FARM Q & A

Y’all asked and y’all shall receive!

Q: Have you always wanted a farm like this? I think you’re living the greatest dream😍 so inspiring!

A:
Remi - I actually had a vision while meditating before getting this house of living on a farm just like this. It had a picket fence around and lots of animals. It was a dream, I didn’t think it was an actual reality and so soon.
Nate - I actually never thought that I would get back to this way of life.

Q: Did either of you have farm experience prior?

A:
Nate- I was raised farming and ranching we had every freakin livestock you could think of. The whole point of it is to be a fully self sustainable family. That’s one of the biggest benefits is that you are incredibly self-sustaining and don’t need to depend on anyone else. We would grow our own hay and cut and bale our hay so we had enough to feed our animals through the winter. We always had food to eat and grew all of our vegetables.
Remi- I have ZERO farm experience but the reason we are able to run this so smoothly is because he has had this in the past.

Q: Most surprising thing about owning and operating a farm?

A:
Remi- The tools necessary to have and run a farm. When we came here the first thing he did was get a pick up truck. He got a pick up truck so he could get a trailer. And then he got a trailer so he could hall the animals. But then once you have everything you are kind of set for decades to come.
Nate- There is nothing surprising for me about it. I wasn’t naive enough to come out here and think it would be smooth sailing breeze because I’ve done this before. The moment you think that you’ve got things figured out, you get a real hard reality check that you don’t quite know what you are doing. You have to adjust, pivot and there are constant problems that need to be solved everyday.

Q: Are you both able to leave the farm to go on vacation?

A:
Nate- What I have here is a vacation. Every single day. I would rather be out there stressed chasing animals or fixing fences. Whenever we was wanting to go on that trip not so long ago you were saying the weathers going to be great, really warm and sunny and I was like well its really dang warm and sunny here. The timing wasn’t great either. Im having lambs right now and god forbid I’m gone in a different county and I’m way far away and I’m having complications with lambs. Id rather stay here.
Remi- I still travel. I was just in Paris with my mom and I’m going to Joe Dispenza reatreat next week. I go back to LA once a month. Thats how it goes, I have outlets to enjoy the city life and travel and Nate holds down the fort here.

Q: What is your longterm vision for the farm? / Is your farm open for visitation?

A:
Remi- I want to share the experience with everyone. One day we hope to open up a wellness center where people can stay and check out of the city for a weekend and experience this self sustaining lifestyle
Nate- Were always in this rush to what’s the next thing, why does it always have to be this long term vision. We got animals out here and maybe once the soil quality improves I can grow some really good grass on the pastures maybe run some cows./ I think that what she is really experiencing and what I knew the experience would kind of be like or bring is reviving we want to share that with people that we care about.

Q: Is there anything you wish you did differently when you started the farm journey?

A:
Remi- So our UTV is very important to us, he needs it to haul water to different pastures for the animals every day twice a day and we first got one off craigslist that was really cheap and sounded great but of course it broke down the first week and then we were out of it and we are still dealing with that today, literally today we were trying to get our other UTV fixed./ We got them in October of last year which is when we got here and they had them in the freeze. All these things could have been avoided.
Nate- When we first start out getting some goats I bought some Nanny goats some female goats that were already bred by another breeder you know that sounds like a great idea. You’re getting a two for one special. If i could go back I would definitely not buy animals that were already bred by someone else. Definitely always opt for the most well established breeders. You get what you pay for. Don’t try to find deals on animals because you’re just going to get sick animals. Getting these Nanny goats already bred and not knowing when exactly they were going to have these babies and trying to eyeball it and figure it out trying to figure out how many kid goats they are going to have. These are some of the best lessons and we learned them all quick right off the bat.

Q: Is the farm your forever home?

A:
Remi- Its hard to look into that future that is so far away. Eventually if this becomes a wellness center, we’d still be here there is going to be like some more development coming around this area. So it will change with time and maybe at that point its like do we pick up and go but this is all like 10-15 years from now maybe. Things change so quick. I didn’t even think I was going to move from a different state and that happened.
Nate- It’s our home now.

Q: Are you guys interested in regenerative ag?

A:
Nate- Regenerative agriculture is geared around restoring the quality fo the soil naturally. So if you think about the big time grow crop farmers that do mono crop farmers. Means that they are planting the same crops in bulk every single year year after year. Spraying all this pesticides and herbicides and this crap that is damaging the soil. Who knows how much is actually contributing to climate change and everything but it is definitely not good for the environment. It is a much better approach to restoring the natural soil quality. By doing selective grazing, using sheep, goats, or hogs. Planting cover crops and letting nature do its thing. Like spreading compost around on the pasture which I do. It’s a long and tedious process but its better in the log run. You get better quality food out of it and your animals are restoring your land for you.

Q: How did you guys decide on which animals to get?

A:
Nate- All the animals have a purpose they’re not all just a bunch of pets. You know, the chickens obviously give us eggs every single day so they’re great to have around. Huxley, guardian dogs they’re not just pets they have a very important job around here. They guard the pasture. The donkeys, they are also another means of guardians and they have a deep deep hatred fo wild dogs and coyotes. They’re good to keep out on the pasture. We picked the goats and the sheep for restoring the pastures. Goats go for more of the heavy thick brush and the sheep go for the grasses so they compliment one another very well on regenerating the pasture. We wound up settling with the goats where they actually primarily Nubians. Purebred Nubians are dairy goats. So they make the best quality goat milk. It is very high in butter fat content, very tasty, and very healthy for you as well. That is the purpose that those goats will serve for us in the future, providing milk or us.

