How to Tell Your Farm Story and Sell Premium Products: Blake & Stephanie Alexandre on Regenerative Dairy

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top producers and experts within the regenerative movement. Join us as we learn together how we can steward, regenerate, and share God's creation for future generations. You know, most for most producers, for most farmers, most ranchers, you're either a really good producer or you're a really good marketer. And it's really difficult to do both. But my guests today, my friends Blake and Stephanie Alexander from California, Northern California, they're doing a great job with both. And so I'm very excited about this conversation that we can have to talk not only about how do you produce things in a regenerative way, but how do you do a really good job of marketing those things in a regenerative way as well. So Blake, Stephanie, welcome to the Green Cover Podcast.

0:59 It's wonderful to be here. It's a privilege and an honor and so thank you for having us.

1:05 Yeah. Well, I've gotten to know you over the last couple years. We've been to a couple events together. You guys have supplied some of the dairy products for some of our events and we've had rave reviews on that. But other people listening may not know you yet. So, why don't you go ahead and start out by just kind of introducing yourselves to folks who you are both personally but also with the Alexander Family Farms, what that looks like in the context of what you're growing and marketing right now.

1:40 Yeah. So, primarily we're really simply just dairy farmers out here in extreme northern California, right on the coast. We're within a mile of the ocean and about our ranch is three miles from Oregon. So, literally the upper corner of California, this is where we're in our house right now where we raised our five children on the farm. And years ago, we kind of set the priority to try to differentiate our farm and make it a viable option for our kids as they grew up and met their spouse and made a career decision. And so we've been chasing organic and now regenerative and A2 milk and these specialty reasons for our existence really. And so we literally live in a really cool climate where it's very conducive to 100% grass-fed type production.

2:33 And I think it's good to know a little bit of our history, too. Blake grew up on a dairy farm in Northern California where it's all grass-based. I grew up on a dairy farm in Southern California, more confinement, but my mother was chairman of the California Milk Advisory Board through my high school and college years. And as a child, I prayed I'd marry a dairy farmer. So, but my mother being involved in that kind of what happens to milk after it leaves the farm gate was really pivotal for me and always being aware of dairy and just understanding how important dairy was in the diet. And then we meet at college. I was a business, he was dairy science and he was an outstanding cowman. Won world dairy expo outstanding judge first place. So he really knew cows and when we became organic and learning to do no harm to the soil early on when we bought our ranch 33 years ago and it's like how do you become organic? What do you do? And someone told us about Acres USA. The keynote speaker was a doctor teaching people to go to the farm instead of the pharmacy and at the same time Blake is listening to Gary Zimmer, the biological farmer, and he's understanding soil better and learning about grasses and pasture.

3:49 Because this would have been how many years ago, what time frame is this all this happening?

3:54 Yeah, 2003 is when we went to Acres USA. We were organic, started the organic process in 1999.

4:01 And it was pivotal. It really gave purpose to both of us and really guided our passion. I mean passionate as a dairy farmer, passionate as a mother, but God just embraced it. It was really purposeful and we started also just becoming deeper in our faith in our walk. We both always have been blessed to know the Lord. So that's been wonderful. But to understand his purpose for our life was really as farmers and making a difference in the food system and that was kind of the beginning of it and we just followed our passions equally. He on the soil and grasses and myself on the nutrition.

4:39 Yeah, that's a great story and what a great way to start out. Now Blake, you don't, how often do you remind Stephanie that you're actually an answer to prayer for her, you know?

4:50 Yeah, I know. Isn't that wonderful? Be careful what you pray for. Yeah.

4:56 Oh, that's too good. It touches my heart every time she says that. That's cool.

5:04 So tell people a little bit more. You mentioned that you're doing A2 milk. And again, I think I mostly understand what that means, but go ahead and explain why A2 A2 is important, why you chose to go that route, and how that makes a difference for your customers. And I've actually got a story that I want to share about it too when you're done with that.

5:27 And so let me just pick up on Stephanie praying that she'd meet and marry a dairy farmer. When she met me, I was from a farm that was 150 250 cows up to 300 occasionally. And it was on our leased and rented facility in the little town of Ferndale where I come from. And so she often then accuses me of getting too big and too much. And so I want to put a little context to who we are. We literally milk more than 5,000 mature cows milking on five locations now over about a 100 mile span. We still have what was my great-grandfather's farm in Ferndale where our oldest son and his wife are. And so we have been on a journey to just do the best that we can with what God brings our way. And in '07, he brought us this A2 milk concept. And we really learned a lot about that. And so Stephanie, why don't you go with that?

