This Past Weekend - E367 A Turkey Farmer

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Robert Hupman is a turkey farmer and the owner of Hazard Mill Farms in Virginia. Theo and Robert talk about all things turkey; what it's like to farm and harvest them, his family history of farming and his love of jiu jitsu. Hazard Mill Farm FB: https://www.facebook.com/Hazard-Mill-Farms-122182925136515/ New Merch: http://theovonstore.com Tour Dates https://theovon.com/tour Podcastville mugs and digital prints available now at https://theovon.pixels.com Support our Sponsors: Betterhelp: https://betterhelp.com/theo for 10% OFF your First Month Peloton: http://onepeloton.com $350 off the Peloton Bike+ ShipStation: http://shipstation.com  use code THEO to get a 60-day free trial Keeps: http://keeps.com/theo  to get first month free PublicRec: http://publicrec.com  promo code THEO to receive 10% off Liquid Death:: https://liquiddeath.com   Music: "Shine" - Bishop Gunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to [e-mail]. Hit the Hotline [phone] Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://bit.ly/TPW_VideoHotline Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com  Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon  Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon  Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend  Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEK Producer: Spencer https://instagram.com/adventuresofspencer Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's that time of year, always. And you guys have been waiting and we are happy to let you know that the new, I'm upstairs! Merch Collection is available now at theovonstore.com. The greatest excuse on earth. If you need something, wish I could help, baby, but I'm upstairs!

If you need me, you know where I'm at. Theovonstore.com. Thank you guys for all your love and support. Today's guest is the owner of Hazard Mill Farms. And he farms roughly 75,000 birds a year, getting them out the door and on to the dinner. He's a second generation turkey farmer here in the United States of America.

We're happy to have that bird man with us today. Turkey farmer, Robert Huppman. For me to set that parking brake and let myself unwind. Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my story. Shine on me. And I will find a song. I'll be singing just for you.

Robert Huppman, we're sitting here with the turkey farmer, baby. This is your time of year really coming up. Yeah, yeah, we generally, it's kind of funny, we get that a lot, but we're year-round, you know. So Thanksgiving is just another day for us. We're pumping turkeys 24-7. Oh, dang man. But do you wake up on Thanksgiving morning

and you're like fired up and the kids are all, you know, they're fired up and people are doing like turkey calls. Like is it that kind of a day for you guys? Is it, how big of a this time of year is y'all's market share basically? For our market share, it's probably, I don't know. And I don't know what market share means also. So generally, we're growing birdsie around. So if my flock happens to go out before Thanksgiving or a month before,

fine, if it doesn't, it's probably about, I don't know, 30% of what a true turkey farm goes through. Because we're pumping out, we're selling breast meat for, you know, lunch meat and other items like that. So I've had some. I mean, I don't know if I've had you guys. How do I know if I've had you guys as turkey? Most likely if you ever had a Dietzen Watson sliced turkey.

That'd probably be one of ours. Damn man, thanks. Yeah, I've loved it. We sent some stuff out when you lived in LA. We sent, I think they, California buys some of our product as well. Oh good. Yeah, I probably enjoyed it there. Okay, so for just a regular human, right?

I'm a human consumer. What part of the turkey is used for, like, like, well, I guess let me start here. I'm just trying to think of where to start with like a turkey farm or like. You want a day in the life of a turkey farmer? Like start to finish what I go through. Yeah, yeah. What's it like when you get up in the morning, like, what does it go like?

Thank you. So yeah, so I'll wake up. I don't even know why I'm here. No, you're good. Thank you very much. I've never been good, but that's sweet of you. Yeah, Robert. So what is it like?

So you started in the beginning of the day. What's it like? Yeah, so normally I wake up 3.30, 4 o'clock a.m., do a little paperwork, knock some emails out, go through the birds. Luckily right now I got a full-time farm hand. Okay. This is the first time ever. So I don't have to be up there as much.

But we're going through them every day. You're checking for any type of mortality, making sure they all have automatic feeders. So there's one feed line that runs continuously down the barn 800 and some feet long. So a feeder that runs down the barn that they're all housed in. Yep, they're housed in. They have plenty of room, ample amount. We, you know, biosecurity is key. So we dress up, suit up, go through, dip pans, make sure nothing comes in from the barn.

That's not supposed to be in there. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. We're very, to the next, we do like animal welfare every year. You know, we're really on top of our game because, you know, this is our livelihood. This is why I feed my kid with. And, you know, sometimes commercial farms, they'll call it commercial farms, but it's really just a small town guy.

You know, it's a family, maybe running a dairy operation, maybe running cattle. And then they're also substituting some income for other family members for turkeys. Okay. I can make the same, I make the same amount of money as if I was running maybe 200 hit of cattle. Okay. Wow. So with the amount of turkeys you're running. Yes.

And how many birds you guys, you know, how many birds you guys dealing with over there? So roughly like 19,000 to 22,000 per flock. And that's two barns. So, okay. So 19,000 per flock. So what does that mean? So generally we have a flock and the last 19 weeks is to a full grown bird. And they go to market.

Okay. Okay. And then depending how it rotates, you know, you'll have like four weeks down, eight weeks down, depending when they're ready to place you with more polts or more turkeys from the hatchery. Okay. So it starts with, you get a batch of turkeys. Yeah. So you have no turkeys at some point.

Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes I'll have a downtime for four weeks when we're cleaning turkey shit. Okay. You're just cleaning out the barns. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay.

So then you get the batch, right? Yep. They come in fresh shavings laying, you know, we've spread out in brand new shavings. And they're all shaved out. Yeah. We clean them pretty well. It's all nice, nice, clean, pretty, pretty, pretty ground floor. And then strip club up in there.

Yeah. Nice, nice lights. Okay. So you get them in and they, are they scared or they excited? What do they seem like? They're ready to eat. Okay. So they've done travel, got there.

They're really happy birds or clucking. They've been on the road. Yeah. They're ready to chill out. Yeah. So we load them in. They come in. They're nice and warm in their form.

Cause when they're younger, they like it up, you know, around the eighties to a hundred, depending on how the age of the bird. Okay. So you guys have lamps and stuff. You know, they keep them warm. Pre-pain heaters. Yep. We got pre-pain heaters.

Okay. Pre-pain heaters. And so they're all in this hat. And at that point, you already bought them from a hatchery. So they're all in this barn. Yeah. Okay. So you have them in this barn now.

How long until those birds, until you guys, you know, you pull that card on them, you know, and lower them out and send them onto the market. Uh, 19, 18 and a half to 19 weeks. Wow. So they're, and then when they go out, they're, you know, averaging 40 to 45 pounds. Okay. How well the feed conversion. Okay.

So, and that is, you guys are feeding them the whole time. How often do you feed them? They eat nonstop. They have that. They have access to water and food the entire time. They're like my buddy Corey, dude. It's full buffet. And will they eat, uh, and what are they eating?

It's, it's a corn, soybean, and then sometimes wheat. And it's all natural. We have our own hatchery. Y'all ever go out there and give them a little snack at night? Is there any kind of a bedtime snack? Is there anything where you're going to sneak out there? You feeling in a good mood? You're going to go out there and hook them up?

Nah. Yeah. Like maybe one moon pie, but they're like, nah, we're good. So they just like what they, they're real specific. No, no, they really just like that, that feed, that corn, soybean, max. I mean, that's pretty much it. They're water. We have a water system.

I mean, they get in perfect pH every time. Okay. So like we're really, really big on their water. So it's like a little spa in there. They're treating, you know, they got the heat going. They got the food coming in. They're really living. They're living pretty large in there.

Yeah. Okay. Curtains go down. They get natural light. They get to see outside a little bit. I mean, they're, they're, they're safe from any type of predators. Sounds like a detox I went to one time. Honestly.

Be real honest. Yeah. Um, now what about this? So, so, so then you go in there and your daily routine, you cruise in there. We cruise in there. You have special, you know, you got the gear on because you don't want to, how detrimental is it if you bring in something from the outside world? So just for instance, you probably heard of avian flu.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So like back 2016, 15 and 16, they had a huge outbreak killed a million plus birds nationwide. Damn. Which it helped. Yeah. You're talking.

Yeah. Yeah. So we didn't luckily hit it. And I hate to prosper on, you know, bad terms for other farmers because I hope we all get our, you know, right to do and everybody is successful. But it helped us out and bumped us up real high. And we did very well not having that avian flu. But it's literally if I went outside, stepped in some goose crap and that fecal matter was

on my shoe. If I stepped in that barn with the same clothes I had on with that, it would 100% effect and kill me. No way. Within like three days. Damn. So they're a real, it's a real, it's almost like a, they sound like almost like a science, not a science experiment, but they're like a real specific recipe.

If you put in a little bit of something that's not good, it's going down. Yeah. And see like avian. They're real sensitive. Yeah. So other birds can affect other birds. Same like you can't have chickens on a turkey farm, same I can't have turkeys on a chicken farm.

Stuff that would mess with a chicken will mess with a turkey. Oh, really? And it won't, won't seem like the geese that fly, you know, they're, they're just a carrier. They, they don't, they don't die from avian flu, but they can spread it to other birds. And even if say the. Damn, it's like succession. Have you seen that show? No, no, actually I haven't.

It's like, um, yeah. It's like family members trying to, they're just not, it's not just like that, but it's similar. Yeah. It's just like, you know, they're the same breed. You think everybody be looking out for each other, you know, if goose is going to fly and get a little intel or something, drop a note, but instead, yeah, it's a family right here.

