Measuring Up the Herd

A conversation with Steve Campbell and Will Winter about assessing cattle for grass finishing, cattle genetics, how to select for easy-keeping cattle, and advice for young graziers

Acres U.S.A. Can you guys talk about your backgrounds?

Steve Campbell. I was born in New Meadows, Idaho, on a ranch, but it wasn’t big enough for two families — my dad and his brother — so we got into hauling cattle. I did that until I was 33. 

I broke my right ankle really bad in 1999 in a horse accident and had to take a job in a shop. But after about three years, with the pain in the winter, standing on cold concrete, I could only work five, six, maybe seven hours till I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I’d go back home and get in my recliner, eat dinner, maybe watch TV, and then go to sleep and do it all over again. 

In 2002, I went in to see a different kind of a doctor. He was a chiropractor, a certified applied kinesiologist, but an expert in nutrition. He told me to stop eating inflammatory foods. Within ten days, the pain in my ankle went away. One of the first books he had me read was Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. 

It wasn’t too long after that that we got into grass finishing. I started reading Acres U.S.A. books and some other old books. Jerry Brunetti had to learn this stuff to keep himself alive; he needed to know it four or five layers deeper than I did. I just learned it because it was so dramatic how quickly the pain in my leg went away.

Winter. I was born into a wheat farming family in Kansas. Winter wheat has this lush, beautiful green grass, and we’d graze cattle on it. Well, guess what? Wheat grass is bloating. So, I learned how to treat bloat. If we could catch them before they were dead, we would take a Coke bottle full of apple cider vinegar and glog it down their throat, and within 30 minutes they’d be up and grazing. 

I went to college for livestock nutrition and then four years more years of vet school, and then a graduate program. Never once did I hear the word “apple cider vinegar” or that you could use it on livestock. My turning point was when I read a book by Juliette de Baïracli Levy written in 1951 called The Complete Herbal Guide for Farm and Stable, and after that I was unemployable as a veterinarian. I didn’t have my own vet hospital then, so I had to do what I was told. And since I wouldn’t do any vaccines or give any antibiotics or chemical wormers, I was worthless for other vets. I had to start my own holistic vet hospital. That was in 1980, and I ran that until 1999. I put the word “holistic” on my vet hospital, and my friends thought that was career suicide. “Holistic” back in 1980 was like voodoo. Turns out now it’s an acceptable word now.

As soon as I got out of vet school, I met Jerry Brunetti. He came and spoke at a holistic vet conference, and we were good friends ever since. He’s passed away, unfortunately, but you’re keeping his work alive in the Acres U.S.A. bookstore. Everybody should get The Farm as Ecosystem. It’s a deep, deep book. Jerry was a deep, deep thinker. He was inspirational, and Acres has been inspirational. It’s part of the matrix of my life, to be part of Acres — a contributing part, but mostly a receptive part. 

This stuff is hard. You need friends. You need allies. You need people to tell you you’re not crazy to do this stuff. 

Acres U.S.A. Will, after we met at last year’s Eco-Ag conference, the first person you told me I had to get in contact with was Steve Campbell. How did you guys get together?

Winter. Well, I was his parole officer in the beginning. Just kidding. Steve and I met over cattle, through a man named Gearld Fry. He’s passed away as well, but you have his book in your bookstore — Reproduction and Animal Health, which he wrote with Charles Walters. Steve, in my opinion, is the new Gearld Fry. Steve teaches what Gearld did, but he also has the big picture. 

I was an expert cattle judge when I was standing next to Gerald Fry, but as soon as I’m out there by myself, they all look the same. But Steve has an eye. When Steve goes out to assess a herd, he brings a box of Kleenex with him because the cowboy’s probably going to cry — Steve will divide your herd, and it’s kind of like a bell-shaped curve. You have your 10-20 percent gorgeous ones, and then you have 10-20 percent that Steve will recommend you move down the road. You’re trying to move that bell-shaped curve over so that 80 percent of the animals are not the dinks — and when you work with Steve over a long period of time, you will gradually move your herd so that most of them produce top-dollar meat, and that makes you money. 

Genetics are not everything, but they’re huge. But Steve just calls it proper selection. Phenotype is very important to Steve. He does linear measurement, which is a way to measure several aspects of the animal. He can predict what your cutout’s going to be — what percent is going to be top-dollar meat — just by measuring the animals.

