Family Farm Beef Box

Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Glade at Family Farm Beef Box in Nebraska. Good morning, Glade. How are you? Well, hello, Mary. I'm doing quite well. Thank you.  How is the weather in Nebraska this morning? You know, we are just starting to feel a little bit of that chill, like it's getting towards fall and...

00:29 I'm excited about a couple things  such as harvest  and football and a freeze that's gonna kill all these flies.

00:39 Yeah, us too here in Minnesota. was 41 degrees when I looked at 5 a.m. today. So it's definitely winding down on the heat and I'm so glad because it's been a hot, hot summer here in Minnesota. I don't know what Nebraska was like, but Minnesota was kind of not a fun summer.  Yeah,  we were pretty blessed in Nebraska.  It really was fairly nice and fairly,  we got some rains when we needed it.

01:08 So I can't complain too much  that much, I sure don't have any problem enjoying fall weather. Yeah. Fall is my favorite season, followed by spring, followed by winter, followed by summer, because I do not love high summer.  I hate it.  So,  okay. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.  My name is Glade Smith.  I'm a husband of  one wife. I'm a father of

01:38 seven children.  I am a multi-generational cattle producer  and I am a  leading marketer of breeding stock for right livestock and the owner and  founder of Family Farm Beef Box. Okay, awesome. How many generations back on  the cattle?  So my my grand, it'd be my grandfather three generations ago.

02:06 He moved to  this area just down the road from where I'm sitting. uh He was born in 1896 and moved to this area.  It seems interesting to be able to say he moved here with wagons pulled by mules  over to where our general area. My wife's family, uh her roots go a little bit deeper. She'd be the ninth generation farming on the same general.

02:34 close to the same area where she's from. I've got a ways to go to keep up with my wife. Okay. Tell me about the beef box. Very good. No problem. Yeah. A family farm beef box is a conveniently sized share of an entire beef. It's been dry aged and hand cut and raised right here in central Nebraska. Think of it as just a smaller version of a half a beef. It works well for, for say a couple that

03:01 used to buy a half a beef, but now their kids are grown and they just don't need that much anymore. So you get a nice sampling  of some steaks and ground beef  and roast, but still the dry age quality that you grew to love when you purchased a half a beef. And we do ship that beef across the country  every Monday and work with those customers as far  as allowing them to subscribe  and get a  box every one, two or three months,  or we let them try just a single box.

03:31 And we do offer a little options as far as a smaller package or a more bulk option.  So  that's  what we  strive for with our little beef business  and try to focus on getting to know the people that we're actually sending the beef to. That's  something that's important to us is trying to build relationships with these people. And a cute little story that  from when I started Family Farm Beef Box,

04:00 It's been about eight years ago now.  And honestly, goodness, what  spurred it was  I'd been  farming and ranching  and  we'd grown enough to be able to grow the balance sheet, to be able to borrow some more money, to grow the business, to borrow some more money.  I got  to be fortunate enough that I had quite a bit of money borrowed  and several bad things happened in the farming world.  And I couldn't pay the bank back and I was underwater and the bank told me.

04:27 I say I was fortunate enough because it forced me to grow and learn and be creative in other ways. The bank told me that all the money I made was going to go towards debt.  And so what I did was I told my banker, said, wel