The front guy almost look like he got a little gobble on them, but they, uh, they're all like rich people and they're all like backstabbing, but they're all the same breed. I did see the first season now that you said that. Yeah, I got, I, I've just seen a little bit, but I got to see some more, but anyway, so this is really cool. So, so now you go in there, you guys are kind of like, you, you, you're careful what you bring into the barn. Yep.

You get in there, it's, it's the early morning and then what are you guys doing at that point? So we're going through making sure, you know, no, the water lines are broke. There's no water leaks, uh, the feet feeds all properly distributing through the lines. Okay. Occasionally you'll have a mortality. One bird might just croak from what could have been anything just anything, heart, liver, you know, just sometimes you just, you know, you have so many birds in there. Well, not so many, but you'll have birds in there and they just, you know, just like human

life, man out here, they'll no different if you were raising for outside in the field. You know, oh, you could be jogging with your buddy and you just drop. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with those, dude. Tom, Tom just dropped number two. He's like, bro, what's up? I ain't never the same.

And you don't know what's going on. They might have small beef going on in there. They, you know, they do fight, you know, they'll occasionally rough up each other. You got to break them up. Will they? Yeah. Yeah, dude. Like no nonsense Keith Peterson.

Okay, so now you got the farm going, everything's going pretty swell. Yeah. At what point do you guys start to get them ready for the slaughter basically? What do you call it? Just, uh, just harvest. Okay. Just kind of like, uh, same as if you're harvesting corn, just we're getting ready to, uh, it's a, I don't know, just going out or whatever.

Birds go out. That's kind of what we. Okay. We've got a group coming in. We've got a group going out. Yeah. So it's a nice way to say it. They say it at senior homes too.

A lot of times, you know, you know, Donna's going out, you know, we've got a question that came in right here for you, Robert. Yep. What up Theo? Turkey farmer. How you doing? Yeah. I got a little question for you.

So I assume you're, uh, taking these turkeys in and now you got to kill them for meat, you know, are you the one who's doing these killings? How do you go? Do you just chop its head off? How do you go about this? Is it peaceful? Is it a long process? And do you ever, uh, develop some sort of relationship with a certain turkey?

Maybe he does like a little dance or something that you think's funny and something unique about him that you don't want to let him go. You don't want to send him off with some family for dinner. So, uh, yeah, have you ever kept one of these turkeys for a prolonged period of time? And that's about it. That'll do it right there for me. Theo. Peace out.

Gang, brother. I hope you guys close, but he might not be, you know, that's the world we live in, man. It's just, you know. It is Turkey Farmer. Your interview. That's a good point. Yeah. Hot topic.

Hot topic. I'd be naked too. If I'm talking about bird, man, dude, I'm bringing my bird, you know. So there you go. That's a nice question. What would you say to that? Like when it comes time to shut them down, right? Cause you got to do it.

It's got to be done as part of it. So, so that's another aspect of the, the farm throughout. There's birds that, that need to be cold. Um, either they get a broken wing, broken leg, something, something happens, they twist their stuff up. You just got to euthanize them, you know, immediately because we don't want no bird to suffer while they're there. We don't, if they can't get food, water, and they can't properly move, we just go ahead

and take them out. Because what happens if a bird's in there, if a bird's in there and he can't move, then what's going on? The other birds will kill them. No way. Yeah. But then we don't, we don't let that happen. And why do they do it, what's going on in there?

Do you have any intel? It's just turkeys being turkeys, man, out in the real world, man. They don't care. Yeah. It's like damn Sinaloa. Yeah. So that's why I was telling, uh, Spence over there that we, uh, they're kind of like kids when they first come in, they're, you know, love in, they're happy, and then they turn

into, uh, teenage assholes trying to kill you, just like in Jiu-Jitsu class, little kids start, start cool. And then next, you know, they're ever beaten up on the old man. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So you got the birds now, you guys, and when they, when they, when they do, when they do send them out to harvest, when they send them out, what's the process?

Do they line them all up and like just neck them out? No, this will, this will probably be a little wild. We'll bring in 19 tractor trailers and hand load them on three guys. They'll bring them up and it's like a little escalator. Take some right up and they pick one up, put them in the cage, load the cage up. Truck goes down, turns back around. They can load a truck up in like 35 minutes. And they gassing?

Yeah. Well, they take them back to the processing facility and that's, they, I think they use like a CO2 base and they'll just put them to sleep. Then they're cutting them up. Really? Sending them up to conveyor belt. So they put the meat to, they just put them to sleep. Yeah.

So they're not shooting them now. It's not like a bullet or anything. No, no, no. Yeah. So like on the farm, they, you got two options for your animal welfare. You can either, they have like a bolt gun, like a cap gun, you'll hit them in the back of the head with it and I'll just take them right out. Or some farmers rig up like a little box with CO2 and they'll put them in and that way they

go night, just go to sleep and then you put them in the compost and then we compost the birds for crop rotation and we'll put them on the fields and stuff. Oh, so you, they'll become a fertilizer almost. Yeah. We'll create fertilizer. Yeah. All natural. So you, so you guys don't do the actual, so the killing isn't actually done by you guys.

It's shipped. It's like outsourced. Yeah. Yeah. So now I will, you know. The seagull out there just rolls up, huh? Yeah. So we will kill birds.

And ones I have to call, I'll, I'll, I'll pull the meat out for friends and family and cut the breast meat. I got some pictures I'll give you guys and you can show them the size of the breast and stuff like that. But damn. Yeah, man. Constant. Okay.

So, so we're talking about the hit man, the guy comes in, the trucks come in, we load them out at night and then they start to, they go to the plant, they get, you know, messed up and then they're out the door within like 24 to 48 hours. So you don't see them back. You're not there putting them in the box. You're not there putting them in those little. I'm there. I watch them go out and make sure everything runs smoothly on my end.

That way the birds are, you know, safely loaded. Yeah. Send them away. Cause that's, you know, that's our livelihood. Right. Yeah. That's the work. I mean, look, that's what it is.

I mean, people love it. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think people do anyway. Has the, has the turkey market, have people been buying less turkey over time? What's going on with turkey? So turkey's like an influx, so you'll get two years of like markets up and it'll drop back down, then it'll go back up. And generally that's because when they go up, Butterball and these bigger companies will

come in and be like, we need to put a hundred more houses across here. So they'll flood the market with Turkey. Then they'll sit there because we don't freeze our birds. Our car is out fresh. Like, what do you mean? They say we need a, like, what do you mean that they're just in the market when they need to put more houses? What do you mean?

When you see the market value, you know, turkey value go up and then they'll, what, what does it get to? You know, a pound? Yeah. Like, you know, breast meat might be four something, five something a pound. You know, they really throw the, or then it'll be as low as a dollar when it crashed because they'll have a lot of birds frozen. Those bigger companies hold that stuff.

Oh, I see. Yeah. We really specialize, you know, not only in just turkey growth. We were the first ones doing antibiotic and organic turkeys. We have two different divisions and we're considerably a small company compared to Cargill or Pilgrim's Pride or Tyson Tyson's huge and butterballs, the biggest turkey company probably in the world. Yeah.

I used to watch. Uh, yeah, I know I've had some butterball before. I'm sure. Yeah. I don't know if I liked it or not. I remember. Now, what about this guy's a question right here? This Italian guy.

All right. What's up Theo? What's up turkey farmer? Got a question, man. What's up with the free range and the natural and the organic and the regular? Is that just a farce? Is it the real deal? What are you buying at the stores?

Thanks. That's, that's a good question. Yeah. It's a great question, man. Yeah. What is it? What are, how do they divide that up? What do you guys have to do?

Do you guys have to? So, so if it's like the other farms are more like the organic farms or the antibiotic free, it's a, it's heavily regulated. So you got a lot more paperwork and actually like to be an organic turkey, it has to come for organic females. So all those, the closest organic female to us, I believe is in Pennsylvania. So we have contract farms, NPA that grows, grows that particular bird. Okay.

So, so, so a lot of what goes in, I heard this, I have a friend that works for like a meat company called cow or something I think and, but it's KOW, right? And he sent me some fancy meat one time and it's good, but you know, it's still, it's still expensive, but he was saying that what determines grass fed, it's just, it's certain like really regulations, doesn't even really have to do sometimes with what they're eating. It's just sometimes where they live at, things like that. What, so what's that like for you guys? So you have the different.

Different levels. So like AU or whatever they call it, it's antibiotic free. The only difference in between that is if, say a bird gets like a common cold or something, you wouldn't be able to treat it with like our pen or a penicillin for like one or two days. And everything's done very properly with a vet. You know, we have a vet that checks the bird. It's just a crazy industry, but they, they make sure they've really went and stepped,

you know, from what it used to be to now it's, it's, it's by the book, everything's clean and done professionally, but. So was it, it used to be the, it used to be this, the dark art from, from what I hear back in, we've been doing it since 89 and it's been fairly consistent all the way up. It's just, you know, more regulations and we, we're wanting to stay on top of everything. Yeah. But for like a free range bird. So all they'll do is they'll take my barn, build doors and then the doors will open and

then they can go out in a fenced in area. Okay. Sometimes they don't even go out. Like my buddy grows a free range. They, yeah, they, they free free range chickens. Same thing. They spend all this money, they leave the doors open, the birds are inside where it's nice and safe.

