Episode 169 with Michael Kilpatrick
The Entrepreneurial Farmer: Skills Employers Seek & Growing Sustainable Futures
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
169 MICHAEL KILPATRICK
Ginny Yurich Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and we've got a farmer with us today. Michael Kilpatrick, welcome.
Michael Kilpatrick Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Ginny Yurich It doesn't have you. Michael Kilpatrick from Growing Farmers Dot.com. He runs Small Farm University, has his own podcast that has close to 200 episodes, right?
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, I think we're up maybe to 30 now.
Ginny Yurich Over 200 episodes. Yeah. So fantastic in the Small Farm University has got all sorts of courses that people can take. So just thrilled to have you here. You run your own life and you're helping other people learn how to run theirs. So here's my question. Have you always been a farmer?
Michael Kilpatrick Actually, most of my life it's been either in farming or in agriculture. I did take a brief stint. We moved to Ohio to see if I could do something else and didn't fail miserably, but realized really quickly that it just wasn't for me. I actually worked at a factory producing displays for KitchenAid, and then I actually went and tried to help a billionaire start a farm in the Hudson Valley. And, you know, just both weren't good fits. So back to running my own business and just feeding people.
Ginny Yurich What made you try something else?
Michael Kilpatrick Well, part of it was we relocated to Ohio, So we're in New York. I ran our own farm up there for about 12 years, and then we moved to Ohio, and I really wasn't sure what was next. And I have kind of taken up some part time work while we were here for a visit, and they offered me a pretty sweet opportunity there directing the management. And yeah, so it's just more like getting our feet back underneath us and just trying other things. But I just love growing things and I love being outside and I love feeding people and seeing, well, nature is so exciting. I think that's the big thing. And so, you know, just every year seeing those new seeds come up and try and make it a little bit better is kind of an exciting part.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So when you were working for KitchenAid and when you were working with The Billionaire, what was that like where you stuck inside a lot?
Michael Kilpatrick Yes. Yeah. So the KitchenAid I started in the, in the lamination room, so I know if you ever familiar with how lamination is applied, it's typically applied to plywood. There's nasty chemicals involved and I probably am a systems person. So I improved the process and I think that's why they saw the potential there. And then they moved me into just managing packaging and all these other things. But it was literally stuck inside 9 hours. I mean, I would I started the job in January and so I would go to work in dark and come home in the dark and have a half hour or an hour at lunch. And it was just like, this is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. But the billionaire job was kind of fun. It was a very, very expensive part of the Hudson Valley on top of a hilltop. And I mean, all the stuff we did was crazy. And they closed the farm because he had no idea what is doing. He does can make more money in arugula than he did his hedge fund and his hedge fund was very successful, let's put it that way.
Ginny Yurich So just stick with that. What's interesting, though, Michael, I think that's a really cool thing that you have had experience in both and can say, look, this is really what I want to be doing. I want to be outside. I want to help other people get outside. I want to grow food for people. And so you came back to it and now you're in Ohio. Your farm is called Farm on Central. What would you say that you specialize in?
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So, you know we exist. Do help our community, eat more awesome local foods and change their diets. So, I mean, we're in a very blue collar. We are left over from the industry. And GM was here. GE was here. The Duramax Diesel plant is still here. But, you know, millions of jobs were of manufacturing were in the area, not many millions, but hundreds of thousands of jobs. And most of that manufacturing is gone. And so you've got a lot of older population which are incredibly sick from all the radioactive or the asbestos or all these chemicals. And so we just see people with so many health problems. And and we started the farmers like, oh, let's just grow, you know, these things and they buy everything from where to grow it all ourselves. And we realized there was more about, Hey, how can we help these people be healthier? And so what we've gone to is more of a cheerleader to help people eat more local, raw whole foods. And so we have an on farm store where we carry a lot of our own products as well as a lot of local products. Our biggest crop is probably strawberries. So we literally today will probably wrap up our strawberry season, a five week strawberry season.
Ginny Yurich Oh, it's short, isn't it?
Michael Kilpatrick I know. And we picked out maybe 7000 £8,000 of berries this year. You pick is what came through. But we do a lot of perennials too. So that's we have a wide range. I mean, we do everything from Elderberries to willows to comfrey, do lots of lettuce, tomatoes, some cucumbers, and then we have a wellness line. So Farmstead wellness is our wellness line where we make fire ciders and salves and tinctures and, you know, just again, because and I hate fire cider. But the thing was, as my wife.
Ginny Yurich I.
Michael Kilpatrick I was really sick and my wife was like, okay, you're going to take this. And I was like, I gagged it down. But my cold was like, gone. It like, scared the cold right out of me. And so then I was a believer. So now we do it. We make our own. We grow our own turmeric, ginger, all the herbs we grow, horseradish, lots of onions and garlic. And then we process all of that in the fall into the firefighters. So it's a little bit of a wide range. We have eight acres.
Ginny Yurich Oh, not.
Michael Kilpatrick Much, no. And we're in the middle of a city. So in the little city of Carlisle. And on one side we have train tracks. The other side, a very busy road and two other sides. We have houses. So we're like this little landlocked farm right in the middle of the city.
Ginny Yurich Eight acres. I love the answer to the question, What do you specialize in? And then it just kept going and going and going. It is really.
Michael Kilpatrick Good. And then we have on farm education. So we do canning classes and gardening classes, and my wife does amazing sourdough classes. So yeah, we're just doing it all on site.
