Episode 198 with Mary Heffernan
Nature's Classroom: Empowering Kids and Embracing Rural Living
SHOW NOTES:
Explore the rich insights from Mary's book that illuminate not only ranching secrets but also life's timeless wisdom. Get ready to be inspired and learn how to infuse adventure, tradition, and outdoor know-how into your family's narrative.
Learn more about what Five Marys Farms has to offer below and order one of Mary's cookbooks here or her brand new book here:
The Hands-On Ranch Book >> https://amzn.to/3PVTdaG
Five Marys Family Style: Recipes and Traditions from the Ranch >> https://amzn.to/3N9pJ69
Five Marys Ranch Raised Cookbook: Homegrown Recipes from Our Family to Yours >> https://amzn.to/3TEgflQ
https://www.fivemarysfarms.com/
https://www.m5entrepreneurs.com/
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
MARY HEFFERNAN
Ginny Yurich Here we go. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I am so, so, so, so, so excited that Mary Heffernan is back. Welcome.
Mary Heffernan Thank you. It's fun to be back here again. It feels like an old friend meeting.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So cool. I absolutely adore your cookbooks. That's what we talked about last time you had a new cookbook that was coming out and we have both of the cookbooks. And then the coolest thing, Mary, is I see them everywhere Bake, especially at Bucky's. Do they Bucky's over on your side of the country?
Mary Heffernan They don't, but everybody sends me pictures of it there. And I love it because I still to this day have not seen my cookbook in a store. No way it will get out much. Apparently.
Ginny Yurich I see it everywhere. I mean, I would say that yours is one of the books that I see the most often is your cookbook. It's a phenomenal cookbook. And we have been following along with Fi Mary's Farms for years and years and all of the things that you're doing. And you just had a new book that came out that is awesome one for families and for kids. It's called the Hands on Ranch Book How to Tie in at Start a Garden State on a Horse and everything else people Used to Know How to Do is a fantastic book. Can we just start off by telling you about like, what do people used to know how to do books?
Mary Heffernan Well, this book is like right up your alley because it really is like all about getting kids outside, learning everything from like survival skills to basic skills. And I feel like it's just a lot of things that we are used to so many amenities nowadays that we don't necessarily need. Like when's the last time you used a map? Like an actual map. Right. They don't even sell them in gas stations anymore. At least not all of them. But these things like reading a compass, reading a map, how to start a fire, how to purify water, like the outdoor skills that just go back to basics. And it doesn't take much to learn those. But honestly, you know, the past three years have shown us this, if nothing else, that we don't know what's going to happen in this world. And having those skills to take care of yourself are really important. And kids can learn those. You know, they can operate an iPhone at five years old. They can learn how to safely start a fire or how to read a map at five years old. So it goes through a lot of those kind of outdoor skills, country living kind of base. And then it also has a lot of fun. DIY is from candle making Leatherwork you know, in the five ranch school, the bigger video course we teach mechanics and welding and some of these skills that, you know, kids did used to know on a daily basis. And it's interesting, we, you know, we live rurally and my daughters at high school are learning welding and I just think that's so cool that that's still part of the curriculum in some places. But I just want all kids to feel like they can be exposed to it. You know, this isn't a book that you have to live on a ranch. It's like this is a book for any kids, probably more geared towards kids who don't live on a ranch, who live in suburbia or live in an urban area where they're kind of interested in like, well, what are these skills and what could I be doing outside that I'm not already learning here and just giving them a little taste of that maybe spark their interest a little farther.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. I love it. This is something really unique to what you do. So you have this farm, you have lots of acreage. You have a restaurant. Your husband was a lawyer. Is that right? Yeah. You are. Is a lawyer. Your husband's a lawyer is a lawyer. So the restaurant and you moved in, you've renovated homes and you've got these outdoor spaces and you have your own butchery. Is that the word for it?
Mary Heffernan Yeah, that might even be. Since we had our last podcast date, we opened an on ranch USDA. We call it a harvest Barn, which is really a nice word for slaughter. But to be able to do that on the ranch is really unique. It took us a lot of years of research and design and permitting and regulations and all the things, but what it means is and then we have our USDA butcher shop that we've had open for about two years with that team of craft butchers. We do all our dry aging. They're really important to us to have that quality control for the whole process. And my husband always says we don't do anything unless we're proud and we're really proud of this meat that we're raising. And so to hand it off to somebody else and say like, oh, you know, can you butcher this for us? Nobody cares about your product like you do. And just that trust and knowing that from start to finish, it was in our hands the whole time until we literally hand it off to a customer to feed their family. And that is pretty unique and something we're really proud of.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, so you have so much going on. And when we talked before we were talking about this that you've always really had this bent toward entrepreneurship and so you're shipping meat all over the country. We talked about how Joel Salton came to you because he said, Well, I want to start to ship things too, and he's coming to you to learn your process. We love when we get our boxes. It's got the M5 right on the top is really cool and our kids know they know if it's from your farm or if it's not. Everybody can tell.