6:33 Yeah. A2 is the digestible protein in dairy. We like to say A2 A2 so people learn to understand it's a DNA. You get one from the dam and one from the sire. And so in learning this the devil's in the milk from Dr. Keith Woodford, his book, we started searching for those genetics and we were already paying attention to things in New Zealand because we're grass-based here on the coast. And we found that that's where they had the genetics to purchase A2 semen. And so we did that and started breeding all of our cows that direction. Fast forward into 2015 16, we're talking to our dairy buyers saying this A2 is for real. We're reading the science. It needs to go this direction. We needed to launch a brand in our region and wanted them to do it. And when they weren't interested and wanted to dismiss us, we decided to launch our own brand.

7:34 Yeah. So it's not that we really had a desire to own a milk company, if you will, or a brand. That was not in the cards at all. We really wanted to do it under someone else's label, but it wasn't happening. And 20 21 years ago, we had taken our kids to the east coast and learned about this chicken operation where pastured chickens and laying eggs or hens on a grazing situation. And so our kids started a little label of eggs called Alexander Kids. And for us it was like no employees, just our kids, sink or swim. And so that business has been going and it gave us enough confidence in the retail world. While the kids were in college we were about 5,000 birds and when they came out of college we wrote a plan to go to 30,000 birds and then we doubled up from there once. And so we run about 40 or 50,000 hens on grass and sell a lot of eggs and it's been a really wonderful experience. And so we had this little bit of retail knowledge, just enough to jump into the dairy side when we finally exhausted all of our options. And you know it was pretty clear that Organic Valley or Horizon weren't going to come out with an A2 version of milk.

9:07 And Keith, if you can imagine, we're parents with these children that are all born in the 90s at this point. So they're all pretty young. And we are learning about nutrition together and feeding our kids and as well as our cows. And we know that milk from grass-fed cows is so good for us. So then, well, yeah, eggs from chickens on grass must be great, too. And so the family we visited in Pennsylvania is the family that has been visiting us this week. So it's just a small how God put this back together.

9:40 And so full circle. Yes. That was some of the motivation was not only raising kids but also our community, our state region needs eggs like this. But for us it was just selling them on the farm in a local farmers market. But it was also bringing nutrient-dense foods that are better for people to the market.

10:01 Yeah. So I love that journey. I love how the progression has gone from starting small, scaling up. I mean, milking 5,000 cows across five locations. This is no small operation. And we'll dive into a little bit of the intricacies on the marketing side as well, because that's no small feat, the processing and the marketing. But yeah, I love how the kids got involved and the eggs came up. And you know, it gave you that little taste or flavor of the what the retail.

10:33 Side may look like because we do a lot of retail sales as well. And it's hard. It's very rewarding, but it's very hard to engage inventory and employees and all these things.

10:46 Being a farmer doesn't necessarily train you for retail world. However, being a farmer trains you for problem solving and so we can navigate through it and it's really good for your prayer life right?

11:01 And to your credit, I'm looking at your magazines or your sales. There's a bunch of beautiful catalog. I'm so glad we've gotten extras when we've seen you because we end up giving them away. I don't know that we have very many more because we get visitors sometimes to the farm and we talk soils and grasses.

11:21 We could definitely send you more. So, that's what they're there for. So, I wanted to just share a little story. At the regenerative nexus summits that we do every year and we'll be doing again in January. This past one in Scottsdale, we had the kefir and I think we had milk, chocolate milk and white milk, the Alexander family farms and I remember overhearing one of the other people that were there and one of my employees, one of the other sales team members, in fact, it might have been my wife who was there was saying, 'Well, you should try this. This is, the best kefir. It's the best yogurt.' And they're like, 'Well, no, I'm lactose intolerant. I just haven't been able to do that.' And she worked on them and worked on them and finally got them to try it. And they just fell in love with it because they were able to consume that dairy without having all of those issues, that they were so used to having and had basically just given up on dairy or was living a dairy-free life. And I think they're probably pretty loyal customers to your brand now, and partially because of the brand, but mostly because it is that A2 A2 that they're able to tolerate and like Stephanie said, it's the digestible part and they were able to consume that with no issues. And so, thank you for doing that. Thank you for bringing this brand to the market because there are, that's not an isolated example and I'm sure you hear this all the time from your customers.

12:58 Yeah, we do. And I was sitting next to somebody at a wedding on Saturday night who had been introduced to our milk about a week before and he was just so excited that he'd been drinking it all week without issues and it first time he's doing milk in years, decades. And so we hear this story literally all the time. And that's exactly why we do what we do. The world or particularly here in the United States did not have an A2 option in the organic world and so that was important to us to keep it organic and bring that to the marketplace.