Ginny Yurich So you're building community at the same time.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. And that to us is really important because I think, you know, with that aspect of being outside, it's also an aspect of, I mean, kind of like the juxtaposition of, you know, being outside means you're tossing the screens and you're tossing that stuff. And building community is the same thing. I mean, I think a lot of people think their community is their phone and they don't realize that there's so much more to it than just seeing what someone else is doing. And actually, in one aspect, being jealous, oh my gosh, they're on another vacation. But if they were able to sit down with that person, have a conversation and just.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, take a class together, how fun is it?
Michael Kilpatrick Even physical.
Ginny Yurich Touch. Right. I was just actually talking to someone about how there's a trend with bridal parties to learn something together that maybe you would go take a sour doll class or you would learn how to do flower arrangements. I thought that was a really, really cool idea because you really are building memories. And Jill Winger, I don't know if you know Joe Winger, but she was on our podcast recently and she was talking about how when we work with our hands, it helps our brain release dopamine. So all of those things like making flower arrangements or making reads or making the bread, all of that working in the garden, obviously. So that was a really cool thing. So you guys are doing a lot there. One of the things that you do in similar to your salads and from poly fees is that you're doing it yourselves. So I looked at your website, it's like you can buy the elderberry cuts and you can buy the different things, but you're also teaching other people how to do it. So you do both. When did that start? How did you get into the realm of teaching others?
Michael Kilpatrick Mm hmm. Yeah, it's really started back in New York. You know, we were pretty successful as a farm up there, and I had great mentors, and so I was just able to implement and scale really fast. So then we started getting invites to do teaching at other places, and we started doing that. And then I started doing more and more conferences when we shut the farm down up there in 2015. I was doing a lot more and I started to get asking about consultation, and so I started going to farms and realizing just how we were, this little bubble in that. And up there we had very successful farms, really good customer bases and just a community of people growing together. And when I got out and I realized just how hard a lot of these farms had it, I knew like, there is principles that we have that we need to share. And so we kind of made out of five. We have a five pillar program that we work with farmers. And so we started sharing that and that kind of just dove into being more online. And we actually were behind the scenes with a lot some of the other larger farm education in our space. So some of these little big names out there, we were the behind the scenes that helped them bring their product to market. And so yeah, we just started doing that and then it just kind of really went from there. I mean, the ordinary thing is it was is huge for us now. And I think last year we shipped like 25,000 elderberry sticks across the country this year, this spring. And for that it was a friend of mine called me and said, Michael, I've got all these cuttings I need to sell. And I was like, Well, let me see. And so I reached out to my audience and then I started getting questions and I was like, Well, now I just got to interview people. I think the biggest thing is I'm just really curious about this stuff myself. And so I just started at it from like a complete newbie and like, okay, what are the questions I need to ask? Who in my world can get me in touch with the certain people that I need to to learn more about this? And I'll just leverage those relationships and get these people on an interview and then create some sort of education around it.
Ginny Yurich Interesting. Yeah, because it's a lot of practical information. Basically, when you have your own farm and you have so much diversity within that farm, there's a lot to know just about that. But then the other piece of it is the business piece and understanding your customer base and that type of thing. And so you come at it from both angles and I read that you read a lot. Yeah. So what have been some of your main inspirations? Let's start on the farming side. So who's a couple big inspirations for you? A couple of books and then the business side.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So on the farming side, obviously, you know, Joel Alton was the guy that got it all started for me back in New York. We moved up there when I was 13. We started getting eggs from a local ag person and one. Day she pop by the house and she brought an article that was the article in the Smithsonian that showed Pauley face. And just like the amazed and we were like, blown away because here's the thing. You know, we were raised again. Our parents believed we could do anything. But, you know, farming was always that know, probably not going to make it work because everyone told us farming doesn't make money. Farming doesn't make money. Our grandparents always says, oh, yeah, you want to be a farmer. And so Joel was like, Oh gosh, he's doing it. And he's also doing it this regenerative direction way. And so we really got kind of stuck down that rabbit hole, started reading his books. I remember reading You Can Farm and all those, and that really helped us kind of set that stage. The other legacy is inspiration. They haven't written a book and they really need to, as my mentors, Paul and Sandy Arnold, they are farmers in upstate New York who have built an incredibly profitable and now it's moving to the second generation farm and just, you know, a little hardscrabble hill and Argyle, New York, and they just very small couple of acres. And, you know, Paul always tells me the smaller I get, the more money I make and the more product I produce per square foot. But he's been a really good inspiration. Otherwise, unlike the book Side of Farming. I mean, obviously you have to go back to the Elliot Coleman books. I mean, he's kind of the guy who was like the father of the movement, and he really set forth some of these great principles that now a lot of us implement. So, you know, I always like to say there's principles and there's techniques and then there's your context. And so knowing the principles, you know, soil is alive, then you got principles. Okay, we have to keep soil wet so that the plants can thrive. And then going back to your context, how am I going to keep my soil covered in my specific area so it's going to thrive?
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Michael Kilpatrick That would be the farm side. On the business side, I mean, gosh, when we were starting, I mean, we started diving into the IMF and diving into Jim Collins, you know, good to great, great by choice. So those books were just fabulous. And then we really started moving into the marketing because that's where I feel like my strength now is with everything we do is again, I can grow vegetables, but I'm not the best vegetable guy out there this way, better ones, but I can sell it and I can think up a thousand ways to sell it and just thinking about the avatar and all that. But you know, a story brand by Don Miller is always been great for us. And actually, you know, and one aspect I really kind of it's a tough one to swallow, but there's some great principles there. A lot of Russell Brunson that can get away to throw marketing on one side. But there's a lot of great principles that a lot people can take away from that. And then one other author, what I would say is really kind of it's more of a 2.0 level. Is Geno Wickham in traction. So I think this the the whole that aspect of what they build there as you start to scale, you can be a little bit bigger that really can pay off and what you're trying to do.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it's Sony that you have both things. So I looked at Small Farm University, so this is an aggregate of all sorts of types of courses. There was a lot there and each course is meaty so someone could come and they could sign up for a monthly or yearly membership or lifetime membership, and you have an extensive list of courses. So I was curious, do you have a favorite one?