Mary Heffernan It's the greatest taste tester. I hear that all the time. They'll be eating dinner and be like, What's wrong with these tacos, Mom? And she's like, Shoot, I ran out of my berries by before. I didn't think he would be able to tell.
Ginny Yurich No, they can tell. And it is such amazing meat in the products that you ship out. And in fact, one of the boxes that we had, but it came with a little cookbook from York, like a little one, and it was like 20 things to do with ground beef. I don't know, something like that. So just been fabulous. And my point is, though, that with all of these things that you're doing and you're famous, like you got TV people coming in, you're in magazines that know you are you you're in buggies. With buggies is like the place to be. And you're right there, front and center. You have this bent toward including kids. And I think that's a really unique thing that I don't see other places that you do. You started this ranch school, which is incredible. And I know it's not just kids. I think you've talked about like older people will come and take classes, too. It really could be for anyone. But could you talk about a little bit of the back story there, like with all of the things that you have going on, restaurant, all this acreage building, all these things, the outdoor kitchen, the TV producers, the people coming, all of it that you said, You know what, We also want to invest in this learning component.
Mary Heffernan You know, I've always been passionate about education. My first business that really showed me like, hey, wait, I'm an entrepreneur. I need to follow this path of being an entrepreneur was a tutoring center where I, you know, worked deep in education with kids of all ages. And then when we started ranching, people were really kind to us to teach us like, You're doing that wrong. Your irrigation pivot needs to go like this. You know, people stepped up and said, Let me help you. And that, you know, meant a lot to us. We wouldn't be here today without people investing in educating us on what we needed to know. But we came to agriculture with the experience of starting lots of different small businesses in lots of different industries. You know, Bryan, with his legal background, I was a lifetime entrepreneur background. We spent a year and a lot of money wasted on like, how do you ship meat? Like what's the best box, what's the best liner, How do you use dry ice? And ten years ago, that was a much more foreign concept. You know, today a lot of people are shipping food. But then I was like, I can't find anybody doing this that I can ask. So once we started doing it and kind of figured out that secret sauce with the shipping costs and all that, people said, How are you doing that? And I'm like, You know what? I will tell you everything because there's lots of mouths to feed. I know we're selling beef, but guess what? Everybody eats every day, sometimes three times. But, you know, just sustainably, like telling teaching everybody. After I taught a few people, we put together this and five entrepreneurs course to help teach what we had learned. And these skills that I was lucky to come to agriculture with, from marketing and branding and building website entity formation like the insurance needs all that. So we compiled this and five Entrepreneurs program that really help adults. We have like a little teenager, kind of like how to start a business in 14 days program. But we, Bryan and I both get so much satisfaction out of that. And seeing these people, you know, some of their lives are changed, like especially in agriculture. Times are changing. You know, these ranches that have been around for six years, they're going up on the chopping block because they are a slave to the commodities market and they can't figure out what do we need to change to make this work? And the direct to consumer market is really a great solution for a lot of these operations. So we get so much satisfaction out of that online academy community that we were building that during the pandemic when, you know, all of a sudden all the kids are home and my kids are pretty fortunate. They are very capable. They you know, they've all been driving since they could reach the paddles. We were like, this is the perfect time to let's invest more in the skills that they might not have time to do during the year. So we have this great, like handyman personality, the Carhartt team jokes. They're like, did you get him from central casting in Hollywood like he's the perfect handyman? I'm like, I know John and his suspenders and he just wants to teach people. So we're like, We have this great resource in John and he wants nothing more than to teach. So we said, if he's going to teach our girls how to weld and how to mechanic and how to change a tire, let's make that available for more than just our kids. Like we can keep this amazing resource to ourselves. So it just kind of snowballed from that with, All right, if we're going to teach these skills, let's teach canning and preserving and candle making and bread making and oh, we've got all these and five entrepreneurs all over the country. These friends can teach how to harvest maple sirup or Bryan's brand for high school, who runs this huge almond almond. You know, they call it an agricultural nut tree operation. Let's go down there and see a harvest. Our friend Bruno has an organic dairy. Let's go visit Bruno. So we just filmed it all and created all this content. I hired a couple educators to help me write the actual lessons to make sure that they were, you know, geared towards meeting all the standards we need to meet. But it's not an accredited program. It's more of a supplement. I'm learning. But we really dove into, okay, we've got a year, let's make this program awesome. And what we ended up with was 40 weeks of lessons on all of these topics that are covered in this hands on ranch book and more that give kids an insider look into how these operations work. Yeah, showing them that these are jobs. You know, you could be a tree harvester, you could be an underwater welder, you could be an ice fisher in Alaska. There's so many jobs out there that I think kids it's so great for them to be exposed to. And ranch school was just kind of born from that desire to really share what we feel so lucky that our kids get to experience here.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. What an interesting thing to call it, supplemental learning, because that is of what people would consider it. But when you really take a step back, you're like, no, this should be like the primary learning so that the kids are confident and capable. This is one of the things you talk about in your book, which is like coming at life with a sense that I can learn, a sense that I can do ascent, that I've had these other experiences, I can connect this new thing to my old experiences, and then my capacity is increase. And you can see that through your videos. You can see that your girls are ready for a challenge, that they're up for these different things. They're, you know, they're riding the horses. The horses are running. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. What? You know, and they're not scared. And they you can see that they have been built little by little into young women who are ready for life. And so it's an interesting thing that we still consider that the supplemental learning instead of the primary. So let's talk about your girls, because one of the things that you have them do and it's controversial, I think is a fair amount of chores.