Acres U.S.A. I think it’s important. I look at the grass finishing of animals as the backbone of our operation moving forward. Steve, how did you learn to see what a lot of other people have problems seeing?

Campbell. I met Gearld Fry in 2004, and I was pretty motivated from that point to start putting those concepts into action. I was getting cattle in the shoot and getting better at using my eye and my hands — feeling the bones, whether they were flat or concave. But I was always backing it up with ultrasound.

I’d watched Gearld do it. I was at places where we worked together. The last year I did ultrasound, I hand-graded all the cattle, and I hired someone for $1,000 to confirm what I thought, and he found the same thing I did. After that I quit spending money on ultrasound. You can see with your eye, and feel with your hands, that meat is tender or not.

In the early nineties, in a feedlot in Nebraska, they linear-measured 18- to 20,000 head of steers. On a bull, the front end is what you’re looking at; on a cow, it’s the back end. They would measure the heart girth — right behind the front legs, versus the top line — and for every inch more, that translated into 37 more pounds of gain and 37 fewer pounds of grain to do that. They gained more and ate less. Well, the more vertical the ribs are in the animal, the more it shoves the front legs apart — the more it shoves the top of the shoulder blades apart. You get a bigger ribeye steak — it’s a higher steak-to-hamburger ratio. You don’t get any less hamburger; you get more ribeye steak. 

The wider the front end of the bull should be, the wider the back end of the cow should be. Almost everything between the cow and the bull are opposites, linear measurement wise. If you’ve got a bunch of cows with raised tail processes, what they call the grow bone — I call it the anti-fertility bone — you need a bull with a lot of slope, from the hooks, hopefully level with the backbone, down to the rump. 

Why do we need more slope? It gets back to linear measurement. There are three commonalities with cows that have 10 or 11 calves in a row — anywhere from Mexico to Canada. They have a bigger belly than the herd average. They can eat and digest enough for three. They have a bigger rumen — a greater percentage of what they ingest, they digest out. They have a wider butt than the herd average. But what they have to have to get the ninth, 10th, 11th calf in a row out is slope from hooks down to pins. 

Winter. Gearld Fry used to say that when men sat close together in church, their shoulders touch. When women sat in church close together, their rumps touch. That’s a good thing, he said. It’s the ideal structure.

Campbell. It’s like two right triangles. With the bull, everything’s getting bigger as you go forward — toward the head — and everything’s getting smaller as you go back. On the cow it’s the opposite. 

Sex hormones shut off long-bone growth, so taller animals in any breed, everything else being equal, are less fertile. Estrogen shuts it off in the front end of the cow first, so she should look like she’s walking downhill on level ground. Testosterone shuts it off in the back end of the bull first, so the more fertile bulls will look like they’re walking uphill. Cows with a little teeny tiny tail, where the tail only sticks down so far into the pelvic opening, taking up very little room. But if a cow has a great big, coarse tail, it takes up some of that pelvic opening, and we have to pull more calves.

Winter. Something I learned from Steve that really affected my job is that the prepotent bulls, the really good ones, will clip days off of the gestation time. She will calf several days earlier, having a smaller calf, but with compensatory gain as soon as they’re out. So, they calf more easily. And that’s related to the bull.

Campbell. That came from Michael McDonald. He found that at a year of age, for each inch that the bull’s shoulders were wider than the length of his rump — from the pins to the front of the hook bone — it was two and a half days less gestation. That’s approximately a five-pound-lighter calf. So, if you have a plus-two or -three bull at a year of age, you’re going to get a calf that weighs 10 or 15 pounds less. Calving ease is normally associated with low birth weight. 

Winter. This is the stuff he can measure before they even breed. He can predict whether this is going to happen with the gestation time and with calving ease. Steve selects for calving ease and for temperament. 

Acres U.S.A. Someone told me once that at the sales barn they want to see an animal coming out kicking and being a little bit wild — they know that it’ll make the semi trip better out west. That kind of shows how backwards it is. 

Campbell. I mentioned the rump slope, but cows that give birth easily also have a wider butt than the herd average. The wider they are, the easier they give birth. The width of the muzzle, the outside of the front lips, is approximately equal to the width of the pins. And the pins are 80 to 90 percent as wide as the pelvic opening is, which is bigger than the width of the muzzle or the width of the pin. So, a wide-muzzled cow — and you’re looking from behind — she’s 40 percent as wide as she is tall — makes for easier calving. They do a better job with their grass too. They don’t have to eat as long, and then they digest a greater percent of what they ingest. 