Michael Kilpatrick You know, it's really funny. You know, I kind of like to go back because there's two two courses in there I love, but one of the things I love to do is tinker and so dry your greens, which is basically how we take a wash machine and turn to a salad spinner. It's so simple. It can be done in an hour or two and literally it will change a farmer's life. I think salad greens is one of the most profitable crops that farmers can grow. They can grow year round. In most of the U.S., I'd say 98% of the U.S. can grow greens year round and is a steady for us is our number one seller in the store. So we do a lot of salad every single week. I'm looking out my window at that is a beautiful lettuces so that's probably one of my favorite cause That's one of our first ones. And it's just chains for life for so many farmers. I think one of the bigger ones that I'm probably most excited about is the start of farm intensive, because what we did is we created this and it's the 30 day challenge we created a 30 day challenge for folks is to go through every day to build a new block in their farm business. Just understand behind the scenes of what a business actually is. Because here's the thing most people get in. The farming is loved to grow food. But the problem is, my mentor told me, he said, Michael, first you need to be a marketer, then a business person and then a farmer. And the reason for that is, again, it's all about a business. I mean, you don't have to be a great grower to have a successful farm. And so I think that's the important to us. Again, it's an exciting thing to just see people when they go through, build those building blocks and understand what their farm business should look like. We take them through marketing and profit analysis and all these ratios and that sort of thing, just to try to understand what it actually takes.
Ginny Yurich What an interesting thing. I would imagine that most people go about it the opposite way. So you say market or business? Farmer I would imagine most people go Farmer, Business marketer.
Michael Kilpatrick Yes, they grow a crop and they go, okay, how am I going to sell this? Now granted, I'll buy stuff online and be like, What am I going to do with it? Like this spring, Earlier I brought a box of into the Washington pack and said, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this is like, Would you buy 150 hydrangea? And I like. What are you gonna do with that? Well, I had ideas for it, but I will still buy a bunch of stuff anyway. But back to that, you're absolutely right, people. And they're like, Oh my gosh, I got all these tomatoes. What am I going to do with it? Well, for us right now, we have an overabundance and they're going to get blender ized, put in gallon freezer bags into the freezer. They go we'll pull them out in six or eight weeks and turn them into marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce and that sort of thing, or just dry them down in a freeze dryer for tomato powder, for seasoning. So there's so much potential out there and people just need to, as you said, flip that so they can think about, well, is this going to make money or it's going to work for us?
Ginny Yurich So with all these courses that you have, do you ever get to a point where you have saturated it? You feel like all the information people need is there? No, no, there's more.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, there's more coming in. Like right now we're getting ready to start working on a strawberry one because again, strawberries are the number one crop and sales for us. Obviously we sell more salad greens year round, but a quarter of our income comes in and just that month where we have strawberries. And so the system we do is kind of particular and there's a lot of information like I'm sitting right here holding the North Carolina Strawberry Guide, which is fabulous information, but it's written to conventional growers and there's no course out there for organic growers who want to, you know, do it on a more regenerative aspect. So that's the next thing. And I think the thing too, is there's constantly farming is moving forward. We're not farming like we were ten years ago, even five years, even two years ago. I think we're all learning in this space about, again, the bio diversity under our feet and just how important that is. I mean, I was interviewing Jeff Moyer from Rodale and he's actually since retired since I interviewed him. But he was saying that once you get to a point in your soil, you can grow a 450 bushel crop of corn, which is actually a little on the lower side for conventional, but for organic, that's a very healthy stand without any fertilizer, he said. If soil biology will take it to a point that it can because under our feet is all those phosphorus potassium and we can put them in nitrogen in there with cover crops and all of that. So that's possible. It's just we have gotten to the point so far from the original design of how things worked that the soil is depleted. And so he's like, you know, we've been doing 30 years or 40 years now of no till research on Rodale, and we've gotten to the point where it's possible. And so just learning that and trying to understand how that all works is just incredible. And there's so much more research and so much more education that needs to be done because, again, the amount of chemicals used in our current cropping systems is unsustainable and is going to destroy our farmlands and it's our farmlands.
Ginny Yurich Wow. So you have this small farm university and it's just growing because you are continuing to learn and continuing to add to it. What would you say and you may not know this, but percentage wise, how many people are coming to you that are brand new farmers versus that are already farmers and just sort of want to enhance what they're doing?
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, well, there's a lot. Again, the one we've been in is that we start in, there's some trends, so you've got trends, we've got established farmers coming in and they, you know, they just need some little up level. They pop in their poppin for six or 12 months, go to some courses, and they're like, okay, good, I'm good to go. I wish to stay around for the community, but sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But we do probably I'd say more like 60% of people that come in are brand new farmers. And here's another thing. Some of the people that come in are homesteaders, and some of them realize after a year or 18 months, you know what, farming is not for me. And you know what? I'm grateful for that because I realize that is not the life for everyone. It's a challenging again, there's a lot of pluses about that. But again, the fact that we help them figure out, self-select out before they spent years and wasted time away from their kids and all the challenges and money they would spend in that, that's a success for me. It's a win. So I'd say, you know, we have these people come in. They're like, Oh, yeah, but, you know, I think it really the thing about farming is it really takes about five years before you really start to see a profitable business. And so it's a little bit of a longer cycle than you have in some of these other businesses. So it's not for everyone. And again, it's physical work and you're dealing with the weather.
