Hey Vancouverans, on this episode I talked to Eric Thompson of Great Mous Regenerative
Farm.
We talk about the local food scene, what regenerative farming is, the difference between grain fed
and grass fed beef and food as an investment.
I think it's a really interesting look into what's going on right now in the local food
scene in Vancouver as far as regenerative farming and sustainable food.
But stick around till the end where I'll have a link to get $50 off your reservation
for a quarter of beef at Great Mous Farms.
So enjoy.
Hello and welcome to the Spotlight Vancouver podcast.
I am your host Doug Varinas, licensed real estate agent in Vancouver, Washington and
beyond.
Today I'm super pleased to be with my guest Eric Thompson.
He is the owner, curator, maestro of Great Mous Regenerative Farm out in Rainier, Oregon.
Eric, welcome to the show.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks Doug, glad to be here to kind of talk about our farm a little bit.
We make it out to Vancouver all the time so we consider that part of our territory there.
Yeah, thanks.
And I do want to say in full disclosure, this will be my third season getting your delicious
beef.
I'm a customer and a fan and I'm happy to have you today because I feel like there's
a lot to talk about.
And I wanted to start by getting what your journey has been like to get where you are,
to regenerative farming.
How did you become a regenerative farmer?
Well, that's a good question to start.
So I guess my history with the farm goes back a long way because I actually took over my
grandparents' farm when they passed away.
But about 15 years ago, I bought the farm out of the estate and while I was working a
day job, that was my weekend farming that I did from Seattle, making a two and a half
hour drive down on most weekends and kind of keeping the farm going.
But it was a cattle farm for quite a while on about a hundred acres down in Rainier,
so a good amount of land and a few houses down there.
But I wanted to keep it going and keeping it going as a productive cattle farm made
a lot of sense.
So the way we've been developing it is trying to get a model of beef that a weekend basically
birth the beef on the farm and then raise them up into finished beef.
And my ideal model is selling as quarters of beef that gets it direct from the producer
to the consumer.
And I think that has a lot of benefits in itself.
I can try to keep my cost down quite a bit while having the best kind of beef, controlling
the whole operation.
The grass-fed beef is the main way we do it and we cut all of our own hay during the
summer so we can feed during the winter.
So we really try to scale our operation to the size of the farm and the resources that
we have, not have to use a lot of outside resources and just produce the best healthy
beef we can, which comes from the healthy cows.
Yeah.
When you took over the farm, are you using, were there regenerative farming practices
being used at the time?
And I guess for our listeners and including myself, what is regenerative farming?
Well, so yeah, to kind of frame regenerative farming, I think a lot of times that goes
beyond what an organic farm would be, which is just trying to get productivity out of
the farm, but we really try to invest in the farm and make the soil and the systems better
and better over time.
I consider my work on the farm is investing in the future of the farm and everything that
I do should make a more productive and more bountiful farm over time.
Use very organic practices, but we're also, as a beef farm, we're not doing just beef.
We're really doing a whole, I guess you could call it a large homestead kind of farm where
we have farm scale composting.
We plant a lot of trees and grow those trees.
And really our first priority is food for family.
So we're also doing some pigs and chickens and greenhouse production of vegetables and
squash and things like that on the farm.
It just happens, being as big as it is 100 acres, we have a surplus somewhere.
So we channel a lot of our surplus into beef and the beef grazing the natural pastures
is really how we improve a lot of our soil health and keep that going.
And we integrate those in with the tree systems and some of the other systems to basically
use nature as the improvement in the land.
Yeah, when I visited your farm, I felt incredibly ignorant and it was definitely a time where
I felt really removed from food production and right.
And to be honest, like the natural order of things because when you walked me through
your farm, it had layers and layers and through time, the way you thought about how you organize
things and the systems involved not only were stacked on top of each other, they had an
element of time and longevity and scale that I was blown away by.
Like I was kind of slack jawed the entire time I was there as you were going through
this because I have no, I have little, I'm a city kid and I have little experience with
food production other than like my own.
Like I've raised chickens and I have more experience than a lot of people.
Like I've raised chickens, I've grown my own vegetables on a small scale.
Where do you start?
Like how does your mind work and how do you get that sort of knowledge and training to
do that?
Were you, did you always have it or did you get some kind of education or schooling?
How do you do that?
It was mind blowing.
Well, I think a lot of regenerative farming is a community and looking at what other people
in the field are doing and how they're doing it.
But when it comes down to it, what applies to your own property and your own land is
the most important part.
And just having a connection with the land is the main thing and being able to daily
go out on the farm and see what's going on and plan through design wise, kind of what
can be done through the next year to really encourage the things that are working on the
farm and move away from things that don't work as well and just try to improve it over
time.
So nothing's ever perfect and nothing's ever beautiful, but like a lot of trades, you're
learning more all the time and there's always kind of another step that you can take things.