13:39 Let me just explain real quick. Two-thirds of the world's population believes that they're lactose intolerant. And these are the folks that we now know, a lot of people in our communities that just don't do dairy and they believe they're lactose intolerant, but it's kind of self-diagnosed. Lactose is the sugar in milk. And so what I believe, what we've come to know is that, it's 90, 95% of the time it's not the lactose that's the problem. It's the protein. And so when we talk about A2 A2, we're talking about the digestible protein that God put in mammals, all mammals, including people, that is intended for our diets. And what happened somewhere along the line, maybe a thousand years ago, there's a gene mutation on this amino acid chain between number 66 and 67. There's a histidine where there's supposed to be a proline and so that creates this little seven-chain amino acid called beta casein morphine that doesn't digest and doesn't break down in our stomach. Some of us have no issues with it but some are starting more and more people are having issues with it. It's very similar to gluten intolerance in wheat, right? When we were kids 50 years ago, nobody knew about these things and nobody cared either. And now it just it's rising up. It's on everybody's radar. And so our bodies because of the heavy loads of everything that Bobby Kennedy says is real and it's causing issues in the American diet that we all need to wake up to.

15:26 Yeah. And if people are introduced to digestible dairy through our dairy, then hopefully there's an internal message and a prayer from us that that's a gateway to better food system that they're discovering.

15:40 Yeah. And I think that's a great point and you know we talk about regenerative as a systems

15:46 Approach and you have to look at the whole system. It's the same way with our body. And when we abuse and we run down our body with all this other stuff, whether it be poor diet, lack of exercise, all these different things, I would guess that it makes us less tolerant to everything else. And so it just kind of been this downward spiral where if you were healthier or had better diet or all these other things, you may not be as sensitive to some of these.

16:18 But regardless, we're glad that for the A2, my niece and her husband who live right next door to us, they have a little Jersey A2 cow as well. So we have A2 milk here on the farm. Milking one, not 5,000.

16:35 It all starts with one, right?

16:45 So you're doing this grass-fed. So you're feeding no grain. Everything is organic. Talk to us a little bit about the way that you're growing your grass, some of the regenerative practices that you're doing to not only improve the nutritional quality of the grass, which we know will improve the nutritional quality of the milk, but talk about those practices and then also talk about how you've seen your soils change since you started doing that.

17:16 Sure. Out of our five dairies, two of them are 100% grassfed, meaning zero grain. And three of them currently have grain. We're working on transitioning one more the other way. And you know, to where we'll have three no grain dairies, and that's hard to milk cows with no grain. It's really difficult as a dairyman when you pull the grain away. We did it 13, 14 years ago when Organic Valley first started their 100% grass-fed program. We were the first dairy and two of our neighbors and us and it was a bit of a disaster in a sense because none of us knew anything. Our cattle genetics weren't quite right.

18:05 So we do use FleckV genetics out of Germany and we love those cattle. They're a dual-purpose breed, kind of a Simmental-based breed, that's bred for meat and milk at the same time. We've been using those genetics for a little over 11 years. And so pretty much all of our females, I'd say 90% have Flex blood in them. And we're going to keep leaning into that. And that's the perfect cow for the no grain diet. And they milk well. And you know, it's not a big sacrifice production-wise.

18:43 Well, on we'll talk about our climate here. We can grow green grass all year round. We can hear the ocean from our bedroom window. So we're right on the coast. And our average daily temperature differs 11 degrees from winter to summer. So it's always cool. It's never too cold and it's never too hot. It's beautiful. It's perfect for grazing cows. We do get a lot of rain in the winter, so we have freestall barns and the appropriate housing for our cattle in the winter time that also protects the grasses and the pastures.

19:16 And so because of that, Blake mentioned the 100% grass-fed on two of our dairies and the other three we do feed grain, but we lean on grass, I think, like no one else does in the world as far as dairy. And the way we can graze grass and get that growth and keep it green all year round is amazing. Our cows do so well on it.

19:40 300 days a year on grass is quite common for us. I was just talking to somebody here an hour ago. They were just a couple hours away in central Oregon and it's 95 degrees and I'm like wow, it's 53 or 4 here and I can only see a quarter of a mile down the road, it's so foggy, and then you know this is whatever it is September second, it's like this is our normal summer weather.

20:06 So the beauty of our grass and the flavors still come through in our milk that we call our red label where those cows get a little bit of grain. It's not a lot of grain, but it definitely helps with what we need them to feed grain for.

20:21 Yeah. And so how, what have you seen change in the soils since you've been doing more, I assume rotational grazing and regenerative type mindset applied to the grazing as well, because there's good ways to graze grass and there's, you know, kind of not good ways.

20:40 Right? And so I like our farms in Ferndale, my hometown. You know, we grazed there literally we've been grazing there for five generations. Even as conventional farmers, we were heavy in the grazing because it's just a beautiful little environment similar.

