Ladies and gentlemen, today on the podcast, we have Nate Pontius with Pontius Ranches.
Welcome, brother.
Thank you.
All right.
So right now it is raining here in Central Texas.
So my dad's side of the family were dairy and crop farmers in Central Pennsylvania.
Yeah.
And I knew how their lives and just their days were affected by the weather.
How do you feel with days like today where it's raining pretty good?
What does that make you feel in terms of your property, the animals, the crop everything, as a rancher or farmer here in Central Texas?
Considering the entire time I've lived here, the last five years we've been in just a prolific drought, year over year, getting less and less rainfall.
A day like today is a very, very good day.
And it's also kind of like forced rest.
When it's raining like this, you're not out there aggressively getting after it on the farm.
You are physically resting and allowing the animals and the land to rest and just take in this rain.
So it's a really good day.
Yeah, yeah.
Perfect day for me to be doing a podcast.
I assumed that.
I did assume that.
I just remember growing up, my grandfather, he sold his farm when I was young.
But I still remember the days where he was a dairy farmer.
It's like waking up every morning, 4 a.m., milking the cows.
Every night before going to sleep, milking the cows.
But the mental state that he was in was determined by the weather.
So these last couple of years, as we've experienced some of this dry drought, how do you handle that in terms of anxiousness or how does that affect you, the weather?
I mean, this prolific drought has guided me into making the decisions of raising a drought-tolerant sheep on my farm.
Did I really start out wanting to be raising sheep?
No.
I prefer to be raising predominantly cattle, but due to the land that we had in this drought it forced me to kind of shift my focus and use an animal that would perform better in this drought, which is a South African breed of meat sheep called Dorbers.
And so that's what I... mainly focus on at the farm.
It's interesting.
What makes the sheep different than a cow?
Cattle have specific grazing preferences where they like to eat a lot of the longer, sweeter grasses.
They don't really graze on brush and forbs and like thickets as much, whereas sheep They get down on that.
They eat all the really, really crummy, crummy forage and they can perform and gain weight a lot better.
And they're smaller.
They have a lot less impact on the land as what a cow does.
They're eight, nine times the size of a sheep.
So I can stock more sheep on my land and benefit it more than overstocking it with cattle, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I do eventually, in this conversation, want to get into some of this pulp-fed practice that you implement with your animals.
But there's this ranch here in the Georgetown area.
It's called Bar 3 Ranch.
And I bought a few quarter or half cows from them over the years.
Never a whole cow.
But I got to spend time with the owner of this ranch, his name is Jeff Rusk.
And he walked me through his property and what he's learned over the years.
And from what I remember, he put radishes within his fields and it made the beef a little sweeter.
And it really gave the fat a super unique color and texture and flavor.
And it was a really interesting experience where I remember I got this meat from Jeff.
I came home.
We first cooked the ground beef and the fat was so different where in the skillet It sucked that skill up for what felt like weeks and months.
And where I'm going with this is when I've bought grass-fed beef from a farmer's market or a farmer, half a cow, quarter cow, and comparing that to the grass-fed beef that I buy in the supermarket, grocery stores, it feels very different in terms of the way the fat renders, the way that it tastes, the way that it looks.
What do you think that is?
Well, I'm not really sure, really.
But what I think is the most interesting about this is how you're drawing the parallel to the importance of what your food ate.
And that's kind of what gets me going is in order to have a positive effect on my beef and the overall nutrient density of it and the flavor of it, the eating experience.
I can influence that by my practices and what I'm planting out there for my cow to eat.
So now what I'm eating what what my cow is eating is important because i'm going to be eating that in the future and i can i have the power to influence what i'm going to be eating in the future and that's kind of fun and cool so like with that farmer that you were just talking about how he was planting these specific forages in his pasture, the daikon radishes and how that influenced the beef.
Like that's, some of the most fun parts of farming is being able to influence your end product, that protein.
Have there been certain inputs that you fed your animals that you've seen a direct reflection of flavor?
Oh, absolutely.
The pulp, 100%.
The juice pulp that I feed my animals from Alchemy Juice.
Not only does it have a direct impact on the flavor profile and the overall health of my animals, my diet, My animal's immune systems are incredibly robust because of it.
The citrus pulp, in particular when my mama sheep and my mama cows are eating that.
They're lactating like crazy.
They've got higher buttermilk and protein content in their milk for their lambs and their calves, and their lambs and calves grow incredibly incredibly well and on top of all of that the beef the lamb the pork that i harvest after eating that pulp i've had i sent my beef samples off to a lab to get tested and the nutrient density that came back on it it'd blow your mind i saw you posted about that oh yeah i found that wild like the amino acid contents are like,
2300 percent higher than usda grass-fed we've got vitamin c in our beef which is there's no vitamin c in beef whatsoever but that's just a direct reflection of them eating all the citrus pulp very high in potassium vitamin a magnesium calcium all the good stuff So how did you come across, this is a good segue into talking about this because I'm really curious about this.
I think for a lot of people, myself included, there were only ever two options.
It was like your cattle were either fed grain or Or it's grass, or it's a combination of grass, then finished on grain.
When did you come across pulp and what exactly is pulp?
Well, I was raising hogs at the time.
Well, I still raise hogs, but at the time I was raising hogs.
When you raise pigs, you kind of start to view waste a little bit differently.
So I'd be shopping at Whole Foods or H-E-B and they'd be wheeling the carts around the produce section and just like throwing away all the old produce and bakery goods and whatnot.
Like, man, that'd be really good hog feed.
And they'd wheel it around to the back of the dumpsters.
And so when I was finished with my grocery shop and I'd go back to the dumpsters and I'd grab all the old blueberries and lettuce and all that old produce and baked goods and I would throw it out and feed it to my hogs and they would go crazy on it.
And then just from that, it got me kind of got me kind of thinking a little bit more.
Well, Whole Foods.
One of the managers at Whole Foods caught me doing that and was like hey, you can't be rummaging through our trash anymore.
So it got me thinking.
I went to Sun Life Organics first, just walked in.
I asked them, What do you guys do with all your smoothie stuff, your juice leftovers?
Could I have your trash?
And they're like, that's kind of weird.
No, you can't have our trash, man.
Alchemy Juice was another local place right in Dripping.
They got a couple places in Austin as well.
I swung in there, asked them if I could have their trash.
They're like, yeah, sure.
That would actually be doing us a huge service.
We have to pay a special company, a composting company to come and haul it away.
If you were to come and pick this up and haul it away for us, it would actually be a benefit for us and it would save us money.
So I just started doing that every day.
I would go in and pick it up and feed it out to my pigs.
And then I started expanding to feeding it to my cattle, feeding it to my sheep. kind of it.
Were people doing this that you knew of before you started doing it?
I didn't know of anybody doing it.
Like you said, mostly you have one of two options.
You have grass if it's raining enough, or you're feeding grain if you need to fatten your animals up, and We weren't getting a lot of rain.
I wasn't gonna feed grain because I didn't start farming to raise fat, unhealthy animals for meat.
I wanted to raise healthy animals.
So it kind of forced me to think a little bit differently and get resourceful.
That's awesome.
I saw you recently started selling product into Radius Butcher in Austin.
Yeah.
I love that place.
It's a really cool place and they're doing all the right things.
The whole cliche motto of like, know your farmer, shake your farmer's hand and all that.
But they're actually doing that.
They came out to my farm.
They like saw my practices, like looked over my rotational grazing.
You know, fed out juice pulp with me.
