SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Amy Hay from British Columbia 7-18-24
*Sings* Unstoppable, unshakeable, but it rolls out the town unfreakable, it's unavoidable, you're sure it'll lead up only between the lines, start to loosen up your mind. And welcome again to Shark Farmer Rio, hey! I'm your host Rob Sharkey, we're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Studio powered by a BEX hybrid, got the planes flying. And the error tractors. That's right, and you know it's so funny, we can't call them crop dusters anymore, right? Although everybody does. We have to say aerial applicator, that's more, I don't know, politically correct, apparently. It has better connotations with it, right? I don't even think- How old is school if you say crop dusters? I don't think the crop dusters even care if they're called crop dusters. Probably not, probably not, but I'd like to be, you know, accurate. You're one of those, huh? Yeah, the yellow planes are flying today, there we go. Yeah, putting on a fungicide. I'd say in my neighborhood, the corn is all being applied by air. I would say, no, probably 90%, let's say 90%. Yeah, we did see a helicopter going too, and yeah, the ground rigs, maybe not quite so popular for a fungicide application, right? Because everything's so tall, you can't do it. Well, you know, everybody's own, like, like our sprayer. We've got a highway, but it's not, you know, high enough. Although, you know, probably this year, I don't know what it is with the corn, but it's short, which is good because we've taken two hellacious storms right on it, and it's still standing. We have, the generator is still going, we're on day two, so glad to have a generator. We're also taping at PBS today, WTVP, so that'll be fun. We've got, like, six episodes we're doing for a shot of egg. It's actually a short day. All right. Okay, let's go up to Greenwood, a British Columbia. We're going to be talking with Amy. Hey, how you doing, Amy? I'm good. I'm good. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Not that anybody would even know, but where in the great province of British Columbia is Greenwood. It is right on the American border, like it's over my hill, I can see the state, and it's around about five hours from the west coast. Okay. In the middle and as far south as you can go. That's, I've not been to your area, but I did not imagine that type of accent coming from British Columbia. I don't have an accent. Neither do I. I am from Scotland. I have been in Canada for 15 years. Okay. All right. We'll definitely get it to that. That's fantastic. You are a first generation rancher. And was there any background in agriculture? Zero. My husband has a little bit more than I do. He hails from New Zealand, so his background is sheep farming. I'm sure there's lots of jokes about that. No, I have none. Zero ranching agricultural experience. Okay. So, Scotland, New Zealand, how does this all work? Where did you guys meet? We met on a ship in Marseille, France. Okay. I'm getting tired of putting pens in a map here. It sounds incredibly romantic. Yeah. I previewed work. He was strictly speaking. He was my client. And I was installing satellite communication equipment on the ship that he worked on, and he was chief engineer. That sounds like a terrible job installing satellite equipment on a yacht. It was awful. Was it love at first sight? I'm going to say yes, and I know that sounds awful, but yes, it was. Yeah, but that's a whole other story, and you need lots of wine for now. Oh, we've got wine. Who made the first move? Yeah, I was going to say, you don't even have to answer that. Okay, so you guys took up, you get married, and then I don't even know where you start. How did you get into raising beef? It was always like a dream. So, when we first met, and we were just chatting, my husband had mentioned, you know, like, after a couple of drinks, that his dream was to kind of run Wagyu. He wanted to do Wagyu beef somewhere in like Canada or the state for summer, and that was his kind of dream. And we made it happen. So, we both left the actual on-sea portion, and he was working in a shipyard in British Columbia, where they were building bigger yachts, like 45 meters, not too big. And I was still working for an OEM, original equipment manufacturer, who designed SACOMs. And the travel for me was insane. Like, I was traveling. He worked out three in a bit months of the year, I was away, and he was a single dad, but still working in a shipyard, and I think at that point we had a two-year-old and a newborn, or a two and a half-year-old and a six-month-old. And this isn't what we want to do, and let's go and revisit that dream again. And I guess the rest is history. We kind of made it work. We bought six acres with a, we ranched in six acres, and we boarded horses to get it working, or starting. We both still worked full-time. And we went to the auction, and we got ourselves four heritage tears. And then it kind of started. And then the five-year plan kind of took off and was brought forward. And two and a bit years later, we moved to the ranch. I'm sat on now and gave up our jobs, and I started raising cattle for a direct-to-consumer market. Well, this was his dream. I mean, was this your dream, too? And I'm from very rural Scotland. So we were surrounded by farms. I love open spaces and wide open spaces. It was never something I thought was on my radar. I kind of laugh, and I did a post that kind of went crazy on Instagram, was never did I ever, with my degrees in communications control and MBA did I think. I'd be walking the field and inspecting cow vaginas. They were going to be calving anytime soon, and it's kind of, no, this was never on my radar. Well, that's a great thing about life. You never know where it's going to lead you. All right, today we're talking with Amy Hay from a Greenwood British Columbia. Never have I ever. Never have I ever. When we come back, we're going to talk about how they got the ranch going. The struggles and the successes. We'll be back right after the break. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground, where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io, that's commonground.io. All right, if you missed a short farmer TV, don't worry. It's okay. First of all, you should have it in DVR. Most people do. It's RFD on addition direct. That's right. It's an encore presentation this weekend. Saturday at 1.30. That's in the central time zone. It's in the central time zone. Yeah, so adjust accordingly. Yeah. Oh, so fantastic. We're in Oregon at a tulip farm. And I mean, we're not just talking on a small tulip farm. We're talking acres and acres of the most gorgeous tulips and then a course. Yes, 40. They have to put hot air balloons up so you take a hot air balloon up to look down on the tulips. I mean, there's nothing more gorgeous. I wanted to go there when they brought in the steam tractors. The steam power tractors. That looked so cool. But let's go completely opposite end of the new world. Let's go back to a Greenwood, British Columbia. We're talking with Amy. Hey, Amy, could you do me a favor, please? Can you say the word "herford" again? [LAUGHTER] Had a bird. [LAUGHTER] A lot with... That's fantastic. Amy, originally from a Scotland, her and her husband now live there in British Columbia, in which we've been talking about. All right, so you buy this farm. Is it a deal where you're easing into it with the horses and then was there like a decision that we're going to go all in or how did that work? So, we were in the... I've always had horses for two, thirty years, giving them age. So we had our own horses and the house we bought, the kind of small acreage, was kind of run down. And we fixed it all up and leased the stalls. Like we boarded other people's horses to kind of like pay for a portion of the mortgage. And there was some big pastures there that the horses didn't really need. And it was the time to kind of start, see if we could rip some beef and sell some beef direct to consumer. Because the whole idea was we didn't want to get into payers and taking things to auction or doing seed stock. We literally just wanted to provide a really ethical food source for people who needed it. So, I'm going to just say it again. We went to the auction and got head-offered, like four of them. And we stuck them in a pasture. And we at that point, because now we are a regenerative grain pre-rate grant, but at that point it was just feeding them. And we worked with some micro breweries and we got like spent grain brewers mash and they ate that. And hey, and halage and grass went there with grass. And about six months later they were ready to be processed. And we kept one for ourselves that filled our freezer. And I just posted in local Facebook buy and sell pages and stuck up some banners at work. And we were selling an eighth, a quarter, size and hold. And it all went in a couple of days. I was like, "Well, that was easy. Can we do this again?" Was that a fluke? We ended up, I'm going to kind of side step. So, that kind of worked. But the dream was Scott wanted to raise Wargoo. So, we actually found a Wargoo breeder with pure blood, Japanese bloodlines. And he was on Whitby Island in Washington just over the border. And we drove down and we met with him. And we ended up shipping 11 seamenstram embryos. So, there was five sexed and sixed unsexed Wargoo embryos. And we went to the auction here and we just bought recipient cows. Like, we got some from an older dairy guy who was retiring some of his dairy herd. And we put these embryos into recipient cows. So, they gave birth to Cool Blood Wargoo. And that kind of started the Wargoo side of things. But we also, at that time, we did buy some more steers, finish them off and sell as beef. And again, it worked really well. Like, we kind of joked that we had backdoor meat sales that people would come over. What do you have in the freezer? Your dealer. Buy something. Yeah. But it worked. I mean, this was way back. This was 10 years ago because I didn't have my third child at that point. So, yeah, it was 10 years ago. That all started. Okay, with the, with like the regenerative and that, I mean, was that what your customers wanted or you guys just hippies? Well, we moved here. So, when we moved to the ranch, I'm on that. So, we had those little six acres in Langley and it was awesome. But it wasn't enough to kind of do this full-time. We bought this place. And we literally moved, Scott moved with these barrels of grays on. Like, to kill anything that's not