Ginny Yurich Oh, sure. Yeah. A lot of things that are unpredictable. So you talk about starting small. What does that look like? Does that look like you start with one thing, You start with three things.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So, you know, you've probably heard the shotgun versus sniper rifle analogy where, you know, sometimes you throw a lot out there, see what sticks, and then you start laser focusing on one thing. So I mean, when we say start small with something brand new, I mean, you can start in your backyard. I mean, if you have an urban lot, I mean, you could start with a patio. I mean, you could grow two dozen herbs on your patio and planters, put them in the savs or sell them to your at your local farmer's market. That's a great way to get started. And then you scale from there. I mean, like you can there I have a farmer, right? Tyler, who farms with his family down in Tennessee. I think he's got seven or eight kids, but they farm on about an acre and they are doing well over half a million dollars in sales selling into the Franklin, Tennessee, which is basically a suburb of Nashville farmers markets. But there is so much you can do, so much and so little. I think the biggest paradigm shift that we struggle with. Getting existing farmers to understand is, look, you can do an acre, you can do two acres, you can do a half acre, and you can make way more money than a lot of farmers on 100 acres are doing.
Ginny Yurich Unbelievable. Well, how how?
Michael Kilpatrick Well, it's intensive and it's it's very high value crops. So let's say we grow an acre of corn. You can get 200 bushels, you can get $5 a bushel. That's $1,000. You're going to pay out about 4 to $600 in expenses. So now less at $200 in profit, we start a better lettuce out a foot long bed of lettuce. It's 150 to £200 of yield off that. Then conservatively you're going to get $10 a pound for that lettuce. We get more now. So, you know, we say 150 times ten, that's 1500 dollars per bed and that's in five weeks, the corn.
Ginny Yurich And then you just keep going. Yeah.
Michael Kilpatrick So then you put in radishes, and then after the radishes, maybe you put in garlic and the garlic goes over winter, in the spring, you harvest the garlic and now you put in strawberries or now you put in carrots. So the amount you can make and this isn't even value adding that. So then we take that salad mix and then we put it into a little clamshell with a little bit of dressing and some second. So the other things we add to that salad are like carrots that were like crooked or, you know, split. We make that into, you know, a little bit of a carrot. Shavings put that in our salad, two or three edible flowers, and now we're charging $9 for that. And so now we're charging $20 a pound for that salad mix and it's unlimited. I mean, our strawberries, one of the biggest additions this year was a strawberry slushies. So we did apple cider slushies based on feedback from our apple farmers. And Michael, you've got to do slushies. Okay, fine.
Ginny Yurich I mean, they are the they are the best. They are because we live in Michigan and so apple cider slushies are like a top thing in the fall.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. You know the science behind that?
Ginny Yurich No, I don't know it.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, the water and the apple cider freezes. So then what's left is that sugar sirup. And that sugar sirup is what hits your tongue. But it's also your tongue is being cooled by the actual ice pellets, basically little tiny pellets. So it basically creates this just unbelievable experience.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, they are amazing.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So the strawberry slushies, we figured out a recipe, we started doing that, and now we realize we're making $72 a plant for our strawberries, which is awesome. And again, it's more of just more labor and it has more value in it. But it's one of those things you just keep looking at What's the next step, what's the next upsell herbs going back to those herbs or even calendula. So like the calendula, we're growing, we're growing 150 foot bed every two or three days. They go out there and harvest all the right flowers. They bring inside, they dry them, they're going in basically storage. We will make salves and tinctures and stuff with that, and that will probably end up being, you know, five, 6 to $7000 for 150 foot bed.
Ginny Yurich So back up. So when you say a 50 foot bed, what does that mean?
Michael Kilpatrick Okay, so our beds are five foot wide tall. Okay. So it's basically a five feet wide by 50 feet long.
Ginny Yurich Okay. So you've got 250 square feet.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. And you do a couple thousand dollars from when you start to really value. Add that and.
Ginny Yurich You have to I mean, you do have to grab those every single day, right, Because those grow faster. Yes.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So you want to get them when they're open and you want to dry that low temperature. So it's a little bit of have to make sure you've got the right equipment and all that and then you're going to immerse them in oil and there's all different thoughts on what's the best oils. And, you know, that's a whole different ballgame right there. But then you then it's infuses for a certain number of weeks. You mix it with typically you melt beeswax and mix it the firm it up, and then you'll add other things depending on what you're trying to do with that specific sap. I'm like, we have a warming salve which has turmeric and calendula and a couple other things. So that aspect there is just, you know, really value adding. I mean, if you decide to do Microgreens, Microgreens can be done under lights in a spare bedroom and I think Microgreens are way overdone. I think everyone in their brother's doing them right now. But as I'm sorry as.