When you have a regenerative farm, it's going to be something that's not necessarily your
picturesque farm with the barn and the chicken and the cow like on the labels of industrial
products.
But if you've seen industrial farms, that's definitely the opposite of what we want to
get to where an industrial farm is trying to maximize productivity with minimum costs.
So feeding the cheapest possible feed in order to get pounds of production out and just trying
to treat that as a factory.
We don't really do that.
We try to do things in a more efficient way with nature, not necessarily with the dollars
of soybean feed going in and that led us to a lot of the things like grass fed and grass
finished beef production, but the beef's purpose on the land is really maintaining and healing
and fertilizing the land.
So we're not trying to push that production model beyond what the kind of natural ecosystem
would prefer for that.
So it's guided by nature.
That makes it kind of easy.
It's all solar payout.
Yeah.
Oh, nice.
I think there's a misconception or a view out there, especially with beef, in that beef
and regenerative don't go together.
I think there's a feeling out there or some kind of, I don't know if it's a misnomer,
but I think people associate cows and cattle and they hear not sustainable or environmentally
harmful.
I hear that a lot in mainstream media, especially with beef, like donate beef for, it's kind
of an anti-beef sentiment.
Can you speak to that and what's the state of regenerative farming in the area and what
are some of those misconceptions about raising cattle?
Yeah.
Well, definitely.
I would agree there are problems with beef on your typical industrial lots.
So I mean, a lot of people would see beef in a feedlot where you have hundreds and hundreds
of beef just being fed grain and being transported in for all the food to feed them and trying
to get as many beef raised up per acre as possible, which of course creates a pretty
destructive habitat.
The places where all this food is being raised is kind of the same.
It's pesticide-laden lands that are just stripped every year without really good maintenance
of the soil and the soil biology.
But it turns out if you don't try to stretch your production so much and raise the beef,
how they're naturally meant to be raised, nature already has all this figured out as
far as what a good recipe is and how to build soil and maintain soil.
So it's just tapping into that.
These systems that have already evolved over thousands of years in order to just control
that a little more.
So that's where we have some control over where the cows are and how long they are on
a paddock and we shift them between eight or 10 different paddocks throughout the year
and then just manage the grazing rather than trying to get as many cows on there as possible.
Right.
It seems like it's a scale issue and industrial farming trying to just overuse the land.
Yeah.
I mean, that takes some management and it has to be a little bit open-ended.
Some years are easier than the others.
So maybe one year and four, I might need to buy in a little bit of feed if I'm a little
short because of the weather or because of some other things.
But we try to keep a good managed amount that we can harvest all of our own feed so we know
the source and we know it's organic and then we feed that through the winter and that works
pretty good.
So the cows are right now, they have a feeding barn where they're out on about 20 acres
of pasture during the winter, but they also have a big feeding barn that they come in
to stock up before every evening.
So we're doing about 4,000 bales of hay per year to feed them through the winter.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
That's a lot.
How many head do you have on your farm?
So we raise all of our beef from birth to butcher on the farm.
So our main herd is going to have a certain number of mama cows and then all of their
babies would be raised up.
So right now we have 27 mama cows and two bulls, so an older bull and a younger bull
that are with those.
But then they're all raised as a big family.
We never separate the beef out.
Mama's from babies or anything like that to try to get them back into, to say, perfect
weaning condition or anything like that.
Because turns out the animals don't like that.
So we try to adapt our practices to what the animals really prefer and that keeps them
stress free and pretty happy.
Overall we have babies that are raised up for two to three years until their finished
beef to be sold in quarters.
So total number we're up close to 100.
We're being...
Oh, wow.
Probably 90 to 100 at any time there.
Okay.
Are you...
I guess you run a business but the production can be...
Is limited by the resources in the land via those regenerative farming principles.
So I mean, it's a model where I guess you don't want to do too well in a certain year.
You're not trying to get the most amount of customers possible.
Is that correct?
I think the best way to describe it, I mean all of our processes are really family first
and investing in the farm first.
And then when it comes to beef, that's one of our main surpluses.
So we'll be butchering around 25 beef a year, which is a lot more than we need for our family
and extended family.
So that's one of the main things that we're selling off the farm.
And beef is one of the things that's a lot harder for most homestead farmers on two
or three acres to do by themselves or do well or efficiently by themselves.
I think if we can do 25 beef a year, we're at a pretty good scale to take care of the
beef and maintain the pastures and do the feeding in the winter and invest in the equipment
to do the hay and those kind of things.
So I think that part works pretty well.
We scale to that and then as a business, we're really just looking at getting some income
from the surpluses that we have.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of terms that people might be confused with with regards to, you
know, there's grass fed, grass finished, grass fed, grain finished, pasture raised.
Like there's a whole litany of terms that are used with beef production.