Acres U.S.A. Are there certain breeds that seem to have these characteristics better than others? 

Campbell. You can find good cattle in every breed, but you’ll find more in the British breeds than you will in the continental breeds. Black and red angus, shorthorn, Devon, Scottish Highland, belted Galloway, things like that. There are 22 different breeds from England. The breeds that have been messed with the least will typically tend to have more of the right shape, more tender meat, etc.

Acres U.S.A. Here in Wisconsin, because there’s so much dairy, we have lots of Holstein mixed into our cattle. I’m assuming you try to avoid any sort of noticeable Holstein genetics in these beef animals.

Campbell. They tend to do better in the feedlot than in an all-grass environment. 

Acres U.S.A. At the sale barn a couple weeks ago, and a group of 500-pound Holstein steers went higher than some Angus.

Winter. Todd Churchill started Thousand Hills Cattle Company in 2002, and he hired me as the company veterinarian, and I’ve worked there for 20 years. Our protocol is to only raise British cattle, in order to have a tender, delicious steak. 

In the beginning, we put it on the supermarket shelf at $4.99 a pound for ground. At the time you could buy ground beef for $1.99, and it looked pretty much the same. Our first thought to get people to buy it was to just tell them how healthy it is — Omega-3 fat, CLA, etc. Didn’t sell. So, we tried the environment — our grazing is better for the environment than a feedlot. Didn’t sell. Then we thought, let’s tell people how much more humane regenerative grazing is. Didn’t work. 

What do you think worked? We all got cowboy hats and aprons and went to co-ops and grocery stores, and we had a little grill, and we gave out free samples of our 100 percent grassfed beef and of feedlot beef, for comparison. And our grassfed beef would jump into the shopping cart. Flavor and tenderness sold grassfed beef. 

Mineralization is also important for flavor, and for nutrient density. I’ve given thousands of guys steaks. I can give a guy who would normally eat a 32-ounce steak at Ruth’s Chris a 10- or 12-ounce ribeye or New York strip that’s grassfed and mineralized, and that guy will feel completely full. You know why? More nutrient density. There’s more in that 12-ounce mineralized, grassfed steak than there is in a 32-ounce feedlot steak.

Campbell. When you go down the regenerative path and you get clean and mineral-rich animals, the better it tastes, the more nutritious it is, and the fewer bites you have to take every day to get what your body’s needing. We don’t have to grow as much food. People get back to what they used to look like in the fifties.

Winter. And their heart and their cardiovascular system is so much healthier from the CLA and the Omega-3 fat. What kills you is inflammation, and feedlot steak is Omega-6 fat, which is an inflammatory fat. It will choke up your arteries. 

Acres U.S.A. Steve, can you cover your keys to easy-keeping cattle? And how do these relate to what we’ve been talking about — flavorful beef, animals that do well on grass, and then also the right temperament?

Campbell. As Fred Provenza says in his book Nourishment, easy-keeping cattle have home-field advantage. Unless you take an animal to a higher plain of nutrition, they’re never going to do as well as what they got from mom while they were in utero and what they were eating at mom’s side. Johann Zietzmann, in his book, Man Cattle and Veld, said that if you want a bull that’s going to have easy-keeping daughters, you need a bull that looks like eight pounds of sugar in a five-pound sugar sack. He looks like the Michelin man — on just grass. 

The first key is glandular function. You can’t buy glandular function. It means animals that are adapted to your environment. They shed early; they breed early; when it gets cold in the fall, they hair-up early. That’s the hardest thing to find. 

The other two keys are butterfat and a correct shape for the cow. It costs money to produce a lot of milk, but the cow with good butterfat actually eats less and digests more. She has a bigger belly than the herd average, a wider butt than the herd average, and more slope from hooks to pins. 

