Rachelle Meyer is 30 years old, the mother of 7 and a successful regenerative farmer from Southeastern Minnesota.  She and her husband, Jordan, have been together since high school, and they have been farming together since they got married.  Jordan grew up on his families farm/dairy, and Rachelle grew up outside of agriculture.  However, her mother had farm ground that she had put in to CRP.  

Jordan and Rachelle struggled to find a viable business model for years until 2018 when they started practicing regenerative farming.  Since that time they have had opportunities develop and productivity increase.  And, they have had input costs go down.  Today, they have multiple streams of revenue from their farms and the farms they lease.  They are direct marketing what they produce, and they are inspired about the lifestyle they have chosen.

Rachelle also works as a "business and mindset coach" helping people to frame their mindsets about farming in such a manner that leads to success.  They are growing their family and growing their farm into the future, together, and today we get to share a bit of this with you.

On tomorrow's ag business episode I am featuring an inspiring entrepreneur who has built a farming enterprise with her husband through regenerative farming practices.  This made me think back to this interview I did with Wil Crombie in 2011, and I realized that it was the perfect tie in to tomorrow's show.  

Cash Lehrman is the Chapter President of the Bridgewater-Emery FFA in Emery, South Dakota.  He is also a cattle rancher on his family's first generation operation, and he has his own business clipping cattle for other ranchers in preparation for their performance sales.

Cash ranches with his family in Eastern South Dakota, and has been doing so all of his life.  By now, he is well aware of the challenges that come with raising livestock in South Dakota, especially in the Springtime, when they seem to get some late winter storms and lots of precipitation.  His long term, future plans, are to ranch cattle on his families property and continue to grow this business.

Cash's short term plans really caught my ear as we spoke.  After he graduates this year, he will be heading to Oklahoma State University to get his degree in animal science.  The natural follow up question is "why Oklahoma State" when you are from South Dakota?  I thought his answer really demonstrated just how much he loves working with cattle.

Cash's answer was all about nutrition.  He knows from the reading and research he has done due to his own curiosity that the methods of grazing and feeding cattle in the lower plains is different than that of South Dakota.  He wants to learn how and why ranchers in the Southern Plains graze on winter wheat and then can follow up with a wheat harvest of what was just a forage crop.  It is Cash's natural curiosity about raising cattle and his desire to know more that will take him to Oklahoma, and then who knows where else before he finds himself back on his families ranch.

For the third year in a row I ran to the Southwest Desert to find the sun and feel some warmth during the middle of winter.  This is becoming a tradition that I don't think I will ever give up.  I'll talk all about it on today's Farm Update Episode!

Kailee Adkins is her chapter's FFA President, a national finalist in agriscience and show goat producer from Chillicothe, Ohio.  She has had an interesting journey to where she is at today.

When she was about 9 years old, she and her family moved to the farm on which they currently reside.  Kailee described her father has wanting she and her young sister to grow up with the responsibility of raising and showing livestock in the manner which he did.  The animal of choice for this was goats.

For several years Kailee showed goats unenthusiastically, but it was part of her responsibility on the farm so she devoted herself to it.  Meanwhile, she had growing interests in plants and soils that were coming from the environment that she was living in.  So, when high school arrived she signed up for a class about plants and soils that interested her, and this led her into the FFA.

Kailee is the first ever FFA member in her family, and she said that it really brought her out of her shell.  She started off high school shy and quiet, and the FFA gave her the time outside of her comfort zone to overcome this.  Then, one day when was about 15, something clicked and she became passionate about showing goats.  After all of those years, something finally clicked in.  Today she is growing a herd for both quality and quantity and developing a business.  This spring, she and her family, will hold their first ever "bid board sale" at the county fairground to sell their goats to other exhibitors in the area.

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The Agricultural College Episode is designed to profile agricultural trade schools, junior colleges, colleges and universities around the U.S.  This episode is an effort to replicate the conversation that prospective students, parents and ag teachers might have with agricultural schools at trade show like the National FFA Convention.

When it comes to ROI or return on investment, Tennessee Tech probably has the best of any university that I have interviewed for this episode.  They are certainly in the top 5, and that includes for non-resident students.  On today's episode we are profiling this university that sits about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville in upper Tennessee and offers a wide array of agricultural options for the future Ag professional.