Ginny Yurich Well, it's just something that you can do in a small space. It's something that you could do in a home. And I do feel like sometimes people say, you know, your homestead can even begin in your kitchen, correct? It doesn't even necessarily have to begin outside. If you just go back to cooking from scratch, that type of thing. It's happening there too. So the microgreens are something that you don't need 250 square yards.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, you can do it in a metro rack. So you know those kitchen racks that you see very easily with a couple of lights and stuff and even in a just a even in like you're a window, they will grow in a window. It's not great for them. So there is a detriment. You can start on any scale. Yeah. I said you know, we do it a little bit larger but literally someone could go 12 Calendula plants, harvest the flowers every couple of days and still make a couple hundred dollars and snaps. And that's one of the things that we're really passionate about, is helping folks realize how to step out of the system and start to make their own money. Because here's the problem. If you're stuck in a 9 to 5 job, you're not with your kids a lot of the time. That's one of the reasons we started the farm, is we were we are not saying desperate, but we are intentional about making sure that we're spending time with our kids and their feet are hitting the outside and the dirt. You know, these things can be done when you can leave the system, when you, you know, opt out of all these, you know, I think the farm system, the food system, the education system and the employment system, then you really. Get back in control of your life and you really start to. Because the other thing is when you're tied in all those systems, amount of time those take and the time those take mean that you don't have time for creative thinking. Because I think one of the huge things is my wife and I were talking about the other night is the amount of our the amount of ideas. We probably can cure cancer by now if we weren't all stuck in our phones because our phones are all consuming, not creating. And so if we could get back to that creation mentality, and I think that's why, you know, America was at one time was such a powerhouse. I mean, you look at like the last 50, 60 years, what ideas didn't come from America? I mean, the car, the phone. Again, not the same. There's not a girl creativity around the world. But you look at a lot of these things. And I think what it was is that one time it just was set up and there was a lot of that encouraged. But, you know, as we start to really dumb ify ourselves down with just looking at that screen, I don't know if that's the right word for that. I think that is where we really start to see the lack of creativity.
Ginny Yurich There's a lot of loss there.
Michael Kilpatrick Yes, massive amount of loss.
Ginny Yurich It's interesting because Joel talks about that. I've spoken with Joe a few different times and no TV grew up with no TV. They still don't have a television. Yeah. Yeah. And he doesn't have a smartphone either. And he'll come to these sessions. Now, just very recently I saw him with some typed out notes that were stapled together, but most of the time it's a chicken scratch and a legal pad, a yellow legal pad. And he's just not embracing that technology too much. And yet it's not it's not affecting his life, really. You know, he's just pumping out these books left and right. He's got time. He's got time to read, he's got time to research. And he really is busy. He's flying across the country for different legal things. He's doing farm consults across the country, and he's got time for it because he is not losing that time to the screens. And so that's always inspiring to hear. I mean, when you talk about who's inspired you for business and for farming, you have to have time to read those books and to touch base with those people. If it's like mentors like you were talking about, And if you don't have that, then you're going to struggle. I really liked your answer to what does starting small look like? I actually think that was an exceptional answer with really cool, practical ideas. At time I could say, Oh yeah, you really could start small with one thing, and then from there it grows. And so I think that's kind of an answer to the question of probably a lot of people are like if especially if they're starting out, what kind of farm property do I want?
Michael Kilpatrick MM That's a great question. So when we spent three years looking for the property we're on now, it wasn't like my realtor called me and said, Michael, I think I got something for you. And she's like, Unfortunately, it's out of your price range, but I think I can work with your lender to make it work. Unfortunately, this is the middle of COVID. So we went through three different lenders and we were homeless for two weeks before we could actually close. Wow. But what it was, was I mean, again, it's the middle of the middle of this the city here. And it had a beautiful 1893 brick square house, one those brick giant brick houses. So it's beautiful. And our front door is just, you know, it's beautiful wood with original stained glass and all of that. So it's a fabulous house. But it was one of those things where soil for us is so important because again, we're we believe in the organic principles that soil is life. And so when you believe that, you know that you soil has to be the best, especially for the annual farming that we're doing with a lot of vegetables now, if we were just doing elderberries, we could be very different soil type. But because we did a lot of annual vegetables like strawberries, the fruits, that sort of thing, it has to be really special. So I mean, again, I would say don't let that hold you back, that I need to find the perfect farm property because I want people just start. And you can always do raise beds, you can do container gardening if you have really bad soil, like really clay or soil, you can always start with animals. I mean, rabbits, meat, rabbits. Rabbits are easy to grow in a very, very small space. Chickens you can do in just a couple hundred square feet. So there's a lot of potential there to just get started. But there's five principles that we always talk about when we talk to folks about, well, what's more. But we'll we'll go through five real quick. One is, is location. So it's way better to have a very small piece of land near people than a very huge piece of land hours from like I see people that are farming 3 hours from the nearest Wal-Mart in Idaho. And I'm like, unless you have a product that's incredibly compact and easy to ship, it's really challenging. But I'd much rather be on a corner, you know, a little tiny quarter acre lot in New York City because I know the market potential is just there. So, you know, basically locations, always key soil type is going to be key. You're always looking for more of a sandy loam. You don't want wet soil, you don't want to be a floodplain. Floodplains can be really problematic. Hurricane Irene really wrecked upstate New York and Vermont, and because all the flood plains flooded with like 12 feet of water and like overnight it was amazing and incredibly scary and sad. And at the same time, water is key, though. You do want to be able to access water, especially if you are doing the annual crops that we're doing. Herbs are way more resilient. Perennials are way more resilient. Animals don't need as much water. But what we do, we need a lot of water and clean water. So that's very important. And then. I think utilities and services are another thing, like Internet is now an important imperative that you have for your farm. Having the right type of power like we didn't have three phase power at a previous farm. And so being able to have that, especially if you decide to go a little bit larger on some of your equipment. That is something to think about and access to be able to get into the property, you know, get out of the property, be able to get tractor trailers. Again, as you're scaling, you're always going to be able to get it cheaper by the pallet, by the truckload. And so back to our previous place that we could not get a tractor trailer up our driveway because it was so steep and it was very challenging in the wintertime. But right now one of the reasons we chose our place is because there is industrial park across the street from us and a lumber yard down the road. So all our deliveries just get delivered there very easily and we actually make much better rates on that. But again, that's only for as you start to scale, that's not something super important right at the start.
