When you're a great grandfather was starting out. Did they
have stories and how many people were helping them out?
How many people were on the farm at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I don't know that you got up to nearly five
hundred acres or is wat which was a pretty big
fall of that errow, and we could speculate, so that
would have been the sharecropping, which was typically forty acres
on a mule, So if it was four hundred acres,
that would have been ten shaf roppers. That usually be
(02:51):
a family, so it would be dead and who were
ail working agent family?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
What did they raise in the farms you know at
the beginning, Yeah, you know, it would have.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Been very similar to today. They would have raised enough
corn to feed the meat of wolves.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I do know they had cattle.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
They had harms and poultry probably certainly chickens, and probably
ducks and turkeys, and probably goats and sheep, which is
what we have to that's almost exactly the same species
that we were raised here on the fall today. Although
we went a couple of generations, it was operated as
a monocultural cattle industry. My dad and the first part
(03:31):
of my career we only had cattle.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
What's one of your favorite memories with your grandfather?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You know, my granddad died when I was a very
small child, and I do remember him. I remember that
he had a horse named Die who seemed like he
was as big as an elephant to me, and he
got so old he couldn't get an old diag, had
to put him on dag, but he would ride around.
I'd ride on the back of the horse with him.
(03:57):
You know, I don't know that much communication. I don't
know what I was too small. He was like my dad.
You know, my dad didn't now, let's say to me
evil unless he had something for me to do.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, that was going to be my next question. What
kind of a father was your dad?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, so we had an usual relationship. My dad was
an only child born in nineteen twenty and I'm an
only child born in nineteen fifty four. And we were
like best friends, brothers, father son, just being close in
every sense of the word. And we could hoot together,
(04:31):
fish together, eat together, drink together, play together. But when
it tem time to work together, it was not pretty.
We thought over everything, and he won every fight we
ever had. His truck card was you don't for god?
Who was day on farm?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
This is that'll part of me settle every argument right there.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, I would stalk away and swell the doll and
spend my tires when I left. But you know, he
always won.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But I what was it like to be will Harris
growing up on White Oak Pastors, knowing that someday you
were going to have to steer this ship that had
been in your family for generations.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It was great because I never was confused over what
I wanted to do. I always wanted to run the farm.
I remember my friends wanted to be you know, fireman
and doctors and lawyers and policemen, and all I wanted
to do was run the farm. No sense of confusion
(05:30):
on my part, and I did. I went to the
University of Georgia a major, and I didn't want to go.
My dad put in for me to go, so I did,
and a major denimal science, and the previously been outible husbandry.
They had changed in animal science with the full intention
of coming back. He did not want me to come back,
(05:52):
and my dad had been very successful, but he was
of the generation that people needed to escape the fall.
He wanted me to go to Towel and get a
job and make a lot of money and old come
back and farm. So we will go at oz O
that deal for a while, but ultimately I made it back.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So his goal was to be successful enough that you
could leave and beyond your own and do just something
totally different.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, yeah, he did this just two different things. He
certainly in Dublin wor worked hard to do the best
he could, but then he also separately wanted me to
do something else. That generation, at post World War two
generation really felt like children needed to escape the fall.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And that's truly what happened. You know.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
The best and brightest of us left and went to
the city and got a job. The worst of us
went to jail, and us see students stayed and farmed
the fall.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And it was fun. If I were to ask your
daughters what daddy was like when they were growing up,
what do you think would be one of the first
things that they'd say.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Give him ex precious hold us. You know, we got
a law really really well. I had three daughters. I
gree wife who it was a school teacher, a devoted mother,
and we had a pretty clear differentiation of duty. She
the house and the family and it was her domain.
(07:19):
The farm was my domain. I ran very autonomously. She
ran her very autonomously. And my girls did not work
with me on farm. You know, I always worked on
fall growing up. I did not expect that it didn't
have much. I did not have much fun heim to do.
(07:39):
It was a very industrial, commercial cattle operation, and I
just didn't have much for them to do, and they
did all the little girl things, pr lessons and ballet
lessons and gymnastics lessons dot. So that's the way that
deal went.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Agriculture changed about the time that your dad took over
the farm. How did that impact white Oak pastures?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
A lot? A lot my dad to go on the
far post World War two, and that is when agriculture industrialized, commoditize, centralized,
and my dad went from raising what his dad had done,
raised a lot of different species of our moors and crops,
to be a monocultural cattleman. And I think my dad
(08:28):
was very proud of that. I think that allowed him
to be an expert cattleman and he enjoyed that, and
he was very very good at it, very successful with it.
You know, would not have considered the other species. All
I want to do was run the farm, excite that
the way my dad had run. The role model went
(08:50):
to when I major dollar science came over and read
it that way when he let me, when I finally
got my turning back, and I too was successful. We
weren't people, but I never lost money. I went back
and to look and we paid taxes every single year.
We had paid for a farm well whistle advantages. And
it wasn't until I started changing the farm that word
(09:12):
you could use money on farm. I didn't know you
could do that, but I found out she could.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Well that's my next point. You know, you come into
the picture years later and you started to change things
like how your grandfather and great grandfather used to work
the farm. What prompted you to change your mind as
it were, and eventually change your farm?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You're right, I did turn the farm into a modern
day version of what my great grandfather did, but that
was not my original intent. I just wanted to change
what I was doing. I was the uber industrial cattlemen
use a lot of of drugs cattle, a lot of
(09:51):
lot ofbout its up there. Peter found about it's a
lot of our lotus folds, a lot of implant steroid
one more implants, are you a lot of besticized on
my crops, a lot of chemical fertilizers. Are very very
industrial farmer, and I had a fairly sudden change of mind.