Q: Are any of these animals for profit?

A:
Nate- Of course. I have a couple different avenues open now with the sheep. I’ve got a small partnership now selling purebred full blood high quality Dorper show sheep. There is also another avenue thats just become kind of popular and that is in the solar farm grazing industry so around the area, especially in California and now happening a little bit more around Austin are these solar farms. Large tracks of lands full of solar panels and the whole premise behind them is green energy. The grass and everything gets overgrown and lush and if it gets to the point of growing over the solar panels then they can’t collect sunlight anymore. That’s a problem and how do you solve that problem? You can’t get guys in there with weed eaters and mowers and bush hogs and everything and not to mention that completely defeats the green energy. You can’t get cows in there because they are too big and you can’t put goats in there because they will climb on everything and they’ll break the dang things. Sheep are literally perfect. So I have joined a network called the American Solar grazers Association and basically it pairs shepherd grazers with solar farm owners to pay us to bring our sheep out to graze their land and keep that grass down. It’s a pretty cool partnership. That’s about the only profits that we have made. Farming and ranching is just a good way to lose money.

Q: How is Hux doing at his job?

A:
Remi- Huxley, we got as a puppy, primarily his sole purpose is to protect the goats and the sheep. No he is not allowed inside the house, he stays outside. He lives outside with them.
Nate- For as young as he is. He is really smart and mature. He has developed a really tight bond with the goats and the sheep. The contact that I got Hux from is just this old school rancher that his dogs are just wild out on the pasture just surviving and thriving and protecting animals and killing coyotes. Hux has just got that perfect upbringing for it he’s got 65 acres that he owns. He owns that land. he gets to walk it freely and gets to piss all over every fence post he wants and he owns that land and he is very happy and I am very happy with how good he is doing.

Q: What animals do you want to get next?

A:
Remi- I’m thinking piglets!
Nate- Pasture pigs would be the next area that I would expand into I don’t think I am in too big of a rush to get there. I’m still getting my ass kicked daily, learning with this whole sheep thing and you know I want to really make sure I have everything locked down before I throw another species in here but I am really fascinated and intrigued by the benefits that some pigs bring. They are a rooting machine. They would just turn over all the top soil on the pasture and their manure is super great fertilizer. They just minimize so much waste. We have so much compost scraps that go in the trash. The goats and the sheep won’t touch it or eat it but the hogs will eat it up and put it to great use.
Remi- That’s something surprising about learning about the farm that each animal has a specific purpose.

Q: How much works are chickens? I want eggs so bad.

A:
Remi- We had chickens when we lived in the city so its possible if you live in the city and you want chickens you can have chickens. But don’t take my advice because you may run into legal troubles or get fined (LOL). Check your city ordinances!
Nate- Chickens are incredibly easy creatures. Chickens are incredibly difficult to kill or let die. You would have to really mess things up to kill some chickens. Make sure you’re very tight and secure. They’re coop for night needs to be a secure area but their dietary requirements are not anything too crazy. I feed them once a day.
Remi- The chickens are smart because where they sleep at night they don’t go far from that. They’re going to stay where they’re being fed and sleeping everyday. They are bind at night so once they go into the coop at dusk they’re in there for the night and when the sun comes up they come back; they are so easy to manage.

Q: How often do the vets have to come out for maintenance on the farm animals?

A:
Nate- In the past year we’ve had the vet come out about 5 times in total. We had to take a couple baby goats to the vet to get some plazma because they had diarrhea. 7 total vet visits. The little onsies and twosies here and there we can do together. We normally get into a total bitch fit fight because we are tryin to hold and corral an animal and get an injection in. Its’ stressful on the animal, it’s stressful on us.
Remi- It’s more the upkeep on the vaccinations for the babies and moms.

Q: Will you be selling any farm products in the future?

A:
Nate- I’d like to get a whole shit pile of chickens and have a bunch of chicken on the pasture. This partnership with the market lamb we will be selling products in the foreseeable future. As long as I get this coyote problem under control.
Remi- If you can buy eggs from us. Maybe some grass-fed lamb. Then you know where you’re getting your meat and see how we take care of them

Q: What are weekly, monthly expenses to run a farm - all the animals including dogs

A:
Nate- We just came out of a drought and with that drought really really increased the input costs for animals. Theres no rain, no grass growing. When there is grass growing you can take the sheep, cattle, goats whatever and toss them out on the pasture and put a little mineral out there for them. But with the drought it really increased feed costs of both grain and having to buy bales of hay to put out on the pastures to feed the animals so rain is very important. Right now pastures are good I haven’t had to spend a whole heck of a lot of money just loose minerals for the animals and that’s a $25 bag of loose minerals and that’ll last them about 2 months. Chicken feed went up a lot. I would say I spend about $40 a month on chicken feed. There’s a lot of front end costs that go - the fencing. Fencing materials are a lot.
Remi- Which is like nothing because we get like 8 eggs a day. Oh my gosh. The fencing! One little line of fencing is like 10k!! Your jaw will drop to the floor!