Mary Heffernan Mm hmm.
Ginny Yurich So what does that look like on a day to day basis?
Mary Heffernan So they are like a hugely integral part of our operation. Brian only has really like one and a half ranch, hands on the ranch. And for the number of animals we raise, the number of species we raise, that is not much, but the girls are so helpful. And when we first started, you know, I think we were all thrown into this new lifestyle of necessity and that animals come first. You know, we always say we don't eat before animals eat. We take care of our animals before we take care of ourselves, really. And Brian and I were overwhelmed with trying to manage all this and learning all these new things. And at first they kind of had to step up to the plate around the house. You know, they were little, but we'd say, Hey, we're not going to be in for 2 hours. So if you guys are hungry, you got to make dinner. And they started cooking and they could figure that out. And, you know, one of them would say, There's no clean clothes around here anymore. I better do some laundry. And so they all kind of took on tasks at home and for being, you know, little. They were 1 to 6 years old when we moved here. So this was, you know, the first couple of years and they were, wow, seven, eight. What I saw was like, wow, I need them to do this. But I don't feel bad that I'm making them, you know, do too many chores in their old life. You know, I was like filling their sippy cups and doing whatever they needed. And now I'm like, they are different kids because they are so empowered. They are proud. At the end of the day of like, I clean the kitchen, I make dinner. Like, what else you got for me? You know, it wasn't like whining about what you motor my needs. They saw the needs. Here are our our animals and our family ranch and each other. And I want to serve, serve this operation and serve this common goal. And they just became so capable and proud of the work that they were doing. And so since then, it's just been natural that they've, you know, they all kind of have different roles and what they love. But, you know, when we're in our branding season or our air, we do artificial insemination for our whole cattle herd because it gives us the best possible genetics for really great quality meat. It's like a two week process where we do it and end of November, December. So it's always just like rough weather and you're out there in the elements and working and you know, my girls are more capable than I am. I'll be in the sorting chute and you've got to look like Brian's like, let that one by, keep that one. And I'm like, I'm scared. These girls are big and the girls are just like, Oh, they're getting after it. And they have fallen into those roles and they love doing it together. And we as a family, you know, we've been good about trying to make sure we balance work and play. You know, the girls do rodeo, which they absolutely love. Rodeo is very time intensive sport, not to mention dollars, but, you know, we're like the only we don't need money when we're all because our time, the kids are home. This is our thing that gives us this family time off the ranch. So we've really leaned into letting them rodeo and letting them take clinics with pros and really graduate into a little bit better horses as they've they've improved their skills and they love that and are so appreciative that we support that. So like when we have these two weeks of working cattle in November and December, our family icing on the cake is. We jump on a plane and go to Las Vegas for the NFR, which is like the Western world Super Bowl of rodeo, the National Finals, Rodeo and Cowboy Christmas. And it's like the girls are in sequins and it's like the exact opposite of the ranch. But it's what they're passionate about is that the sport of rodeo and they know that they wouldn't be able to do those things if they weren't a part of helping us with the operation, because we have, you know, we have to hire less people. So we have a little bit more cash to do fun things with them. And I think that that's you know, that's a real world scenario that is important for them to understand that, you know, that's that's how the world works. And if you're kids and you contribute to your family, there are benefits that you reap from that.
Ginny Yurich Wow. And they're contributing in ways that are substantial. I just read this book called Hunt Gather Parent by a woman named Michaeleen DOUCLEFF, and that's what she talks about. Like in other cultures that kids have. She calls it a family membership card, like they really are helping in ways that actually matter and they know it. And so that really is what is boosting their confidence and back, she says. In these other cultures, they don't praise kids. There's not all of this like extra praise. You're amazing. All of that. They just they know that they kind of are because they're capable, because they're really inserting themselves in a way that makes the family run better. So that's incredible. Okay. I want to know about the rodeo. This is completely out of my purview. Is this something that you already knew existed? Like I have never been to anything like it. And I see your girls out there on their horses and it's incredible to watch. Like, where did that all start?