It wanted to move away from that, so I started
(10:13):
giving things up without any real good direction of what
God was going, and it led me here. And I'll
say this, I was extremely fortunate. I've never heard of
grass fed beef when I started making changes in the
mid nineties, but by the time I had grass fed
beef to sell, people were talking a little bit about
(10:36):
grass fed beef. I actually sold Whole Foods Market and
Public Supermarket the first pound of grass fed beef that
they ever sold in the store or advertised it that
way and sold in the store. So for the time,
it was just so so fortunate.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Speaking of grass fed beef, has anybody ever asked you,
maybe they're coming to visitor on the farm or they
crossed path and they say, you know, I taste regular beef.
I guess grain fed beef and grass I can't tell
the difference. Is there really a difference in taste?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, I don't get that much. I had people say
I don't like grass fed beef, and then that's okay.
I sailed them. Maybe the ones say I can't tell
the difference in grain fed and grass feed. There's a
remarkable difference in the two. And I'm not here to
blasphem grain fed beef, but it's a very different product
and people have a preference one over them.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Well, I've heard you use the term that you're in
a very break evenish business. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I am now, and they break evenish business always made money.
When I was in the industrial cattle business, I said
that we're rich people, but we live comfortable. I changed
the model and it was an early innovator in embracing
the grass fed model. At that time it was very fashionate.
We have some very very good year that I don't
(11:58):
mean compared to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, but for
a farm in Bluff in Georgia, we have some good
years and I thought they would last forever. Got a
littledrunk all success and they didn't last forever. It changed.
Some things changed we.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Can talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
It became a very very humanist business. Today we have
a big business. It's a twenty five million dollars a
year business with the largest private employer in the county.
We got one hundred and seventy and sol employees. But
from a profit perspective, we pay our bills and there's
nothing left. And you know what, it's so key. Certain
(12:38):
little nerve rifing sometimes, but as long as I can
pay my bills. We have a very good stattard of
living and very enjoyable lifestyle, both for ourselves and I
think for our employees.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I've heard you and Joel Sallison used the term transparency
when it comes to almost everything you do on the farm.
Do you feel that that thought process is the heat
of a solid foundation that comes to doing business.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I don't think you can operate this way without
being super transparent. Big Food is so so good at messaging.
I mean they can They can produce a product any
way they want to and have brilliant people talk about
it in ways it's very pleasing to the consumer. And
(13:25):
we really don't have Our advertising budget is zero and
the number of the people that we have that are
focused on messaging is zero. So we'd have to rely
authenticity and transparency and let people come and see what
they do. And most people find it pleasing. And we
(13:46):
got a lot of trouble to get people here. We
literally we've been in a restaurant that's open, free meals
of the day, seven days a week. It's sixteen miles
to the next restaurant. We are watching here old Farm.
You can come and study well stone War here general store.
We do all that we can to make it inviting
(14:07):
for people to come here so we can show what
we do, because if we show what we do, we
will probably make customs out of it.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I saw you giving a maybe a little privatory, a
little talk, and you had them go inside, and you
showed them an aerial view of the land where you are,
and you pointed out that where the original farm was
it was very green, and farther to the north it
wasn't as green. Why is that?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That's a great washinge. And there's several different things I
can tell you. Probably for Moost would be the amount
of organic matter that we've built up in the soil.
When I started farming the way I farmed now managed grazing,
the old gag model in my soil was one half
of one percent. One half of one percent today is
(14:58):
over five percent. That's a ten x increase in the
amount of organic model, which is carbon it's in the soil.
And to put that in perspective, for it, one percent
organic model will absolve about an inch of rain. We
get fifty two inches of rate.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
A year here on the attic.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
At lest it comes to ritual downpour we'll absolve it off.
When it was a half percent, we couldn't abslve it
half an inch rainfall. This stip it rent off and
we get a lot of raise over half an inch.
So the growing capacity of the soil just increased exponentially
(15:41):
when we increase the organic model by ten x.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, I'd say that you weren't just raising cattle, or
you're kind of raising the vibration of all the other creatures.
You're kind of probably bringing all the other creatures back,
you know, the worms and caterpillars and everything else.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right, Well, thank you for that observation. When I'm asked,
what's so pointed to me in terms of operating the
Starman is that we support the cycles of nature. The
soloc relature are the we just talked about, the carbon cycle,
the midderal cycle, the water cycle. You know, the circles
(16:17):
just go old and over the west socle we don't
even recognize carbon cycle, microbial cycle. And when those cycles
are operating optimally, the land is teeming with life. There's
just a lost stuff live itting out there. And when
you fall been a reductive mount with modicultures, your goal
(16:41):
is to kill everything that's I by except that one
specie that you're trying to release that year. That's the
reason it went from five centle getting to a high percent,
and then back up to five percent.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Once you were moving forward, you know, in the nineties,
Like you said, what were some of the teaching moments
that maybe the cattle your employees, or Mother Nature touched
along the way.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Or Mother Nature whips my height and e every day.