Ginny Yurich But those are interesting considerations because moving is a large process and no one wants to do it more than once if it's unnecessary. And so those are really interesting things to think about. I actually wouldn't have thought about being near a bunch of customers, and I think the thought is, Oh, we should be out in the middle of nowhere, like you said. Yeah, with 300 acres, that's the best bet.
Michael Kilpatrick Well, there's two things that a couple of things about that, because that's a that is not there is thoughts on both sides. I mean, one side, if you're let's say say on Etsy and you have like a really specific product, maybe you do, you know, seeds, lavender seeds or lavender, you know, your lavender farm deal is lavender products. You could be an Etsy middle of nowhere as long as your post office that picks up well, but I think it also comes back to that we were talking earlier about community and being in community and being with people. That's really easy. I mean, we take a bike ride with the kids pretty frequently and my six year old loves bike rides and we can bike to two different parks. And then when we're there, we're in community with people in our neighborhood or in our city. So that is one of the reasons I feel like being even closer again for just our family is super important because, you know, that's I think one of the reasons we do farm is we do want to be with our kids. And again, sometimes they can't be with us because we do have a little bit some of the equipment's larger and a little more dangerous, but 95% of the time, everything we're doing, the kids could be around us. Sometimes they aren't.
Ginny Yurich Sure. Sure. No, I get that. But the opportunity is there. And I think that is the point, that most careers, the opportunity is not there. It's not even an option at all. And so if the opportunity is there, well, sure, they don't have to be with you 100% of the time. But even if they're with you half the time, that over the course of a child, even if they're with you 20% of the time over the course of the childhood, that's a lot more time that you get to spend together.
Michael Kilpatrick Well, and we're teaching them the work, too. I think that's a super important aspect of what we're doing as as parents is really to instill that. There's two main thing well, a couple three main things that I think we as parents either focus on. One is teaching them to ask good questions and teach them to be curious. I think that's the biggest problem with the industrial education system is it teaches you to memorize, to take tests and not to ask a lot of questions. So in education, you know, teaching to teach them to read, teach from the right, teach them to ask critical questions and let them go. And that was we were homeschooled. That's what happened with us. And I would say that's you know, again, it's not for everybody. But I would say that's a huge a huge advantage for has been for me and what we're doing here.
Ginny Yurich Let's pause there just for a second because we are headed into a school year. And so when this goes live, all the questions are swirling. What are we doing for the school year? And I always think it's good to know it is that there are homeschooled people that are in every realm of life. You could find homeschool lawyers, you can find homeschooled, stay at home moms, you can find homeschool farmers, you can find homeschool business people. And you are both in that sense, right? You are a farmer and a business person with a lot going on. So a successful homeschoolers, though, that's always good for people to notice if they're nervous, because I think that there are a lot of people that want to make that decision, but they're very nervous that they're going to mess it up. And you had written in some of that worked for you had written in that you talked about your childhood, that you have parents who fostered an entrepreneurial spirit and gave you a lot of freedom. So, yeah, on paper that sounds really cool. In practice, that looks scary because to give someone freedom means you're not controlling all of their time as a parent. And yet you would trace a lot of your success back to the freedom that you were given as a child to try things out.
Michael Kilpatrick Well, and I don't think my parents were intentionally entrepreneurial because my dad, again, he grew up in the system he worked for as a a doctor for a practice and not his own practice, but he worked for a hospital. I worked for another system. And even today, you know, he's very entrepreneurial. He's anyway, it's it's not a bone in his body that's like, oh, let's do it ourselves.
Ginny Yurich Which that's. Good to be sick. You don't have to be the thing that maybe you hope your child becomes. You don't have to. You just have to give them the opportunity to search it out on their own. And in order to do that, they have to have time.
Michael Kilpatrick Yes. Well, and I think the biggest thing is my parents never told me, no, you can't do this or this is not going to work for you. They were basically like, try it, see what happens. And again, mistakes were made. I think my mom would have done some things differently along the way. But what they did is they just gave us the freedom to do try and they didn't tell us, oh, well, that's not going to work. Now, granted, along the way, there were discussions and like my dad is very, very anti debt. And so like there was many discussions like I need capital for the business to grow. And he's like, well, you know, self-fund it because I don't like that. Because again, he was the majority shareholder, because he started the business when I was under 21. And so I couldn't literally be on the paperwork, so he had to be on the paperwork. So anyway. But yeah, that stepping back and just opening it up and letting this go for it. So I think that one is super important just to be there. I thought there are two big things with our kids. I want to go back to that is one is learning how to work. People do not know how to work. And again, not that you need to be a physical laborer your entire life, but if you know how to work, you are going to be so much further ahead. And it's something that has to be trained. People don't just naturally want to get down and start working for hours. I mean, with our six year old, our eight year old daughter is way more she was a little bit more natural that way. And she's more of a helper aspect and we've been a lot easier with her. But with our six year old, that's been a little bit more of a challenge. But one of the things that he's responsible for is taking the compost out every day. So it's a little compost pail goes out to the big compost bin behind the barn. He dumps it, he washes it out, brings it back. We are now, after about a year of this, he is now it's like ingrained in him. So now it's an easy walk out and he comes right back instead of before it was like tears and you know and I think it's takes you 2 minutes buddy. It's not that much work, but it was one of those things of just like having to completely do it over and over again, to train them to just kind of move through that.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Okay. So that's number two. So one is curiosity. Ask a lot of questions. Two is learning how to work.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. And I think the other one is I mean, there's a lot of other places we could go with these big things. But I think the biggest thing is to critically think because that goes hand in hand with those questions. I think a lot of people say, well, you're homeschooling and so you're brainwashing your kids into what you believe. And I was like, Well, how is that not happening with other education systems? I mean, you can very easily see that. But to me, it's more important just to be like, Well, why do they think that? Let's talk about do they have a friend that thinks that or someone to hear that. So. Well, let's talk about that. And how does that make you feel? How does that you know, what in society, what does history show? So that goes back to the past, because we all know history repeats itself. And so if we can go back and say, well, you know, when this culture did this, this is what happened, because I think one of the problems we do see some I have seen some families that do homeschool and maybe they're really intentional about trying to steer or try to, you know, pass on their legacy to their kids. Their kid decides to do something completely different, is they didn't give them that aspect of understanding of like, okay, so white of that critical thinking of trying to process through that. So I think that's so important. And again, there's books out there on that, but I think it's a lot of times just sitting down and having that intentional conversation and being and just letting them unwind it in their brain. We did this with our team is I will give them a situation like, okay, give me a solution for this. Because because again, if I have to solve all the problems here, am going to be frazzled and be you're never going to be able to up level to the point that I can let you run this by yourself, which is important for your salary and be important for my sanity.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Okay, let's pause there for a minute. Because you are a farmer. And just by being a farmer, that seems like that would take most of your time. And then you're also a businessman where you have this small farm university. You run your own podcast. It's what's it called? It's called The Thriving. The Thriving Farmer Podcast. Mm hmm. And then you have the Summit series. So the Thriving Farmer Summit series, which is a free summit series for a period of time. And you've done several of them. And so someone from the outside would look and say, okay, there's a lot going on here, and yet you have time to have deep conversations with your kids, deep conversations with your team. So how are you finding that balance to do those types of things?