Mary Heffernan So I'm I grew up not really around horses in my early age. My mom wanted nothing to do with horses, didn't ride horses, but my grandmother was a like, avid horse woman, you know, back in the forties and fifties in the mountains of California, she and her sister. And so my grandmother was always like talking to me about horses. And she sent me to a horse camp when I was like ten or 11 years old. And they had this weird sport called vaulting, which is gymnastics on horseback. And I kind of fell in love with it and was like, This is great. This is so much fun. And I found a club near me that gave lessons and I talked my mom into letting me go. So I started doing this weird sport called vaulting. And you're doing like gymnastics routine while a horse is running around. And I was, you know, the oldest of four kids. My mom's running around making sure everybody's getting to the right place. And I was carpooling there with somebody who lived near me. So the first competition, like three or four months in we go, and she goes to this other mom and goes, Do you see that? That girl standing on a horse? And her mom's like, Yeah, Mary does that too, right? So I did that for all of my high school career. And then after college I was like, I'm too old for that to wear a uniform. It unitard and dance on a horse anymore. And I was tutoring for a family that lived near this old school polo grounds in the Bay Area. And I started going there and watching the games and getting to know the pros. And pretty soon I was like, Can I just come and like help exercise your horses? And they kind of taught me the game. And I started playing polo and I played pretty well wholesomely until I met Brian and realized this is really a dangerous sport. It's okay. You're going to be you're single, but not when you have something to live for. So I played all over Florida, Southern California, Argentina, and I pretty much just gave it up when I got married and we started having kids and didn't look back, we moved to the ranch. I thought, Oh, maybe, maybe we'll get horses. And Brian and I were both like, We can't handle horses. We have way too much we need to figure out here. And a lot of, you know, you think cattle ranching operations like you have to have horses, right? But there are operations that go up in the mountains and they're gathering cattle. Those do, but we have a pretty like well contained operation where we move from pasture to pasture up on the hill. And horses aren't entirely necessary in our operation. So we said, no, we're not doing we're not doing horses. And then, you know, never say never. I think it was probably four years in to the ranching. Somebody had two horses to give us. They said, These are perfect kid horses. The girls were begging. We agreed they got each got a horse halter for Christmas, and Bryan drove to Walla Walla, Washington, to get these two horses for the girls and brought them back to the ranch. And it was a disaster. They were not kid horses. We had the shoot out and he's like, Someone told you these were kid horses were like, Yeah, they were free. He's like, Apple loses are always free. Just say no. So and we had this pony someone gave us who turned out to be really this angel pony who taught the girls everything they know about riding, who they gave us eight years, seven or eight years ago to retire on the ranch. And she's 44 years old now and still living her best retired life. What's her.
Ginny Yurich Name?
Mary Heffernan April. April. The dream pony we call her. So April gave them a good start to like understand horses and tacking up. And then we had some neighbors whose kids rodeo and they were competitive in high school rodeo and we didn't even. Know what this was, but they would come pick up the girls after school and say, Hey, we'll bring them back in a few hours. And we were like, okay, where are you guys going? And they taught the girls how to ride, how to rope, how to, you know, like start running barrel patterns. And pretty soon, you know, we look out there and they're totally capably tacking up their own horse. One of my and five entrepreneurs is Amber and Abby. They're down in central California, and they started a company called Riding Free TAC that makes lightweight saddles. And that was also a component to our kids, starting because we didn't have time to go tack up for horses and usually saddle up. That's really hard, like to physically get a saddle on the back of a horse. And by now, the operating horse is not ponies. So riding three tack makes these awesome lightweight saddles for kids. They're super affordable, but still well built. And like Tessa was out there, you know, five, six years old, getting it on our head and then getting it up on her horse. Or she'd climb a fence with it on one arm. So they, you know, again, by necessity, like, had to figure out if we want to ride, we got to figure out how to do this all ourselves. And they did. And then pretty soon they were, you know, actually catching steers with their ropes and and figured it out. And then we said, okay, I guess my school rodeo starting, which starts in fifth grade, and Franzi started that the first rodeo. We had no idea what we were doing. She didn't either, but she loved it. And the rodeo community are fantastic people. They're great kids. It's neat to live in a rural town where there's not many people to have another outlet to like meet kids that are of the same kind of values you do that are interested in the same kind of things. And it's been really interesting. But they're competitive, they're great, They're an all of that. They kind of have their own sports. But Francis, our oldest, qualified for junior world Finals, which will be in Vegas during the NFR, and then the others are there. They're winning buckles and stuff that we never, never thought possible.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, that you don't even know. It's a whole. I'm so fascinated with subcultures and especially the ones that you don't even really know exist. And then you hear the you know, I watch your stories and the girls out there on their horses and they're having a great time. They're just hanging out with friends and the in between and what a cool thing. Isn't that interesting to how sometimes your life can be so dramatically changed by like, oh, someone gave us this pony and that was it. That was a thing that happened. And then here you are doing this thing and that the fact that their own interest drove them on because you weren't directing that. Yeah. You didn't have the time or bandwidth do. And so, you know, that like intrinsically comes from them is something that they want to do so. How cool. I love watching that kind of stuff and I've learned a lot from it. I've learned a lot from this book, too. Okay. So one of the things in the Hands on Branch book is that you always approach your horse from the left side. What's that about?