And so it was really cool.
Yeah, it's awesome.
It's one of the spots like, I can spend every dollar in my bank account at a store like that.
I really appreciate good food.
We bought some pork chops from Radius a few weeks ago.
They were some of the best pork chops I've had in a long time.
And I'm particular with pork and the sourcing of pork specifically.
I was going to bring you some pork, but I know that some people are a little bit iffy about it.
But it is very, like you said, it's critical on how that animal is raised.
Most pork is not raised well in this country, unfortunately.
And what makes...
I'm not super educated on this, but what makes a pig different from a cow in terms of the way it digests food and why pork is sometimes viewed as unclean?
Well, cows and sheep are ruminants, which means their digestive system like kind of upchucks, their cud, and they like double digest it.
And so it makes their meat ruminant. healthier in a sense.
The pigs have a digestive system more like ours.
And so the thought is that because they don't chew their own cud their, their meat is unclean and also because they can't sweat and remove certain toxins from their body, it also gets trapped.
And you know, all in all, 99 of pork in this country is not awesome, and i know this for a fact because the Where I grew up in Illinois, we have some of the largest commercial hog farms that are just like mile long warehouses stocked with thousands and thousands of pigs.
And I actually, as a kid, went with my uncle to one of these places that he worked at.
And I was so excited to go to this pig farm.
And I thought I was going to be like interacting with pigs, like on a field or something.
And I went into this massive warehouse and my job for the day was walking down this massive aisle.
The pigs were so loud.
You had to wear ear protection, like screaming louder than gunfire.
And I was just shoveling dead piglets that mamas had rolled over on, because they're just like standing in these crates side by side on concrete slabs.
And I just shoveled hundreds of dead piglets into a... into a trash can all day long.
And so that was my first experience with like pig farming.
And then so fast forward to the way that I do it now, on an open pasture where I use the pigs to destruct my land.
And then overall regenerate it in the long term.
It's like it's completely, completely different product that you're getting.
Like my, animals are out in the sunshine rolling in mud rooting wallowing, doing exactly what they're supposed to do.
And so like whenever I get my pork back from the abattoir.
The very first time I got it back and I didn't really know what I was getting.
I called them because I thought they gave me somebody's beef order.
My pork was so dark red.
I'd never seen pork that red before.
But that's the difference in how they're raised.
Would you ever eat pork from...
A grocery store down the road?
Never.
Because you know where it's raised and how it's raised?
Yeah.
Food, the quality and the sourcing is very important to me.
What about beef?
Did you ever buy beef from a store?
Not now.
I mean, even when I was living in Los Angeles, I...
I went to like the small mom and pop butcher joints.
And even when I couldn't afford to buy the good cuts, I would buy organs and eat those.
Growing up in central Pennsylvania, surrounded by beautiful farmland.
My grandfather wanted me to be a chicken farmer one day.
I obviously didn't take that route, but he had me working chicken farms in the summer.
And I remember being in these multi-story chicken houses and You know a big truck would back in and they drop off all these chicks and then they'd be there for weeks and months and they'd raise them.
But these farmers were telling me they'd say we're going to pump these chickens with so many steroids that we actually want to see some of them die because they're so fat and engorged.
So that was the point of like, let's fatten these things up as much as possible with drugs and food to get the biggest chickens possible.
And now, like a lot of the chicken meat and eggs that we consume, is from a local farm, Short Tail Creek, in a local area.
Yeah.
But that was like my exposure to mass chicken farming growing up.
Well, yeah.
I mean, you look at the grocery store, you look at the size of these chicken breasts.
And if you were to like proportionally, put one of those chicken breasts on a chicken, it's like they're huge.
Like they can't even stand up with that amount of weight.
Yeah.
So I want to get into...
What drew me in recently that I want to talk about that I love is the Farmer's Bowl and just the way you approach your diet.
And I saw you and your wife actually did a video the other day building the Farmer's Bowl.
So you have about four to five of these a day, two handfuls of protein and correct me at any point if I'm wrong that protein being either beef lamb chicken pork, one or two handfuls of carbs, one or two handfuls of veggies, some fruit.
In the video I was watching, you had apples pears berries, and then you always throw on some yogurt and cottage cheese.
And from the videos, a lot that are shared on your account and then your wife's account too.
You're prepping these meals every day at around 3 am and setting yourself up for success.
When did the farmer's bowl start?
And what has the response been as you guys have shared this online?
I mean, I've been eating some iteration of a farmer's bowl for over a decade.
I mean, I started doing this when I got out of the Marine Corps and I was riding a bicycle around Los Angeles just hustling.
My initial farmer's bowls started as just a giant pot of spaghetti noodles, some ground beef meat sauce, eggs and cottage cheese.
I would just dump it all in one gigantic Tupperware and I would carry it in my backpack all day long and just eat out of it all day long.
And over the years, it kind of progressed.
When Ramey and I got together, we did a lot of farmer's market shopping together.
And due to just the abundance of... seasonal produce in Southern California and seafood.
My farmer's bowls were, you know, very filled with leafy greens and seafood.
Now fast forward to now.
I'm more adapted to this environment and what's raised around here and you know i eat a lot more red meat.
I eat meat that i either hunted or raised myself, or chicken that i have bartered my own meat for eggs that i raised myself, and I get them prepared first thing in the morning because I'm sure, like you and a lot of other people,
There's a comfort in having control over something like that whenever there's so much that's not in our control.
Day in and day out, like running around, running a farm, running businesses.
The last thing I want to do during the middle of the day is stop everything I'm doing and throw a skillet on and try to cook a meal.
Like I have all my macro, micro things.
Nutrients tossed in one bowl.
They're ready to go at the drop of a hat and I get straight back to what I'm doing throughout the day.
The responses have been overwhelmingly positive. positive, really.
People look at them and they're like, wow, they're very simple.
They're very practical.
A lot of people want to know, what's the macros?
What's the macros?
And the thing is, I haven't counted a macro in over a decade.
I don't need to.
If you were to plug any of my bowls into MyFitnessPal any single day, those macros come out damn near perfect every single day, which is doing two handfuls of protein.
A handful of The carbohydrates is like the only thing with some wiggle room.
And I make that incredibly simple.
It's like the carbohydrates are based on your activity levels.
If you have a job or a day that you're just not doing a heck of a lot, One carbohydrate source like one cup of rice for an entire day is probably sufficient for you.
If you're somebody who walks 30000 steps a day and runs like crazy, you probably do two or three carbohydrate sources and you'll be good.
The fruit, fruit's great.
It helps with digestion, gets a little bit extra fiber on top.
And the yogurt and berries, that's kind of like my sauce or my seasoning for the whole thing.
What's today's farmer's bowls?
I have it right here.
I got white rice.
I got a 50-50 venison and beef caveman blend.
I've got berries. apples, pears, cauliflower, and Japanese sweet potatoes.
So, just like you said with the protein sources, I have those on constant rotation between beef bison lamb chicken, venison.
And then like my carbohydrate sources are also keep on rotation where it's like quinoa, White rice, black rice, brown rice, sweet potatoes, yam, sourdough.
And then vegetables, I keep it very simple where it's, try to keep it seasonal if I can.
Carrots, asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels.
And I keep those on rotation as well.
Are you eating those at certain times, specific times on the day, or is it just whenever you get hungry?
I think that i get hungry at exactly the same time.
I'm the same way.
Yeah, everything is just really dialed in that way.