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, it's not easy, but the biggest thing is just I mean, again, I told you earlier, I'm an early riser, so I'm up usually between five and 530 every morning. And a lot of it's just been an intentional time to tell.
Ginny Yurich The story about why I asked you that at the beginning, because you said, oh, this is kind of late for me. And I was like, oh, this is kind of early for me. And you said, I'm an early riser, but it stems somewhat from your childhood.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah. So my dad, again, you know, again, it baked into the old way of like, Oh, we're gonna keep the house cool at night, save energy. And so, so, yeah. So wave in the morning, I'd wake up, be cold, come downstairs, grab a blanket and crawl on this one little heat basically register. And this we had hot for stair so sitting on the floor flat. So I basically put the blanket over my head and just curl up in this little register. A lot of that warm air coming up. So. But yeah, I know I've just been always been up and ad that Yeah. So that early times is super important And then typically a lot of the time after the crew leaves at about five, I'll just do a kind of a walk and just kind of walk the farm, but try to take the kids with me. And then Sundays, our family day. So family day means we try to not do any work. And again, this year has been a little more challenging just because of a few things. Like last Sunday. We ended up picking blueberries in the morning and then we were expecting a two inch hail storm. So that meant we were outside doing a couple of hours of work and we typically wouldn't have done work. But typically it's just family day. So we hang out together. Screens tend to come out a little bit more on family day, which is something my wife and I are discussing. But what we did do this year is my parents have got us zoo passes. So we've been to the zoo now four or five times and we will continue to go through the year. So that's time that in the car with the kids at the zoo, with the kids. But instead aspect of also understanding, you're only as powerful as the team behind you. I mean, you don't see any usually one person wonders. There's always behind them the team that's supporting them. And so I mean, we right now have a really great team, always uplifting our team. There's always new people joining and, you know, through the different aspects of our business. Like when we first started the online business, I had one person working for me and they had very limited skill set. Now we're at the point where we have, I think like six or eight people total on our team and some very specific skill sets. We just put a marketing guy on that does fabulous video and so we're so excited about the use hemmed up level because we haven't done a lot of video just because we haven't had that level experience. But you know, it's it's one of those things of and again with him a lot of things I'm going to be like, here's some tools that you can use now. Take the tools and your experience and put those together and then we'll go from there. And again, we always realize that when you're hiring a lot, especially with farming, because it's very specialized, you're not going to be hiring for someone who's, okay, I've done all the things, been all the places, because every farm's going to be different. What we're hiring for is attitude and typically leadership and being able to manage it, because that's really what we're going for is because they're very technical. Now, if you're going to say, I needed a scientist in the lab, obviously you're going to hire for the scientists in the lab that are very specialized assigned, but we hire for attitude, we hire, you know, that's one of the first things we hire for critical thinking. We do working interviews. And one of the aspects of what we do in that we're getting interviews. I send them on like errands and make them a little bit ridiculous, like go over here and find this thing and bring it back. And we had this one guy recently who I said, you know, go into this place, you know, walk in like two feet, turn left, and the bucket's going to be right there. You need to grab. 10 minutes later, he was still wandering and I was like, sorry, but it's not going be a good fit in time out at the time. But I was like, oh, that's that's just not a good fit. So, you know, those are the kind of the things that we're looking for. But going back to like the intentional time is, you know, the bike ride with the kids, you know, that's one of those intentional things we love to do as a family farm walks. So we'll put the two year old in the wagon or now she's big enough that she can walk around. A couple Sundays ago it was strawberry sampling. So we do six or eight varieties and we're always trying to figure out which ones are the best. And so it was taking, you know, taking the whole family out there. Each of them was trying a different variety, get a thumbs up or thumbs down or why we may want to go with that. And so that was thinning out three or four varieties so that next year we're only growing the best.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it's is a lot of ways to weave that in. And it doesn't have to be perfect if you have know most sundaes that are set aside or you know, most parts of Sundays that are set aside, then that's really going to add up over time. And I think the attitude leadership thing is really an important one because I think when we talk about educating our kids, we talk about childhood in general. It's like we're looking down the road. They we hope that they have a stable job and a stable life. And what I'm starting to see is that a lot of places are taking your approach. It's not about the technical, it's not about what they know, it's about their personality. Are they personable? It's about can they work with the team? Can they be a leader? Can they self start that type of thing? And we just got back from a rafting trip. We went five days down a river in Utah. I went with my oldest daughter. It was really fun. And the guides who are taking you through Whitewater, who are help setting up camp at night, who are cooking all of the food, this is a lot of skill set and who are talking and helping people build relationships. They're all in their twenties and they said that in order to get this job, which is also a highly technical job, can you read the Whitewater? What happens if someone falls out all these different pieces? Can you? Cook for 40 people every single meal. And can you make sure you're on time? You have to hit these different times. But I mean, there's a lot to this. And they said they hire mainly for personality. You don't have to have any of the skills. They said, well, train you. So I think it's a thing just to be aware of for a parent that we don't have to maybe be quite so on top of this fact and that fact. And do they know every single state capital, that type of thing? There are different qualities that are needed when you go to get hired. Yeah.
