SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Von Wotring from Franklin, TN 6-11-24
[Music] Hey welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio hey I'm your host Rob Sharkey we're in the studio today just outside of Bradford Illinois studio powered by Bex Hybread it posts corn sprained season here on the farm which I don't like I don't like I don't like it because you run over corn you know I noticed that yeah but oh wow okay that's when you say oh you just you never hardly ever do it well you know we were gone a couple days so when you come back you got to just you know survey everything and I thought oh what happened and like oh yeah we sprayed corn you always have to take a minute yeah I was looking at this morning I couldn't believe where I doubled up how much had dinged the corn I know that's what I was noticing but it was only just a little spot where you turned around so hey we can deal with that we have been gone we were in Nashville during CMA fast which is always a crazy fun time but we were taping for Shark Farmer TV so we got out of Nashville which was great went down by Franklin visited a hops farm in a brewery and so of course because you know we had so much fun we had to have Vaughn on today that's right today we're talking with Vaughn watching now he his hops farm is in Santa Fe Tennessee Santa Fe yeah that's right right Vaughn that is correct you are now a local okay I mean is there a story behind that you know it's you know Tennessee Santa Fe we we like to rhyme a big part of it it's you know we have other other towns or cities in the state and I grew up in Ohio and we had the same thing out there you know with this pronunciation of different things so I you know it's just a you know it's just a normal way of saying it one one person said it that way in the very beginning and everybody else liked it so I did just stuck that's what I'm going with that yeah this is like San Joseph Illinois you also have a brewery in Franklin Tennessee which is about what like 30 minutes south of Nashville if not the 23 minutes south of Nashville just right there close into town of and Franklin yeah and then the hops farm is just another 25 minutes out in the country from there so you're brewing beer we're gonna talk about that but what's your background my education is in chemistry and then made my my first career I guess through the pharmaceutical industry and then you know got into consulting a little bit and working around always loved to always love brewing loving fermentation sciences and you know just one day maybe you can have a you know have a brewery and you know just as a nice big playground if you will and yeah here we here we are today brewing is science brewing is chemistry a lot of fun going on there so I just honestly it's almost like being back in college except I don't have to cram for an exam I just have to make good beer I mean what this wasn't your always your end goal though was it just like I'm gonna work my whole life and then I'm gonna become a brewer yeah you know that's an interesting way to know in the very beginning absolutely it wasn't I figured I would do like you know like my grandfather my parents you know work work work and collect the hopefully a Social Security check retire do all that but you know somewhere you know between the beginning and in the 10 years ago I guess it was you know we came up with this idea that you know having a brewery would be a lot of fun you know bringing community together and in doing something on the agricultural side would be even more fun because that tied in a lot to my wife and I our families you know in the past and we wanted to sort of bring that back you know for our family and our children so that they could see it at least in some respect the way we thought when we were kids growing up mm-hmm you're just a little bit older than I am I we're not we're not guessing we're gonna get Social Security check so I don't know about you it's funny every once in a while you receive that statement and you know you get a you know maybe a hundred dollars a month if you were to retire you know at some point and yeah I don't I don't I don't think it'll I don't think it'll materialize I'm with you you know you don't offer me like a couple hundred bucks to cash out my whole Social Security because it might be tempting you know a little bit cash and burden a fist or something like that I don't know so okay with this brewery did you just start off with like the you go to fire tucks and buy like the home brewers brew kit yeah well for me yeah I started out as a home brewer you know we call it the pot brewing or you know cooler brewing it's you know that you know big orange cooler you see maybe hanging on the back of a you know a work truck or you know or a tractor or you know that's what you start with and you know at home heating up the water on a on a turkey fryer or your gas grill whatever you've got and making making your mash and then fermenting into a little five gallon you know size carboy that you would see at the grocery store with you know bottled water or you know there so you start out of that and then you slowly you know just graduate through to a to a nice stainless steel seven gallon pot and then next thing after that I was on a small one barrel system 31 gallon system propane and you know with wheels and everything you know super nice beautiful you know powder coated red