Um, I I eat my first meal after moving around a little bit in the morning, and it gives me enough fuel to get out and do all the morning chores.
And by the time I'm done with my morning chores, I'm ready to get some more fuel in me.
Yeah.
I typically have like a meal at six 30 or seven.
And then between 10 and 10.30.
And then 1.30 and 2.
And then 5.
And then probably my last meal is typically 8, 8.30.
Do you eat that close to going to bed or do you stay up later?
No, I'm in bed like...
30 minutes to an hour afterwards.
Because what I find is, if I don't eat right before going to bed, I will wake up in the middle of the night, hungry.
Like during my last Ironman prep, it was on the dot.
2 a.m.
I'd wake up starving.
And Stephanie, I was going to the kitchen.
I was getting a bar.
I was putting some honey on a bar and I was eating and going back to sleep.
Because I was just, I was starving.
You're burning an intense amount of calories.
I was burning an insane amount of calories during the Ironman prep.
I love the farmer's bowls.
I just made this post yesterday where I'm always traveling with multiple meals.
For me, it's beef and rice.
And we'll be at the airport.
I'll be on an airplane.
Like when we travel, if I'm on an airplane, I'm bringing my own food.
It's beef and rice in a Ziploc bag.
And I throw it with a little cooler pack in my backpack and I'm pulling that out on the plane.
I'm always traveling with meals.
Because it's one of those things I can control, like you said.
That I know is going to fuel me, make me feel better, reduce any risk of stomach discomfort or stomach aches.
And I know that the inputs will deliver the outputs that I'm looking to achieve.
So I love the farmer's bull.
Well, there's...
I get laughed at too because I probably eat out somewhere like maybe a handful of times a year.
I'll go out to dinner with the wife, but I'm still packing a farmer's bowl, because I'm sure you can relate.
Anywhere you go out to eat, it costs a fortune to get me fed.
So that's why I've always got food with a farmer's bowl with me as well because...
I can't eat enough anywhere else I go.
It's like, I have to have that fuel.
Do you guys go into Austin frequently for dinner or every once in a while?
I wouldn't say frequently.
Like I said, a handful of times we'll go out to dinner.
There are a couple of places here that have impressed me that I'll continue going back to.
What are some of those spots?
Aries has been good.
Okay.
There's a place out in Wimberley called Jobelle.
Very mom and pop, like farm fresh food.
You know, that's about it.
Like if I'm in a real, real crunch, I'll grab something from True Food Kitchen.
Flower Child is pretty decent as well.
But, you know, otherwise, all that stuff's really expensive and easier to make at home.
Yeah.
Have you heard of Dai Dewey in Austin?
East Austin?
Yeah.
I'm going to tread lightly here.
It was very good.
I had a very good experience with it when we first came out here and viewed our property about five years ago.
We just stumbled across it, went in there.
It was one of the best dining experiences we had and recent.
I can't say.
I think maybe it's gotten a little too popular.
Also Not to brag or anything, but being that I can raise some really really good high quality protein and we can cook a good steak at home.
We also were kind of spoiled in that regard.
Yeah.
What's your go-to method of cooking a steak?
Cast iron.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was cast iron for a while and...
I like the lump charcoal, the smoke you get from just a good charcoal.
You know, like a $100 Weber grill from Home Depot or Lowe's.
Taste a little bit of lighter fluid on your steak?
I don't do any of the lighter fluid.
It's like natural lump charcoal.
I'll just light it.
I mean, it takes forever to get it started.
Before I knew anything about anything, I was cooking these steaks years ago and I couldn't get this charcoal lit.
I remember just covering it in lighter fluid.
And now I look back and think, dude, I was eating straight up lighter fluid.
Your kidneys are still probably trying to filter that out.
I think back to that.
Like, what was I doing or thinking?
But no, now if we do charcoal, it's natural lump charcoal and we'll light it.
It may take forever to get lit, but we won't use any lighter fluid in it.
How do you respond if people ask the question?
Dude, don't you get tired from eating the same thing every day?
What's your response to that?
I'm a very routine-driven individual.
I like routine.
And like you said, I don't want to be dealing with stomach issues and everything.
I like the regularity it affords me.
I don't get bloated.
I knock on wood.
I haven't been sick in six, seven years.
I don't ever get sick.
My immune system is solid.
I like that.
I like all of those things.
So, no, I don't get bored of it.
I don't get bored of not getting sick and not feeling great.
Yeah.
You like the consistency and the way you feel better than the need for variation.
I mean, and, you know, there is... some variation there.
The format is the same, but there is... For example, ground chicken, cauliflower, apples, and...
Black rice is a completely different meal than white rice, beef, pears, and asparagus.
Yeah.
Same format, but incredibly different eating experience for me.
See, I think I could eat the same meal every meal.
Just beef and rice.
Every day, beef and rice.
It's one of those meals that I still every day... after eating it for 10 years.
I still get just excited about it every single day as I did 10 years ago.
And I've never been able to resonate with that pushback and response of I just like I need some variation today.
I need something different.
I like the feeling of consistency.
I like the predictability of knowing how a meal makes me feel and perform and digest and taste.
And I think it's a bigger issue, with a lot of people that constantly need variation in their life to find fulfillment and joy and happiness and a little bit of a win.
And for me, I'd say I've never resonated with that.
Eating is strictly business.
Yeah.
It's fuel.
Yeah, I agree with that.
So let's go back a little bit because you haven't been ranching your whole life.
When did you occupy the ranch, the property you own right now?
Five years ago.
Okay.
How old are you now?
35.
Okay.
So am I. So you went right into the Marine Corps after graduating high school.
You were 18.
So that was 2009?
It was.
Yeah.
Okay, same as me.
Yep.
How soon after enlisting the Marine Corps were you deployed overseas?
Within two years.
And you were an infantryman?
Mm-hmm.
What was that experience like for you?
And was it everything you hoped it would have been?
Going overseas, fighting in combat?
Yeah.
Yes and no.
I mean, I'm sure you can relate better than anybody.
Seeing what happened in 9-11 and Second grade like.
From that moment on, I had it made up in my mind that all I wanted to do in my life was go and fight bad guys.
So I didn't know what that was going to look like.
But yeah, when I turned 18, it just turned out that the Marine Corps infantry was going to afford me that ability to go and fight bad guys.
And so got to go do that and it was great and all.
And then it's not until really after, after everything that you you have, after the dust is settled really, that you like start to think about the things that you did over there and like how, if the shoe was on the other foot, maybe all of the experiences that you had, you had those for a reason.
I start to think about, you know, just living out on my farm with my family now and like the way that we used to just roll up on these houses and these families and just take over.
Like we.
We certainly weren't winning any hearts and minds, and we just couldn't understand why we were losing so badly over there.
And it was exactly why I think about somebody rolling up on my farm and doing those sorts of things to my family.
I was like well, No wonder we got this sort of responses that we got, and why it felt like we were constantly moving backwards in Afghanistan.
I'm glad I joined.
A lot of who I am now is due to those experiences and how the Marine Corps molded and shaped me for better and for worse.
It's character-defining years for sure.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah, similar in the way you described...
You're not now having the perspective of being older wiser, having a family, someone coming on your property and you know force of violence towards your family.
I think of sometimes, when I'm driving down the road, you have an 18 year old kid who's in a Honda Civic and a expanded muffler, and you know, going 30 miles per hour over the speed limit, racing by you.
And I got my kids in the backseat.
I used to once be that 18 year old driving a Honda Civic like an idiot.