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Andrew Szalach is a really amazing FFA student.  He has been very involved in the FFA since 6th grade, even before he could officially join in the 7th.  So much so that he served as his chapter's vice president during his freshman year and has served as his chapter's president the past two, subsequent years.

There is no doubt that when Andrew finds something he is passionate about that he goes "all in".  He has demonstrated this in the FFA for the past 5 years, and his supervised agricultural experience is another glaring example.

Andrew has a passion for Massey Ferguson tractors, specifically those from the 1970's.  So, in 2021 he found one in Northern Pennsylvania that was for sale, a 1974 Model 14.  He and his father drove down from New York and purchased it, and he got to work on it once they got home.  He says that today he is 80% of the way done with the restoration and hopes to have it complete for shows this summer.

In pursuit of this project Andrew applied for and received a $1,000 SAE grant.  He also sent out letters asking for donations for his project and received multiple, totally about another $1,000.  Just when I thought I knew everything about his SAE he told me that he was obtaining and selling both parts and manuals for 1970's Massey Ferguson tractors.  At restoration lots if he finds one that cannot be restored, he will pull parts off of them and sell them online.  In addition, he will locate hard to find repair manuals online and then offer them for sale online, printing and binding them only when they are requested.  He does this all for little to no profit, just to keep people interested in 1970's Massey Ferguson tractors!

Spring is coming everyone, and it always makes me think about the spring of 2012.  Back then I had never started a business, but I had identified one that I wanted to start.  The first business I started was gopher extermination, and it was a seasonal business.  All winter and spring I had been getting cold feet and chickening out until one night at about 3am I sat straight up in bed and realized that if I did not get started I would have to wait a whole year more to begin because I would miss the season.

If you have been doing the same thing, the time is now!  Don't wait until May like I did.  Take a step forward and begin.  On today's show I want to go back to an interview about one such business.  If you are thinking about staring a farm photography or video business, growing season is coming!  Get started, and let this interview I did with Doug Armknecht back in 2015 be your inspiration!

Stephen Lemon is the host of the Chef Lemonhead Youtube Channel, an FFA student and the chair of his chapter's recruitment committee.  With almost 4,000 subscribers on Youtube, including me, Stephen is inspiring people to cook all sorts of creative dishes.

Stephen has had a fascination with cooking since he was about five years old, and when he first started asking if he could cook for the family.  In the beginning, nobody was too sure what the food he was making was going to taste like.  So, when he cooked he cooked just for himself and not for the rest of the family.  However, it didn't take long for things to start smelling pretty good in the kitchen and enticing the rest of the family.  Pretty soon, he was the main chef in the house.

In combination with wanting to cook, Stephen had always wanted to have his own Youtube channel.  So, during the long, boring days of Covid he decided that he would make one.  The, just a couple of years later, he joined the FFA and needed a supervised agricultural experience.  Viola!, the cooking channel fit perfectly, and it became his SAE!

Nancy Rivas is a senior at Sanger High School and is very active in her FFA program.  She did not grow up on a farm or ranch and really had no exposure to agriculture as a child.  However, when it came time to start high school in 2020 she was aware of an "easy" class called "floral design" and she signed up for it.

Nancy's start to high school was not as auspicious as other students may have experienced.  She began in 2020, so she actually started high school at home, behind a computer screen.  So, when she "attended" her floral class she was kind of tuned in, but not all the time.  Of course, floral design is a very kinesthetic type of class, but taking it online offered none of that.  Then Nancy noticed that she was being asked to recite things such as the FFA Creed, and she did not know how that related to floral.

Finally, in her sophomore year she got to attend class in person and work with floral arrangements with her own two hands.  Something clicked for her when she did that, and she found herself working right through her lunch and not even noticing.  This led her to explore other opportunities such as showing dairy cattle.  And, she also joined the goat team and purchased a goat that she was able to keep at the school farm.  This has now led her to develop her own goat herd, which she keeps at a friend's farm these days.

Nancy will be heading to college next year, and she has her sights set on becoming an agriculture teacher.  She says that she wants to have the impact on students that her ag teachers had on her.  That is a great goal!