Mary Heffernan Yeah, it's kind of it's just like horse culture. And when you're saddling up or tacking up, you always get on in the left side. It makes the horse comfortable. Like the horses are really creatures of habit and routine. So if you always approach on the left and then there's, you know, a certain way that the tack set up that, you know, you tighten your cinch from that side, making sure that your gear is all set before you get on that horse. And, you know, probably if just started generations ago that it's it's just kind of become habit and it's that it's the only way you do things around horses. And there's also some interesting, I don't know superstitions around the horse world of like you ever put a cowboy hat on a bed like the biggest and you could commit putting a couch on a bed or even like laying them flags, cowboy hat, they are all shaped really well. But in our little travel we have a horse trailer. It's not little, it's a l Q living quarters trailer where we live in the front part and we train our horses in the back and it's a bed up above the thing and then, you know, a fold down bed and a bed up here and, you know, a lot of space besides bed. So there's always cowboy hats everywhere and no one is willing to put them on the bed because it's it'll be some kind of old school cowboy curse.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I love all that kind of stuff. And if I think back to that too, and I've not been on horses a ton, but, you know, you go to camp is like you always, it's always like you put your left foot up and swing your right foot over. Always. Yeah. It's never the other way around. That's super interesting. Well, another thing in here was about leaving eggs out on the counter and the bloom, so I actually didn't know. I knew that you could leave the eggs out on the counter, but I didn't totally know why. So can you explain? Because I think in other parts of the world, they leave their eggs out. But here in America, for the most part, they're in the fridge.
Mary Heffernan Yeah, Even grocery stores in other countries you'll buy they aren't refrigerated. So when the egg is laid and I've actually seen an egg being laid in real time, which is like an insane to actually see it happen. It has what's called a bloom on it. And it's just a fine coating. It looks like wet when it comes out and it pretty very quickly dries on the egg. And that bloom is a natural antibacterial cover on the egg, which is so amazing because an egg is very porous. You know, the shell is porous, so the bloom is naturally antibacterial and it will keep that egg from needing to be refrigerated. It'll keep that egg fresher out on the counter. You don't need to refrigerate that egg when you wash an egg to clean it, you know, because they'll get poop or dirt on them. When you wash an egg wash that bloom off, you've essentially stripped it of all that natural antibacterial coating. And then you do have to refrigerate the eggs or they will go bad a lot sooner if left out on the counter.
Ginny Yurich That's fascinating. I learned so much in this book, so it's a great one for kids.
Mary Heffernan The egg. Drop it. How to tell if an egg is fresh or not. Yeah. Yeah. So if the egg sinks, it's actually fresh. And if it sits on its side, it's very fresh. Once it starts kind of sitting upright and bobbing, it's less fresh. And if it's in the middle of the water or floating on top, you don't want to eat that egg. It's gone bad.
Ginny Yurich Yes. You know, that's and ever a good thing when you crack open. Negan, it's gone bad. Yeah. So lots to learn in this one. You talk about sheep. Do you guys have sheep? You talk about the color of their eyes. Like the things that you can learn from the color of their eyes.
Mary Heffernan Yeah. Sheep are really interesting. You know, we didn't really think that we'd get into sheep when we started, but we have this Navajo crow, this old breed, and they have these beautiful coats. And you can tell by their their eyes and their teeth how old they are. Like pretty scientifically start losing teeth. So basically, you know, how how far they're into having good teeth and then the teeth start to deteriorate. We've learned a lot raising sheep. It's hard. It's a little bit of a hard sell in America because people don't really eat lamb like they do in other countries. So I have to spend a lot of time on education teaching people that lamb is a delicious meat. It's what my kids would probably choose over anything else if they had the option. But we it's nice to be a part of what we do here because it gives our customers, you know, a lot of our customers are farm club members where they get a they get a box every month or every other month. And being able to offer beef, pork and or lamb just gives a little bit more variety. Mm hmm. And lamb, always fun.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So much to learn about. And you have in this book, like you'll have all the different breeds, maybe not all of them, but a bunch of different breeds. And you got pictures in there so kids can learn and just see be exposed. Because I don't think you really realize, you know, you think about I think about sheep and I think about the white fluffy ones and that's it. But then there's all these different varieties out there, and I think it's fun exposure to see that our world has all of this variety.