and then next thing you know you're you know staring down a brewery with a big four hundred and you know fifty plus gallon brew house yeah I bet his beer the taste of your beer has come a long way since you were just starting out in that little pot first up probably awful well yeah you you do learn a lot but then in the spirit of making beer there is you know you don't want there is no really bad beer is just beer that you don't want to make again that was my positive swing to you know technique and learning it they're in the beginning yeah no I disagree there's bad there a lot of it today we're talking with bond watering from Santa Fe and also his breweries in Franklin Tennessee we're gonna talk about it 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 Common Ground.io that's Common Ground.io I have a hunter coming in today don't we do yeah they fix our cameras because we stop doing it they'd be like hey go there's a tree growing up in front of my camera I'm like well tough a raccoon landed on it because when you run to the picture ten times and then you ruin my camera then you got to go find the camera and it's like all the sudden half a day's gone so I just said no more well and I think it gives them a good excuse because then they have to tell their wives oh sharky won't go out and do that for me so you know I'm close to Illinois I'll just get off in Chicago and take the couple hour trek you know darn they'll have to be at the lodge for you know 24 hours hey if you're looking for a great agriculture pot well if you're looking for a great podcast because the one we launch today I would not say is agriculture is it yeah no it's not agriculture but you know sometimes because we talk life we've talked about every subject under the Sun and so yeah this this today your podcast that dropped is about a 911 the survivor of September 11th attacks and he was in the Twin Towers and the fuselage and the he was on the plane hit right above where no yeah yeah you're right yeah but the wing of that second plane went through his floor went through his floor and he survived it whereas so many people did not yeah it wasn't a simple story is like oh the plane hit and I ran downstairs no it's it's a an adventure yes and his poor wife I mean what she went through that day on the other end how many times did she thought he she lost him that just again and again and again so it's a powerful story and and a lot about faith too like he just hit a neat way of just feeling like he's gonna make it and that he had a nudge to go a certain direction and if he had gone another you wouldn't have made it and yeah powerful story today we're talking with Vaughn watering from over there in Santa Fe Tennessee also as a brewery in Franklin Tennessee Vaughn did you know the Twin Towers those buildings the each floor if you put it out on like a ground those were about an acre a piece they were that big I had not heard had not heard that stat I still remember that day where I was what I was doing and what I did the next hour yeah Vaughn you you told us you had a background of chemistry and you got interested in brewing what you are currently doing now you you went one step further though you're you're growing a hops aren't you yeah yeah the you know big ingredient in beer hops there's many many varieties of them and yeah I wanted to you know have the ingredient as close to me as I could and hops were the right the right thing to do for me and yeah love them they're wonderful I can't believe how labor intensive growing hops is people don't even know I mean it just looks like a vine growing up and but you have to train it you have to hang all the rope you have to tell us what that's like because were you expecting it to be so hard when you thought you know what I'll grow my own well no I think nobody's ever expecting you to be as hard as it really is especially in agriculture and you know going down that there's more to you know hops are up certain 11 months a year job and in that 12 months you're you know checking your inventory is ordering your supplies so yeah it it starts the growing season starts there in you know April time frame maybe a little bit earlier than that as far as growing but were you know six weeks ahead of that were in the field checking wires dropping core string making sure all the post you know the guy wires are in good condition and then the hops are coming up and then they're you know they're they're gonna move pretty fast and you have to yeah you have to train them to climb the vine has to climb the little the string and it'll go up there clockwise and it runs all the way up in the more and more daylight and warmer temperatures and so forth we get the faster it goes why clockwise and you know I'm gonna go with the the same reason your toilet flushes in the direction it does here in the northern hemisphere so if you grew those in Australia would they go the other way you know what that's gonna be a I'm taking a note here to check that one out I'm gonna that would be a good a good one to do and but I will say so my wife who she was helping me the first year we were all out there stringing family project and she did not put them up did not train them going clockwise because she was just just her you know handedness and so she was going the other way they did some of them unravel themselves a little bit and start going the other way so we had some really interesting