Anyway. If it's sunny, they might come out for a little bit, check up and then they'll see a hawk or something though. I tell it back in. Yeah. Maybe Andy Dufresne sneaks out at night or one of them. Or one of them government geese dropped a turd down there and puts them all out. I'm just saying, you'd think there'd be a lot more of that Madagascar type activity,

you know. Yeah. Somebody trying to really put it, throw a dirty spider in Charlotte's web out there, you know. Okay, so what are the different types, different varieties of turkey that's for sale on the market? You're just going to have the antibiotic free, you're going to have an organic bird, free range bird, and then what they call a cage free bird, which no bird is caged up

in a little cage. That's just a fake narrative that people create to try to give people bad name, farmers. Sure. And no bird is completely cage free either. Like you got to have some sort of way to keep the bird or it could leave, right? Can turkeys leave? Well, I mean, I've had it where they're smart enough to turn the doorknob and whack it open with their wing and actually try to make a jailbreak every once in a while.

Oh yeah, man. But that's far in between. The turkeys are in a wide open barn, you know, you're looking at one barn's 40,000 square feet per barn. So you guys get out there, you got all the turkeys, they come in and they go out. And like so around Thanksgiving, like is there an extra batch, do you double up on your batches like starting in like October or something or, you know, would you say it's not 19 weeks? 19 weeks.

So that's that's for a heavy time. And if it's going for when we're doing like turkeys for Thanksgiving, they're probably putting them in there, taking them out at half that. So they're probably going out around 13 to 15 weeks, a medium sized bird. Okay. And that's the one that most people buy for Thanksgiving. That's what they're going to buy for Thanksgiving. And they'll put these specialty birds just for that and their, their medium toms is what

they'll call them. Damn. Yeah. And how'd they get the name Tom? It's genetically, I guess that's what you call, you know, a Tom and a hen. And we'll have hens in there occasionally because they'll sex them, but they don't always get them right. So you have big old hens mixed in there with the Tom.

Is there trans turkeys, do you start to see that even in like the turkey industry? They don't really identify other, other than Tom and hen and maybe, you know, you'll find a dominant, I found hens with beards on them. So maybe they're, maybe they're transitioning. Oh, I've found some of them too around town. I've definitely, there's one of my buddies had a real issue with them, but he's doing good now. I mean, he's doing pretty good anyway.

He's on like a ranch right now in Montana, but the holidays are the most wonderful time of the year. It's a good time to, to hug somebody and to tickle somebody. You don't even know that well if you want legally and in a safe area. With more people shopping online every year, you got to ship stuff, man. You got to damn get things out of your possession and into somebody else's possession. Even saying I heard a rumor, some, he's not even going to some countries anymore because of the crime and stuff.

And he's going, he's just going to ship stuff there. He's going to use ship station. Ship station works with all major carriers, international and local, including FedEx, USPS and UPS. So not only is shipping easy, you can actually save money. Now that's something. No wonder 98% of companies that use ship station for a year keep using it for as long as they're in business.

It's that good. Use my code Theo to get a 60 day free trial. Just enough time to handle the holiday rush. Just go to shipstation.com. Click on the microphone at the top and enter code T H E O ship station, make ship happen. Is there something interfering with your happiness? Is there? Is there something interfering with your happiness?

And that's a question you have to ask yourself. You have to ask yourself, is there something interfering with my happiness? Because when you get an answer, if you really make an honest answer, then it's a good place to start from to think about stuff. And sometimes you can't think about things alone, sometimes you need help. And I've gotten help from this company, BetterHelp. I've gotten it over Zoom, over phone, and over S-K-Y-P-E Skype, Skype, Skype, Skype. Visit betterhelp.com slash T-H-E-O that's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P and join the over 1 million people who have

taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. Don't go it alone. Try something different, try something new. BetterHelp might work for you, betterhelp.com slash Theo. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and TPW listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash T-H-E-O. It may be an option for you. What's like the future of the turkey business?

So let me think what I want to ask right now, so you've got these different types. You've got the males. So can I eat a male turkey or a female turkey at Thanksgiving? Can I have either one? Yeah, potentially it might be either or. So I don't have any idea. No, no, no. Wow.

No, no. Do my mom know if it comes in the kitchen and she's in there doing it? Yeah, you would never know. Really? Yeah. Because so we sell turkey fries. Okay. And that's turkey nuts.

So they have glands and their nuts are actually in their wings. No way. Yeah. So they'll pop them things out and you fry them up meat and nuts. They good or bad? They're good. They're really good. Yeah.

I mean, do they bust a little or are they just kind of? Now they just fry them up. It's just like eating a, you know. Like a what? This is where? Like a nugget, like a chicken nugget. Oh, okay. You good?

You eat nuggets? Is this them right here? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. They're good, man. We've had numerous meetings where, you know, congressmen and senators and stuff go to the turkey federation meeting.

We used to have them there. I mean, I just ate elk nuts like a week ago because we went out elk hunting and our guide fixed up a nice rocky mountain elk Parmigiana. Well, I think, look, your Rogan can apparently eat his own penis. I read the other day on the internet. So I think at this point, everything is fair game. Yeah. Dude, if I was starving, I'd eat one of my nuts right out of my damn body, I think.

You know, because if they feel, it feels like you'd have, yeah, I'd have one. I'm going to have both of them, like some creep, you know, damn, but, uh, okay. So do why does Turkey look so ugly though? And is that a thing? If I say that? I mean, they are kind of like my babies, but now they don't mean like that. But you know what I'm saying? Like, to me, I, because I actually went jogging this morning, I go jogging on this around

this lake. And there's a lot of turkeys out there. This time of year actually, but usually there's a lot of turkeys out there. And they're just big and they're, they're just not the most attractive, you know, they're not peacock, but right, you know, they, uh, I don't know, they're pretty majestic for the most part. It's probably just the beauties in the eye of the beholder for the most part. Some people love turkeys.

Love the way they look. A lot of my buddies are turkey hunters. So they're, they're all about getting every, every species of turkey hunted and mounted and displayed as wall art for, you know, their memory of that hunt. Yeah. And they like eating them too. They're delicious. Um, oh no, you kind of figure they probably were at some point, some type of raptor.

If you go back to dinosaurs, so maybe they've just devolved. Yeah. Like they're a little fur, got a little smaller claws, but they still try to cut you. Yeah. They get a chance. Um, how sharp is that talent? How could that thing get you or not? Oh yeah.

I mean, I've had them where they cut through my pants. I send, uh, send some pictures over where they've gotten me, uh, in the leg, in the back. I mean, they, they're with our turkeys, we don't have spurs. So, so they'll, they'll have those at the hatchery. They'll have them knit. And so we really don't get messed up, but their front calls, you know, when they jump up, they're jumping up with their feet to latch on.

Okay. And you can see that. Yeah. So that's a scar from there. Look, I got some cam haze boots and save my toes. Oh yeah. But the rest of you, you need that full cam haze. Yeah.

I know. He needs to come out with some leggings or something for me. Yeah. It's yoga pants or something. So that's one turkey talent did that to you. Now, what does their talents look like? What is their leg? What does that leg look like?

Let's see their leg. So go to the foot. Okay. The one that's spread out. You see, so they got these toenails and that's what's got, that's, that's what cut me one of those toenails. Oh, wow. So they have.

So they have a spur, ours are docked. So they won't have that long spur like on a wild turkey. It'll be there, but it'll be nubbed off. Because they cut them off? Yeah. So you don't want that in there. Because they'll kill each other. They'll be murdering like all sorts.

Wow. I wouldn't even go through there at a point if they were like that. But now there's claws and like I said, you'll see turkeys, you got videos of turkeys fighting out in the wilderness. Same thing. Just bigger bird. They're going to jump up at you. They'll try to get you.

I mean, I've had them pecked me in the forehead, working on the feed line, getting motors put back on. And do they seem manipulative? What do turkeys seem like as a? Very nice at first. So they're like, hey, what's up? You can be sitting there and they'll kind of come up and you can pat them on the head. And then just next thing you know, they turn around and run around and say, oh, John, look

at this. Fucking hammer you. So if you can work in twos, a lot of times, like I said, I've been doing this so long by myself. Some of these repairs. And they'll pick motor lines, everything where I have to go in and replace electrical. They'll break water lines down where they'll rip the line, tear the water up, and I got to get in there before it floods the barn.

I mean, they can be destructive. Does it seem calculated though? Does it seem like it does? Yeah. So we take every measure when we go through. We're tying up lines, making sure if there's a wheel, there's a way a turkey will definitely fuck something up. But does there will seem to be that they want to create anarchy?

Does it seem that they want to escape? Like what? Yeah. You can literally leave the door open. They won't go nowhere. Oh, I see. They'll just chill out. Maybe poke the head out.

They're just kind of like, what's up? But I think it's more like you're kind of like fresh meat and prison style. You walk in there and they're like, well, I'm going to get you, boy. Oh, damn. Yeah. And now this is after like 17, 18 weeks, they're coming out. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure. They got their testosterone up. They don't know hormones going. They're getting crazy. So their testosterone raises while they're in there? Yeah. They're a baby bird and then they become essentially a teenager. Okay.

So they got that teenager. And now they grow other birds for breeding purposes where they'll get real big, 75, 80 pounds would be less birds in there. And I've never been to a farm like that. I've seen them. And they say that once they get over that 19, 20 week range, like 22 weeks, their testosterone goes back down and then they like mellow back out. But you're riding right around that 19, 18, 19 week.

Yeah. So they're doing four weeks of battling, just trying to get through there, make sure everybody's good, not getting yourself tore up. So you know it gets a little hit managed in that last month. Yeah. So I mean, I've had a guy, one of my buddies, Mark, straight got drilled in the nuts. We had a, I was watching them crawl out of the barn, like it took them out, took them out.