I'd she see an incredibly beautiful roomal teacher. We talk
about Mother Nature a lot and being so she's beautiful,
but she's not kind. She wins every single time. And
you can either play by her rooms or you can lose,
(17:27):
whichever one you want to do by lessons have been
learned by observing what the natural systems, and I say
mother nuture to me, that's sort of cycles that I
mentioned previously. They're trying to feed those cycles. And when
you feed those cycles, you create this living organism that
is teeming.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
With life, thriving.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You think about all that coal and oil and natural
gas that we've been living on since especially since World
War Two. It was the abundance of nature that was
stored beneath the surface of the earth. When the cycles
of nature were rocking and rowing, and today I think
(18:12):
we've just gone so far towards I hate say, killing
the planet. We can't kill the planet, but we can
and impede the circles of nature so they don't produce
an abundance. So I think we've done that.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, so Will Harris is zero for a bazillion against
Mother Nature.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Anyway, I try to do what she wants me to do.
I use the balls. Here.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Is regenerative farming one of, if not the solution to
the global challenges that we're facing now.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Well, I think it's it's just the world I know about.
I'm sure there's some other things that need to be
doing with it. I worry about it a lot. It
has a great cost. You know, when the linear moticultural
industrial way that we produce food in the world today,
(19:01):
it has a great host. It's rently cheap, but there
are so many costs that are spun off. We will
just skip global warming. That's so controversial. But let's talk
about something. There's a dig and so in the Gulf
of Mexico. I've eighty miles of the Gulf of Mexican
and when I was growing to the shrimpers in the
(19:21):
watertime brought up shrimp to the fish market in Blakelely, Georgia,
and my mother would buy a shrimp and that rest
a weekly meal that we had and they were good.
And now they banned slipping in the gulf because of
the chemical pesticides fertilizes the wash down the shout into ruval,
(19:46):
some of which came from the start before chaining. So
if there's such an horrible thing that we're doing and
they find pesticize in the ice caps, it's just incredible
what we're doing. And and I don't see it's doing
any different. The way I produce food costs mold. It does,
(20:08):
and I hate it, but a little apologetic for it
lipically this county. But certainly people a little planet that
are can't afford to buy more expensive food, and I
worried about that. And I don't have a solution flot
but I know that what we're doing now to produce
this what appears to be uhba cheap food, it's not
(20:30):
rid of that cheat.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Do you feel that the powers that be are listening
to those of you who work the land, who work
in tune with the earth, and are making the necessary changes,
are trying to that must be made to safeguard our
ecosystem for future generations.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
No, you know, I think those guys that may be
the exception of tree lot on who they are, but
they are there for the lobbyist. Then the lobbyist work
for big food, big A tag, big tech. So no,
they are not intending what we do.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
What compelled you to write the book about the anti
factory farm, as you stated in your book, that became
what we know of as white Oak pastors today.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
To be honesty, that writing a book had never crossed
my mind. I'm nearly seventy years old. I went to
the University of Georgia in the nineteen seventies, a major
in notinal science. I didn't read many books then, hadn't
read any sense and the idea of writing one it
was just to me. I could have written any in
(21:35):
Russian about diseases, I could have written in English. But
I was contacted by an agent representing Penulum Random House Books.
I told them, thank you very much on fier, I
can't write a book. Uordimately they provided someone to write
the book for me. The charming, lovely young woman the
(21:56):
same age as my little boy, whose name is Amily Graven.
He's able to wrote the book, and I think she
did a fantastic job. She represented us well. She spent
a lot of time here on the farm. But in
addition to that, for a year, a solid year, we
had a date telephone day every Friday afternoon, and it
(22:18):
could last from one to three hours. And when we
got all of the hey, how I use out of
the way. She went to work and she'd ask me
questions and I respond, I don't know how many times
she would say, wait a minute, that's inconsistible. What she
told me on July eighth, I said, WHOA what I
(22:39):
tell you? She'd go back and read it to me.
I said, doesn't know, but that is not the same thing,
and I'd get it straight with oh okay. So she
just did a fantastic job, and I couldn't have done
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
She was a good checks and balances. She was great.
It's gonna touched it. The transformation began within you, but
was then realized on the phone arm itself. So do
you envision the farm changing and improving even more as
you move forward?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Absolutely. My two daughters are in their thirties. They've got
another thirty eggs or work left the build and the
spouses as well. They're very, very committed to this. I
used to manage the farm very very autonomously. I was
held with decision. But here that has evolved to today.
(23:29):
We've got what I call the board of directors. I
only said up, we have a board of directors. That
is me, two dollars, two of the last two non
family members. We have a meeting of this little office,
but every Wednesday, everyone speaks equally in that meeting. And
I don't run it autonomously anymore. And it's such a
(23:51):
burden lifted from me. You know, I was really concerned
about when I was a younger man. I was really
concerned that, you know, what if I break my back.
I wonder if I fought through leave, what if I
it would all will be rich? You know where we
all the balls were in the air. And now we're
(24:14):
at the point where if something happens to me, it'll
be okay. I'll still work every day, but it doesn't
have to help me. I'm not a citry.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You're in good hands with your daughters.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
I mean good it is with this menage routine and lived.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
By my dollars. In your book, you wrote that industrial
farming takes so much on the land but gives back
so little, if anything, and that experts guestimate that we
have less than sixty harvests left on the planet. And
the system that started us on this pathwell is less
than one hundred years old, but it sure broke down
pretty fast.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's incredible. I mean it really a lot of these
tombs of the Roule, you know, for most of the
nineteen hundreds, but the real application accele rated post World
War two. So we're well under one hundred years and
it is just amazing what we have done. I tell
(25:09):
this story recently, but what I was, I was more
than nineteen fifty four. I was an outside kid, you know.