broadleaf. And I mean, I think it's actually round up. Like, we were not regenerative in it like this. We wanted to get this place up and running. We've never used it. We moved here. And the local boundary farm advisory board had put on a clinic that my husband went to. And it was with a lady called Nicole Masters. Her book is Integrity Soiled. I didn't go. He went and he was completely in awe. And he came home and said, "We're doing it wrong." And I think at that point, we plowed two fields to replant. And he stopped everything. And he took a complete 180. And all that round up is still sat unused in our shed. And we kind of, the following year, we hosted a clinic here with her. Like, we invited her back to our ranch. And we worked with the local farm advisory. And we had loads of other farmers here with a three-day clinic. And I told my husband, "You guys have fun. I'm just going to go and ride and go and check the ranch." And he goes, "No, you have to be here." And I'm like, "I really don't want to be here." But okay, I'll do one day. And I was completely hooked. And I did all three days. And she's amazing. And it was like, "Wow, this just makes so much sense." Okay, hippies. That's all you had to say. So we're hippies. [laughter] Crunchy granola type. [laughter] But I got to imagine that's what, I mean, the customer is in that area. I mean, is that what they're wanting? So we're really rural. And our local area, a lot of them are like, "This will never work. You don't want to do this. No one's ever going to pay your prices. You know, laugh, ha, ha, ha, ha. You know, come and see us when you need a job kind of thing. But our local area is not our customer base. Like the customer base is two hours away in the bigger urban hubs who do one. They want farm fresh and they want farm direct. And they want some kind of ethical, generative products that make them feel good about supporting a local ranch. And yeah, there's a huge call for it for sure. But in our local area. They want a story too. Is that what you're finding? Yeah, they do. They do love a story or a story sells. And if they, like, I've been two hours away just wearing my ranch hat and people run up to me in the street and hug me. And I'm like, "I don't even know who you are." They're like, "I thought you wanted to come." And it's like, "Okay." No, they don't. It was just some random dude. It was a lady. It was a lady. All right. Then you felt good and then she just went and hugged somebody else after you. [laughter] Now, I like it because so many times we're finding that people, they want that story. They're following you on Instagram and they want to want to eat in that piece of beef. They want to know the story behind it. We're talking with Amy Hay from British Columbia. When we come back, we're going to talk about the struggles they had with that farm and how they overcame them. We'll be back! All right, after the break. [music] This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io, that's commonground.io. [music] I didn't know we were big up in British Columbia, but all the fan mail that comes in, they say, "Hey, we want our favorite radio segment. We're in the world as well." Well, what did you find for us today? Today I'm in Greenwood, British Columbia. A city in South Central British Columbia. It was incorporated in 1897 and was formerly one of the principal cities of the boundary county, smelting and mining district. A lot of smelting going on. It was incorporated as a city originally and has retained that title despite the population decline following the closure of the area's industries. In 1886, several mining claims had been staked in a narrow Gulch ten miles north of the mouth of Boundary Creek. The ore was high in copper. Copper? Yep, ten years later. I care about copper. Well, a lot of people. Ten years later, more claims had been staked in the area. These claims gave rise to the city of Greenwood. In 1895, a merchant named Robert Wood erected a log store and named the region Greenwood. Oh, okay. By 1896, there were three hotels, a general store, a livery stable, two assay offices, a mining broker, an opera house, and a dozen other establishments. Greenwood became an incorporated city in 1897. The population climbed to 3,000 by 1899 in a railway called the Columbia and Western Railway, reached Greenwood from the east. It's a copper boomtown. Yep, in 1899, a fire struck Greenwood, which gutted several businesses. Oh. Close to Greenwood is the location of Jolly Jack's Lost Mine. Geez, that's so jolly anymore. Local historian Bill Barley wrote about Jolly Jack's Lost Mine. The location of the mine has never been found. The Greenwood local museum has written records of Jolly Jack. It was a gold mine. Ah. There's another Lost Mine, Henry Morgan's Lost Mine. Somewhere around Greenwood, the mine is thought to have been at the headwaters of Boundary Creek, although it has never been found. How do you lose a mine? Well, this is what I understand about that. There's like a guy who finds some gold or something or ore or something and is mining it and doesn't tell anyone where it is because he wants to keep it all to himself. That's smart. And then he dies and then no one knows where the lawn... It's when I hide Oreos in the house. I get it. Yeah. Those Oreos