Mary Heffernan So many breeds. Yeah, so many different purposes. You know, some breeds of cattle, like the girls have roping, cattle that aren't good, steaks aren't good eating quality. And then, you know, there's like the Texas Longhorns, those are raised for corn and hide the meat is not as good quality. We raised black Angus which is a very meat forward breed. Then there's Jersey cows. You know, milk cows are totally different purpose than beef cattle. And teaching that to people and, you know, understanding a little bit more of that I think is really interesting. The same with the terminology, like a cow is not actually what you're eating. Usually, like in our program, the cows are for breeding and the cows are having babies. And then when they have a calf, it's either a steer or a heifer. And a heifer is their cattle who haven't had a baby yet. Fear are castrated males. And those are the ones that go into our meat program. But once they become a mama, that's their purpose because the meat quality is not as good once they've had hormones and nursing and babies.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, there's so much to learn. I think that's one of the coolest things about nature, is that it's not all just one thing, one type of tomato, one type of animal, one type of sheep. I mean, there's just so many different kinds. Well, then you talked about how with the sheep that them is it that the mom sheep can find the baby sheep by sound. Is that right?
Mary Heffernan Sound and smell. It's really interesting. They sheep and cattle, they know their baby right away. You know, it's an instinctive thing. Like a lot of our heifers are first time mamas. They'll have a calf and they're kind of like, What just happened? But then they're like, instinctively, like in the calf off getting it, you know, stimulating it. And the sheep do as well. And they're very protective. They know, you know, we've got whole pastures of black mama cows and black baby calves, and they all pair up at night. They know who their mama is and they die by the sound, though especially in sheep, their bodies are very distinctive, but the smell as well. And sometimes we will have to. Whereas pigs they don't care about. We have a group like once the pigs are a little bit older, the mamas are out there and they're just like anybody can or somebody, I don't care. But sometimes when we have our cattle, you know, one of the saddest things is to see like a stillbirth or a calf who dies, like in the birth canal. That's a different. Got birth. And that momma will mourn that calf. You know, they they'll either stand on him, licking it, trying to get it up until there is no more hair on that calf or they'll pace around. And that is it's really heartbreaking to see. And sometimes we'll have if we have twins, Brian says cows can only count to one. They usually only take one of them and the other one is kind of left to its own devices. So we usually, if we have a twin, we have to bring in the the second one, the weaker one, and it becomes a bottle baby. Or we we have some milk cows and jersey cows that we will use as nurse maids. But what you can do and it's not always successful but is graft on that baby to the mama who had a stillborn. And one of the ways you do that is by actually skinning the hide of the one who died and tying it to all four legs of the live one. So the mama comes and licks it and it was like, Oh, yeah, that's my baby. And then she'll she'll actually take that as her own. And then by the time the heid falls off, rots off, she's like, Oh, nah, that's that's my calf. It's like, very fascinating to see.
Ginny Yurich Oh, I can't even imagine. So fascinating. And like you said, they have a whole field of animals that all pretty much look exactly the same. Mm hmm. Like, you wouldn't be able to tell in part, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Yeah, but they can find their mom.
Mary Heffernan Yeah. It's amazing.
Ginny Yurich Wow. What an incredible thing. It's like, I bet you couldn't have ever imagined to see that. To see that in person. Well, this is what I'm curious about, because you have a lot of entrepreneurship ideas in this book. Mm hmm. It's something that you talk about a lot, so. Well, you talked about I really like how you had those different job ideas in here. And then you also had entrepreneurship ideas, like ideas for handmade goods to sell and ideas for services to sell. And then there's all these interesting careers that you were talking about earlier, like the welding and things like that. And you even have worksheets in the back, which is fun. Kids could try Entrepreneurship worksheet for chores and caregiving. So all of these different types of things. Candle making. Do you reach a point where you're like, okay, you know, we did the harvest house, we have the custom butcher, we've got the restaurant, we have the outdoor kitchen, we have the classes. Do you hit a spot where you're like, We're good, we're done? Or do you still always have other ideas?