We need a bull with a head that’s half as wide as it is long, with a pointed pole — a little top knot. That’s tender meat. That’s butterfat. Also, the smaller the diameter of the tail, the more butterfat. On a cow, a bald udder is the number one indicator of butterfat. But a real close number two for both tender meat and butterfat is vertical folds in the hide. Usually you see them in the neck area. But if you see them from the vulva down to the udder, those are always really good cows. These aren’t the “happy lines” — happy lines run parallel to the ground, across the ribs, on the side of the animal. The vertical ribs signify a loose hide. And I like to see the last rib pointing somewhere between the hock and the ankle. To get that in your cows, you’re going to need bulls with very vertical ribs, which are going to give you that large heart girth, that higher meat-to-bone ratio in the front end of the steers, and higher meat-to-bone ratio in the back end of the cows. If you can get ahold of that and press on it, the more of a dip there is about a third of the way down from the backbone, the more tender the meat. The more it’s convex, the more rounded out, the tougher the meat. The more rounded in, the more tender the meat. 

We want a bull with a broad head — a lot of width between the top of the shoulder blades — but we really want him with a pointed pole, a small diameter tail, and a whole bunch of vertical folds in the hide — that’ll put the butterfat in the daughters, which will make easy-keeping, low-maintenance cows. Michael McDonald says 40 percent of the profit is fertility — having calves every year — 30 percent is what it costs to run the cow. 20 percent is growth, and 10 percent is carcass traits. So, growth and fertility are on opposite ends of the teeter-totter. Growth is 20 percent of the profit on the ranch selling calves. Fertility is 40 percent of the profit on the ranch.

Winter. Fertility is beginning to be a problem in my world of animal health — lack of fertility. A lot of dairies have 60 percent settling of their cattle, or sometimes less than that. That’s bankruptcy level. If you have 100 cows and only 60 of them get pregnant, you’re going to go broke.

Rural America is getting bombarded now with 5G cellphone towers. Cows are much more sensitive to it than we are. Horses and chickens are very sensitive to it, and 60 percent of Americans at reproductive age are sterile now. Obviously diet and many other factors are part of that. But if you have 10 holes in your boat and you fix nine of them, you’re still going to go down. And this EMF correction is easy. We can do it. Fixing it will also improve weight gain and milk yields without increased consumption.

The only other thing I’ve seen that’ll do that is apple cider vinegar. I was working with a 1,200-cow Horizon organic dairy, and they had mastitis problems, so I trotted out my whole dog-and-pony show, and they said, “We can’t do all of that. If we only did one thing, what would you do?” I hate that question. But I said, “It’s actually a pretty easy question. I would give your cows apple cider vinegar.” So, they bought five totes of ACV, and I thought I’d never hear from them again. But a couple months later the guy called me and wanted to know the biggest truck he could get of ACV. When they started giving the vinegar, the butterfat shot up from 3.1 to 3.9. That’s what they make money on. It’s not volume — they make money on components, and butterfat is gold. 

By the way, it’s the same thing as with intermuscular fat. Butterfat and intermuscular fat have the same mechanism — acetic acid has been shown in the rumen to make both.

Campbell. People say it’s a good, honest 20 percent savings in feed using the vinegar that’s made with whole apples. They keep it cool enough through the whole process that none of the enzymes or living microbes from the apple get killed. And that’s basically where the digestion comes from.

Acres U.S.A. I think both of you would probably say mineralization is the first step, and then apple cider vinegar will work the way it’s supposed to work after that. How did you start getting into mineralization, and how have you seen that evolve?

Campbell. Back to Weston A. Price, a dentist at the turn of the last century — he was seeing so much facial deformity and cavities, he thought it must be something in our environment — what people were eating. So, he went around the world and found 14 groups of people eating in the old way — nothing modern, Western, or processed. A lot of their preparation was fermentation — heat, moisture, slight acidity, a little bit of bacteria. Kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut, etc. There was no similarity between the groups in terms of the amount of fat, protein, or carbohydrates in their diets, but they were all in perfect health. The common denominator in the 1930s, when he went around the world and found these groups, was those 14 groups were getting five to 10 times the vitamins and minerals the average American was getting. 

Then in the 1950s, Maynard Murray was seeing that his elderly patients who’d predominantly been eating ocean-based proteins had fewer aches, pains, and diseases than those who’d been eating land-based protein. So, he went and autopsied everything he could get his hands on for about six months, and he couldn’t find any degenerative disease in the ocean. He started bringing ocean water and ocean minerals back to the ground. Over the course of 20 years, he was able to recreate that immunity to disease in both plants and animals, knowing that ocean water and our blood contain the same 92 minerals in exactly the same balance, except iron and magnesium are reversed. 