Michael Kilpatrick Let's let's go back to that because I think, you know, you've got these and again, I see it in my mom's friends that they like, Oh, I need this curriculum and I need this curriculum and I need all these I need all the language arts. And they got to know the capital city. But why? Why do they need to know the state capitals? How is that going to serve them later in life? They got to Google. What they need to know is, hey, you know, I can see that this guy is trying to swindle me these different things. I mean, going back to that critical thinking, if you're child and understand how to work hard and a couple of hard skills. So, you know, learning how to weld, I think would be super important. Learning basic wiring. I think our kids are always going to know that kind of stuff because again, that will serve them so well later in life, right? But learning, understanding, marketing, psychology is something that I will make sure my teenagers go through because it will be a very important for them, as are trying to sell things, but also so they can resist the billions of dollars that are spent on them every single year trying to lure them into different things. They don't need every little thing. Again, my parents taught and I feel like my parents made me do a little too much school. They're going to hate school anyway.
Ginny Yurich But but that's an interesting thing to say because you also say they gave you freedom. And I would imagine probably that most people looking back would say, I wish I had less formal schooling and more time to explore what I already knew I was interested in.
Michael Kilpatrick Yeah, well, here's a bit of a freedom. On Fridays we got to do our elective and for me that was building this ridiculous little tiny cart in our basement shop. I love. That was my favorite part of the week. My least favorite was the Biology, which actually served me well. But then the calculus, I was like, Ooh, I just that was not for me. So I say, Yeah, we did a lot of school. But they also, you know, my last two years, I didn't do a lot of school because my parents were really sad that I was taken off from the farm and my dad eventually just wrote his name on the banner certificate. Had to be okay. You graduated?
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Yeah, I know. I've got a friend. She said her kids are helping build a house. She says she calls it construction management. This is learning, too. And John Taylor. Garrett says there's millions of things of value to study. These are good things to know about. It's good to know what employers are looking for. And I think sometimes we are separated from that. We don't know. So we're thinking while they must be looking for someone who's taken three years of calculus and they're like, No, we're looking for someone who can find the bucket, you know, that's what we're looking for. So, Michael, if people want to find you, you are in a lot of places. You have your small farm university, which would be great for anyone who is an existing farmer or an aspiring farmer or even someone who wants some business help, small farm university and everyone can find you at growing farmers dot com at growing farmers on Instagram. Then you also have the Thriving Farmer podcast in the Thriving Farmer Summit series. Did I hit it all?
Michael Kilpatrick I think you did, yeah. And then if you want to see our farm journey, we're most active on Facebook with that. So it's farm on Central, the farm on Central, on Facebook. We also have a website for that too. But again, that's where I'm actually most active right now. So the online companies, they kind of do their thing. There's, you know, again, they're helping people, but like the day to day journey, if you want to see how we're raising our kids, how they're involved in our farm, all of that, that's super. And that's yeah, that's where our focus is.
Ginny Yurich I think that's an interesting thing to follow along. Your kids are still young and so you're talking about your thoughts when they're teens. So if people want to follow along, I think that it'll be a cool journey to walk alongside you with Farm on Central. Michael We always end with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.
Michael Kilpatrick I think gardening with my dad was one of those. I mean that I think that really kind of got the bug of growing things in me. We had poor soil. My dad had no idea what he was doing. He didn't have a lot of clothes for that. So here's where an old hospital scrubs. So we've pictures of him in green hospital scrubs. I think I have them because behind me there was a picture of him. But I remember like, you know, growing carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes. And my mom said to me afterwards, you know, couple of years later, like, you know, he came inside. He was so frustrated. He only had two books those before YouTube. And he's like, I have no idea what I'm doing out there, but I know the boys are excited about it, so we're going to do it. And I mean that again, mistakes were made, you know, different things happened in my childhood, but I know that my parents always had my best interest in mind and they were working as hard as they could to give us a childhood that was going to be beneficial and supportive of us in our dreams. And so I think that's that's one of my best memories.
Ginny Yurich And you can sure see the fruit of that. And what what a message. It doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have. To be perfect. In order to be successful, your farm doesn't have to be perfect. The way that you manage your time doesn't have to be perfect. But if you're striving for it, then you see the fruit. Michael This has been fantastic. I loved it. I love talking with you. So I'm so glad that your wife reached out and glad that we've connected and we're in Michigan, so maybe someday we'll be able to swing by. We're not all that far from you, so thanks for being here.
Michael Kilpatrick Absolutely. Thanks so much for the invite.