And you're talking about a force of a 40 pound bird and it just not tagged them perfect. He was laying on the ground. He was trying to get the third bird you're jumping on. Yeah, you kind of always get a fear, like something happened, you get crippled in there and they probably just kill you. What's a great question we got coming up right here about how many birds? Yo, what up, Theo? What up, Turkey farmer?

It's Alex here, Fenton, Michigan. Just really got a couple of quick ones for you. Do the turkeys have large talons on if they do or if they don't? How many do you think it would take to take one of you down gang, gang? Yeah, baby. Thank you, brother. Yeah. Yeah.

How many turkeys does it take really to take out a Robert Huppman, man? Probably 10,000 or so. Really? I mean, unless I stroke out or something in there, they might get me, but you know, but it looked like the damage that one could cause is pretty extensive. Yeah. Yeah. No, they, I guess it's just all in the right, right way.

They get you. Anybody get knocked out by anybody for this part. So, you know, I could be leaning over and one whacked me in a noggin and if you go out in there, that's just, it's, they're going to get you on the ground. So they're more, yeah, they, so they might go around and they, they're just curious. So they peck. Right. You know, you might say you stroke out, fall down, they peck you.

I'd imagine if no one found you for a few hours, probably wouldn't be good. Right. Straight up. You know. So you running with some real, it's a really, it's same as these cat ladies and shit that die with cats and get, and get eaten up, sitting in their chair. Dude, we had a lady in my neighbor growing up. They had a panther in her.

She had a panther living her place. Nobody, everybody always thought she was crazy. I was yelling about this cat outside and people were like, get back in your house. You know, and she had a fucking bobcat or panther, something that had a big daddy, been living in her house and she's been in there living with it for years, man. And everybody's just like, you're crazy, Ms. Dorothy, you know, go back inside. God, and, uh, somebody threw a surprise party by our house or something and somebody jumped down and yelled surprise and that damn cat fucking almost killed the guy.

Damn. Serious shit. I mean, it's just, you don't know, you know, you don't know really what's going on, I think inside of some of these animals. That's really the tricky part for me. Yeah. Um, is there, is there a time where you get a real big one and you're like, oh, I got to pull this one out because this one I got to use for breed and this one is goes somewhere

else. Does that ever happen? Or at this point, you know exactly. We're getting into the perfect genetics for, for the birds to create, uh, you know, solid breast meat. We're really going for a heavier bird for breast and, uh, and thigh so we can feed, feed America. We're trying to, trying to get back in, uh, that's why we're always revolving and just

constant, constant birds year round. So how has the meat, damn, that's you right there? Yeah. Damn. So that's when they're, that's your first wife. Yeah. This is damn beautiful. She's pretty good.

It's actually when they're going out, so that's a good picture. See the feed lines raised, everything's there, lights are on, it's nighttime. That's one of the heavier birds that he probably weighed close to 46, 47 pounds. And this is only a middle Tom, right? No, this is a heavy Tom. Oh, this heavy Tom. That's, that's big boys there. That's, that's, see they got little beards, whatnot.

Dude, it's really, they're kind of beautiful. I didn't, I guess I have not seen pictures like this. Yeah. They're nice, pretty white birds and, uh, really clean. Like I said, the, that's why we do litter quality. When they're tilling day-to-day operation every week, we go in there with a tractor and a tiller to make sure the, you know, the shavings get brought back to the top. Everything stays nice for their feet.

Because if you, if you got poor litter quality and poor, poor life, these birds won't look like that. They'll be, uh, we really run down, they'll have burn pads on their feet from the turkey, turkey crap. Uh-huh. It'll burn their feet. So that's why we, yeah, that's why we make sure everything's nice and, nice and clean. So they're a real sensitive animal, huh?

They can be. Yeah. It's interesting how. They're tough and, you know, the turkeys are smart and dumb all at the same time, I guess just like me. Yeah. Me too. Dude.

Damn. I didn't know it was possible. And then here we are. Yeah. Um, what's something that I wouldn't expect about a turkey, man, what's something that's really unique about them compared to maybe any other animals or something that really stands out about them? Cause they definitely look really different.

They definitely, they kind of seem like a peacock that's been, you know, essentially a peacock is a turkey, just, just a different, you know, they're very, very similar. They, they'll get hooks too. They'll get spurs. They just got a weirder, uh, uh, call than a turkey does. And then, um, I don't know, they're characteristics. I mean, they're pretty much a, you know, noble, noble animal. They stick together.

Um, I don't know, just, I've been around them for so long. You know, take mine. I was raised, raised up in it 89. I was like five years old when my parents started it. So your parents started this business? Yeah. My mom and dad did it. Mom worked at the bank.

Dad worked down the road driving heavy equipment for a company down in Northern Virginia and uh, he would commute like two hours back and forth. And, uh, we just needed to figure out a better way to, to bring some money in for the farm because the farm I actually live on, hazard mill farms, it's, uh, been in the family since you know, could sit continuously since the late 1700s. And then, uh, we've been operating my great, great grandfather bought it in 1888 from another family member and he bought a bunch of these tracks up and he owned both sides of the river. Now my other family owns the other side.

We got this side, uh, right on the Shenandoah River. And has it always been turkeys for both sides or? No, no, we, we, my parents were the, so I guess I'd be a second generation turkey part. But I mean, we, we did beef cattle, my great grandfather would forge the river and bring cattle over there. They did tomatoes for the can infactory. Um, he, he was a big time farmer, granted we were poor, um, and lived off the land, but they, uh, he, now I mean, I'm looking at some, uh, prime real estate that I just

happened to put in the conservation easements and I got worried about no development. It's all bordered by national force. Right on the river. Yeah. Right on the river. Oh wow. It's beautiful. Yeah.

So do the, do, uh, so you guys, at what point did you guys get out of cropping and just get into, uh, turkey? So we were just on beef cattle. My dad started, uh, started back, bringing beef back on. He married into the, my mom's side, and it's my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, they hanged that property and, uh, you know, he started it and then they decided to say, you can grow like I was telling you, instead of having to have 200 head of cattle, you can make the same money with two turkey barns that take up 14 acres.

Wow. So we're able to preserve the land to the way we want because we're more mountain land. It's all up on Massenutton Mountain. Got some fields out there. We do hay and pasture, but other than that, you know, we couldn't run, uh, the 200 head of cattle to make enough live, you know, make a living to justify it. Right. Right.

Well, this is just more economical, makes more sense for you. Yeah. It's still, you know, to start a new barn, start to finish right now. If you're looking at, you're probably looking at 1.5 million per barn. Really? Start to finish. And then you're not going to turn a profit until, I think they're saying, depending when that barn gets built, 13 months to 16 months, by the time you're first flock and you're

turning over some money. So say you sell a flock, right? The market's at a decent price. Yeah. How, I mean, can you, is it, can you make a decent living? I mean, I used to work on a farm or worked on a soybean, corn and cotton farm in college at the end of college and, or at the end of high school and beginning of college. And, uh, you know, I didn't know anything, but I saw basically kind of how the living

was and like how, like, you know, when there was a bad crop, there was some subsidization by the government and stuff like that. So at least you had a little bit of backup because you were providing like a something of, and yeah, because you were probably providing a value to America, you know, you're providing like food or whatever it was or animal food or whatever. Um, what, uh, what, what is it like for you guys there with the market? Is it like, what can a turkey farmer make? I'm pretty small scale compared to the other guys.

So like cash flow wise, you know, I'm pulling in, you know, roughly depending on the flock average, you know, you can make it 150, you know, give or take a year and that, and that's not just on, and granted, I'm still paying electric, you know, some of that cost comes out, but we're, we're kind of like a cooperative. So we get, we do get some dividends and stuff through that. So it's not, not as bad as if I would just grew for a privatized company, like you were sharecropping or something. Yeah.

Or if I grew for like, uh, Butterball or something, they'll give you, uh, incentives and stuff as well, if you do go for your first two years, but after that, then there's no other incentive to grow for them. And then you're, you're already kind of locked in at what you got. And then you're like, well, do I build a couple more barns and take another chunk of investment out? So it's 1.5 million to start a new barn, roughly, if you wanted to start one. And that's, and it's going to be, and that's before you start to make any money to come

in. It'll be through after your first flock is done. That's three, four months, five months, maybe no, no, it's a first flock. It's, it's, it's like I said, 13 to 14 months. You're built, you got your first flock in and it's out the door. Turn around. Okay. And how long is that flock coming?

You said it's 19 weeks? 19 weeks. 19 weeks. Okay. How much months is that? Almost five months. So you can maybe do two flocks in a year kind of. Is that what you kind of go for?

We go three flocks a year. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, it's because you can overlap some? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have the idea that you want to do another barn? You think you kind of get where you're at?

I'm good where I'm at. I, like I was telling him, I'm moving a shutdown one production side and I'm actually I created Hazard Mill Selects. So right now we're doing CBD, we're growing hemp in there and then we're Virginia just went legal for marijuana. So that's my whole another step. I'm getting ready to try to get one of these permits and go, dude, if you came out with a tip with that turkey THC that shit that'll put you to sleep, boy, you know what I'm saying

to you? Because both those things will put me to sleep. If I have a little bit of turkey or have a dang hit on a joint or hit on a damn, just smell you right now. Dab, you know? Hell, if I even kiss some girl that's been smoking dope, I'll fucking go to bed, man. I gotta sleep real easy, dude. I'm real.

You know what I'm saying? I don't fucking. You ain't got to rub your belly. Oh, dude. I see a pillow, son. It's over. Yeah. You know, it's time.