What specifically can you go through the differences of that for the audience who may be like,
I don't know, I hear all these terms and I'm not sure what they mean.
Yeah.
And some of the confusion comes from the industrial farms that say their animals are grass fed.
I mean, the truth is that most any of the cow and calf operations raising a calf up
to a year old are done on grass and there's an important reason for that, that just a
grain diet is very destructive for an animal's digestive system.
They're not meant to live on grain long term.
It just happens to be something that fattens them up.
So when you put say some beef on a feedlot with grain, they'll get unnaturally fat, you
know, more like your industrial chickens that are unnaturally fat because of genetics and
feed and everything like that.
But they'll be unnaturally fat and that actually changes the whole microbiome in the intestine,
changes the pH and it's just not a natural thing for the beef.
It's actually activating a starvation response in the beef that they have developed to go
through lean times in the grass, but it supercharges that and activates their fat and they can
digest the grain, but long term it damages their digestive system.
So that's something they can't do long term and your dairy cows and mama cows for beef
cattle can't really handle that year after year.
Getting to grass finished is something where they're eating all grass all the time and
you know, that includes some forbs and also things.
So some clovers and fruits and things like that, but it definitely doesn't have most
of their calories coming from grain and grain products, which is not a natural system.
So the grass finished, you'll get a different beef out of it.
It's probably not as efficient economically since our country right now is set up to produce
cheap grain for feeding livestock on small acres, but it produces a much more natural
and healthy beef and the healthy beef comes from having healthy animals that are eating
it.
I mean, this is the way beef are meant to be ranged from thousands of years ago on the
savannas and plains where they're grazing and moving themselves.
All we're doing is taking that natural process and controlling that a little more with our
fences and paddocks on the farm itself.
Yeah, how does that difference affect the end product?
Like the composition of the meat, the texture, the taste?
Right.
Well, I think I would say grass fed beef is always going to be less fatty.
So I guess you could compare that to a natural classic chicken like an egg laying chicken
versus your over fattened broilers that you get nowadays in a store.
But the same kind of thing is the meat is going to be leaner and more flavorful in the
meat itself.
And if you just compare it to say your grocery store bulk processed meat, it's going to have
a much darker red color.
And that's usually a pretty good indicator of nutrition and flavor in the meat.
Having less water in the meat, all of our meat is dry aged after it's butchered, which
is another good process, which takes some of the water out, but goes a long way to making
a fairly tender cut, even if you don't have too much fat all the way through it.
Yeah, like I said in the beginning, I'm a customer going on three seasons now and it's
certainly a delicious product that I enjoy.
Did coming from a factory beef model, that's my experience, it did take me a little while
to get used to cooking it, I think, because I do it like fast, like higher temp and quicker.
And so that kind of sears the outside and then leaves the inside, you know, I mean,
I'm sure we've all kicked the steak there, but I tend to go really high heat and then
on both sides and then I just, that's it.
And it's been amazing.
But it took me a little while because you don't, the fat content is not as much, the
flavor is there certainly.
But it took me a little while to get the cooking down.
Yeah, I've heard that before.
It's a little more difficult for me because being my grandparents' farm, this is the
beef I grew up with.
So it's the main thing that I'm used to and I haven't always just avoided grocery store
beef because it didn't seem quite right and restaurant beef much the same.
But a lot of people will say that just the cooking method is different and getting used
to that is what it takes using lower temperatures and slower cooks.
But recently a lot of people have gotten into sous-vide cooking for especially their steaks
and the sous-vide helps keep the moisture in and then just do a controlled sear at the
end to whatever doneness you like your steak.
So I think that's been helpful for a lot of people no matter what kind of steak you do.
Yeah.
It's either I do it really slow, low and slow depending on the cut or like the steaks out
like I said I do them hotter and faster and that seems to work.
And yeah, it's been amazing.
In general, I'm wondering what you're plugged into the community of regenerative farmers.
I know you have some neighbors who are doing some similar stuff.
What's the state of regenerative farming in this area and are you seeing an increased
interest in this style of farming and consumers like myself who are searching for a beef that
is or any animal that is raised more humanely and on less antibiotics and grain?
Yeah.
Well, I think so.
I think one key point for a lot of people is realizing the connection between food and
health which is really critical and really a lot of people in their life need to get
to their first health crisis which usually happens when they're 40 or 50 years old to
really realize that connection and what they're putting in their body has a huge impact on
their health.
But we are seeing more and more young people getting this connection and managing what
they eat and how they eat as they go along.
People who are older who are trying to take better care of their health start to get into
this piece by piece and realize that a lot of things in our food system are just not
set up to provide optimal health for people and they're seeking out not just beef but
a lot of other products getting to a naturally grown, more natural solution which makes a
huge impact on health, digestive health and overall skin health, heart health, everything
in that.