Winter. It’s about 24 percent minerals, whereas all of the other ancient sea salts are only 4 or 5 percent mineral. So, it’s not your full mineral for your cattle, but it cuts your mineral bill way down. It’s a great addition to your herd and to your health.

Acres U.S.A. How important is forage quality when it comes to finishing animals on grass?

Campbell. On average, 20 percent of minerals in your mineral box are bioavailable, unless you’re doing some kind of special chelation. Minerals attached to a carbon atom through the plant are 90 percent bioavailable, though. That’s huge. If you’ve got 4-Brix grass versus 14-Brix grass, it’s a totally different outcome in the health, rate of gain, flavor of meat, tenderness of meat, how long it takes to get marbling, etc. 

Winter. We found at Thousand Hills Cattle Company that we have to have Brix of 12, on average, to fatten cattle on grass. Otherwise the steers could be nine or 10 years old and they’re still not getting fat. The sooner you fatten your cattle and get them to town, the more money you’re going to make. 

Three- to 5-Brix grass — that’s a nothingburger. They’ll never get fat on it. We have to find ways for our producers to fatten cattle without grain. Grain has energy. The limiting factor in livestock production is energy. It’s never protein or minerals. Minerals are essential, but the production factor is energy. We can’t give them a bite of grain, though, or they won’t be 100 percent grassfed. So, what we do is we give them apple cider vinegar, because it’s pure energy. We can get all of our producers to finish cattle by 24 months if they give the animals ACV every day. And if that isn’t strong enough — if the producer has very poor grass — we use either molasses or fermented molasses. 

You’re trying to get your Brix higher every year. It should go up. We had a producer once who sent us a batch of cattle, and they were the wrong kind of cattle. They were continental cattle. We knew they were going to be tough, but we took them anyway. But then they graded prime on grass. We thought for sure he was cheating — you can’t have prime on grass with that kind of cattle. I was sent out to check — to see how he was cheating. I brought my refractometer out there and my squeezer, and his grass was tall fescue. For a lot of people in the grass world, fescue is a four-letter word. I checked this tall fescue and I about dropped the refractometer — it was 20. I went another almost 20 years before I saw Brix of 20. 

The guy was not cheating. He was an agronomist for Midwestern BioAg. That’s how he knew how to make nutrient-dense grass. I met another rancher in Missouri who had fescue, and he hit 20. Those are the only two in my life that have hit 20-Brix grass. That’s candy grass. Cattle just look at it and get fat. 

But you’re looking to hit 12. This is so critical. I raise grapes and cherries as a hobby, and when the first leaves come out, if they don’t hit 12 Brix, I know that in a couple months I’m going to have wormy cherries and moldy grapes. I’ve got two or three months to doctor my trees and vines via foliar feeding. I’ll put some inoculate on it, some biological stimulants, so that when it sets fruit, it’ll be good. 

Again, we can do that with grass. The number one way to stimulate grass is to put some biological stimulant on. That’s what’s missing when you buy or inherit a farm that’s had a hundred years of crops pulled off of it — the biology is dead, and biology is what builds soil. If you read Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil, this is exactly how he did it. If you want to put some biology on, do it with a foliar stimulant. It’s cheap — a few bucks an acre. Put some biology out there on all your acres and you can double your Brix. If you’ve got 10 acres, and you treat it and you double the Brix, you suddenly have 20 acres equivalent of grass.

Acres U.S.A. We’ve always had issues with cattle not eating the fescue. It’s not mixed with the clovers and legumes; I think that’s probably part of that problem.

Winter. When they can, they’ll pick the most delicious stuff. Cattle can spot the high-Brix grass. 

An example of low-Brix grass is the ring of repulsion around a manure pile. The grass is just exploding around it, and you think, why don’t they eat that? It’s not because of the poop — it’s because it’s high in funny protein. If you have high-NPN grass — high levels of non-protein nitrogen compounds — your Brix is low. We always talk about the cattle getting the squirts on lush spring grass; that’s because it’s growing like a freight train, and when it grows, it’s going to be very high in funny protein, and it’s going to be low in Brix, so they eat and eat and eat. They get the squirts. They don’t gain weight. It’s really pretty grass, but what we want is high-Brix grass.