I'm hooted and fished and try and whatnot. And I
long to go to the wilderness, you know. I wanted
to go to the Yukon and the Amazon and Africa,
and I've traveled a good bit. But now if you
(25:32):
think about it, really there is no wilderness. We're going
to be a little spot here. Spot math has been protected,
but the wilderness is gone in my lifetime, and I
fear that rule can happen the same way if you
go to any rural town rule smalltile. If it was
(25:56):
to punder the par agriculture which so many of them
were in the economy was deputed upon agriculture which so.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Many of them work.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It probably is a ghost hunt or approaching the ghost hunt.
This one was. And I'm believing that in my children's
lifetime real can go the way of wilderness. This won't
be a thing anymore. And I think that we lose
something beautiful.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
What do you know that Washington and Wall Street can't
seem to understand about sustainability?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Well, I think I know a heck of a lot
more because we know what we want to do. And
I think that Washington Wall Street of me a lot
of money in the industrialization of agriculture as well as market.
I don't think we are what we are because people
don't know. I think we are well we are because
(26:50):
people have made so much money putting us here. I
think that what we've done here, we've done't successfully here
is not rocket suits. Sea student of the University of
Georgia figured it out here. And I know a c
student in North Dakota that figured it out. I know
one in California that figured it out. And we are
(27:13):
where we are not because we don't know what we've forgotten.
It was because we made a lot. Somebody made a
lot of money getting us here. Well, many people made
a lot of money getting us here.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
When someone wants to change the way they've been running
a farm and go back to the old ways, would
you tell them that they have to realize that they're
going to have to change everything from top to bottom.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I do tell them that. In fact, we were doing
more education than I could afford to do, but we
didn't make money on it, and we spent money on it.
So about two years ago we fed a nonprofit of
five O one C three called SEAFARM that stands for
Sector for Agricultural Resilience. We've found sponsors and we bring
(27:57):
people here and train them on this to farming, and.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And well also we have an intern program. We bring
in six or seven interms four times a year. I
think we're doing our part in helping people learn what
we've learned. Nothing that we know it all we've been
learning for four five thirty years. I think the appetite
is out by I'm knowing people to do it. It's just
(28:26):
that it is so expensive to do it. To me,
it costs a lot of money to fix so far
the years of loss of productivity when you see to
use chemical fertilizers and pesticides and try to find a
market for whatever it is that you crew just as
a great cost, and so many of us can't afford
(28:47):
to do it. Had I not known that what I did,
I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it
my time. It was just so fortunate.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Well, you mentioned interns. There's a piece in the book
where one of the interns taught to a pretty good lesson.
Can you tell us story?
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, the good serpt. She said us, you are so
much the good SYRP. And I could tell her she
meant it. There was a copping look by the way
she said this. I said, thank you, And I had
no idea, so I looked it up when it was
a cop but I didn't. I didn't go to church much,
(29:21):
but that it went twice my wedding. It is funeral.
I've been just a few more tubs than that, but
not too many.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
What brings you the most joy, well, seeing this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Farm operating the way it is well with these good people.
A lot of us mean by family, I mean these
good people here. I see the leader getting better and
butter and butter. I see the herds and flocks getting
butter and butter and butter. That's what scoopt for me.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
What are some of the fonest memories you have as
a child and later as an adult on the farm.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh, toomendous to Mitch, I better good. I was pretty
feral growing up, and my parents allowed me to be feral.
There were too many rules, you know, well, great childhood.
Do you know what the University of Georgia of the suvadies.
You didn't get any better than that. And then I
(30:18):
came home and ran the farm, and I've let a
blessed life. Just always happened to be at the right
place at the right time. I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And finally, now that you spend a little time on
the planet, what do you know that's true about cattle
and community, mister Harris?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That you don't manage them to maximize the returns on
the quarter of the report or the annual report for
the month of the report. The cattle in the layand
you said community, I'm gonna put the legs part of
that are perpetual. There's no beginning, no winning. They don't appreciate.
(30:55):
If you've got a thousand good cows, you're always out files,
you CAUs you've got clothing to go. If you've got
our files, the lookers will lay in, you know, with
the files to get better and better. So it's very perpetual,
which end to make things so linear with a start
and stop January first or whatever. If these sons we're
(31:19):
talking about us are very very perpetual assets, they need
to be managed there work well.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Thank you for writing the book and for becoming the
man that your daughters are proud of, and for taking
the time to be with us today.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Thank you for having en George over to.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
The Good Foods podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The claims, comments, opinions,
or information heard should never be used in place of
your medical provider's advice or your doctor's direction. Thank you
for listening, Follow us on social media and wherever you
get your podcasts. Good Health through Good Food, Good Foods
Grocery
Hello. This is Wood Harrass, oder of White Oak Pastures,
Holistically maddaged regenerative ranch and farm. It's been in my
family for over one hundred and fifty years. Author of
a Bowl returned to get runger Down, One Fall, six
generations and the future of food And this is the
(00:22):
Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All of us are on a journey towards better health
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
In this episode, when I'm asked, what's supported to me
in terms of operating the star means that we support
the cycles of nation and when those cycles are operating optimally,
the land is teeming with life.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This is the Good Foods Podcast. And now here's your
host show.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Thank you for having it. Delighted to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Eighteen sixty six, that was a pretty good year in
the history of the Harris family. How did your great
granddaddy decide to settle in that part of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
My great grandfather had a fall about thirty miles from
here that he worked rout to the Civil War. Somehow
in the Civil War we lost the farm and I
don't know how that happened exactly. I've heard two three
different versions, but we did. He was very fortunate. He
(01:31):
had an uncle who was a medical doctor in Bluffton, Georgia,
which is where I am now, who started them over
farming here in eighteen sixty six, and he followed laying
all his life, followed by his son, My grandfather followed
by his son, and my dad followed by me, and
(01:52):
I have two of my three daughters heereed farming getting
with me today, same land plus some extra and between
the two they of five babies who have not helped yet,
but we got high hopes they're.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
In line already to take on the charge.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
If you don't work, you don't eat. We feed you
and educate you to a point, but at some point
you either doing work on the fog or you don't,
and it can be the water. I have a daughter
who chose not to come back to the fault, and
that's okay.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
When you're a great grandfather was starting out. Did they
have stories and how many people were helping them out?