20:58 To say New Zealand or Ireland or something is what it feels and looks like. And the when I was a kid, 63 this year, but so 50 years ago plus, the gates were all open on the farm. In the morning, the cows went out and they walked through the seven big fields of 40, 20, 30, 40 acres each and then at in the afternoon we brought them in and they milked and it was there was like no concept of rotational grazing of any kind or management grazing or the concept of using polywire electric fencing and really managing the rest period on pastures that all started for me back in probably the extremely early 80s as I was getting into college and Allan Savory and his partner back then Stan Parsons had done some educational stuff out our way here in California and so started thinking and looking at it very differently and so we've now been whatever intensely grazing, I guess that's 45 years ago already, and so we keep getting better and better and better at it. We still have a lot to learn, but we're getting better at it.

22:20 So when we bought the ranch here that we're on 33 years ago, the soil organic matters were about 2 to 3%. And in 2018 when our daughter called out of college, she's the one that manages our cows and our farm on the cow side of our dairy. And so we taught her, John Schneider and I went out and taught her how to pull soil samples. And she pulled a whole bunch of soil samples for like a month. And it was just shocking. We thought that she had made some mistakes because we were seeing organic matter in the 12, 13, 15 range. And so we waited a year because we only pull them in October. And we redid it again before we told anybody. And really all we did was then double check her technique and we're pulling soil samples in the top 6 to 8 inches. We're not looking to go 30 inches like some folks are. And so again we verified that those were real numbers and the reason for that is because 30, 31 years ago when I met John Schneider for the first time, he has since passed away, but he became a good friend who lived about 2 hours north of us and we just really focused on intensely grazing and resting fields and we focused on our organic program because in the late '90s when we went organic and your commercial fertilizers go away and your toolbox kind of empties because you don't know what to put in it as a new organic farmer.

23:56 And so we just started focusing like after Gary Zimmer came out here in probably 2003 or 2004, he just says well spread that compost out, you overapplied magnesium. He said it a lot faster and in a much higher tone than I do, but it was pretty exciting. And so we then just started, okay, we're going to make as much compost as we can, and we're going to spread it as thin as we can over our land, and we're always going to focus on the worst 20, 30, 40% of our land. Last year we spread over 2,000 loads of compost, which they're big loads, you know, we're talking like 20 yards per load or something. And so we do get a lot of free shavings and wood chips, our solids manure from our freestall barns or the milk barn. And then we get fish waste and we compost our dead cattle into it and our dead chickens and anything that we could possibly get that's free we put in there—shrimp shell, crab shell—and we just we've always got a massive abundance of compost happening and we keep spreading it as thin as we can. So that's part of growing organic matter. I understand some regenerative specialist legalistic folks would say, 'Well, that's outside inputs.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, it is.' And I'm cool with that. It gets us over the hump.

25:25 We picked up 1,500 acres across the river four years, almost 5 years ago, land that had absolutely been abused with lily bulb production, so flower production, lots of chemicals, lots of spraying all winter long. And that ground is just a mess. We had the advancing ecoagriculture folks out, John Kemp and David Miller, and it was really wonderful to see it through their eyes here about 3 months ago and understand that wow, John says you've got 3 feet of topsoil here but the top foot is a mess. It's just this solid hard pan that's dead. And I clearly knew that we've been trying to do what we can with very little budget. And so we're now kind of incrementally trying to pick that ground up and lift it. We're only kind of doing it in thirds because we don't have enough resources to do it all at once. But yeah, kind of reclaiming land, you know, fixing the abused soil where the previous owners weren't farming in harmony with nature. They weren't focusing on God's plan for how soil works. And this whole regenerative movement is just a way to explain what the first farmers did, Adam and Eve in the garden.

26:49 And you know, I think of that all the time is that you know, this is just us getting our arrogant heads out of our arrogant rear ends and realizing the system that God gave us and quit pounding our chest saying we can feed the world here in the US, which was true, but we did it at an extreme cost and we were there's no way we were going to do it forever.

27:13 Yeah. And the other thing that we can add to this is that we have nutrient ponds for our manure water and we have aerators on them and we have our irrigation system set up to where we can get our nutrients out to the fields as part of the irrigation system or just to dewater sometimes and pay attention to what fields need them. And we see that green grass get darker green and know that those nutrients were needed there. It's really exciting to see that.

27:44 Well, let me just explain that more clear for the listener. So we have a solids separator at all five farms. The solids pile becomes the base of our composting program. And then we add in all this other stuff. And then the liquid, which is still carrying the majority of the nutrients, is this pond water that Stephanie's talking about. And what we learned at an early stage was let's keep it aerobic, not letting it get anaerobic. And so we agitate and stir it and just you know kind of subtly. It's not a big irrigation project. It's just circulation and it keeps it healthy. And so when we do pump it out to the fields either directly or injecting it into an irrigation system, it's more of an earthy pleasant odor and it's not nasty. It's non-anaerobic. And so at the same time, the biology that's living in the field says, 'Thank you,' as opposed to, 'Oh crap, what is that stuff?'