Mary Heffernan You know, I don't I don't think brands are wired that way, unfortunately. You know, we've always been a good match because we love big ideas and, you know, making them happen together and see, like creating something, you know, whether it's a business or a new building on the ranch or, you know, a new facility, a better way of doing things. We are just passionate about that. And I think that's what really drives us. I think if I stopped, I would get bored and everything would fall apart because I wouldn't be very good at doing I'm not good at just like maintenance. I'm good at like, what's next? What's next? And I think that's important to us, that we have a very diverse operation. You know, we do whiskey and wine and the restaurant and we do hospitality and the cookbooks and the butchery. But, you know, we have four kids and ranches. Like you're setting yourself up for a pretty tough place in succession. You know, if all four kids want to come back and run the ranch, that's not going to work. So we want to give them options that if they do want to come take over some part of our operation, it's might be something that they're more interested in or, you know, everybody has a place to come back. Now, do we really think all of our kids are going to come back? No. Do we hope they do? No. I hope they go do what makes them happy in life and maybe use the tools we've taught them as entrepreneurs to start something of their own, or they might find, you know, a much more traditional path. So we have no expectations of that. But it not only kind of gives a lot of options for the future, it also really helps to be able to pivot and lean into some things more than others. You know, the past three years and the pandemic. And, you know, all of a sudden the restaurant has to close and we have all these issues coming up that nobody ever really expected would be modern day problems. We could kind of pull at the strings and say, okay, this is still working. Let's lean into that. This is still working. Let's lean into that, because ranching is expensive is not an industry that you can just get into and think, you know, it's all going to work, or I'm always going to have, you know, a steady income just like any entrepreneur. But agriculture kind of has a way of making it even harder because there's all these variables you can't control from weather to, you know, disease and sickness in your herd. Things just not working out. I think we like having that diversity to kind of keep us moving and always in the right direction.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. That's so interesting, Mary. I wouldn't have thought so. When you said about succession. There's just not enough there to support for people.
Mary Heffernan And their families. Right.
Ginny Yurich And their families.
Mary Heffernan Because you're limited by time and space and resources, you know, you can only grow so much or buy and store so much hay or have so many animals on the ranch. And so that's where a lot of family farms, especially in this day and age when things are changing a lot and the commodity market is is so volatile, there's a lot of ranches that fall apart because they can't or they really ruin a family dynamic because one person gets to take it over and the others are left out in the dark. There's not enough for a buyout or anything like that. It's just like, who's going to take over the farm? There is a huge industry and succession planning and succession mediators that have to go into these farms and ranches and figure out, you know, can you get the trucks into this part and you get this part or you guys have to sell it all at auction because this just isn't going to work. So while we're proud to be creating kind of a legacy family business, that's also could be pretty risky.
Ginny Yurich Wow. Is that fascinating? So the thought is, is that if there's all these different arms of the business, like if there is publishing and there is this harvest house and there's the hospitality, like people can come and stay there and you're doing media things and you have a restaurant and then you have the actual animals themselves, that there is a piece of that, that if the girls wanted to do that, they could grasp on to you. And since all kids are different, you know, people tend to gravitate toward different things anyway. That's really interesting. Have you found because we've thought about that a little bit with our own business, that at the very least it's a fallback that, you know, if at some point someone was in desperate need for this job or work or that you're building something that your child could come and work at someday. Do you hear other people talking like that?
Mary Heffernan You know, in the agricultural world. Yes. But it seems to be the place where it's most kind of on the forefront because the investment in the land and the equipment in your operation is so great. And the heart of the business, you know, the the generations or that this is how I grew up and I saw how hard my dad worked for this. I think it's just more intense than, you know, if your family has a restaurant or a shop, Sure, you'd love for somebody to take over the family restaurant. But if it closes, it closes. You sell some restaurant equipment. You'll always have the stories and the photos and the menus. But, you know, selling your home, your land where you grew up, when your business is wrapped into the legacy of where you live and all those memories and blood, sweat and tears poured into it, it brings it up a notch in the intensity.
Ginny Yurich That's like a different level of investment That's really interesting. It's also it's a challenging thought, though, to incorporate that into your own life. And I think that that's been a part of our journey over the past many years is thinking like, what parts of this could we use to bring on others, even if it's not your own kids, even, you know, you're talking about hiring other people. Are you the one and a half ranch hands that is really supporting the work of other people? I know you guys have your shipping days where you ship out, and so the more that you permeate out, the more that you can hold up.
Mary Heffernan Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it.
Ginny Yurich Okay, so we're coming out to the farm.
Mary Heffernan Yes. The template.
Ginny Yurich People can follow along because I won't be sharing, but are we going to see.
Mary Heffernan So you'll be here kind of at the tail end of calving, but we still might have some calves being born. So that's always very exciting. But we should have lots and lots of baby calves running around the pasture with their mamas. So we'll we'll take you along to check cows kind of along the riverbank in our pastures, and then the girls rope and ride almost every night. So I'm sure we'll probably end up around the roping arena, watching them ride. Sometimes they have some friends over to rope and then we built, you know, we have this beautiful outdoor camp kitchen kind of on the hillside of our ranch where we entertained. And then sometimes we do, you know, long table dinners and farm dinners or farm stays. But we all of a sudden we're like, man, we can't even get up there to cook anymore because we're down here watching the girls. So we built another outdoor kitchen barbecue area at the arena because for us, time with our kids is the most valuable currency right now. And we're like, It's worth investing and putting down something here. And it's pretty simple, you know, especially on a ranch. It's so nice how you can throw things together. You know, Bryan could throw Wilden hat on and make me what I am dreaming up. So we just built a little barbecue area, but we spend most nights there as a family. And, you know, we've got the string lights overhead and it's kind of a magical place right now with the way that the ages of the kids and, you know, they're so self-sufficient with their horses. So I just get to watch from outdoors and with a cocktail and cook dinner. And we love having people come join us. So we're really excited to host you guys.