How many people were on the farm at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I don't know that you got up to nearly five
hundred acres or is wat which was a pretty big
fall of that errow, and we could speculate, so that
would have been the sharecropping, which was typically forty acres
on a mule, So if it was four hundred acres,
that would have been ten shaf roppers. That usually be
(02:51):
a family, so it would be dead and who were
ail working agent family?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
What did they raise in the farms you know at
the beginning, Yeah, you know, it would have.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Been very similar to today. They would have raised enough
corn to feed the meat of wolves.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I do know they had cattle.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
They had harms and poultry probably certainly chickens, and probably
ducks and turkeys, and probably goats and sheep, which is
what we have to that's almost exactly the same species
that we were raised here on the fall today. Although
we went a couple of generations, it was operated as
a monocultural cattle industry. My dad and the first part
(03:31):
of my career we only had cattle.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
What's one of your favorite memories with your grandfather?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You know, my granddad died when I was a very
small child, and I do remember him. I remember that
he had a horse named Die who seemed like he
was as big as an elephant to me, and he
got so old he couldn't get an old diag, had
to put him on dag, but he would ride around.
I'd ride on the back of the horse with him.
(03:57):
You know, I don't know that much communication. I don't
know what I was too small. He was like my dad.
You know, my dad didn't now, let's say to me
evil unless he had something for me to do.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, that was going to be my next question. What
kind of a father was your dad?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, so we had an usual relationship. My dad was
an only child born in nineteen twenty and I'm an
only child born in nineteen fifty four. And we were
like best friends, brothers, father son, just being close in
every sense of the word. And we could hoot together,
(04:31):
fish together, eat together, drink together, play together. But when
it tem time to work together, it was not pretty.
We thought over everything, and he won every fight we
ever had. His truck card was you don't for god?
Who was day on farm?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
This is that'll part of me settle every argument right there.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh, I would stalk away and swell the doll and
spend my tires when I left. But you know, he
always won.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But I what was it like to be will Harris
growing up on White Oak Pastors, knowing that someday you
were going to have to steer this ship that had
been in your family for generations.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It was great because I never was confused over what
I wanted to do. I always wanted to run the farm.
I remember my friends wanted to be you know, fireman
and doctors and lawyers and policemen, and all I wanted
to do was run the farm. No sense of confusion
(05:30):
on my part, and I did. I went to the
University of Georgia a major, and I didn't want to go.
My dad put in for me to go, so I did,
and a major denimal science, and the previously been outible husbandry.
They had changed in animal science with the full intention
of coming back. He did not want me to come back,
(05:52):
and my dad had been very successful, but he was
of the generation that people needed to escape the fall.
He wanted me to go to Towel and get a
job and make a lot of money and old come
back and farm. So we will go at oz O
that deal for a while, but ultimately I made it back.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So his goal was to be successful enough that you
could leave and beyond your own and do just something
totally different.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, yeah, he did this just two different things. He
certainly in Dublin wor worked hard to do the best
he could, but then he also separately wanted me to
do something else. That generation, at post World War two
generation really felt like children needed to escape the fall.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And that's truly what happened. You know.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
The best and brightest of us left and went to
the city and got a job. The worst of us
went to jail, and us see students stayed and farmed
the fall.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And it was fun. If I were to ask your
daughters what daddy was like when they were growing up,
what do you think would be one of the first
things that they'd say.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Give him ex precious hold us. You know, we got
a law really really well. I had three daughters. I
gree wife who it was a school teacher, a devoted mother,
and we had a pretty clear differentiation of duty. She
the house and the family and it was her domain.
(07:19):
The farm was my domain. I ran very autonomously. She
ran her very autonomously. And my girls did not work
with me on farm. You know, I always worked on
fall growing up. I did not expect that it didn't
have much. I did not have much fun heim to do.
(07:39):
It was a very industrial, commercial cattle operation, and I
just didn't have much for them to do, and they
did all the little girl things, pr lessons and ballet
lessons and gymnastics lessons dot. So that's the way that
deal went.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Agriculture changed about the time that your dad took over
the farm. How did that impact white Oak pastures?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
A lot? A lot my dad to go on the
far post World War two, and that is when agriculture industrialized, commoditize, centralized,
and my dad went from raising what his dad had done,
raised a lot of different species of our moors and crops,
to be a monocultural cattleman. And I think my dad
(08:28):
was very proud of that. I think that allowed him
to be an expert cattleman and he enjoyed that, and
he was very very good at it, very successful with it.