looking bind that first year oh my gosh yeah I've also told me that it was so fun because on Valentine's Day she put out pictures because when you tie those ropes at the top the little knots look like hearts yeah yeah that's just a simple not you know that you run over there and if you know some guys can do that with two hands I'm I've gotten to where I can do it one handed and some over but they you know some guys can do you know left hand and they're going they're flying through they're getting them done but yeah it's just a simple little knot and you know pulls her pulls nice and tight and then and we do it again in the following year hmm do the hops canopy at the top I mean they're huge long I mean what are they 20 foot that they grow up but do they canopy then or not yeah some of them some of the hops of varieties yeah they'll grow 20 feet 22 feet even and they will hit the top of the wire the top of my wire my trello system is at about 18 feet and they'll get up there and they'll start to just droop over and you know just with the weight of them back to the back to the ground yeah it's funny you know we were doing the videos for the TV show and just the day before we we saw a guy at a hop harvester but his hops it seems like they were all from the top hanging down so I don't know if that was a different variety or you ever seen anything like that yeah yeah no they absolutely do that if you have the you know the trellis down I've debated on bringing my trellis a little bit lower till do I heard somebody one times you know say that when they were drooping over that that was another indication for the for the hops to you know in their growth you know cycle I I'm not sure about that but yeah that's a you know friend of mine he got him about a 15 foot trellis and and they will run up and over it's a different variety we'll do that and then there's also some what we call hedge varieties that will only grow about 10 feet tall that's my kind you you talked about bringing some sheep in there sheep will not eat the hops yeah sheep are you know a great opportunity there to just help keep the the you know the grass and so forth around the bottom of the of the plants nice and clean that yeah they they like that part they won't eat they will not eat the vine down in New Zealand that's a big way that they do it you wouldn't be able to use goats I think the goats would eat our coach are dumb anyway all right today we're talking with Bon watering from out there Santa Fe Santa Fe Tennessee we come back we're gonna talk about his brewery we'll be back 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 common ground.io that's common ground.io Emily and I just getting back from filming in Nashville for a shark farmer TV season 9 season 9 that was it was so much fun oh my goodness you know go into curio brewery that we're talking about today it was fun to get out of Nashville I mean it was absolutely beautiful going to go just down there oh you know the winding trails the opposite of an I state absolutely yes yeah but there's only so many jokes you could do about tractor getting stuck or sheep remember because we were who remembers this nursery rhyme a bob-bob black sheep have you any wool yes or three bags full and then this is where Emily was wrong and she won't admit it because I Googled it it's one for the master one for the Dame with an M these so you said Dane you know what it is Dane yeah D A N E I have thought ever since I was a little kid that it was Dame you know the girl the Dame one for the Dame now a day is like a woman would lose Merle morals yeah it is that's what a Dame is that's the type of girl you didn't want to bring home oh gosh and then one for the little boy who lives down the lane which I don't know what it means but that's I don't either but you know you learn something every day our producer had never heard of that nursery rhyme all right today we're talking with Vawn watering from Downer in Tennessee he has got his hot farm in Santa Fe Tennessee and then brewery in Franklin Tennessee before we get to the brewery Vawn you you built a barn you like you built it like not just a pole barn like an old wood peg barn tell me about that it smells so good inside when you walk in yeah yeah it's a yeah we built we built that barn a few years ago 2019 where we raised the frame up on it is a it's a true post-and-beam all mortars and tenon and woodpegs holding it together and patterned it after an old family barn when my long ago ancestors came here to to the States and landed in a beautiful place called Aurora West Virginia and that was the the idea for the shape and the design of that and then yeah put it up and it was it as I mentioned it was such it was so much fun putting it up because I you know it took us a few weeks to to raise the frame and seeing we had so many folks stop in just you know and to just watch and see how a barn raising goes as you build bent by bent and standing them raising them up it was it was a lot of fun we really enjoy that barn did they really stop or did they actually drive off the road into your ditch staring this kind of fight some some didn't want to because everybody's very respectful and that's what I really love about you know you know living out there or having our farm out there and ultimately we are going to start building our home out there for for Tammy and I and the kids but I love it that you know everybody's so