Ginny Yurich We're so excited. That's so cool. I remember reading in one of Jose Hilton's books about how no one really views their home as like, I don't know if you put it this way, but like a vacation spot, right? Or a place for recreation that we're always looking for that. And outward thing is, do you ever feel really tied down or are you finding what you need just in your surroundings?
Mary Heffernan You know, we did feel a lot more tied down in the beginning when it was really hard to find help and more things were always going wrong. There's always something to fix or always something that goes wrong on a ranch. But Brian has kind of a right hand ranch hand who he trusts and is just like an extension of Bryan, who's been with us for three years now. And so we are lucky that that allows us to get off the ranch. Now, would we get off the ranch very often? Probably not. We're not in the season of wanting to do vacations because we just we love where we live so much. And, you know, if we're going to go anywhere, we'll go, you know, have dinner up on the mountain, barbecue or camp out on the hillside. But what rodeo has given us is this like forced get off the ranch, put the jaws down for a minute, focus on each other. And we travel together in this mini semi truck, the seven passenger semi, and then this giant trailer. And we go anywhere. We set up camp in the middle of a fairgrounds parking lot or a dirt parking lot or a fairground stop over. And I've got the system down where the grills come out and the chairs come out and the rug and the awnings and we can like pop up together and sit there at night with cold beers. And the kids are running around, rope their dummies, and I'll make dinner for everybody. And that's been really a gift for us to kind of have that forced family time off the ranch where you don't feel guilty for leaving because you're doing something productive as a family. It's just a really fun time for us.
Ginny Yurich That's really cool. I mean, that's a big gift from that subculture, like you said. Otherwise, maybe you wouldn't ever be doing that kind of stuff, but it pushes you out. You do. I love seeing that stuff. Well, let's take one more topic from the book, because there's a lot of really cool things to learn in here. How to make Wild Earth Day, how to read seed packets, how to make your own fishing pole. So many fun things in here. Bread making a sour dough, starter recipes and other recipes as well. So lots in here. But I didn't know. You know, you always see the beeswax. Candles, right? Yeah. And people shape up into different things. And to me they just always seemed whimsical. But what I learned in your book is that the light that the Beeswax candle emits is more a replication of, like, the sun.
Mary Heffernan Mm hmm. Yeah. Like, where it is on the spectrum is different than any other candles. And that, you know, it it's really good for the air a lot. And that's a big topic now. A lot of candles have chemicals in them and don't burn clean. But a true beeswax candle, it does have a different light. It's kind of that like warm winter fire light that I don't know. You almost feel it, you know, when you light a real beeswax candle, you're like, Why does this feel special? But it is. And yeah, the bees made that.
Ginny Yurich Wow. Yeah. So that does a cool thing in the book. So just so many how to use that was how to make the Beeswax Candle. And then there's different types of knots, which I thought was really interesting. Like one of the things I learned in this was that in certain situations you want to have a knot that you can quickly undo, especially if you're working with animals. You want to be able to do something if they get spooked or certain situations that you are able to quickly remedy that because of the type of not that you made. So how to make maple sirup is in here showing, which is such an important thing, how to sew on a button, how to mend things, taking care of chickens. This is a comprehensive book, Mary.
Mary Heffernan There's a lot in the book. I think we packed a lot in there with some fun illustrations. I hope it'll make a good holiday gift for people. You know, it's a it's a great like grandparent to give your kids or to give a classroom. We're trying we're going to do some giveaways and try to get them in as many school libraries as we can.
Ginny Yurich Oh, I love that. That's such a fantastic idea. So this one's called the Hands on Ranch book How to Tie In and Start a Garden saddle, a horse and everything else people used to know how to do. It's an adorable book by Mary Heffernan. You can get that wherever you buy your books because it is out now. It is out and ready to go. And if people want to find you, it's five Mary's Farms dot com. You got the ranch school and you're on Instagram and Facebook. So lots of places to follow along. And it's really fun to follow along because you see, you see those outdoor kitchens and you see the rodeo days and you see the animals and you see the entrepreneurship journey. And so then it's always like it's interesting cause then I'm like, Well, what are they going to do next? You know, you get up to one massive thing and then you're like, Oh, we have another idea.
Mary Heffernan Always something going on.
Ginny Yurich Always something that's really cool. Well, Mary, huge congrats on a new book. Absolutely Loved it. And we'll see you soon.
Mary Heffernan Okay. Sounds great. Thanks, Ginny.