Why does why does turkey make people go to sleep? Yeah, I'm not too familiar with it, but I know it releases some type of endorphin or whatnot, but it's supposed to, it's kind of like a melatonin you get from it. Do turkeys sleep a lot? Do they have it because it's in them, I guess? Well, they'll kind of get in that nesting when the lights go out for them, they'll get their downtime and they'll kind of rubble up. That's when they're all together.

They kind of just like to stick together and you'll see them all like wing to wing just chilling out and the muscle down, they'll take the fresh shavings, kick it over and then just kind of snuggle up. Kind of like lions or something. Like if you see a pride of lions out there, yeah. Now what are turkeys like different in the wild? So do you turkey hunt also? Yeah.

I'm an avid hunter, fisherman, outdoorsman. Pretty much the same except for that they're not as heavy, so they'll fly up and roost every night, so they'll do the same thing, but they'll roost in trees together. How hot can a turkey get up in a tree? I'm seeing them up in pine trees 20 to 30 feet. No way. Then they'll come off that roost and just glide. I mean, if they're off a canyon or a little cliff style, they'll just glide over and go

like three or 400 yards and then just boop and then they start doing turkey things, start pecking and looking for food and scratching around. I've actually had turkeys come up to my barns and get them riled up where they're gobbling back and forth at each other during springtime. They'll be outside like what's up and then they just start going back and forth. And who fights more than males or female turkeys? The males. Yeah.

Females, you know, other than if something's trying to get after their babies, they generally in the wild, they don't. What keeps them from mating when they're in y'all's containment over there? I think it's just because they're not technically a mature bird. Oh, so they're not even at what age do they start to mate? Like right about right when they're getting ready to go out. So they don't really, you know. So a lot of them are never going to see fatherhood really.

No, no, no. Well, they just get there, you know, do their job and, you know, feed America. It's dinner time. Everybody, I mean, it's, uh, is there a lot of pushback on the industry? No, not. I wouldn't say for, it's such a staple. See turkeys, you know, we're not like chicken companies. So you know, they're, we're a little more of a niche market compared to like Purdue for

their chickens. Because you know, you're not seeing turkey chicken nuggets, you ain't seeing turkey nuggets inside. So the demand's so high for chicken that they have have a larger turnaround. And then there, you know, there's instances where that you see some, some bad stuff that happens on farm with other workers and stuff like that, but how did, how did y'all lose that battle? Was there like a battle where it was like chicken or turkey was going to be the excite,

the one, the new, the thing, you know, I don't know, man, they've been growing, uh, turkeys since like the fifties and sixties in the Shenandoah Valley where I'm from and, um, I don't think it was ever, uh, I guess it was something back in the day because I guess turkeys got stapled as the Thanksgiving, you know, niche and then you think, oh, I'm only eat turkey once a year, maybe Christmas, you know, so you're like, okay, I eat my turkey and then just eat chicken the rest of the time. So I think maybe we kind of got ourselves put into the first Thanksgiving put us there. Yeah.

People get tired, they eat that big meal, you get tired and you're like, oh, I'm good on turkey for a while. Yeah. Maybe that's part of it too. Maybe turkey has that thing where it's like, I'm going to, uh, I'm a holiday vibe. Yeah. I think it's true. It's like it's been romanticized kind of in culture as, yeah, like a holiday meat.

Special. Yeah. It's a fancy thing. You would see rich people like at a thing and they got a big, uh, plaque or something they're eating off of and they're, you know, yeah, somebody's rich and the kids on pills or whatever, but he's still like, it's always, you know, you're like the Norman Rockwell or something. You'd see those pictures and I think it makes you feel a full turkey, a full size pig with

an apple stuck in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You would see that. You're like, oh man, this is a fancy time. They want turkey leg.

Oh, yeah. Somebody. Um, here's a question that came in right here from Christopher right here. Let's get to it. Hey Othio, Mr. Turkey Farmer. This is Chris from Down in Sydney, Australia. Rise up lights, rise up lights. I was just, uh, wondering, I'm a big fan of turkey.

I think it's a great meat. It's nourishing. It's lean. And I just wondered why you don't see it on more fast food chains like at McDonald's or KFC. Cause you know what I mean? I'd love to have a Mcgobble-gobble, uh, no homo. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah. But yeah, that's my question. No homo. Why don't you see turkey on more fast food menus? Cause it's a great, great meat. Yeah. It is.

Gang, gang, gang baby. Thank you, bro. Yeah. And, uh, rise up lights. If you say razor, if you say rise up lights, rise up lights a couple times, it sounds like razor blades in Australian. Okay. Rise up lights.

You just taught me something there. Yeah. Try it. It's good. Rise up lights. Rise up lights. Rise up lights. Yeah.

It sounds like razor blades. It's razor. So anyway, just good ice breaker. Good, you know, keep the wife warm with that one. Yeah. Uh, but that's a great question. Yeah. How does it, why isn't it?

Do you think it's headed that way? Well, first start. Why isn't it? Why isn't turkey more that thing? Now you do see it at like a Jimmy John's. You do see it at a Subways. You see it at Arby's. So you're seeing like a lot of them, it's going to be like the sliced turkey.

So that's something that we would probably sell like a product where they're getting that breast meat to the masses. I'd love to see like a turkey tender instead of a chicken tender. I just think the market for it to be sustainable like that. The reason you haven't seen the turkeys go hard. It's just really just that we don't have that type of, um, that many farmers out there to actually be able to consistently sustain that, that demand at the moment. So it's kind of like we go all in and then say you guys don't end up wanting to, you

know, turkey nuggets or whatnot, and then you got like a lot of farmers don't invest it, you know, two, three million dollars in this stuff. And then they're out, out on the streets again. You almost need a different hype, man. You need it like a big PR thing to be like turkey is that thing. It's like, yeah, cause you see us at Panera bread. That's another big comp. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I hadn't really thought like it's only turkeys often sliced or you'll see it at like a Boston market or something like that, sometime a place where they do more of a meal. I think yeah, it's regarded as more of a meal and not as much of a, I don't want to say like a cheap eat, but cause I love turkey burgers, turkey burgers is something that I love.

That's delicious. Yeah, man. So, and maybe some of it's growing over time. Do you know if the market is growing over time? It has compared, I mean, you're going from, you know, when my parents started in 89, I know they've had some attempts, niche markets where they pushing it, but now since people are more wanting to know what they put in their body, like he was saying, people want that lean protein from that turkey and it's different than chicken.

Yeah. I think it's, if not better, I mean, you barbecue up a couple, a couple chicken tenders and slice that breast up just right. I mean, it's good on the grill, good, good anywhere, man. Fucking looks good, man. Yeah. God damn it looks good. Yeah.

I'm thinking about it right now, dude. If I had it, I'd cook it for you. Fuck, man. I'll have to get you one. Every time people see you, they just want some damn turkey like, hey, what are you doing here? Give me some damn turkey. It's like, yeah, man.

Can I get a little slice? It's in the problem. They just want some. Like you should have it in your coat like a little hip, man. You want some breast? Yeah. Want that thigh? Yeah, dude.

I'd probably take a little thigh, man, I think, you know, is one part, is there a part of the turkey that's being used for something new and novel that we don't know about or like a new, like, is there a part that they're... They sell everything from our turkeys to everything. Yeah. The feathers will go, you know, they've even shipped stuff to South Korea, stuff like that, the guts, the in-ear stuff like that, I don't know what to use them for, but they've found a really good market where they can, you know, be very useful and use pretty much all the

birds, the feed, what, you know. So there's a niche for just about anything in the world. Somebody's going to eat it like we're just talking about turkey fries. You wouldn't think that would be a niche, but we sell a pile of turkey fries. And what is... Oh, a turkey fry is a nut. Duts. Yeah, turkey.

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Go to publicrec.com and use promo code Theo to receive 10% off. That's publicrecrec.com and use promo code Theo for 10% off. Public rec yourself. What else we got over there? Spence? Anything else come in? Here's a question right here from a white guy. What up Theo?

It's Carl here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shout out Nick. I have a quick question for your turkey farmer. What does he eat on Thanksgiving? Because for me, if I was processing all those birds and getting ready for this Thanksgiving rush, I'd be so over it, I'd be like, no, we're going to get some steaks. We're going to get some ham or something else. So what does he do?

And then if he is turkey, then what's his favorite side? Because obviously the bird man is going to know the best side to go with some turkey. So I'm looking for some suggestions. I appreciate you. Gang, gang. That bird man, yeah, what's the choice from the captain himself? What is it? You know, I always joke around with the guys.

We eat one of our turkeys every year. So like just before I come here, one of my guys from the company, we kill our own birds and then we keep our turkey birds and we give everybody in the company a free turkey. But with that being said, I mean, I've been lobbying to get some ham, maybe partner up with a pig company or exchange or something. Yeah, do y'all do it? Is there any dark sneaking over there at night across the freaking pig pen or what? Is there any?

No, no, it's none of that. But do you choose? So for Thanksgiving, you guys have turkey? Yes. I mean, I cook a lot. I'm, you know, borderline chef, wife's a chef, but we do the, I do a nice infrared. So I don't deep fry it, but I put them in that infrared and it gets that crispiness just like a deep fried bird without all that oil.

Really? It's delicious. Is it? Yeah. Because I grew up on that turducken, man. And even that. Oh, yeah. Turduckens.

We had damn turditos. I remember something. It's like a turkey and a duck and then they fill it with Cheetos. I remember. Shit. And I'm like, what is this shit? You know what I'm saying? They had damn everything out there.

Spicy Cheetos or regular Cheetos? Oh, I think it was. I couldn't tell. I think it was regular. Okay. Yeah. Because nobody in our area ate those jalapeno Cheetos. It was more the, they didn't even have the hot ones at that point.