respectful you know can we come up can we see we don't want to intrude you know just want to introduce ourselves and so you know always fun and then we come up but I'll say to your point everyone wanted to come up and watch and I always asked if you know if there's ever anything I need help and I said well if you've got your hammer with you right now and now I can't right now sorry the hammers back at the house yeah let me go get that uh-huh that would not happen in this neighborhood they literally would pull up and they would all say the same thing well that's not how I would do it that the barn is absolutely beautiful and boy he if you should be really proud of it but let's move on to the brewing yeah let's move on and ask Vaughn if he knew that you were gonna chug that first beer right on film yesterday yeah he did we talked about it was stripped it out everybody thanks scripted TV a spontaneous a spontaneous no it's not it was that too I can't speak after that beer yesterday it was really good yeah that and we had not eaten that day but anyway tell me how you got into actually being part of the brewery I you know it's uh I've been wanting and the folks know you know what I was doing and I had a couple of contacts in and out there and we a friend usually how the story goes right a friend introduces you to another friend and we that's how it came about I was introduced to my partner now he was looking to you know do some things you know a little bit differently you know there and grow the brewery in a in a new fashion different fashion and you know he and I spent a lot of time together and came to agreement and that's how I started that was about about a year ago and then Curio actually the brewery is four years old will be four years old this July so it's yeah it's kind of how it how it happened again through a friend of a friend making making relationships mm-hmm we went in there and the smell was fantastic because it was coffee day so this is not just all beer you guys have like the oh I hate to compare but you're you kind of the the the gals go in there and get the latte whatever it's called right right yeah we pull coffee roaster in the back bringing in beans from long put along the way places if it's a you know Africa or Central America or so forth and roasting them right there and then making some great drip coffee but then also we can do you know run the espresso machine and make all those fancy latte smell so good I mean two of my favorite things like beer and coffee all in one great great smell I do love roasting day myself it's it really fills up the back half of the brewery I almost like it as much as I like brew day I'm there where I'm smelling all those you know those grains all steeping in the mash but they have the beautiful beautiful place and now who who are you getting for customers are these all locals most of it is most of locals yeah we have we do have a regular crew you know to come in it's a great work environment that come in you know latch on to our internet and and spend their day there then we have family to come in we've got some you know on the evenings we do we do the usual we do the trivia night we have we have a bingo night that's a lot of fun and we have a runners night with a jogging group and every once in a while when folks come to town because we are Franklin's only brewery and folks want to look up breweries because you know breweries are great places lots of fun and we'll have some folks from out of town and that's always just a really fun time because then they can say you're but we're from Wisconsin your beer so much better than this place in Wisconsin you know but it really bring the you know nice a nice opportunity to share that's really cool so if people want to find more about you more about your brewery where would they go you know I hit the socials they're jariobrewing.com and then you can find us on our you know you know social pages there links into the Instagrams and Facebooks of the world yeah great place and we're just you know just a stone throw outside of downtown you know Franklin it's just a you know nice little spot quaint a blessing is that it is you know kind of out of the way and quiet and peaceful you know it's challenge we don't always have all that you know cross traffic foot traffic and so forth hitting it but you know you can't you can't have everything all at once yeah destination everybody Googles when they're in town where can you get good coffee or when they wake up in the morning where should I go so it comes up and directs them right to you so you don't even have to bother with a drive-through or anything like you just you have people your destination yeah cross road from the fire department and that's always cool to see the trucks in that yeah yeah those guys are awesome too they come over there they're regularly in there hanging out drinking coffee is that when you know because they're a they're a full staff so they're on shifts so they yeah they're they're great okay carry your bearing at that brewing that's C-U-R-I-O C-U-R-I-O they're in Franklin, Tennessee. Vaughn look forward to seeing your segment on Shark Farmer TV coming up in the next season it was really great to meet you guys yesterday you've got a great thing going congratulations on all your success Vaughn don't go anywhere though Sean Haney's coming up next he doesn't like hops we'll catch everybody next time. [Music]