You know, would not have considered the other species. All
I want to do was run the farm, excite that
the way my dad had run. The role model went
(08:50):
to when I major dollar science came over and read
it that way when he let me, when I finally
got my turning back, and I too was successful. We
weren't people, but I never lost money. I went back
and to look and we paid taxes every single year.
We had paid for a farm well whistle advantages. And
it wasn't until I started changing the farm that word
(09:12):
you could use money on farm. I didn't know you
could do that, but I found out she could.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Well that's my next point. You know, you come into
the picture years later and you started to change things
like how your grandfather and great grandfather used to work
the farm. What prompted you to change your mind as
it were, and eventually change your farm?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You're right, I did turn the farm into a modern
day version of what my great grandfather did, but that
was not my original intent. I just wanted to change
what I was doing. I was the uber industrial cattlemen
use a lot of of drugs cattle, a lot of
(09:51):
lot ofbout its up there. Peter found about it's a
lot of our lotus folds, a lot of implant steroid
one more implants, are you a lot of besticized on
my crops, a lot of chemical fertilizers. Are very very
industrial farmer, and I had a fairly sudden change of mind.
It wanted to move away from that, so I started
(10:13):
giving things up without any real good direction of what
God was going, and it led me here. And I'll
say this, I was extremely fortunate. I've never heard of
grass fed beef when I started making changes in the
mid nineties, but by the time I had grass fed
beef to sell, people were talking a little bit about
(10:36):
grass fed beef. I actually sold Whole Foods Market and
Public Supermarket the first pound of grass fed beef that
they ever sold in the store or advertised it that
way and sold in the store. So for the time,
it was just so so fortunate.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Speaking of grass fed beef, has anybody ever asked you,
maybe they're coming to visitor on the farm or they
crossed path and they say, you know, I taste regular beef.
I guess grain fed beef and grass I can't tell
the difference. Is there really a difference in taste?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, I don't get that much. I had people say
I don't like grass fed beef, and then that's okay.
I sailed them. Maybe the ones say I can't tell
the difference in grain fed and grass feed. There's a
remarkable difference in the two. And I'm not here to
blasphem grain fed beef, but it's a very different product
and people have a preference one over them.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Well, I've heard you use the term that you're in
a very break evenish business. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I am now, and they break evenish business always made money.
When I was in the industrial cattle business, I said
that we're rich people, but we live comfortable. I changed
the model and it was an early innovator in embracing
the grass fed model. At that time it was very fashionate.
We have some very very good year that I don't
(11:58):
mean compared to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, but for
a farm in Bluff in Georgia, we have some good
years and I thought they would last forever. Got a
littledrunk all success and they didn't last forever. It changed.
Some things changed we.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Can talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
It became a very very humanist business. Today we have
a big business. It's a twenty five million dollars a
year business with the largest private employer in the county.
We got one hundred and seventy and sol employees. But
from a profit perspective, we pay our bills and there's
nothing left. And you know what, it's so key. Certain
(12:38):
little nerve rifing sometimes, but as long as I can
pay my bills. We have a very good stattard of
living and very enjoyable lifestyle, both for ourselves and I
think for our employees.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I've heard you and Joel Sallison used the term transparency
when it comes to almost everything you do on the farm.
Do you feel that that thought process is the heat
of a solid foundation that comes to doing business.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I don't think you can operate this way without
being super transparent. Big Food is so so good at messaging.
I mean they can They can produce a product any
way they want to and have brilliant people talk about
it in ways it's very pleasing to the consumer. And
(13:25):
we really don't have Our advertising budget is zero and
the number of the people that we have that are
focused on messaging is zero. So we'd have to rely
authenticity and transparency and let people come and see what
they do. And most people find it pleasing. And we
(13:46):
got a lot of trouble to get people here. We
literally we've been in a restaurant that's open, free meals
of the day, seven days a week. It's sixteen miles
to the next restaurant. We are watching here old Farm.
You can come and study well stone War here general store.
We do all that we can to make it inviting
(14:07):
for people to come here so we can show what
we do, because if we show what we do, we
will probably make customs out of it.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I saw you giving a maybe a little privatory, a
little talk, and you had them go inside, and you
showed them an aerial view of the land where you are,
and you pointed out that where the original farm was
it was very green, and farther to the north it
wasn't as green. Why is that?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That's a great washinge. And there's several different things I
can tell you. Probably for Moost would be the amount
of organic matter that we've built up in the soil.
When I started farming the way I farmed now managed grazing,
the old gag model in my soil was one half
of one percent. One half of one percent today is
(14:58):
over five percent. That's a ten x increase in the
amount of organic model, which is carbon it's in the soil.
And to put that in perspective, for it, one percent
organic model will absolve about an inch of rain. We
get fifty two inches of rate.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
A year here on the attic.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
At lest it comes to ritual downpour we'll absolve it off.
When it was a half percent, we couldn't abslve it
half an inch rainfall. This stip it rent off and
we get a lot of raise over half an inch.
So the growing capacity of the soil just increased exponentially
(15:41):
when we increase the organic model by ten x.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, I'd say that you weren't just raising cattle, or
you're kind of raising the vibration of all the other creatures.