28:45 I also wanted to add when Blake was talking about Allan Savory. So when we were in college together, we started dating. I'm a sophomore, he's a senior. He graduated, went home, and was really paying attention to the pastures and helping his father on the dairy. And so it was time to do my senior project and he encouraged me to do it on rotational grazing and raising replacement heifers in Humboldt County where he's from. And so we both dug into Allan Savory's work and Stan Parsons and working with the local extension agent to find out weather patterns and all this stuff that really I saw Blake get into. And we had all the DVDs for Allan Savory back then in the 90s. And so his passion for that soil and the grasses was really real. It was fun to see him.

29:32 Yeah, that was way before organics as well right?

29:35 Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And I'm glad you mentioned John Schneider too. When we've had this conversation before, you know, John was instrumental in helping us get started as well because when we first got started we didn't know where to get stuff and you know we came across John at a show somewhere and just his, you know, he's been, yeah he was out to our place you know multiple times and just his willingness to share information, to share his knowledge, you know he is just a great example of how all of us should be and being willing to give back. And so yeah, he was a big part of Green Cover getting started as well.

30:18 Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, he literally just became a good friend and we could, you know, kind of talk shop together and we saw the world very similar.

30:28 Yeah, that's great. Maybe one more thing before I kind of want to dive into the marketing side of things here, but I know that in listening to some of your talks and seeing pictures and just knowing your operation, you've seen a huge shift in the wildlife populations on your ranches as well because of how you're grazing, because of how you're, you know, overall farming. Just talk a little bit about what that looks like and why that's important.

30:55 Sure. Yeah, it's absolutely build it and they will come attitude, right? We were outside with this family this morning and the birds were just overwhelmingly noisy, right? We just and they're just songbirds and blackbirds and whatever they are. I don't, I'm not a bird watcher, but we do have 240 or 60 species on our ranch because we are a birding destination. But before we bought the ranch, I was in a California leadership program, agriculture leadership program, and we had a chance to go to Washington DC, sit down with the secretary of interior and a whole bunch of under secretaries, three under secretaries, and the question was what's going on out there? What's happening? And we were just buying this ranch. And this ranch came with an endangered species called the Aleutian Canada goose, and it's a small small goose that flies from the Aleutian Islands over to the continental US and basically lands on

31:59 Our ranch—we are as west as you can get in the continental US, generally right here in this region, and so we're a big part of the Pacific flyway. Birds that are flying the coast always hit our land, right, because we stick out into the ocean. And so that population of those birds was about 5,000 at the time when we bought the ranch in '92. And we just took it on as a special mission like, what can we do because I'm now educated and somewhat enlightened that, you know, what can we do to help? And so we had a different attitude from the normal farmer attitude like, you know, get the heck off my land, and so we embrace these birds. And today there's 250,000 of those birds. They've been delisted a good 15 years ago or better. And so it's one of the single success stories of an endangered species getting delisted to threatened and then completely delisted, and now they're a hunted species. And we have gotten a lot of credit for that comeback and it's really cool. We've got four of those birds that were shot out of the sky at one point 15 years ago that are living in our yard today.

33:30 Yes, and early on we started fencing riparian zones. None of the riparian zones were fenced. Cows would just walk through the little creeks and stuff, and you know it was just normal, and so we started learning about it. And at first we didn't want to get involved in NRCS projects or take government money, but then it's easy to want to do it eventually. But fencing off the riparian zones and planting trees, and then we made a commitment that we're always going to plant 75 trees every year, and so we keep that commitment and sometimes many more. And so as I said, build it and they will come. And the creeks just started looking beautiful. Blake's worked with US Fishing and Game to teach them how we flash graze inside the creeks after the duck habitat is all done and as far as their hatching their eggs and everything's dried up a little bit more. We put in the cows, a big group of cows into that riparian zone, they graze it off. That way you're not getting that shredded wheat die-off grass that's desertification. We're still getting the regenerative practices right there at the creek bed, and then the cows are out again, and it's just beautiful in those beds every year. We've been doing that, and then the US Fish and Game was doing salmon monitoring because we have the Coho salmon right in our river that we surround, and they were doing the baby salmon or salmon monids and measuring, and they were doing them in all the creeks along the coast. And they came back and the two creeks we own had the biggest growth in the salmon.

35:09 Yeah, the little fingerling fish or whatever were 30 and 40% larger than their siblings where they were all hatched in one creek up river, come down the river and find these little tributaries to live for their very first winter. That's the uniqueness of a Coho salmon. They stay in fresh water for an extra season. And yeah, so it was like incredible proof that what we're doing is working and contributing, you know, to something that we don't even see these fish. We hardly ever see them. And yeah, it's just a wonderful example. We have a tremendous amount of frogs.