It was just, they were still doing the regular Cheetos. You know? Something to try. But that third item now, did that turducken, did that ever hit you? Do you guys have to do that? No, no. I'm never, I mean, I've bought a turducken. You believe in all that?

It's not. It's okay. It's just a lot going on. You got the turkey and chicken and all that stuff, stuff in there. Sometimes I've seen them stuff a quail in that thing. Yeah. Or I've seen a turala, turala, or whatever it is, turala, it's turkey, alligator, and then sheep meat in it.

And I'm like, at some point people are just, damn, this is a damn gang bang, I feel like. You know what I'm saying? That's a little too much. I feel like if you get all those meats and just cook them primarily alone, you can still do your own mix. Yeah. You could mix it on your plate. Like, why do you have to, I feel like they get...

It robs flavor from one or the other. Yeah. That's a lot of trial and error there. Now, I like my turkey. I like to do it in that infrared deep fryer style, a boil-less fryer, whatever you want to call it. Is it good? I've never had that.

That's sawn. It's almost like a sauna, huh? So it's propane, and then it's like one of those smokeless fire pits, you know? So now the smoke comes up, and it's like a tube, and you drop the turkey in just like a fryer, and the heat just goes around it, and it crisps it up just perfectly. Oh, damn, boy. Like that thing's in Barbados or something. Yeah.

I like to inject it with some marinade, get it juicy. Do you guys also, have you ever thought of getting into that market, or that's not really your market to get into like a marinade? It's... Because I guess you don't have that storefront. I right now do not have the storefront. Eventually, you know, Hazardville Farms itself, you know, we're planning to put in probably some grapes, do a winery.

I wanted to infuse some CBD into my wine tasting room. I got an events barn down there on the river. We've been doing some events. Oh, nice, man. Lightings and stuff. Yeah, I'm curious. Do you feel like you wanted to be a turkey farmer, or do you feel like you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Like, where do you kind of feel like some of your sense to be a businessman came from? Just being able to diversify, and my major push is to save small farms, be creative, and then give back. So entrepreneurship was, you know, all on me. Setting around, I want to be creative, so my daughter doesn't have to sell the property. I think the death of small farms is really where the mom and dad starts to farm. We can't afford to live off them. We go get a job, then we end up getting our own career.

So they just never really come back to the farm until mom and dad dies, and then, boom, they're selling it. And then they're selling it because their interest is gone. Yeah, it's interesting how we do that, huh? Yeah, so I'm here to, you know, that's why I came to chat. I mean, I'm really, I'm on Sixth District as the congressional district, I'm on the Ag Advisory Committee for Congressman Klein. Okay.

And that's in Virginia? Yeah, that's in Virginia. So really bad props to Ben Klein, good friend of mine. He really wants to know what's every niche. He wants to know what's good for dairy, for his district, what's good for poultry. You know, he doesn't know much about it because he, you know, he was an attorney, commonwealth attorney, and then got the congressional spot there a few years back. So I mean, just, I give him bad props.

He's going out and trying to find us like-minded farmers to meet and then help him out. What do we need? How do we do better? And how can we save these farms and keep us rocking? Wow. And what's the biggest threat to the small farms? Subdivisions and development. Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, I guess now you said that you had that conservatorship now, or conservatorship? I got a conservation easement with VCC, Virginia Council out of Stanton, Virginia. Yeah. So your land will be safe now so they can't develop within that? Even if it's sold, they would have to buy that thing in a large track and there's no commercial nor housing can be developed if anything did happen. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I had on a guy who does small game, he does

like if you got something in your house that's not your wife or kid, but it's trying to, you know, be alive, you know what I'm saying, that mid-sized animal control man, this fella. And he said that a lot of times you find raccoons in your house, you find this, and he goes, because he's like, they don't know what your house, dude. They're not like robbers or burglars or, you know, like they're not like the wet bandits, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like they are just, they think it's a tree.

Like their trees have all been torn down and shit, so they're just climbing into whatever seems like it's close to that. So it's interesting when we start to really give up our nature. I think a lot of it goes too, too. We get so stuck inside of ourselves like, I was going for a jog this morning, it's beautiful out there, man. That's the place where I've seen the wild turkeys that just have them out there and like, you see them gobbling and sometimes they'll be a little crew of them, pretty cool, just to

just to run right. I mean, you're probably 15, 20 feet and sometimes they run off, sometimes they be a little curious. So it's like, but it's, sometimes I'm so in my head the whole time I'm running, I'm barely even seeing that I'm in like a damn beautiful place, you know, I mean, it's stunning. So I'm missing all of the, I'm missing all of the nature. I think a lot of that, that kind of stuff happens because we just don't, we don't even value it anymore. We don't even see it, you know, anyway, that's a long diatribe for me.

But so, so one of the biggest, biggest problems is people coming along and just building stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, as soon as that family lose interest and you can't blame the kid that went out and started a nice career somewhere else, I get it. But if we're able to diversify, agritourism is huge for us right now. It's kind of what I'm, what I'm doing with the, I want to do the grapes, the wine, CBD, eventually cannabis, you know, I just want to be able to have a good living with the

wedding venue and events venue that I'm doing right now and spend a big hit, done a lot of charity work this past year with it. So it's get back to the community, why we, you know, try to preserve this, you know, beautiful piece of track of land I got and just that whole valley, I'm very fortunate that not only my property, I mean, we have a whole corridor on that river that's all under conservation easement now. On the Shenandoah Valley. Can you bring that up?

Yeah. South Fork of the Shenandoah River. And I think it's interesting that, you know, because it is interesting, if you're doing events and when I saw those pictures of the white, you showed me the picture of you in there with those white birds. It's funny. It really changed a lot of my perception of what I was even talking about because I just don't have any idea.

A lot of people have, you just have no idea. Yeah, you don't, you don't know the market. It's not a very, you've never seen anything. Yeah. That's me right there. Shenandoah River. Oh, that's beautiful, man. Yeah.

We got the, that's, that's a view from Andy Guest go down a little bit that right there, Shenandoah State Park. That's to the middle. Yeah. So that's a view back going toward my mountain. Okay. That's my family across the river. They're my great uncle put that and sold that to the state park to save it from being

developed. Wow. Shenandoah State Park. It's really, I mean, I'm not trying to be biased, but I think we have probably the prettiest stretch of river in the whole valley, but it goes all the way up to Page and Leray and it'll, it'll run all the way to Harper's Ferry. All the way up to, in Tennessee. West Virginia, Harper's Ferry.

Oh, wow. Yeah. It flows north. So it'll go all the way down and dump into a Potomac. So Front Royal, they'll run in. That's our town we live in. North and South Meat. And then that Shenandoah River becomes one, the John Denver stuff, and then you'll go

on down and it'll join in Harper's Ferry and dump into the Potomac. Wow. I just, we did a show, we used to go along the Potomac. I never knew what it was. I mean, I knew about it, but it's, yeah, it's just funny. We just, I mean, I don't know, and I don't say we, but I need to see more nature so that it becomes a, you know, more of a common understanding. Anytime you want to come out, take you fishing.

I see you call a smallmouth there while back. Oh yeah. Dude barely called it. Jesus. You got it in, man. But it was pretty cool. We were catching. The Meadows.

The Meadows, yeah, literally out of like, we had like one of those nets, you throw it, you know? Yeah, casting nets. Dude, it was so cool. I'd never done it. Yeah. So then you, you get it on the thing and then you put it in this other thing, in this other area where the water is, water, and then next thing you know, you get a, oh, dude,

they were like. Hammering it. But after about 32 minutes, 31 minutes, they quit. I think that word got out. Yeah. You got so many in one hole that gigs get up, but yeah, anytime you come on out to the river, man, we'll take you up. What's a city that's near you guys?

So Front Royal, Lou Ray, that's kind of rural, Front Royal where the gateway is Skyline Drive, and that's the start. And Skyline Drive will go all the way down to Stanton, and it turns into the Blue Ridge Parkway. It goes North Carolina. Okay. But Winchester, I know you probably heard of Winchester. Winchester, Virginia?

Yeah. No. So that's the next one up. And then we're only like 70 miles from DC. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, man, I wouldn't mind coming to check out the turkey farm, maybe on a tour whenever we do DC, we could set it up because we just went to Richmond, but I'm sure we'll go somewhere

else. But yeah, it's just funny, man, until I saw that picture of you with those, I'm like, I didn't even know they looked like this. I don't have a real perception of something. What's another question that came in here for Robert Spence? Oh, shoot, gotta turn that around. What up, Theo? What up, turkey killer?

I know Theo, you know, he believes in it, and certain people like to debate it, but I want to know if there's ever been a turkey with that DS, you know, you ever seen one with one eye open or cross-eyed or whatever. Curious to see if you ever seen one and do those kind of get kicked out from the rest of the group as far as what gets put on Thanksgiving dinner table or what, let me know. All right, gang, gang, turkey hitter. Gang, baby, yeah, do turkeys get diseases like humans? Do they get Down syndrome?

They'll have some modified genetics every once while, like a crooked foot or, you know, just like a droopy neck, or it's not so much like what we call it, like Down syndrome. I just think it's, you know, they're born with some type of disability, and usually they get culled out, just, yeah, man, you either, you don't want that bird to suffer, and it's, like I said, depending on the bird. Like one guy asked if we ever kind of keep them, I do have like a holding pin to help birds to heal back up, and if they can make it, they can, that way they're not in general population.