Campbell. There was a couple in Western Australia who bought a piece of dirt that no one could grow anything on, and they took their wheat and inoculated it with some biology and planted it. A couple of weeks later they did an in-furrow with that same biology, and when it got up about eight inches high, they did a foliar. Then they let it ripen. They harvested the wheat, went to the granary, got their check, and went to the bank. 

In every drill row out there in the field, there was a grass no one in Western Australia had seen in 40 years. Those seeds had laid there for 40 years waiting for the soil fertility to get good enough. And, in one growing season, there was enough biology and minerals brought in to allow it to grow. It just makes the hair on the back of my neck stick up thinking about what’s possible — if we try to follow nature.

Acres U.S.A. What’s one piece of advice you would give to young farmers or young ranchers? We’re in an odd time when it comes to pricing; it’s tough for people to get into this right now.

Campbell. We’re at an odd time for land values, but especially for cattle values. But, if you as a young person could rent a farm — your grandpa’s farm or whatever it might be — then grandpa gets an income, and also, somebody else needs grass. So, you run somebody else’s cows and calves. This particular top of the cattle cycle will work its way out. If you have a first right of refusal with that person, when he’s ready to retire, you could go out there and pick 10, 20, 30 percent of those cows, and eventually the price would be back down. This happened in 2016. 

But in the meantime, you’re learning about running cattle on somebody else’s dime. Also, you’re going to find the cattle that are the most adapted — that are doing the best — in that environment. 

So, rent some ground, run somebody else’s cows, wait for the market to shift, and then hopefully buy those cows. You can start buying grandpa out. Or, like Greg Judy, maybe you just continue to rent ground.

Winter. I was going to mention Greg’s books — that’s what he specializes in — how to make money on rental ground.

Acres U.S.A. He’s a big believer in fescue too, where most people are anti-fescue. 

Campbell. How do you mitigate fescue? The healthier any grass is, the less the bugs are going to bother them. The healthier the animals are, the less the bugs are going to bother them. The healthier we are, the less disease is going to bother us. So, the endophyte — those fungal parasites — when the grass gets dry, that’s when it starts going up the plant. Well, if we have 15-Brix fescue before it gets dry, we’re going to have a whole lot less of the endophyte than if we have 3-Brix fescue. And you don’t want to bring cattle in from outside the area if all you have is low-Brix forage — they get hot, and then you’re losing tails and hooves and things like that. 

Winter. By the way, I’ve found that apple cider vinegar and the minerals prevent endophyte toxicity, so they don’t lose their tail or their hooves.

Campbell. A detox clay will do the same thing. 

Winter. On the question of what I would advise a young farmer or rancher in today’s environment — Todd Churchill, the founder of Thousand Hills Cattle Company, always said that there are two kinds of farmers: price takers and price makers. If you’re growing a commodity crop, you’re a price taker. Whatever wheat’s going for, that’s what you get. You have to try to wait out the market.

But businesses like Thousand Hills are price makers, because nobody else has Thousand Hills cattle. We made up our own price. If you sell Steve’s Tailor Made cattle, then you’re a price maker, because nobody else has Tailor Made cattle except you. It’s a niche product. It’s not a commodity product. 

So, my advice to farmers is to get yourself into a niche market where you get to tell the customer what you want for that product. Nobody else has it. Once they taste Tailor Made cattle or Thousand Hills beef or these eggs or this milk, they’ll beat a path to your door. 

You can get yourself listed on Jo Robinson’s eatwild.com. If you have special eggs or special chickens or special beef, she will list you, and she’ll send thousands of people to your door to get your beef. The Weston A. Price foundation has a shopping cart that lists several hundred producers across the United States. Get yourself listed there. They’re both free. You want people to find you. You may have to go to farmers markets for a year till you have, say, 200 families that want to buy your beef. But then you’ve got your customer base, and you treat them like gold. You constantly give them information about why your beef is good. There’s a farm in Mondovi, Wisconsin, that’s created a market where they have hamburger nights. You can do pizza nights. 

That is my advice — find yourself a niche market. Don’t ever be a commodity producer. 

Acres U.S.A. I always say that every farmer is an entrepreneur. 

Winter. And if you’re not that guy — if those who are not your skillsets — you better marry someone who is, or have a friend who can market for you, because you have to sell your story. A lot of the homesteaders are pretty good with people. That’s a skillset that’s not treasured historically in farmers.