35:48 When the kids were little, we go to town in our suburban with five kids, and it's dark, it's night, and the frogs would jump in front of our headlights on a rainy night, and the kids would say, 'Oh, kamikaze frogs.' You know, they're jumping in front of you as you're driving, and there would be a bunch. And then one time I realized after we left our farm, there were no more frogs in the rain on the 10-mile drive to town.

36:10 Yeah, and I realized that it was just only around our ranch. And then that Sunday once I had that epiphany, that Sunday at church, it was Psalms 23 where he causes or that talks about the green grass and the peaceful life pasture. And then I went down to the bottom of my Bible in the concordance part and it said green grass where life flourishes. And it was just like I wrote that in my Bible: the frogs, they are living where life flourishes. And so yes, then the elk come and the bald eagle nest and everything and the Coho salmon story. And so it's really sweet to be a part of that and live where life flourishes.

36:53 Yeah, so eventually I think what we're simply saying is wildlife also choose regenerative organic farming. That's that simple, you know. The elk can jump fences and go wherever they want, but 300 of them decide to live here.

37:09 Well, and years ago there were zero, right? It's a testimony to the resilience.

42:40 One-on-one at stores. Our daughter, daughter-in-laws, actually both our daughters, we were all doing demos across the West Coast where we launched. And so Blake said that we are real. We are real dairy and what we put on our social media is real in our marketing. We want to tell the story. We want to tell what happens on the farm. We want to educate people about regenerative practices, educate them about why our food, why our dairy and eggs taste so good. And we know it's the gut of the plant, which is the soil. And that's where it all begins. And start educating people about that process. And maybe they'll start a garden also. And maybe they'll look from other regenerative farmers because if a farmer is concentrating on that soil and what grasses he's planting or what crops he's planting in a regenerative way, that is making a difference on the nutrition and that's more to be told in the future for ourselves and other regenerative farmers that it's tied to nutrition. How healthy that soil is and more we're giving back to that soil that grows that is tied to the taste of those products. And I know from the vegetables we buy from a local farmer that does regenerative practices and how he nourishes his soil how great his fresh vegetables taste. But I also know through our milk.

44:04 Keith the question also kind of stimulated some thoughts in my head I think that your listeners would appreciate. You know, when we started our brand, it's kind of a scary thing and we had some cash accumulated and we just told ourselves we're going to do everything right, whatever right is. You know, couple of farmers don't really know what right is when you're jumping into the markets and processing and distribution and all this stuff that is foreign to us. And so we spent money at every turn to try to get our logo corrected. We spent extra money to get the right people to do it. And so three years in, we're doing great. We're having success. It's our red label only. And then we realized that consumers really want this 100% grass-fed. We were selling it to another outfit as yogurt for Trader Joe's. And we decided, okay, we'll lean in to the grass-fed with our own label. And then, you know, eventually that just took off and our green label now out sells our red label because that's the nutrition that people really really want. And so now that we've got the Flat V cattle that have matured and make that an efficient option for us, we're pretty excited about that. I think the other key to our success, you know the fear of failing motivated us in the beginning and then I think we simply got too stubborn to fail about four or five years ago when we should have shut it all down and the banks were just really really tightening up on us and you know we just barely made it through all this. It's the last two years have certainly turned around the last year particularly and we're on our way to refinancing that looks like you know we can finally say okay we made it but it's been a long difficult road.

46:04 Blake's right that it's been hard. It's been long. We knew that if we stopped at that point we would have lost it all and so we just had to keep going. We had tremendous support when in 2009 and 10, Humble Creamery, where we sold all our milk, went bankrupt and we were just in a pickle. And so we were really blessed that New Island Capital supported us and bought some land and then we leased it back. And so that really saved us. And then they held on while we launched our brand and made sure we paid our banks first all the time. So we've had some great support along the way, but it was scary and it still can be. But we're really excited about what the future holds and consumers response to better food and the food system. Dairy sales in general, whole milk is up. Plant-based sales last year was down a lot. So people are paying attention where real food comes from.

47:07 We're just excited we're part of that great food movement. We're actually at a point here in a couple of months, we're going to host a little regenerative conference here on our farm primarily for other dairy farmers to get them qualified to the principles primarily of regenerative agriculture. They're already organic and they're already A2. And so we want them really to qualify so that we have more of a milk supply into the future because our brand keeps growing.

47:39 It does. So basically you're developing additional producers to come through your brand but they need to do it the right way.

47:45 Yeah. Exactly. Partner farms.

47:50 Yeah. We when we launched our brand or when we were starting to launch our brand, we were trying to find a co-packer to bottle our milk for us and that was so hard we couldn't get that done. So we

48:01 Finally did purchase a creamery where we bottle our own milk and our son oversees that. So it's wonderful to have a family member overseeing it. He also oversees our dairies in Humboldt. Our daughter is our dairy manager and our other son manages irrigation, harvesting in the fields. So it's really a blessing to have our kids involved. We have a creamery management call in a little bit, but our son runs that, so we just can be on if we want to listen to it, but he's got it under control.