Yeah, yeah. Kind of, yeah, get them out, Jen, put them in that solitaire, but now we're just trying to run a healthy, successful business, hopefully, and, but yeah, they just get culled, man, sometimes a dog eat world out there. Yeah, well, it's funny how we romanticize nature as if it's going to do this beautiful thing for itself, that once we become involved, that like, oh, well, of course, sometimes we're using animals for food, of course, but, but also it's like, you know, like a raccoon will kill its children, a raccoon, a man raccoon will kill a female raccoon's children just

so she'll go back in the heat so we can have sex. Same with the bear. I mean, that's some damn, that's, I mean, that's some rest or whole shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying, dude? That's dark arts. Yeah, so, you know, being, being ethical and properly euthanizing them on the spot, you know, you got to make that call and not even second guess.

I mean, Cam talks the same stuff about how, you know, cruel the hunting, you know, the nature is compared to hunting and it's true. I mean, you, you're able to, you know, arrow that, that animal or, you know, shoot that animal at a good ethical shot and you're able to harvest that meat with, you know, minimum damage where you, you watch a wilder beast or whatever out there getting eaten by a line while he's just sitting there with a broken back holler and same with the bears and it's just. Yeah, they're not doing it.

It's not like they're inviting them to a damn Holiday Inn or something. They eat them while they're still alive. It's like, man, come on. It's interesting. Yeah. That whole, that whole world is interesting. You know, we had the guy, Jimmy John, who, John Lea Tao, who, who ran the Jimmy's, you created the Jimmy John's company, right?

Yeah. We were talking a little bit. He's a big game hunter and, but what some people don't know is that you pay some of his exorbitant fees to go hunt like a specific animal and then the fee will pay for like the. The fee that will pay for like local school. I mean, especially like when you're in Africa, some of these other countries, like you're paying for like, you're going to really keep that economy alive and it provides that food

for that, that community. I mean, there's tons of things that go into that. Yeah. That's true. The food to conservation is key because they, they have those villagers come and actually I have a friend that's South African and they, you know, his family had a hunt and preserve. He moved to my town, but same thing, man.

They're, they're there to feed the, the village and they got like a hundred little, they watch out for poachers, they'll notify the, you know, they're there to snitch on these awful people that are poachers and, you know, that's their livelihood. Yeah. It's their food. That's what keeps them surviving. Yeah. So it's interesting.

It's like, Wendy, it's like, yeah, what is he like that whole line is very interesting. Do you feel like turkeys seem like a regular pet? Do they seem like a dog? Do they seem like they have that kind of thing in them? Or do they seem more distant and more like just a snack? I mean, there's a, there's a fine balance. If you, I don't care if that, you had two turkeys by theirself in a pen that you farm raised your, they can kind of, you know, they can get to the point where they're kind of

a little bit nicer. But like I said, the people that are raising turkeys small, small range and backyard at a point at that 18 to 19 old range, they're still going to be an asshole. Right. But like I said, as they get older, that stuff goes away, they'll, they'll mellow out. Right. You know, I've seen turkeys that are pretty chilled and cool. And then I've seen turkeys that are, you know, it's probably just like human nature.

You know, we, some of us are chilled and others are complete dicks. Oh dude. Most of them. I mean, when I was 16 years old, I was probably deserved to die. Yeah. I mean, if I'm real. Same here. Same here.

Everybody I know did. What's the personal life like over there? You got a spouse. I see you brought your beautiful wife here today. Where'd you guys meet? Oh, we met at a bar. Yeah. Yeah.

When y'all were, what age were you? Oh, I think I was mid 20s by then. So yeah, I think we've been together for about eight years. Oh, that's a nice run. Huh? How's it been now when you give my thumbs up so far? She puts up with me. Does she?

Yeah. She's a good girl. Did she want to be a entrepreneur? Did she let have a business side or is that? Yeah. Yeah. She came from the restaurant industry, chef, ran a restaurant there in town for a while. We got together.

I built her a food truck. She was chefing up some quality food at a couple wineries. We do some big events like Cycle Virginia where there's like, no, like 35, 3800 cyclists. Oh, wow. And then we do other events and then now she's doing tiny hazard kids clothes. We have a daughter that's five years old and she makes some really unique pieces for other moms. They got a bunch of different moms groups and stuff.

So she's a homemaker. She's making awesome clothes and it's called Tiny Hazards. Okay. Cool. Yeah. We'll share the website and stuff and share the link. So that's a small business and that's what kind of stuff would you get from there? Could you get stuff for the holiday season from there?

Yeah. Yeah. She's getting ready. I think you got a whole holiday line you're doing so she's got the Christmas collection. Oh, there you go. Yeah. And it's for children's clothing? Yeah.

So snow for kids. I'm sure she would make something for some animals, some dogs and cats, but she's got her template done and she'll do from babies up to toddlers. So it's kind of like that. I don't know if you ever heard of rags, but that's kind of kind of like a kid's clothes like that. But it's her own. Nice.

Now I'm gonna have to check it out. I don't have any children yet, but I wouldn't mind getting a wife and getting some children. Well, you're in Nashville. There's plenty of them down there. I know, man. But a lot of them down there are getting damn DUIs, you know what I'm saying? I got to find one I think a little further away from Broadway where there's a little less liquor in them.

Yeah. Well, you're good over here. You could probably get you a Suburbian. I got a, yeah, maybe one with some more antibiotics in it. Yeah. Get you a farm girl. I wouldn't mind, you know. One with like, you know, something to talk to you with a horse farm or something.

Yeah. I wouldn't mind, you know, as long as I wonder why like, you definitely find, you definitely find more of like kind of a home, not, I don't want to say homemaker type, but people that it does, people that's more family centric, I think here, then, um, in like Los Angeles there, it's a little bit more work centric and the, and the, it's hard to have a family because everybody kind of, that's hard to have a family, but it's hard to have like a space for a family to really like, uh, breathe, I think. Well, it's good to get that teammate.

She does, you know, she does, she's not just at home. She works for a successful barbecue company. She does all the bookkeeping, tax preparation, same with me. She keeps my, my book's in order, so I don't have to thank as much on that. I feel you. Taxes, taxes are the devil. Uh, for the most part. I'm thinking the damn devil, dude.

That's trouble. Yeah, it is trouble, man. Um, and what's the biggest threat then to turkey crops every year? Um, just, just the unknown avian flu or something. About lightning or something? No, lightning's not a big deal. No. We're good at it.

I mean, you, you can have pile ups if a loud noises or go out, but like I said, we, we got alarm systems in there. We know what that stuff's running at all. I mean, if something happened, I get a phone call right now and I'll know, send my worker in there. Um, the bigger operations, they'll, they'll have like a whole command center and they'll have cameras on every, every angle. Computers run the, it's like punk.

Yeah, man. Computers, computers run the curtain machines, the heaters, everything's on thermostat, everything. And we're trying to provide them with the, the best possible growing environment. And that's pretty much, you know, as long as you don't mess up with the biosecurity and go in there and bring something from the outside world, you're usually golden. Now, they, a lot of, there's a lot of like a, I mean, even with that avian flu or whatever like, and humans can get that too. Now, that's not transmitted from, from what I, uh, you know, what we've read on that.

It's not something that there's a type of avian flu that we'll go transfer to human. But I think all that stuff's over in China and, uh, Can we transfer anything to them? Is there any like illness that you would have or would have? No, no, no, no, nothing that we carry would, you know, transcend over there. I mean, they had a, I think some turkeys had what they call like a blue comb. It's kind of like a coronavirus, but they, that's something that's been for years. They've had, and it's just kind of similar symptoms other than you got to, they get like

a kind of a cough, chill out for about two weeks. It's just like a little flu, but it's not, you know, it does hurt their growth, but it doesn't really like massively kill them. But I've heard of stuff like that out there, but, you know, for the most part in the valley, we've done very well and we're spaced out enough and we create, you know, good, good quality birds and, uh, another little statistic I didn't even hit you with just just the industry aligned for poultry in Virginia, you know, that's, that's a 12 to 13, uh, billion dollar industry.

Wow. That we provide. Wow. So it's not like it's small time. I mean, we're small time, but we're providing a much larger service than what we. Yeah. Yeah. You don't think about it.

I mean, people just think everything just comes from somewhere. People think you just get emailed to Turkey now, like it's just, you know, um, one last question I had. I mean, why do we, can I have turkey eggs? It's the same as chicken eggs? Yeah. No way. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a bigger, bigger egg. I didn't know it. It's bigger too. It's a little bit bigger. And does it taste the same? I mean, it's not too much different. I've only had it a few times, but I mean, you, you could potentially get Turkey eggs

if you had like a, a laying operation, like a small time and it's, I believe I don't even know anybody right now that does that, you know, like from a small farm aspect, like, you know, everybody has some chickens or something. Yeah. And they produce, you get three chickens. They're producing way more eggs than you could ever eat by yourself. Oh yeah. My sister, they're not eating eggs.

You got eggs. They're dying eggs. They're dying eggs on them. You know, they're dying them for Halloween and shit. They're out of their minds, but, uh, but yeah, they got, I love their, when they have chickens, I love being over there. Some of the chickens get pretty friendly. Yeah.

Some, some will. Some can, uh, usually the Mariesters, like I said, just like a Turkey dickhead. Yeah. They're coming up, trying to throw, throw bows on you. So a Turkey's a bit more like a rooster. Yeah. Okay. So that's the concept, you know, how roosters can be really aggressive, chase you, them

turkeys will chase you. I wonder some of these kind of more like athletic type men's and stuff would do, uh, a chicken, a turkey egg. I wonder if there'd be a market for that. Like, I feel like if I'm a protein junk, you know, like I'm one of those guys, then I'd love to have me, you know, eight turkey eggs at the house have the boys come over. Yeah. And I mean, I think some of them guys, they go for ostrich eggs.