You're kind of probably bringing all the other creatures back,
you know, the worms and caterpillars and everything else.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right, Well, thank you for that observation. When I'm asked,
what's so pointed to me in terms of operating the
Starman is that we support the cycles of nature. The
soloc relature are the we just talked about, the carbon cycle,
the midderal cycle, the water cycle. You know, the circles
(16:17):
just go old and over the west socle we don't
even recognize carbon cycle, microbial cycle. And when those cycles
are operating optimally, the land is teeming with life. There's
just a lost stuff live itting out there. And when
you fall been a reductive mount with modicultures, your goal
(16:41):
is to kill everything that's I by except that one
specie that you're trying to release that year. That's the
reason it went from five centle getting to a high percent,
and then back up to five percent.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Once you were moving forward, you know, in the nineties,
Like you said, what were some of the teaching moments
that maybe the cattle your employees, or Mother Nature touched
along the way.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Or Mother Nature whips my height and e every day.
I'd she see an incredibly beautiful roomal teacher. We talk
about Mother Nature a lot and being so she's beautiful,
but she's not kind. She wins every single time. And
you can either play by her rooms or you can lose,
(17:27):
whichever one you want to do by lessons have been
learned by observing what the natural systems, and I say
mother nuture to me, that's sort of cycles that I
mentioned previously. They're trying to feed those cycles. And when
you feed those cycles, you create this living organism that
is teeming.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
With life, thriving.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You think about all that coal and oil and natural
gas that we've been living on since especially since World
War Two. It was the abundance of nature that was
stored beneath the surface of the earth. When the cycles
of nature were rocking and rowing, and today I think
(18:12):
we've just gone so far towards I hate say, killing
the planet. We can't kill the planet, but we can
and impede the circles of nature so they don't produce
an abundance. So I think we've done that.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, so Will Harris is zero for a bazillion against
Mother Nature.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Anyway, I try to do what she wants me to do.
I use the balls. Here.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Is regenerative farming one of, if not the solution to
the global challenges that we're facing now.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Well, I think it's it's just the world I know about.
I'm sure there's some other things that need to be
doing with it. I worry about it a lot. It
has a great cost. You know, when the linear moticultural
industrial way that we produce food in the world today,
(19:01):
it has a great host. It's rently cheap, but there
are so many costs that are spun off. We will
just skip global warming. That's so controversial. But let's talk
about something. There's a dig and so in the Gulf
of Mexico. I've eighty miles of the Gulf of Mexican
and when I was growing to the shrimpers in the
(19:21):
watertime brought up shrimp to the fish market in Blakelely, Georgia,
and my mother would buy a shrimp and that rest
a weekly meal that we had and they were good.
And now they banned slipping in the gulf because of
the chemical pesticides fertilizes the wash down the shout into ruval,
(19:46):
some of which came from the start before chaining. So
if there's such an horrible thing that we're doing and
they find pesticize in the ice caps, it's just incredible
what we're doing. And and I don't see it's doing
any different. The way I produce food costs mold. It does,
(20:08):
and I hate it, but a little apologetic for it
lipically this county. But certainly people a little planet that
are can't afford to buy more expensive food, and I
worried about that. And I don't have a solution flot
but I know that what we're doing now to produce
this what appears to be uhba cheap food, it's not
(20:30):
rid of that cheat.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Do you feel that the powers that be are listening
to those of you who work the land, who work
in tune with the earth, and are making the necessary changes,
are trying to that must be made to safeguard our
ecosystem for future generations.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
No, you know, I think those guys that may be
the exception of tree lot on who they are, but
they are there for the lobbyist. Then the lobbyist work
for big food, big A tag, big tech. So no,
they are not intending what we do.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
What compelled you to write the book about the anti
factory farm, as you stated in your book, that became
what we know of as white Oak pastors today.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
To be honesty, that writing a book had never crossed
my mind. I'm nearly seventy years old. I went to
the University of Georgia in the nineteen seventies, a major
in notinal science. I didn't read many books then, hadn't
read any sense and the idea of writing one it
was just to me. I could have written any in
(21:35):
Russian about diseases, I could have written in English. But
I was contacted by an agent representing Penulum Random House Books.
I told them, thank you very much on fier, I
can't write a book. Uordimately they provided someone to write
the book for me. The charming, lovely young woman the
(21:56):
same age as my little boy, whose name is Amily Graven.
He's able to wrote the book, and I think she
did a fantastic job. She represented us well. She spent
a lot of time here on the farm. But in
addition to that, for a year, a solid year, we
had a date telephone day every Friday afternoon, and it
(22:18):
could last from one to three hours. And when we
got all of the hey, how I use out of
the way. She went to work and she'd ask me
questions and I respond, I don't know how many times
she would say, wait a minute, that's inconsistible. What she
told me on July eighth, I said, WHOA what I
(22:39):
tell you? She'd go back and read it to me.
I said, doesn't know, but that is not the same thing,
and I'd get it straight with oh okay. So she
just did a fantastic job, and I couldn't have done
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
She was a good checks and balances. She was great.
It's gonna touched it. The transformation began within you, but
was then realized on the phone arm itself. So do
you envision the farm changing and improving even more as
you move forward?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Absolutely. My two daughters are in their thirties. They've got
another thirty eggs or work left the build and the
spouses as well. They're very, very committed to this. I
used to manage the farm very very autonomously. I was
held with decision. But here that has evolved to today.
(23:29):
We've got what I call the board of directors. I
only said up, we have a board of directors. That
is me, two dollars, two of the last two non
family members. We have a meeting of this little office,
but every Wednesday, everyone speaks equally in that meeting. And
I don't run it autonomously anymore. And it's such a
(23:51):
burden lifted from me. You know, I was really concerned
about when I was a younger man. I was really
concerned that, you know, what if I break my back.