But with perspective and age and wisdom, things shift.
You know and you grow.
And I find myself now two hands on the wheel, driving down the highway, yelling at this kid that's driving by me.
Yeah, I got a family with me, man.
But it's so amazing how these years provide wisdom and characters refined and we grow.
And I can only imagine...
If the 18-year-old yourself could see what you're doing now and I've heard you talk about on podcasts before, how your demeanor has changed, how your approach to life has changed, how you're calmer and more patient now in this life that you're living.
Compared to where you were when you were 18, going overseas, you know, fighting bad guys.
There's not really a question there, but just this observation of it's pretty beautiful in the way that we grow and develop and mature through all these life experiences to get us out of certain situations, circumstances and mindsets that we once were captive towards.
You resonate with that?
Oh, I do.
And having kids will open that door wide open.
You have a daughter now, right?
I do.
She's a little bit younger than your boy.
How's that been for you?
Well, I mean, like you just said, prior to her...
The only tool I really had in my toolbox to solving problems was a hammer.
Anything gotten put in front of me.
It just took a hammer and just started smashing everything violently.
And once she came along, it forced me to get in my toolbox and figure out different tools.
Like, I don't need to use a hammer for problems that require a paintbrush.
And so she's forced me.
I don't want to say force force isn't the right word but she's taught you, she's taught me.
She's been the catalyst for me, lightening my grip on on things and becoming softer, instead of constantly looking forward to the next thing, what's the next thing, what's the next thing.
I'm more.
I'm more present in, in these moments with her because, You know, really that's the only thing that we have.
So, that's been really great.
I thought, you know it's funny also, looking back in hindsight, like I thought that Rami and I both thought that we wanted a little boy first, and now I can't think of anything different.
And it's actually funny how you were talking about how your little boy just hauled off and threw a toy and busted your nose.
It's like, I think of myself as a little boy and he would probably be just like that.
I couldn't be happier to have a little girl.
Yeah, when we found out we were pregnant with our first, my wife was hoping for a little boy at first.
I was indifferent.
And our first was a girl.
She'll be four this summer.
Completely softened me.
Completely softened.
I mean, before having a daughter, it was years before I cried.
Now the wrong song comes on the radio and I cry.
I'm like the softest man ever now from her.
But I've seen such differences of raising my daughter and my son similarities but I feel this different responsibility now of what I need to teach my son compared to what I need to teach my daughter.
But it's got to feel really good knowing that you're building this life on this property, so close and in tune with nature, and the food that you're raising and consuming with your family, and and the experience, the opportunities you're providing your daughter and potentially, future kids and families a whole, that's what they get to grow up surrounded by.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
I, like you were saying, experience kind of shapes a whole new perspective and like I've just kind of found myself in a place where I'm seeking after things that money can't really buy and seems like this farm life has a lot more of those sorts of things.
She's going to get to grow up with an incredible amount of freedom to explore and experience life and death on the farm.
And I just think of all the good lessons that I could teach her about.
You know just how watermelon is going to taste so much better when you bend and Working hard, sweating out in the sun all day, as opposed to just sitting inside in the air conditioning.
I'm excited for all those things.
Some of the best watermelon I've ever had was from the farmer's market last summer.
These big black seeds in it.
You got to eat around the seeds and spit them out.
But man, it was like Texas grown farmer's market.
Oh, it hits different out here.
Watermelon hits, so different compared to you know, sometimes you get that store bought stuff and you're trying pieces until you get the one that's actually sweet.
Everything else tastes like water.
Now this watermelon was like every single bite was, was sweet and gold.
You grow watermelon on your property?
It's hard to grow much out here with the lack of rain that we have.
I've got a small little orchard with some peaches and figs and apples that are impossible to keep alive.
I've got Asparagus and broccoli and lettuces and tomatoes and small stuff like that.
But it's really hard to grow things out here.
It's tough, tough climate.
I believe it.
You grew up in a farming ranching family, didn't you?
I grew up in a very agrarian rural town in central Illinois.
Family was kind of commercial.
Farmers raised hogs and cattle and grew hay and everything.
And the whole agribusiness model never appealed to me, in fact.
I was in all the agriculture classes in high school.
FFA was a really big thing in my high school and I could My agriculture teacher in high school.
If you were to ask him back then who is the least likely student that you would pick that you ever taught to go into farming?
He 100 would have said me.
100%.
I couldn't care less about cows or crops or whatever.
Anything just didn't interest me.
And it wasn't until I started getting exposed to being able to influence the quality and the nutrient density of your own food and using my own physical fitness to make all of that happen, that really started to click and get me fired up.
Like there is this new way of like regenerative farming where you raise higher quality, nutrient dense food, and that's something that got me really fired up when i watch your content online.
You and your families Your wife does an excellent job of behind the scenes of you as the rancher farmer of the property.
I love it.
I'm always showing my wife like, this is the life I want to live.
But tell me, is it actually the life I want to live or is it...
How much more work, how hard is it for all the people who, maybe myself included, want to live this homestead life, who want to have a farm, have a ranch, have animals, have property, have all the responsibility that comes with it.
How different is it actually doing it than the perception of doing it?
I mean, if you want to talk about endurance and endurance athletes and endurance sports, it's like I think it takes incredible endurance to just year over year, day after day after day after day, doing the same monotonous thing.
Tasks with the simple aim of just keeping your animals alive, and then you're going to have animals dying all the time, and then you have to just continue to show up and do it.
It is a lot of work.
I've traded a lot of the physical exertion and effort that I used to put into the gym, slinging barbells and kettlebells and chasing numbers on a Concept2 screen.
And I've just taken it and shifted it into moving infrastructure around the farm, moving animals around, walking a lot.
And I enjoy it.
I really I enjoy the day to day of interacting with the animals, seeing the land improve just a tiny, tiny little bit every day.
Nothing is if you're into any if you want any sort of. gratification not even not even remotely immediate farming is not for you like I've been at it for going on six years now and I'm only just I feel like just now starting to like get over a little hump and that might only last me like another month and I'm gonna have a huge curveball thrown at me I just know it but It's really worth it.
There's a lot of tangible results.
It's all right there.
You can feel it.
You can touch it.
You can see it.
You can interact with it every single day.
You're getting the feedback from the land, the animals, the nourishment that you're putting your physical effort into.
So it's worth it.
It's a very worthwhile effort, but it is all day, every day.
Coming in for the podcast this morning, I had to kind of back plan a little bit get out earlier in the pouring rain, move all my chicken coops, collect up all the eggs, move my wet sheep in the rain.
It doesn't matter what's going on.
It doesn't matter if it's hot or cold.
Animals don't care.
There's work to be done.
And Yeah.
It's not a very glamorous life that my wife portrays it as.
My wife's not showing the dead animals that I'm throwing on the back of the can-am and stuff like that, because that is stuff you have to deal with too.
But
It's worthwhile.
I'll say that.
What are these small wins you experience?
I understand it's delayed gratification, but you have a long day.
What are some examples of these things that happen where you're like all right, this is why I'm doing this?
This is what keeps me going.
Well, in about two or three days after this rain, I'm gonna look out into my pastures and I'm gonna see a lot of my efforts come to fruition.
All of my movement, of my chicken coops across my pasture, these tiny little movements that start to make a big impact day over day.
All the areas that my pigs destructed and impacted.
I'm going to start to have fresh new forage growing up and then I'm going to get to move my cattle on there and they're going to get to eat that.