And I think that's really important.
We try to do that in our family and we talk about a lot of that with our customers and
how they can go one step further and one step further to improving health through food.
Yeah.
I've recently kind of changed my outlook on this because I've come from a kind of like
let's save on groceries.
I'm trying to save money and cut down expenses and let's buy cheap food.
And I've totally changed that fairly recently because I look at food now as an investment
and investment in my health, an investment in the community for smaller scale producers
and it's changed quite a bit.
I've moved to a more meat forward diet, clean meat locally raised and I'm feeling a lot
better and I'm having like less heartburn.
This is just all anecdotal for me.
Yeah, less heartburn, less bloated.
So since I've gone to a more meat forward and less grains, less simple carbohydrates,
less bloat, less heartburn, more energy and so yeah, I agree.
I guess the problem or the challenge is for that scale and that if everybody started doing
that you could run into some production problems because then the strain on you and your farm,
I mean you would just cap your number of customers but I don't know if there's enough local producers
to meet that demand if everybody started wanting locally grown healthy beef.
That's the challenge I think.
Yeah, it could be.
There are pundits out there who will say that, oh, you can never do enough natural food to
feed the world which is really a myth when you look at how much space it actually takes
to produce the industrial food and how much you're degrading land over time.
That's just not a smart investment but things that take a generation to degrade aren't always
a big consideration for people even though they really should be.
We're trying to get our species to live on this planet for many, many generations so
trying to look at the future of the land and improve the productivity of the land I think
goes a long way.
But it does take some work and design on the farmers part to really design how to integrate
systems in an efficient way and make the best use of the land and the resources that you
have but we really try to follow that wherever we can and not overuse or anything like that
but it's amazing what natural produce if you give it a chance and set things up to succeed.
Yeah, and certainly your farm is emblematic of that because like I said, there's so many
layers of complexity and thought that went into how you are designing it and everything
fits together in harmony.
The degree that I just, it was like playing chess over a long period of time and making
these moves, it was really cool to see and I was just so blown away on my visit to your
farm about the complexity and you're just looking at a landscape and you don't even
see it unless you know and you kind of you're tuned into it.
So it was a pleasure seeing what you're doing out there.
Yeah, and I think a lot of that goes to just the design of the farm and managing how things
are done over time.
Trying to do, apply labor on the farm at the right time has a lot of savings for itself
and design is critical so basically looking at what your land can provide and designing
systems to channel nature, creating the abundance instead of just trying to control what's on
the land every point through the year and trying to enforce your own will on it.
So if you channel nature into it, that's a strong power into creating the most productivity.
We believe that and we design for that every day.
Yeah, it's incredible and it really comes through in the product at the end of the day.
You can actually taste that amount of thought and care.
So I want to thank you for what you're doing out there and thank you for being on the show
today.
It's been a pleasure.
Yeah, that's great and I think, yeah, your perspective is good because you actually came
out to visit the farm in becoming a customer and I think that gives you another perspective
on what the farm is and what's important in the farm and you just think if you could do
that with everything that you have in your food chain and things like that, it would
probably make kind of equal impact on, well, just what am I getting right now and how should
this be?
I think that drives a lot of people into finding more local sources or doing a little bit of
homesteading on themselves.
That's one thing that we try to get into.
I deliver a lot of beef through the area and we deliver through Vancouver with a lot of
customers there but I also try to get into encouraging people in their own mini homesteading
wherever they can of whether it's animal systems or tree systems or berries or things like
that starting to get some of your own food going and some of your own self-sufficiency.
I think that's really important.
Definitely, definitely.
Am producing some of your own products, yeah.
Yep.
All right.
Okay.
Yeah, I should probably kind of introduce how we sell most of our beef on the website
because we do reservations on the website and we're selling our beef from June through
December every year pretty evenly through the year and we put our whole year's reservation
out in advance.
Just got that out recently on the website of our June through December schedule and
we have reservations.
You can make a reservation for a quarter or a half of a beef wherever it makes sense.
And then right now through the end of January we typically have $50 off a reservation which
is a good promotion to get planning on the customer side and on our side of when the
beef is coming in.
Yeah, you never know when you're going to be listening to the podcast.
So if you're listening to this podcast a little bit later and think you missed it, you can
email me for a coupon code through the end of February and I'll be able to send that
out.
We'll still be able to get you some beef.
Yeah, hopefully you can put a link to the website on there and people can look at that
because it has a lot more description of our farm and a full description of our care practices
and what is grass-fed beef in more detail than what I talked through.
And you can always talk with the farmer themselves.
So I think we field all kinds of questions.
So I've probably heard almost all of it at this point, but we really try to make sure
to match up.
Get the beef to the customer with really what they like and how they expect it.
Well thanks a lot Doug.
I'm enjoying the show with your other guests too.
All right, thanks.