will stay hidden forever. So if you're in Greenwood and want to go on a treasure hunt, those Lost Mines. Okay. I'm ready to go. All right. Thank you, Will. All right. Today we're talking with Amy Hay from Greenwood, British Columbia. Amy, have you heard of the Lost Mines? Ah. Yeah. Have you looked for them? We have a couple on the property. Obviously, they're not lost. But yeah, there's gold and copper and something else I can't remember. Why are you messing around with cattle? I don't think... Well, you don't own the mineral rights when you buy a property. Yeah, but you don't tell people. Oh, I found this. I found this in my shoebox. I didn't find it here on my property. I'm not about panning in all the creeks. Yeah. Yeah. I would totally do that. Amy has been telling us a... They're sorry about how they got started raising beef with basically no agriculture background. Okay. So, Amy, not always been sunshine and rainbows. Tell me about when the ranch was going through the rough patch. All right. In a nutshell, we've leveraged our ranch on the coast. At least equity. It was six acres, but the property was like high. It was booming. And that enabled us to buy the one I'm starting now. So, for a while, we were carrying two mortgages. And then the property market crashed and we just chased it down. It was awful. To the point where when it finally sold, we actually had to pay $10,000. It sold at a loss. So, the bank went, "Holy crap. You now owe way more than what the ranch holds that can pay back." So, we're just going to cut our losses and foreclose. "Holy crap, no. We've given up our livelihood for this." Three young kids. It was so scary. And when you foreclose in a ranch, it's not like a house. It takes 12 months. So, I had 12 months to really get everything kick-started and in gear. To the point where we had an order book that was booked out six months in advance. And it went from six a month, eight a month, ten a month. And we were doing 50 revenue months selling direct within a four to five hour radius. And the local bank kept going, "No, no, no." To the point where I was like, "I can't lose my whole livelihoods." Everything. And we went over the local branch's head to their head office in Saskatchewan. And presented the order book to him. And he went, "Okay. Yeah. I can see." And they halted all proceedings. And we did have to find a -- without prejudice calls that we can't ever -- you know, if there's ever any class action suit or anything, we can never get involved in it. But they wrote off a huge chunk of money that had accrued in interest because they didn't hold up there and all of the bargain. Like our whole business model was on selling beef direct. And we were doing exactly what we said we would do. But they got cold feet and wanted to foreclose without giving us a chance to do it. So, yeah, we saved it by selling direct. Well, I mean, if you hadn't have done that, like most people just would have accepted what the local guy said. Can you imagine if you'd have done that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. That was never an option. Never. I'm a -- but he's got his last and never without being an option. Is it a deal like the guy you talked to that was over his head is that he just basically got to a point where I'm like, "I'm tired of this Scottish guy." Y'all aren't at me. Just do it and we'll fix it later. And well, the person that we were dealing with locally actually was fired. Because it turned out -- I can't go into it. I'm not allowed to. But they were fired. And, yeah, it kind of changed a lot of things. But there was other -- I think there was other things going on in the background. And we were the ones that kind of stood up and said, "Hey, no, you can't do this." Yeah. It would have been easy. I mean, you guys are smart. You can go and work other places, obviously. I mean, there has to be a passion. To fight this hard for something, you guys must really love it. I do. Oh, yeah. Like, this is what we were meant to do for sure. Like, I do love it. The kids love it. We give -- like, the kids when we moved here were eight, six, and just turning four. So now they're 14, 12, and 10. And we ask them all the time, "Would you go back to the coast?" And they're like, "No." And we even toyed with the idea of selling and buying out East. Like, buying in Nova Scotia, because the property there is so cheap. And they're like, "Don't you dare. We're never leaving." So, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It is an amazing life. And, yeah, we processed 20 head a month every month. And we're sold out two to three months in advance. Amy, if people want to find you on social media or the internet, where did they go? So, I have two accounts. I have YKKA Ranch. That's going to be a mouthful. W-A-I-K-I-K-A-H-E-I_Ranch. That's Instagram. And I have another account called BellbeastDirect. And that is the account where I help other farmers become profitable. And if I save my ranch, I can save yours too. All right. Love this. I love her spirit. Amy Hay from Greenwood, British Columbia. Amy, thank you so much. But please don't go anywhere because your fellow Canadian, Sean Haney, is coming up. He interviews a lot of Canadians, but he doesn't like the Scottish. We'll catch everybody next time. [Music]