They're going to get to eat all of the fresh forage that I planted and it finally rained and that came up, and that takes months and months and months of repetition to make happen.
And I get like.
The small wins are like the excitement of my animals racing onto a fresh salad bar that I essentially curated with my own creativity.
Creativity in physical effort, creativity in the maneuvering of my animals and their impact on the land, and my planting of these different forages for my animals to now consume and get healthy on.
I can resonate with that from a completely different perspective.
Business, if i, if i compare my work to say what you just described with your work, i i always tell the team here like there's certain things you have to build that you can't buy and you have to build it and deposit into it, potentially for years and years and years until it pays off, An example of that being we hosted this ultra marathon on the ranch last summer that I was telling you about.
And it went completely viral.
It blew up.
And all these other brands after that tried to run back that same playbook.
They did the same race in their state or country with very... small positives coming out of it.
It did not even make a spark on the map.
And everyone came to us saying, what did you guys do differently?
We didn't do anything different.
It's just that we've been building into this for years and years and years.
We've been telling the story.
We've been preparing the brand for a moment, For when the situation was just right, all these things aligned.
It worked because we built it.
We didn't go buy it.
And that's like the delayed gratification that I can relate to of there's just work you got to put in, knowing that at some point it might pay off or it might not.
But you believe in the process and what you're doing.
But you can't go buy that.
You can't bottle it up and go buy it in a store.
It has to be built over a long period of time.
And that's, for me, what's so rewarding about the build and the process.
And you probably, I mean, this...
The thing about it was starting out with this event, you didn't start out with the end result in mind.
You were starting out with the vision of just focusing on running this really good event.
You weren't focused on the profitability or the success of it.
That just happened as a byproduct of everything that you built up to just get it started and going.
Yeah.
Whereas a lot of these people who tried to just turn key and do exactly what you did, they were like well, they did it really well.
They were successful and they're really profitable.
So if we do it just like this, we're going to get the same result.
Doesn't work that way.
No.
So after you...
You transitioned out of the military, came back from overseas.
I understand you were living in LA, working at a bunch of different jobs.
And this is when you started competing in CrossFit at a elite level, right?
And dedicate a lot of your life to training and fitness and performance.
And I've listened to a few of your podcast episodes talking about these stories in this chapter of your life.
So as much as you want to share or talk about, feel free to.
But I think one of my favorite stories was...
And you've shared it on multiple podcasts.
It's when you were homeless and you were going to this diner that was close to a fashion school.
And this just reinforces your love and passion about food and fueling your body.
And this diner would serve these massive portions and all these skinny fashion model students would come in and order these big plates of greens and potatoes and eggs and meat and veggies.
And they barely touched their food.
You come in, buy a 75 cent coffee and then ask for their scraps and eat that.
What was that phase of life like as a whole?
Coming back from these combat deployments with the Marine Corps and of all places, going into LA and being exposed to that life?
That I'll start by saying that that chapter of my life.
Just to paint the whole picture, I was riding a bicycle.
A bicycle was my transportation getting out of the Marine Corps.
I'd actually gotten a DUI shortly after my combat deployment and shortly before getting out.
I was just kind of a wandering, aimless drunk on a bicycle that was moderately enthusiastic about competing at a high level in fitness.
And Whenever you're in the military, all your chow is taken care of.
You got a chow hall or MRE is always taken care of.
So I was trying to set up shop of figuring out where I was going to be getting my food from riding a bicycle around half drunk, all the time homeless.
Yeah, I just I had seen this diner that slang these massive portions of food, and these skinny fashion girls never ate all their food.
So I just started swinging in there and getting some extra food to keep in my backpack.
I guess to you know, just paint the catalyst from like drunk bicycle riding to scrap trash, eating Nate's beard, to like competing at a moderately high level in CrossFit.
I don't want to say CrossFit was like a saving grace for me by by any means, because I, quite frankly, I hated the culture, I hated CrossFit, like I hated the CrossFit Kool-Aid.
I really just, I liked the aspect of exercise as a competition.
And I'd kind of like fostered this deep appreciation for training hard in the Marine Corps, because I was a scrawny, weak dude that just couldn't do the things that were required of me in training the Marine Corps.
So I got really into the physicality of doing the things that I needed to do to get strong enough to do my job as an infantryman.
I saw the recon guys doing kipping, pull-ups and thrusters with barbells and all the cool stuff and I thought that'd be really neat to chase after, so that kind of became my focus.
I quit drinking, got my diet under control and started using CrossFit as just my main focus in life.
I still, to this day, can't really explain why I wanted to compete professionally in it, but I'm glad that I chose that because at least it gave me a target to start aiming at and getting my life moving in the right direction quitting booze and eating right, training hard.
And all of those little things just kind of started to seep into every area of my life.
I was no longer this just like aimlessly wandering drunk i was, i was focused on anything that i, that i put my mind to and that carried over into you know.
Having, you know, multiple side hustles at at one time which was a great thing for living in the city you can really really hustle.
There's a lot of opportunity there.
Why LA?
Well, that's funny.
I mean we've established that where I came from in rural Illinois I had no interest in farming, didn't want to go back there and be a farmer.
I had...
I had fostered this appreciation for fitness in the Marine Corps.
I thought I wanted to do something with fitness.
But to be honest with you, I was pretty fresh off of deployment.
The Marine Corps.
I don't know about the Army, but the Marine Corps doesn't really didn't at the time do a good job of like transitioning guys out.
It's just kind of like, well, turn in your gear.
Here's your paperwork.
Congratulations.
You're a civilian now.
I'm like, okay, I guess I'm going to go to Los Angeles.
There's.
I'd seen Venice beach and I was homeless, for a Being homeless on Venice Beach is not that bad.
Really, the weather is fantastic.
There's free showers and you just got to find some food.
So that's what landed me in LA.
I think the military as a whole has to find some sort of solution for better transition programs.
Well, it's like you did your job.
You did what we needed of you.
And to be honest, you got to figure out how to use the skills.
That's the thing.
You get a lot of good skills there.
You got to figure out how to use them and transition them into the civilian world.
Take some time.
They're there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw a lot of my guys because I was a platoon leader, and I saw a lot of my guys struggle with the transition out.
Well, this is something I've spent a good deal of time thinking about and, being that, you're in the infantry as well right,
Yep.
Yeah.
I feel like the infantry guys...
We have the hardest time with that civilian transition because, if you think about it, the types of guys who the infantry appeals to we're not the high honors stud athletes.
We're kind of like...
The misfits, the knuckleheads, like we don't really have any other options.
So we like find ourselves in the infantry.
The infantry kind of forces us to kind of be this best version of ourselves.
And then we go and become a civilian again.
And.
We've become the best version of ourselves and we no longer have like a mission or a purpose that's going to demand us to be the best version of ourselves anymore.
You got to like find that new thing to become the best version of yourself.
And whenever guys can't find that, they just...
And I did that.
I slipped into just being drunk enough to where my ears would be low enough that I didn't really have any ambitions.
But I was also just kind of numb to everything until I found something to go all in on.
What was it and maybe CrossFit was part of that that facilitated that structure back into your life.
Because it feels like even today, you are a man that is a creature of habit and structure, just like me.
A lot of that, Like I said, there are some great things that you can take from the military.
I think that a lot of that comes from how the Marine Corps rewired my brain.
I'm just like...
I'm a creature of habit.
I mean, you think about going through basic training and boot camp.
It's like you go from being this like slow lackadaisical, like just human, and they turn you into this like accelerated creature of, like violence and habit and routine and a lot of that is just really kind of stuck for me and I've tried to figure out ways to harness it and use it in a positive, because there have been times that you know it has become a negative, like being too, like forcing everything, like trying to be too structured or too rigid.
It's like, you got to find that balance.
Yeah.
I have a question and I'm trying to figure out how to ask this, that it makes sense.
I'm trying to relate my journey of military entrepreneur.
In the military, you have especially infantry.
You're in a platoon all these like-minded guys who are on a purpose and a mission to accomplish this one thing.
There's a lot of alignment.
And then you transition out and you're alone.
And you don't have the accountability of these guys anymore.
You don't have the structure.
You don't have the discipline.
You don't have the brotherhood that you once had.
Do you ever miss that?
Because as...
As someone who is really operating alone on your property, doing a lot of these things solo.
What does a community of other men look like in your life right now?
And do you ever miss having that?
I don't think so.
As crazy as it sounds, I've spent a lot of time wondering and thinking about this about myself.
I'm just not really like a brotherhood type of guy.
Those were not really the things that I miss most. about the Marine Corps.
Like yeah, obviously we had some tight bonds and like, going through all those austere conditions and tough times, you know we were very close and we had each other's back.
But I'm just not.
I'm not that guy.
Like I'm, I don't need a crew to assemble and like go out and train hard and get motivated.
Like I don't want to say I'm self-motivated, but even just as a kid, the types of I was very rebellious and the types of people that I looked up to were Dennis Rodman.
I liked the lone wolf.
Like, I went to the rodeos and like all the other kids would like be going crazy for the bull rider.
And they'd like want his autograph and everything.
I was like hyper focused on these rodeo clowns like the bull fighting rodeo clowns like the oddballs, misfits the loners, like I just more kind of identify with that.
And so the transition and being alone, loneliness has never really been a thing for me.
I just needed to find my own personal mission to get on.
I didn't need a brotherhood to facilitate that.
And I actually used a lot of the opposite of that.
I built this group of dudes that I trained with.
I don't want to say that I hated them.
But all I wanted to do was just prove them wrong all the time.
I was just such a vengeful, just hate.
I had so much hate in me and like I would win these competitions and I would like win some money.
And I was never happy because I was never doing anything for myself.
All I was doing was like, I just wanted to prove everybody wrong.
I was just very vengeful.
What kind of softened your heart?
Well, I kind of hit some rock bottom after I competed at CrossFit Games Regionals as an individual.
It was like that was something that like, I built up in my mind as like being the biggest thing.
For like six years I built to being able to compete there.
And so when it was all over and I had 37 in my bank account and I went to, I was in Del Mar and I went to the train station to buy a 27 train ticket to get me back to LA.
It's like well, I've got 10 in my bank account.
I accomplished my goal that I've set out of doing with all these ups and downs over the years.
And I came to find that I was just kind of like filling a void of all of this unresolved stuff that i didn't want to deal with from the marine corps.
Like i went from just being drunk and numb to like going hyper focused on this one target of competing professionally crossfit and then i got there and it's like okay, here's all these things.
Now that you've buried under the rug right in front of you, it's time to deal with them.
And I didn't deal with them.
I went on and I found another void to fill.
I started boxing, competitive boxing at the amateur level.
And so I put those problems off for a couple more years until I met my now wife and Those problems surfaced with her in our relationship, which led to her and I splitting apart.
It's like, here's all your problems again.
It's time to deal with them.
And it wasn't until then that I dealt with my problems from the Marine Corps.
Yeah, us as men are really good with that of putting all of our problems off and using a different void to just glance over them.
I mean for me performance and building my business and working and grinding and going from prep to prep to prep to race race, race was just that same thing.
This is a way for me to justify my problems, where I can put all my energy into these things to avoid what I'm actually supposed to be facing.
How has your... view, perspective, and relationship with fitness changed over the years?
What does training mean to you now compared to what it did?
I mean, back in the day, I'm stating this sort of figuratively.
If you were to tell me if you take this pill, you'll add five pounds to your back squat and you're going to take 10 years off your life.
Without a question, I would do it.
I was that driven to just getting better.
It's like I would do anything to get better and I would sacrifice everything down the line just to get better.
Now, as a matter of fact, the first year that I lived out here at 30, for whatever reason, I thought 30.
In terms of physical performance, I thought 30 meant that I was over the hill, like I was done.
And I have this just immense fear that I have peaked physically.
And it's not... I can deal with peaking physically in my mid-20s, but...
I think what irks me the most about it is the fact that I didn't recognize it.
I didn't acknowledge the state that I was in.
Be like, Just recognize like I am in peak physical condition right now.
Just take a moment and recognize that I was always, like you said, focused on the next, next thing.
And so when I turned 30 out here, I decided that, for whatever reason, on my birthday I was going to do 30 birthday miles, 30 birthday miles of just run one mile, bike a mile, ski a mile, row a mile.
My 31st birthday, I did the same.
32nd birthday, I did the same.
33rd, 34th.
35th, first year I had a daughter, I decided to add on comprehensive blood work.
That's something I never gave a crap about in the past.
Like If my overall health was going to suffer but my performance was going to benefit.
No questions asked.
Performance always wins.
But now it's like I'm finding that balance of training, farming not being stressed all the time and overall health, so that i don't become a liability for my daughter in the future.
So that's how my fitness and health has has sort of changed.
I would say i've.
I'm far healthier now, physically capable Not so much as I used to be, but I'll take that trade off any day, as I'm sure you would.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's a sign of maturity.
For a long time, I rooted my entire identity in training and performance.
Or I would go crush myself in the gym on runs for multiple hours a day to have no energy for anything else that day.
Yeah.
You get home, you have to sit on the couch.
You're a zombie around the family because you spent that whole day training.
And I got to a point where I was like, what am I doing this for?
I love training.
I will always love training.
I love being healthy, but I also am viewing the value of health over performance now, compared to the way I used to look at it, where I would rather have all the energy in the world come 8 9 pm than have run 20 miles at 4 am that same morning to then be a zombie later.
It's like you're finding this perfect little balance of enough fitness To keep you showing up for your family and doing all the things that are important.
But whenever you're doing so much fitness that it's negatively impacting you in other areas of your life, that's where you have to draw the line.
Especially being a rancher.
So that's the thing.
I had a couple instances kind of early on.
Where I actually, I got rhabdo whenever I was competing professionally in CrossFit.
And so when that happens, it's kind of like you flip a circuit breaker.
Whenever you flip a circuit or whenever you blow a circuit breaker, that fuse becomes a little bit weaker.
And so you become more susceptible to being a repeat offender of rhabdo.
And I hadn't done CrossFit in years and years and years.
I still have all the skills.
I can still do all the stuff.
And I got invited to go out and do Murph, which is the...
The Memorial Day workout, where you do freaking a mile run and 100 pull-ups and 200 push-ups, 300 squats and a mile run in a plate carrier.
I probably hadn't done a pull-up in six years.
I don't know what I was thinking, but I just, I went and jammed through a MRF.
And then like not eight hours later, I'm peeing dark brown Coca-Cola and I can't straighten my arms.
I'm like, damn it.
I got, I like accidentally got rhabdo despite like being very aware of how that happens.
And then I'm out there doing all the farm chores.
And because my arms are so blown up, you can't straighten your arms.
I was leading my horse, uh, I'm leading this 1,200-pound thoroughbred with my bent arms like this.
She steps on my foot, breaks two of my toes.
So now I'm out here doing all my farm chores with rhabdo and broken feet.
It's like, okay, my –
My drive to go and like, perform like an idiot, has negatively impacted my ability to show up on the farm.
So I'm like kind of finding this happy medium of training to stay fit enough and strong enough to do all of the things necessary on the farm, but not just wearing myself out.
See, that's where I would love to get to at some point in my life, in terms of what the rhythms of my day look like.
Where, based on my current role and job, I spend a lot of time in meetings, Zoom calls, computer.
And I'm not saying I necessarily want to have a farmer ranch in the future, which sounds attractive, but I want to be outside more.
I want to be physically performing on a regular basis.
And I was just listening to a Mark Sisson podcast this morning.
Mark Sisson is 71, 72 years old.
Great shape.
He's like an ideal.
It's so impressive.
But he was talking about the minimal, effective dose of exercise to be able to live the life and perform and function to actually utilize his fitness effectively within his life, not just in the gym training running.
And I thought that was so important and necessary.
And it becomes even more obvious to me the older I get, the older my kids get.
But as I visualize what I want to be doing with my body in my day for my work in the future, It's being outside.
It's using my hands.
It's using my body to work, not just train.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of farm work, it's basically you're just replicating...
The gym is basically replicating all of the manual labor that goes into running a farm.
I don't need to push sleds or pull sleds or anything.
I've got 1,200-pound chicken coops that I push.
I got six of those that I push twice a day.
I'm chasing sheep around.
I'm walking like 25, 30,000 steps a day around the farm.
You don't need to spend so much time in the gym whenever you create a lifestyle that affords you that ability.
I guess which is what you're craving right now.
I am craving it.
I live vicariously through it, though.
I think it would be.
This regenerative movement in farming is wicked cool because I think that these hybrid athletes would make such awesome farmers.
Just just shift your mindset about like what productivity and progress looks like in the gym and like.
Shift it to like productivity and progress on like land, animals and food.
Man, that'd be so cool.
Like oh, I ran you know three mile or five miles in 16 or 17 minutes and then back, squatted 500 and bench press 315.
Like take that and like I produced 800 pounds of beef and regenerated this 10 acre field and raised 24 eggs a week.
That's pretty cool.
I feel like that's what I'm being called to.
Steph told me my wife before coming on this podcast I know when you're done with this conversation you're going to go try to buy a ranch or a farm somewhere.
Let's have a conversation before you do.
It's like, all right, I promise you.
Well, and it's just so appealing with your kids now.
I don't know what your house is like now, but just can your kids just go out the door whenever they want, like by themselves?
Not really.
I mean, that's the awesome part.
It's like Ophelia, she's opening doors now.
It's like she went out the door.
Oh, well, she's like wandering around the yard, picking up chicken eggs.
You have that freedom.
That's wicked cool.
Yeah, we have these friends who live on property out by dripping.
And...
When we're with them, we realize how different our lifestyle is compared to theirs, because they have young kids who they let just walk out the back door and walk all over the property.
And we're like, hey, are you going to like go walk with them and make sure they're okay?
No, they're okay.
But for us, I mean, we have streets right out in front of our doors and we have like access to neighbors right next door.
And we feel like we have to constantly be watching our kids and make sure they're safe and okay.
But we're with these friends and other family members.
Their kids are half a mile into the woods and they don't think anything.
And they're three, four years old.
So it just shows us the difference of how they're raising their family versus ours.
Makes us think. and question what should the future look like for us.
I think you'd make a tremendous farmer.
My grandpa would be very proud, very happy.
Chicken farming.
I'm not doing any chicken farming.
When you took over the property that you're currently on, What was the condition of it compared to what it is today?
That's a good question.
So the property that we got was an old Longhorn working ranch.
So to be honest, it probably spent 20 to 30 years just being like, overstocked and overgrazed.
The soil was very compacted.
There was not a heck of a lot of good forage available.
And I
Just immediately got cattle and threw them out there on the pasture.
My cattle were just not really performing that well.
I couldn't figure out why they were not eating the forage that was available, because it was just.
I know now that it was just such crummy forage.
And so I had to kind of learn that cattle were not quite the option for that moment.
I had to kind of take a step back, look at the land that I was afforded and get creative with how I was going to utilize it the best as possible, and I didn't start out thinking that I was going to be a regenerative farmer.
I started out thinking like, I want to raise some beef and some eggs would be cool too.
And so just starting out with that end goal as my focus of like I want to raise beef, I found was
The worst thing possible.
Like I needed to focus on what the land needed first.
I needed to start restoring the land first.
And that required me focusing on the soil and learning how the soil worked and learning how to grow plants, because in order to grow my own beef or lamb, I needed to grow plants for them to eat.
Pigs were an excellent creative way for me to radically start improving the landscape.
So you think about all of these destructive tendencies of pigs like the rooting, the wallowing, everything.
Conventional farming would have you go out and just like spraying chemicals all over these weeds and like ripping up the ground, tearing everything up to get rid of them.
Regenerative farming.
I started harnessing the pig's destructive ability to rip up the soil and get rid of all the nasty invasive plants that my cattle wouldn't eat, and i would just move them around the pasture and plant new forage behind them so i can get new grasses growing for them to graze in the future.
I'm trying to figure out where i'm going with this but to, i guess, to To say the property was not in great shape.
It has become in great shape over the years just through these regenerative principles of using all these diverse animal species on the land and letting them all give and take and give and take.
We've got some of the best forage on our pastures around us right now because of it.
And it's taken years to do that.
Was it intimidating when you first took over the property?
Intimidating?
I wouldn't say intimidating.
I mean, around us, there are a lot of pretty like old school, like old school ranchers.
And you know I'm this grungy tattooed LA dude showing up like trying to be a farmer.
Um, I didn't start out thinking I wanted to be a regenerative farmer.
I started out just wanting to raise some food and I came to find that the best way to keep animals alive and healthy was to do it in this regenerative fashion and move them around and plant new forages behind them so that they had good, fresh salad bars to eat.
That's all.
I heard you describing on a podcast kind of just the trial and error and learning of regenerative agriculture.
And you were describing how there's, within certain wet grasses, there's bacteria or pathogens.
And you obviously didn't want to use chemicals on your property.
So you were finding that putting certain animals on those pastures prior to others eating those pathogens To remove them?
That whole concept blew my mind.
These are things that I didn't actually think that people would find interesting.
But yeah, I guess the way that I try to simply explain it is like, if you look at like the African Sahara and like all of the different diversity of animals that are bred, grazing and moving and pooping and everything across that.
You don't see all these animals just turning up and dying from these parasites in the grass that they're eating.
And why is that?
It's because there's such a diverse array of all these animals that are neutralizing all of these different things.
So in the natural world you have, like you know, turkeys and deer and bison and all of these things that are interacting.
In farming world you use chicken cattle, equine sheep.
Hogs.
They all give and take something differently from the soil, from the land, to benefit it and keep it in this cycle.
So like there are certain parasites that if you just continually graze...
I always say mother nature abhors uniformity.
So if you just take sheep or cows and put them on a pasture and leave them on a pasture and have them eat the same grass over and over again, they will get sick and die because there's a certain parasite that they will continually eat, that will eat them from the inside and kill them.
Put some equine in there.
The equine eat that parasite, neutralize it completely.
And then the cattle eat the parasite that will kill equine.
And they both benefit each other, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And then like my chickens, they're like the big sanitation crew.
All of that manure that's left behind on the pasture.
Oh, they go crazy for it, because flies get up in there.
They lay their eggs and – maggots and everything that chickens go through there.
They scratch it, they peck it, they work it into the soil and they eat everything out of it.
And then I don't have a fly problem with my sheep or cattle, because my chickens are eating all of that and eating good.
Well, that's why I asked, were you intimidating when you first took over the property?
Because my thought process is all right, I got to keep these, this is life or death.
Yeah.
Keep things alive.
Well, and like where I'm at now, I never would have thought that I got there from the start.
It's one little thing at a time.
I mean, it's kind of like when you started lifting weights you probably started, you know, doing some bicep curls.
You never thought like, I'm going to, become this icon of a hybrid athlete.
You were just lifting weights.
I never thought that I would wind up with this very complex ecosystem on my farm.
I just put some cows out in my pasture, bought a Stetson hat and changed my Instagram bio to rancher.
And then Had a lot of trial and error over the years and kind of evolved into this.
That's amazing.
What's the vision of the ranch for 10 years from now?
I always have a really, really hard time answering that.
I mean...
I don't know.
Ten years from now.
I don't know if I'm going to be slowing down and Ophelia is going to have to start taking over more of the farm.
I hope I can hold on as long as I can and keep running it.
Just so long as my wife can eat ribeye and filet and my daughter can get nourished properly on all the vegetables, protein that we raise on the farm every day, like that's success and happiness in a whole for me and i'm i'm physically healthy enough to keep up with running it, which i don't show any signs of slowing down yet.
Yeah, how much of your diet and your family's diet comes from stuff you guys raise and grow.
I mean all of our pork beef venison eggs, all grown or all raised by me, and then the chicken that we get are from some good friends that i.
I barter my beef with um Yeah,
I set out to be able to produce and provide, like all of our protein, and then sell some of the excess.
Where do you primarily sell it at?
Right now, we're at Radius.
There's a burrito truck in Dripping Springs that also buys a lot of my stuff that sells.
And I have a good deal of just private customers in the area that I sell to as well individually, which I think I prefer doing that.
It's more...
It's more fulfilling for me to have good relationships with the people that are enjoying the products that I'm raising, because I really don't produce that much meat at the end of the day.
See, I'm naturally an introvert.
I would assume you are too.
I am.
And my cup is filled when I'm by myself, quiet time, just thinking.
I don't get as much of that as I'd like on a daily basis.
That's one of the reasons.
It's probably the only reason I run, to be honest, is because that is like my alone time where I can actually do some deep thinking.
All the time that you spend on the property by yourself, what are you thinking about?
What are you working on?
What are you going through?
A lot of the time, I'm just letting my mind go just kind of blank, to be honest with you.
I'm just really letting my mind go blank and just be in that present moment with the animals and the land.
I've become a lot more aware and in tune with the seasons that way.
I guess that's a lot of my time meditating.
It's like when I'm way out a hundred acres in the pasture moving sheep, I'm not not really.
I don't really have to be in a hurry.
I don't have anywhere to be like.
This is the only thing I have to do, so I can kind of take my time and just look at all these different plants and flowers coming up.
There's a bird species that I've never seen before.
What's this flower that's starting to bud on this tree?
These are the things that I'm thinking about.
What's the pace of life here compared to LA?
Can you even compare it?
I mean, I'm still working a lot.
Obviously, it's just slower, grounded, and focused.
I had like eight different jobs at any one given time in LA and I would just be white knuckling around on my motorcycle all the time.
My jaws were just always just really tight and tense and sore from just like clenching my jaw.
Just a lot more grounded for the most part.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sounds nice.
It's not bad.
I know you do a lot of reading.
You go out of your reading in the morning.
Were you ever in a phase of life where you were obsessed with the self-help space?
No, I will say that, like my initial, I think that self-help books are just wrote and They all just repeat themselves.
I've never been big on self-help culture.
When I first started picking up books, it was just because I was curious about the human condition coming out of the military, as I'm sure you were.
I was curious why i viewed the world that i the way that i did and i wanted to find some answers.
I started out with like the robert green and the jordan peterson and then started diving into like the deeper philosophical questions of the meaning of life and why is there war and all this stuff.
And My reading nowadays is completely different, but I've never gone through a self-help phase ever.
I think I've read every self-help book I possibly could.
Really?
And I can tell you, they all pretty much say the same thing.
Yeah.
I finally reached a point after listening and reading all of them.
And I was like yo man.
I don't have to listen or read any of these ever again, because I know exactly what they're all going to say.
I think I was reading C.S.
Lewis's Screwtape Letters a few months ago and you responded to my story.
That's a good one.
In regards to that one, I've been reading a lot of C.S.
Lewis's recently, and that's where a lot of my reading and learning has shifted towards away from the self-help space and more deeper introspective topics individualism.
I've enjoyed it.
And they're harder reads too.
Well, your wife just wrote a children's book and that's been something that's been kind of on my mind.
And like, I've read that book Multiple, multiple times.
And like writing a children's book is so freaking hard.
Like the concept of it to like I'm wrapping my head around it.
Did she come from a writing background?
She always loved writing.
And she loves working on that project.
Because you get to work with an illustrator and a team.
Well, it's got such deep, meaningful messaging baked into it at such like a simple level.
And that's a really, really hard, deceivingly hard thing to do.
To like paint that picture in an appealing way to little kids.
And I mean right now with AI and like all these, like cartoons and stuff, like I feel like it's really easy for the kids brains just get rotted watching that stuff.
And so like we're really trying to incorporate books like that with like good strong, meaningful messages for Opie.
Yeah.
I read a lot of books to the kids.
My daughter loves books.
And there are certain ones where I'm like, ah, this one's a little too long.
This one's a little dry.
And then there's ones Charlie picks out, and I'm like I will reread this one over and over and over again.
But yeah, we read To chart with not so much with Nico, I think is like Nico, unfortunately it's like the second child treatment sometimes.
But Charlie being our first, we read so many books to her and...
Her vocabulary and her sophistication is very impressive.
And I hope and think we can attribute that to all the reading we did with her as she was younger.
Now we just got to get her to live on some property.
She'd make a good little farm hand.
She would love it.
When we go to this farmer's market in Austin every once in a while, the Barton Creek one and they have this little petting zoo with some baby goats there.
That's the only reason we drive.
It's 35 minutes for us.
But Charlie just wants to see the little baby goats.
We'll go there and we'll get our sourdough and a bunch of other stuff.
But our typical farmer's market is Wolf Ranch in the Georgetown area.
Well, I got all the animals she could ever want to pet.
She'd love it.
She'd love it.
Guys can come out and feed the pulp sometime and bottle feed a lamb, all the fun stuff.
Yeah, we'd enjoy that.
Well, Nate, I appreciate it, brother.
Like I said, I'm living vicariously through you right now.
And me and a bunch of the team.
We love following your guys' content and what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Thank you for the meat.
That's going to be dinner tonight.
I'm looking forward to that and the eggs.
But I just love what you're doing right now and what you're learning and what you guys are sharing.
And it's just cool to... to watch through a screen, and now have finally met in person.
I appreciate you having me on.
To be honest, I told my wife it was going to be really weird getting asked questions by you being somebody that I've I don't want to say somewhat, because I've looked up to you in the fitness space.
So this is cool.
Maybe we can trade days one day.
I'll come do a Nick Bear day and then you do a Nate Day.
I'm all about it.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
All right, brother.
I appreciate you.
Thank you.