I wonder if I fought through leave, what if I
it would all will be rich? You know where we
all the balls were in the air. And now we're
(24:14):
at the point where if something happens to me, it'll
be okay. I'll still work every day, but it doesn't
have to help me. I'm not a citry.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You're in good hands with your daughters.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
I mean good it is with this menage routine and lived.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
By my dollars. In your book, you wrote that industrial
farming takes so much on the land but gives back
so little, if anything, and that experts guestimate that we
have less than sixty harvests left on the planet. And
the system that started us on this pathwell is less
than one hundred years old, but it sure broke down
pretty fast.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's incredible. I mean it really a lot of these
tombs of the Roule, you know, for most of the
nineteen hundreds, but the real application accele rated post World
War two. So we're well under one hundred years and
it is just amazing what we have done. I tell
(25:09):
this story recently, but what I was, I was more
than nineteen fifty four. I was an outside kid, you know.
I'm hooted and fished and try and whatnot. And I
long to go to the wilderness, you know. I wanted
to go to the Yukon and the Amazon and Africa,
and I've traveled a good bit. But now if you
(25:32):
think about it, really there is no wilderness. We're going
to be a little spot here. Spot math has been protected,
but the wilderness is gone in my lifetime, and I
fear that rule can happen the same way if you
go to any rural town rule smalltile. If it was
(25:56):
to punder the par agriculture which so many of them
were in the economy was deputed upon agriculture which so.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Many of them work.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It probably is a ghost hunt or approaching the ghost hunt.
This one was. And I'm believing that in my children's
lifetime real can go the way of wilderness. This won't
be a thing anymore. And I think that we lose
something beautiful.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
What do you know that Washington and Wall Street can't
seem to understand about sustainability?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Well, I think I know a heck of a lot
more because we know what we want to do. And
I think that Washington Wall Street of me a lot
of money in the industrialization of agriculture as well as market.
I don't think we are what we are because people
don't know. I think we are well we are because
(26:50):
people have made so much money putting us here. I
think that what we've done here, we've done't successfully here
is not rocket suits. Sea student of the University of
Georgia figured it out here. And I know a c
student in North Dakota that figured it out. I know
one in California that figured it out. And we are
(27:13):
where we are not because we don't know what we've forgotten.
It was because we made a lot. Somebody made a
lot of money getting us here. Well, many people made
a lot of money getting us here.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
When someone wants to change the way they've been running
a farm and go back to the old ways, would
you tell them that they have to realize that they're
going to have to change everything from top to bottom.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I do tell them that. In fact, we were doing
more education than I could afford to do, but we
didn't make money on it, and we spent money on it.
So about two years ago we fed a nonprofit of
five O one C three called SEAFARM that stands for
Sector for Agricultural Resilience. We've found sponsors and we bring
(27:57):
people here and train them on this to farming, and.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And well also we have an intern program. We bring
in six or seven interms four times a year. I
think we're doing our part in helping people learn what
we've learned. Nothing that we know it all we've been
learning for four five thirty years. I think the appetite
is out by I'm knowing people to do it. It's just
(28:26):
that it is so expensive to do it. To me,
it costs a lot of money to fix so far
the years of loss of productivity when you see to
use chemical fertilizers and pesticides and try to find a
market for whatever it is that you crew just as
a great cost, and so many of us can't afford
(28:47):
to do it. Had I not known that what I did,
I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it
my time. It was just so fortunate.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Well, you mentioned interns. There's a piece in the book
where one of the interns taught to a pretty good lesson.
Can you tell us story?
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, the good serpt. She said us, you are so
much the good SYRP. And I could tell her she
meant it. There was a copping look by the way
she said this. I said, thank you, And I had
no idea, so I looked it up when it was
a cop but I didn't. I didn't go to church much,
(29:21):
but that it went twice my wedding. It is funeral.
I've been just a few more tubs than that, but
not too many.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
What brings you the most joy, well, seeing this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Farm operating the way it is well with these good people.
A lot of us mean by family, I mean these
good people here. I see the leader getting better and
butter and butter. I see the herds and flocks getting
butter and butter and butter. That's what scoopt for me.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
What are some of the fonest memories you have as
a child and later as an adult on the farm.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh, toomendous to Mitch, I better good. I was pretty
feral growing up, and my parents allowed me to be feral.
There were too many rules, you know, well, great childhood.
Do you know what the University of Georgia of the suvadies.
You didn't get any better than that. And then I
(30:18):
came home and ran the farm, and I've let a
blessed life. Just always happened to be at the right
place at the right time. I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And finally, now that you spend a little time on
the planet, what do you know that's true about cattle
and community, mister Harris?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
That you don't manage them to maximize the returns on
the quarter of the report or the annual report for
the month of the report. The cattle in the layand
you said community, I'm gonna put the legs part of
that are perpetual. There's no beginning, no winning. They don't appreciate.
(30:55):
If you've got a thousand good cows, you're always out files,
you CAUs you've got clothing to go. If you've got
our files, the lookers will lay in, you know, with
the files to get better and better. So it's very perpetual,
which end to make things so linear with a start
and stop January first or whatever. If these sons we're
(31:19):
talking about us are very very perpetual assets, they need
to be managed there work well.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Thank you for writing the book and for becoming the
man that your daughters are proud of, and for taking
the time to be with us today.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Thank you for having en George over to.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
The Good Foods podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The claims, comments, opinions,
or information heard should never be used in place of
your medical provider's advice or your doctor's direction. Thank you
for listening, Follow us on social media and wherever you
get your podcasts. Good Health through Good Food, Good Foods
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