You see how big they suckers are. Oh, really? Yeah. Let me see a turkey egg. Spence. We'll get out of here. I never even looked at one. Yeah.

Oh, damn. Yeah. See? It's a handful. It's bigger than a chicken egg. Yeah. Yeah. That's bigger than a jumbo chicken egg at that.

You see a whole palm in the hand. So you're looking at maybe a regular eggs like that. And then you got that. There you go. Oh, stunting. And he's mixed, too, that one. Uh-huh. Got that speckle.

Yeah, boy, damn. That Ben Simmons baby, let's go, son. What do you do to keep busy outside of when you're not working? About close to nine, 10 years ago, I started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. And then I've been doing it ever since.

Started a gym. Now I've got two gyms located, one in Front Royal, one in Leray. My other buddy's a second degree black belt, my buddy Andy. He's got a gym in Harrisonburg near JMU College. Oh, yeah. So we started that. They're switching conference, I think, JMU. Yeah.

They're going big time. They're going. Good for them. Yeah, man. They're killing it. They got a good program and they'll bring in a lot more money with that new, I think they're going, what, pack son or mount? A son or something?

Something like that. I don't know. Something son. Son built. Son built. No belt, I think. No belt. That's my jiu-jitsu class.

Yeah. Yeah. That's cool, man. You also run the gyms? Yeah. People that run them. So I run the gyms with other instructors. I got a couple of guys that came up through the ranks with me and I'm currently a brown

belt right now under Christian Woodmancy and he's an autos black belt from his gyms in Philly. So Logic. And then just all over the place, man, I've trained with all the autos guys, JT Torres, Andre Galvo, and then just had my buddy Nisar, he's one of the HQ black belts out. He came out and we had him for a seminar, hung out with him for about four or five days. Oh, that's cool, huh? Get some training in and good times, but yeah, Andy's gyms pressure, BJJ and Harrison

Berg. But now, man, I love it. My daughter is five now. So she, she's all, yeah, she's all about it. It's a great community. Yeah. So I love the kids class, adults class, you know, we just come together and have a good time.

Yeah, it was funny. I was in, uh, that's awesome, man. And congrats on just staying so, uh, entrepreneurial. That's one thing I find that's always interesting in people is how do you get entrepreneurial? You know, how, where does that come from? I just, I think, uh, you know, certain, certain drives, you know, I'm not, I'm not working a typical nine to five job like yourself. You're not doing it, you know, you're doing your thing, grinding it out and then, um,

I'm always taking on, you know, I get, get a bunch of crap, but you know, she, she supports me on everything I do, but I do take on a lot of projects, you know, I'm doing thermal shelter. I'm building a homeless, uh, shower trailer right now, um, for animals or people for people for the thermal shelter for the homeless air in my town, uh, help homeless. How many people live in the town? It's not like you probably have 11 homeless. Yeah.

It's probably like, you probably get about 25 or so. That's fair. Yeah. We got a population of 40, 50,000 people. Oh, wow. That's a nice size. So it's not, not too bad. We got a lot of DC people move out and it's a pretty place to live about, huh?

It's gorgeous. Mountains, uh, rivers there. You got, I mean, the, the tourism aspect there, you know, that we had, uh, we call them leafers. They just come there to skyline drive and they want to see, they want to see the leaves. And you're talking about, they're backed all the way back up 66 for miles. Yeah. It turns our traffic into, uh, 495 Baltimore style traffic for, for those few weekends

of the year. Yeah. We were just riding through like, uh, Vermont and some other places and at the best part, we got a tour bus for the first time, rented a tour bus. Nice. Yeah. It was real interesting. But I got to sit in the back and have the window open.

It's like, man, you just get to see the leaf, we were just cruising through leaf areas, you know? Yeah. You see all these leaf people and like the wife's got, you know, the shirt made just completely out of, she's got all these leaves hooked on her shirt. Yeah. Look like a damn scarecrow. You'll see them yank off side of the road, about run you off, just to get a picture.

They're like, I'm going to take a picture on the side of the road. Yeah. Every five miles, new picture. Is there like an albino turkey that happens? Is there any like interesting pigmentation that happened with a rare bird where you get a completely white or black or blue turkey? Is there anything interesting like that? No.

Our birds are, you know, a Nicholas or a hybrid style bird and they're always going to be a white, white feathered bird and nothing, nothing out of the norm. Now, wild turkeys, you have different subspecies and no crossbreed mainly, you know, out west where the Marion and the Rio kind of pops out a hybrid looking bird, but uh. You ever eaten peacock or anything like that? I won't say nothing. No, I ain't ate no peacock. I thought about it.

Yeah, I have. I've thought about it. I will eat some one day, I'm just going to be honest. So I don't want to say I'm nod and lie to everybody. That's good stuff. I hear good things. Yeah. Look, I mean, look, it's bird.

Yeah. Look, look, if it looks like that, I'm going to have a little. That's all I'm saying. Um, Robert up, man. Thank you so much for being here with us, man. I really appreciate it. I definitely appreciate it. Oh, I got you some swag from the farm and the Jiu-Jitsu gym.

Oh, I need a new hat. So I got that. Uh, it's a brand build. Yeah. Yeah, they're cool company, huh? Yeah, man, they do awesome work. They do. They've been doing real well.

They sent us something a while back. Nice of them. How's your milk farm? That's the farm? Yeah, that's the farm there. Gang, baby. There's an extra medium. You find your.

Extra medium, man. I've never seen that. That's real large. You got a medium there if you find your girl down there. Okay. Yeah. So what's up? I got the turkey look on.

You know how I like them, baby, you know? You know how I like them, dude. At least 16 weeks. Yeah. Robert Hubman, thank you so much for coming in, dude. This is really just a nice gift, man. I know with Thanksgiving time, people aren't thinking about turkeys and stuff. Do Native Americans ever look at you as like the bad, like, do you ever get billed as like

the bad guy for doing turkey thing? Not to my face. I mean, I got some Native American family members. So we're the Virginia tribes, they still give a turkey and a deer to the governor every year. Oh, wow. But now. Really?

It's applicable. Hey, have you looked that up? They'll still do that. It's like an annual, since there's no reservations or anything in Virginia, you know, there's just what's left of us in that area, you know, my family members, they do the powwows and they'll do Native. Oh, you have Native American family members? Yes.

I got some of their Mary Dan and, you know, they treat me, you know, they're awesome. So I mean, I don't have, I don't think they were really worried about. Nobody's coming at you like you were like pilgrim. No, no. I didn't think. No. You never know what's going on out there. Man, you never know.

Yeah. Everybody's coaching with me. I try to do my thing, help people do good stuff. Yeah. It sounds like it, man. Yeah. Congrats on running a cool, small business, man, and in a big industry. Yeah.

And just, you know, it's fascinating to learn and how much it costs to start and it's been a real interesting conversation for me, man. I appreciate your time. Yeah. I appreciate you having me there. Yeah. I do tours with the 4-H kids, get them involved, kind of give them that, that info on that industry.

Oh, yeah. My sister has a little bunny name. I don't know what his name was. I think his name was Denver or something, but he won. They won something. They keep him pretty clean, but I wish she kept her damn house clean. That thing is a damn trap, though. God dang, dude.

I said the Lord ain't going to show up in here if this place is this dirty. I say he's just not doing it, you know, but yeah. We'll put the links to some of the stuff that you're doing, man, so people can check it out. Yeah. One other thing. I do a hunting youth day every year for kids, and like I was telling them, I take six kids maximum from everywhere, from New Jersey, Atlanta.

They come out and I partnered with my best friend, TJ. He's a VP of the Black American Outdoorsmen. They got a pretty good size following, and we bring them out and give them all their swag. They get hunting gear. It's a black hunting group? Yeah. Yeah, they have, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, man. It's for everyone. There are groups out there, dude. I see on TikTok some black hunter dudes sometimes. Yeah. Just because growing up, I never saw that, you know, but now you see a lot more. I just had never seen it. But anyway, it's getting...

Yeah, man, they're... Everybody loves to hunt. Yeah, everybody loves to hunt. A lot of people do. And the better we are at introducing new people, it's just going to be good for our industry and our sport for the hunting aspect and the outdoors, and the main goal is to try to save as much land that we can for not only farming, but, you know, certain places just need to go look at.

But we want to have pictures like that that we can pull up in 20 years if we don't take care of certain land, you know. It's funny because even when we went and looked in Chattanooga a couple of months ago, we're doing a show over there. So we went out to the... You can see some of the river stuff there, and now there's more factories in the distance. So even the scenery there, it's just getting a little bit marred up. Did you guys go up on the cliff?

Yeah, we went up on one of them. I don't remember which one it was, but it's just interesting. We don't think about all that, you know, until today we do. And I don't think what's turkey, what it looks like to be a turkey farmer, I'll see that picture. It's funny. You just don't know until you have some introduction, so thank you for introducing us to some stuff today, man.

Yeah. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. You guys be well and a happy Thanksgiving to you. Yep. Thanks. Let's get into it.

Oh. Whoo-whoa-whoa. Yeah. In my bones But it's gonna take A little time For me to set that parking brake And let myself unwind

Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I will sing it just for you And now I've been moving way too fast On a runaway train with a heavy load of my past And these wheels that I've been riding on

They want so thin that they damn they're gone And I guess now they just weren't built to last