48:30 Yeah, I totally get that. Having family involved, and there's some things that make it more challenging when that happens. But what a blessing. And right next door, my son Jacen has taken over the management responsibilities of the sales team, so I don't have to do that anymore. And my brother's son Travis is running a lot of the operations. So like you, we've been very blessed to have family working with us. And also like you, we've had to do our own processing. Now our processing a seed is not nearly as complicated as running a creamery, but you're not only doing the production and the marketing but you're doing that piece in the middle as well which is all that processing. And each one of those has its unique challenges. Where do you find that? Maybe the question is which of those three do you enjoy the most and which of those three do you find that if you don't put the effort and attention into it kind of starts to slip away from you—production, processing, marketing?

49:45 That's a great question. I'll go first and am curious to hear Stephanie's answer. I've always enjoyed, you know, at first it was the cows, and then I realized that I'm not a patient person and I'm kind of a big picture thinker and visionary, so the cows got a little boring. And so then it was the land and the soil and all that, and that's been really exciting, but it's hard to do a lot on the land without a budget to afford to do things differently. And so then as we jumped into this marketing, which we had to—we were forced to have our own creamery because we couldn't find a processor that was willing to take our unique stream of organic A2 milk and run it through the facility and give us unique products on the other end. There was a little bit of hope for that and we had one and then they cancelled five months before we launched. So we ended up purchasing this little yogurt facility and making it work for us. And so, to answer your question, I really enjoy this. I enjoy this conversation, teaching, leading, connecting the dots and bringing things together. And I think the brand is what has opened that up for us. So as I age out and kids do more at home, I enjoy being on the road and promoting what we do, whether it's the brand or the regenerativeness.

51:24 Because we're owners and me especially, I feel like I can have an opinion everywhere. I love nutrition. I love marketing. I love telling our story. I think it's a great story to tell and really believe in it and called to do it for him and for his kingdom. I oversee all finance and some legal too. And that's where I spend most of my time. Unfortunately, it's not what I want to do, but it's what I have to do. And I love having an opinion with marketing, but oftentimes a finance brain is a different brain than marketing. And so if I can handle marketing things first thing in the morning, it's when I can do it. But the rest of the day, I'm usually with finance stuff.

52:10 Yeah, I can see where again it's necessary but not necessarily what brings you the energy. So I'm curious, Stephanie, you know, telling the story, and you do a great job of it. Which of the social media platforms have you found that you feel like is most effective in reaching customers? And maybe it's different ones for different segments, but I'm always curious because we're always struggling with this with Green Cover—which of those platforms are going to give you the most, where do you focus your attention that you feel like you get the best return?

52:51 We're on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook. I think definitely between Facebook and Instagram, I would lean towards Instagram. We watch the number of watches, the responses, we get more there, I believe. I feel like the Facebook stays a little bit more localized from the responses, but I'm not sure and I'm certainly not the one that knows the correct answer. I'm just guessing. We have a marketing team now that does that stuff for us, but we definitely Blake and I and our daughter Vanessa oversee it and have strong opinions.

53:30 Opinions of our marketing. We certainly want it to be real. We want our employees to send us video of what they're doing, things like that, so that it's legitimate and this is what's happening on the farm. We're definitely have an opinion there.

53:43 I don't do anything on social media. I don't ever watch our content other than when it's being produced maybe. And we've been training a new marketing team, the younger generation this past year. And a few months into that, I realized, oh, these folks are trying to impress us with their talents to produce things. And I was like, 'No, just stop doing that. Just come over here with a camera and video our employees doing what they do. Just document it. Don't produce it.' We don't need to create data or content or whatever it's called. And so for the last three months, we've had this policy where I get to approve everything before it goes out because I have such a firm opinion. And so it's really more to train our team than to send the messaging out. But I just want it to be authentic, real content. And I also had a strong opinion two or three years ago that we were not going to do TikTok because of the China connection and all that, and I just didn't want to be part of that world. And so that was a huge argument with our folks back then, but I don't miss it.

55:02 I would like to see us concentrating also on educational components. I noticed that when you're teaching somebody something or you do a post that's a meme with education, people tag other people and that grows your following. So I would like us to go back more to educational stuff in the future. In addition to always, you know, what's going on the farm today kind of segments we've been doing to where people know the heart of our farm.

55:30 That's great. And I love Blake. I love what you're saying. Basically, you're saying that you just need to tell the story because the story is already happening. You don't need to create new stories.

55:43 Exactly. Right. And then we always invite everybody come see our farm. Right. We've had some issues in California with the bird flu transferring over to dairy cattle. So we aren't able to openly have everybody come anymore. But that should pass. And yeah, we just encourage folks to come see us whether it's Whole Foods or customers. You know, we've got the real thing here.

56:10 Well, and wasn't that one of the original milk marketing slogans? You know, the real, the something about real milk or something. So you're the real real.

56:20 The real seal.

56:22 We're the organic version of that.

56:25 Yes. Yeah. You might want to roll with that. So maybe as we kind of close here, I like closing with the question, you know, how would you, what advice would you have for someone who's just getting started? And I think maybe I'll make it specifically because you're already doing this, you know, with the conference that you say you have coming up. You're already helping people get started, but what are some of the key things that you're going to tell folks at this small conference you're putting on to help people learn how to produce these products, these dairy products in regenerative ways so you can market them through your brand with good conscience. What would be some of the main things that you'll tell them?

57:13 Yeah, it all stems from us being the very first certified regenerative farm in the United States as we kind of receive the honor of being the first certified regenerative farm or regenerative brand really. It kind of put some weight on our shoulders to understand regenerative and carry that message forward. And then therefore we're trying to teach others along the way. And when I think that we're going to have farmers come and see what we do, I really just want to make it part of the practical experience. And regenerative is not like organic. Organic got defined in the '90s and then became a premium in the marketplace. And if the premium's not there or there's not room for more product, then it's not really an open door for conventional farmers to convert into that process. When we look at regenerative, we should not compare it to that. I believe that the efficiencies and the benefits from regenerative practices come in year one, year two, year three directly to the farmer who's growing the crop. And it comes in the form of reducing inputs and improving and increasing.

58:39 Yields. And so that's the marketplace where this needs to make sense. And so it's simply explaining to dairy farmers, crop farmers, whoever across the country and around the world that this is the smart way to farm in harmony with nature, in harmony with what God's plan was. And we will all prosper because of that. We don't have to sell a regenerative product in the marketplace and think we're going to get an extra 10 cents a unit. That's not the end goal here. The end goal is just to make your organic matter grow on your farm at a higher rate. And so we will teach them a little bit about why we let the grasses get tall, why we let the cows knock some of it over to feed the microbes and eat maybe two-thirds of it. Those kinds of simple things.

59:32 Okay, great. Stephanie, what would advice would you give them? If you know, now they're going to market through your brand, but if somebody was wanting to start their own brand, whether it's dairy or eggs or regenerative vegetables, whatever it is, what would be a good piece of advice you'd give someone going down that path?

59:55 Follow your passion first of all, and be down on your knees praying. But we really believe in the regenerative practices and I think Blake's going to and Vanessa are going to do an outstanding job showing that and Joseph our son too, and Christian, just that what we're doing at the pastoral level, and whether we all talk about who has the best gate handles or electric wires or posts, we're all learning and let's learn together as an industry and better that. As far as marketing and stuff, that is just telling your story, word of mouth, friends in the industry, all that kind of right information.

1:00:41 I just saw something I think is important to add that we probably don't say nearly often enough. As farmers, as unique farmers selling products just even to our neighbors at a farmers market, we need to charge the appropriate pricing. Don't undersell your product. Don't price your half gallon of milk 50 cents or a dollar above the competitor. Price it at $3 above because it is 100% grass-fed, because it's worth it. Otherwise, it's not a sustainable project for you or them. And so don't undersell your product. We really got to there also understand that you're only trying to sell to, you know, 5% of the consumers. You don't need a mainstream brand. We're not trying to be successful at Walmart. We really don't care about Walmart and Costco's food. They're doing a good job bringing in organics, but that's not for our premium stuff. Our premium price stuff is going to support Whole Foods, Sprouts, natural grocers, and all the other high-end natural food stores.

1:01:55 And for us, one of our dreams was that we could lift have rural revival around us. We had three dairy farmers in the last few years go out of business in our neighborhood. And it's sad that shouldn't have happened. They're producing a wonderful food that's in great demand today. And if they would have lasted, but they didn't. And what can we do to protect the other farmers, our neighbors, our community? That is an answer for everybody. We got to raise prices to the farmers, and they're going to get it by doing something different. And that call out of regenerative organic.

1:02:33 Yeah. I love that because part of regenerative farming is regenerating your community, regenerating the relationships with neighbors, and I love that and I love the educational aspect that you talked about. And so, as we close, I hope to see you folks again at a regenerative nexus where we do these things, we help build communities, we help educate each other. And folks, if you're listening and you're curious about what those events are, just shoot us an email, give us a call. We'd love to talk to you more about what that looks like. But Blake and Stephanie, I knew that I would enjoy this conversation and I really did. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the way that you're doing it. Thank you for providing such great products and thank you for being willing to share your story. So, and thank you folks for joining the Green Cover podcast. We hope that you have a great regenerative day.

1:03:31 Thank you, Keith, and everybody at Green Cover. We appreciate you guys. My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations.