Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Homestead Education Podcast. Today I have another wonderful educator on by the name of Katie Olthoff from Chop Local. Did I say it wrong again? No, you did okay.

You did okay. Okay, my attention span lasts like all of 30 seconds. She’s from Chop Local and Chop Local University and so I just want to thank you for coming on today.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Katie’s Background and Path to Agriculture

So Katie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure, so you know you mentioned educator in there.

I, well backing up, I grew up in rural Iowa, went to college to be an elementary teacher, met the love of my life there and that’s how we started out was he was in agriculture so I married into a farm family and I was a teacher so my students could not say my last name very well either so they just called me Mrs. O and I still like refer to myself as Mrs. O sometimes so we can just but yeah I taught for about five years, had my first two kids during that time and then stayed home for a few years and really started during that time to get more into, like I said, I married into a farm family so I started to get more immersed in that life especially when I was home every day. Very much a baptism by fire. Oh yeah, totally, totally, completely and I could go on, I mean I could probably tell you an hour’s worth of those stories but you’ve probably heard similar.

So your husband wasn’t a farmer and I was so he he’s got the baptism by fire. Yeah, the opposite. Yeah, so I stayed home with the boys when they were little but I started blogging about my farm at that time.

That was when Pioneer Woman was just kind of coming on the scene and I was like I can do that, you know, and then that led actually when I went back to work full time I got a job in ag communications so kind of it’s just I, you know, obviously not trained for that, didn’t go to college for that but started working in agriculture. If you can talk to children you can talk to anyone so. Yeah, right and what’s funny is my job, one of my jobs was editing the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association magazine and doing communications and I always said that like doing communications is so similar to teaching because you’re looking at how do you take this concept and how do you get people to understand it, right, and that’s exactly what I was trying to do especially in the magazine.

That’s kind of always been like a real skill of mine like when I worked in the big plants I used to take this like really advanced you know lab vernacular and stuff and then write it for an eighth grade level which is what you write like food safety documents for and so that’s really been a gift of mine that I’ve enjoyed. Yeah and I think that’s a really important skill and like you said it translates into the education that you do with adults but also the education that you’re doing with your kids as well.

The Origin of Chop Local

So then five years ago another farmer that I knew came up with this idea for Chop Local.

Chop like pork chop, right, so Chop Local. He came up with the name. I always tell him that if he hadn’t had such a clever name I probably would not have been nearly as interested but I love it.

When I heard about it. There’s pigs in Iowa so you know you got to roll with it. Oh gosh.

I lived in Iowa for two years. Yeah, yeah. We’ve got, there’s a lot of pigs in Iowa.

There’s actually a lot of cattle in Iowa too. People don’t think about that and anecdotally I would say there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of these farms that are larger commercial farms will also have something like a few sheep or some goats or you know something like that to give their kids a little bit different experience in Iowa. So lots of, there is probably more diversity than people may think here in Iowa.

So he came up with the idea for Chop Local which we, it’s kind of like an online farmers market specifically for farmers who are selling meat direct to consumer. I found out about it, fell in love with the idea and started, joined actually five years ago this week is when I left my full-time job and joined Chop Local. So it’s kind of a fun anniversary week.

That’s amazing. Yeah. It’s exciting to see these these kind of like grassroots movements within like food and agriculture that are like started and are still booming.

Like it’s yeah yeah and we definitely started it because we knew, like we had literally friends and neighbors who couldn’t get their livestock into the processors during COVID, that type of thing. We don’t have a tech background. We’re not like the people that come out of California that are building software, you know, like we know farmers.

That’s kind of our thing. You know, I even get it. My website guy is a, my husband’s a disabled vet.

He’s a disabled vet and like he just does my coding and stuff on the side and it’s like, I’m not getting a techie person in there either. I have like another redneck, you know. Right, right.

And the thing is a lot of people, like if you’re working on the farm full-time, the technology seems, I think, intimidating sometimes. But there are so many tools out there that make it so much easier. And so it didn’t take very long after, you know, starting CHOP Local and starting to work with the farmers that I just kind of naturally started going back towards the education piece where I was like, okay, I can help these farmers one-on-one or can I create a way that we can get information out to more people.

Chop Local University and Education

And so we created CHOP Local University and we have blog posts with educational resources. We have, gosh, over a dozen webinars that are on our YouTube channel. We do have a podcast also.

It’s called Meat Success. I saw that recently. I was like, how fun.

Yeah. And we have a few little courses and like that, this has been probably one of the most enjoyable parts of CHOP Local for me is being able to do this education, talk to the producers, help them with what they need in order to make selling online work for them and make it more efficient, help them understand what they need to do. Definitely.

And I’ve actually taken one of your courses, the one on shipping meat without dry ice. Yeah, shipping frozen meat is our most popular. I gotta give credit to Jared who, he’s my business partner.

You would have seen him in the course. He approached this from a very scientific research base. He tested different materials and how he was gonna, you know, how long things would stay frozen.

And it’s been really valuable because dry ice is a barrier in rural areas. It is. We have one person that sells dry ice in our whole county and you can only get like three pounds at a time.

Yeah. And even during the pandemic, we used to have grocery stores that would sell it and they quit offering it because they just were cutting down on what they were doing during the pandemic. And so we knew from the start we wanted to figure out a way for rural producers who weren’t near a city to be able to do this without dry ice.

Yeah, that’s amazing because that was, I mean, we’ve done some of our own like testing as well, but it was so nice taking your course first and being able to like, okay, these things don’t work, let’s throw them out and then go with the materials we have available locally and see what works for us. And so we’ve been running tests for the last like six weeks probably trying to like lock it in really good.

What Is Direct-to-Consumer Meat?

But you mentioned right at the beginning that you wanted to help direct-to-consumer meat sales.

So would you, can we like talk a little bit about what that is? I’ve talked about it a little bit on my podcast before, but if someone’s popping in just to listen to you, let’s discuss it. Definitely. So when I say direct-to-consumer meat sales, what I’m talking about is that you are raising the livestock on your farm.

You are having it processed. Some people process it on farm, but more likely you’re using a small local processor. We call them lockers in Iowa, but I’ve learned through the years that that is not a universal term across the country.

But you’re having it processed. It’s not, but we call them that here in Idaho too. Do you? Okay, okay, yep.

So you’re getting processed at the local locker. And I think, you know, even before the pandemic, like our family first was buying a quarter of beef from a local farmer and then started raising it ourselves. But the last few years, e-commerce has started to pick up.

And especially during the pandemic, again, like people ordering groceries online during COVID-19 just skyrocketed the number of households that are doing that. And the technology has come so far to make it easy for people. And so we’re realizing they want that, like homegrown meat, you know, that they can choose meat.

Like I want it raised this way. And that without having to seek out that farmer, they can just hop online, find it and get it shipped straight to their house. Exactly.

And we’re seeing that people are liking to, they like, instead of buying an entire quarter and you’re like, I don’t know what to do with the short ribs or I don’t even, I mean, the first time I bought a quarter as someone who didn’t grow up on a farm, I didn’t know what to do with the cut sheet or what these cuts meant or how it all worked. It was an intimidating process for me. I actually wrote a cookbook on like how to use all the parts of the pork.

So when you get your, you know, quarter hog from us or something, you know what to do with all the parts. Right. Because it is intimidating for people who have never done it and who grew up cooking, like maybe two cuts of pork.

Pork, Roasts, and Ham Balls

You know, I think before I bought a half a hog from a friend during the pandemic, like I was like, I’ve made egg roll in a bowl with ground pork. I’ve used sausage and pork chops and ham balls because that’s an Iowa thing. But like, What’s a ham ball? Because like, we don’t eat enough ham for what we bring in.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. We have to talk about ham balls.

But did I answer the previous question first? I don’t know. What’s direct to consumer? And I think that that brings us to a whole, we’re just discussing all the different aspects of direct to consumer. So direct to consumer, you’ve got your quarters, halves and wholes.

We sometimes that’s called custom exempt, because you can use a locker that is has a different level of inspection, but you’re selling part of the live animal. And then we’ve also got the retail cuts, which is kind of what we specialize in. And we’ve seen more and more increase in now ham balls.

Let me tell you about them. Because this is pork is interesting to sell online. A lot of people don’t know what to do with pork.

The things that we as farm families or rural families, like having a pork roast on Sundays and a ham, like those things were classic to me, but they just don’t sell very well online for some reason. So Cody, you’re saying, yeah, you agree with that, right? I do. Yeah.

I haven’t quite got to the online part, like where we’re are sites up and stuff, but I saw a lot locally and people are, unless they’re kind of like the old school farmers and stuff. They’re like, I would love to get a quarter hog, but I don’t know what to do with half the stuff. And, you know, things like where I’m excited about, Ooh, cottage bacon, those are great for sandwiches.

And they’re like, what is it? You know? And so we definitely have those. It blows my mind that roasts aren’t more popular because like I, even in the summer have my crock pot going with a roast in it so that I don’t have to heat up my kitchen and I don’t have to stand outside in the heat to grill. Like I just, we do tons of pulled pork in the crock pot.

Yeah. And then we can do sandwiches. We can do nachos.

Like I can just leave it on low, like throughout the day. And the kids can just go in and like, yeah, get what they want. I think pulled pork nachos are probably one of the newer things that we’ve started in our family that have been such a hit.

Okay. So hamballs though. I’m like, I lived in Iowa for two years and nobody served me a hamball.

I can’t believe you didn’t have a hamball. Okay. So we go to the local grocery store normally and buy ham loaf, which I believe is ground ham and ground pork mixed together.

Okay. So it’s kind of a secret recipe that we get, but from the groceries, like they won’t tell us exactly what’s in it, but it’s all pork. So ground ham and ground pork mixed together probably about a half a half split of each of those.

Okay. Then you’re going to do your traditional meatball stuff. You’re going to have some milk, usually some eggs, graham crackers.

Okay. So your graham crackers and your salty ham is like the sweet and savory. And then you’re going to make that into a ball.

Obviously you’re going to bake that with a sauce that is usually tomato soup, little bit of vinegar and Brown sugar. That’s kind of the classic. So I say that a hamball for me is like dessert for supper.

I really love it with sweet potatoes, again, Brown sugar, butter on mine, like, but it is like an Iowa classic. I just actually just showed up in my Snapchat memories that a few years ago in October, October is pork month. I, I had a caption that said porktoberfest and I’d made like four batches of hamballs so that I could freeze them and just reheat them.

So if you can grind your eating, like even just like some barbecue sauce or something like that. Exactly. I mean, like a sweet barbecue sauce, a little bit tomato based, like yeah, it is amazing.

And I will send you Cody, my friend, who’s a food blogger here in Iowa. She has a recipe on her blog, but it’s pretty classic. So yeah, I’m excited.

Yeah, I know. That’s not, this is not what we meant to, to get on the podcast to talk about, but your kids will love it. They freeze something that we, that we’re constantly doing.

We’re trying to help people like eat more whole foods, you know, eat direct from farmers. And then like you said, they get it and they don’t always know what to do with it. And like, even like the hams, like a lot of people expect like a spiral ham and that’s not what you’re getting when you’re buying from a farm, you’re getting a whole ham.

That’s still delicious. You just have to know what to do with it. Right.

Exactly. Exactly.

Feeding and Raising Neurodivergent Kids on the Farm

And I mean, you know, I was talking about this the other day, like with my kids there, I have a teenagers, a 17 year old twin boy, girl twins.

And we actually discussed this before they’re both neurodivergent. One has really bad dyslexia and ADHD. The other one is ADHD and autistic.

Okay. But like the, the other day, my daughter, she loves to cook. She actually wrote most of our recipes for our cookbook and she wanted lamb euros, but she didn’t want, she wanted the ground lamb because it’s easier to like work with and the little boys eat it better and stuff.

And like, it didn’t even like, she didn’t even skip a beat. She’s like, I want ground lamb. Kate, will you go grab some lamb out of the freezer? And she went over there and she like hooked up the meat process, the meat grinder to the grinder thing, ground it out.

And we had euros for lunch. And I was like, it just the way like kids that are eating whole foods, just know it comes more intuitive to them than like maybe some of like us that were like, that’s not how grandma did it. Right.

And I will say, like we mentioned this before we came on, my kids are neurodivergent too. Two of them, at least one has mild autism. All three of them have ADHD.

The other one of them’s going through testing for autism. Also, I have ADHD, maybe mild autism too. I’m not sure.

You know, my husband keeps sending me reels of those like AU, ADHD people being like, I do this, this and this. And he sends it to me and says, sounds familiar. And I’m like, yeah, do you really want me to send you reels of what sounds familiar about you? Honey, you, there may not be anything diagnosed in your family, but it’s there like this didn’t all just come from me.

Let me tell you. So anyway, I will say that like, and maybe some of your listeners can relate to this because maybe they’re not as far along in their homestead journey as you are. But like, my kids are hard to feed.

They have a hard time with different textures. They’re not very willing to try new foods. It can be really hard to get them.

It’s hard to feed my family, I feel like and to and to get them to eat a well balanced diet. And so having like, more anytime we have more resources and more ideas to pull from, I think like, if they’ll eat a meatball that’s made out of beef, maybe they’ll transition to eating a meatball that’s made out of ham and pork, right? Or maybe, you know, going back to the pulled pork, like if they will eat the pulled pork sandwich, maybe they will try the nachos. And then maybe eventually they’ll put some beans on it too.

Like if you know, that’s been something that’s been really a journey for our family to figure out how to handle those hard things. My autistic one is like, no sauce on anything. Yes.

But that includes like gravy or mayonnaise on a sandwich or and I’m like, My oldest was having trouble. He had a huge growth spurt and was like, 5’11 and less than 100 pounds. Okay.

And the doctor was like, what are you eating at home? And he’s like, well, my mom just cooks with sauces. And I was like, I’m sorry. But like, yes, we do put sauce on foods like that’s generally most people like that.

But right. I mean, even like the mayonnaise on a sandwich type thing. How do you eat a dry sandwich? That’s so late.

And it’s great. I mean, if you were trying to reduce your caloric intake, that would probably be great for you. But for him, he needed the extra fat from the mayonnaise or butter or, you know, so anyway, that’s, that’s part of part of the realities, I guess, of like, you’re raising kids like that and trying to feed your family is it’s not always easy.

So yeah, so having like, you guys are farmers, right? So having autistic kids and ADHD kids on the farm, like, is that challenging for you guys? Like, I think we’re really lucky in that. Like both of our families, and it’s probably because let’s face it, this probably runs in the families and has always been this way, you know, but like, both of our families are very understanding, and are willing to kind of adjust the demands on our kids based on where they are at and what they need. Right? Awesome.

Yeah, we always do the like, I have the same expectations for you as like the other kids. I just understand that you need more help getting there. Yeah, yeah.

And I think I saw like, I was just looking through your social media, and you had something about like, kids become capable when they are challenged or when they’re pushed out of their comfort zone or something about that, you know, and it really made me think about one of my sons because most everything in life is outside of his comfort zone right now. And like, I think you have to recognize that, like, what’s outside of a neurotypical kid’s comfort zone is going to be completely different than maybe what’s outside of your child’s or my child’s comfort zone. And my family, my husband’s family, they have been very, like I said, very understanding of that.

I do see though, and I think I see this a lot in like farm wives, Facebook groups, and different things like that. Like, I think that there are definitely people in rural communities who have this mindset of like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, everybody should be able to do it, we’re gonna punish you if you can’t do it, you know, or like, we’re gonna make you sit at the table and eat this and you’re gonna eat it with the sauce just like everybody else does, because that’s the way that everybody does it, you know. And I think that, as I’ve seen, like some of, I’ve thought a lot about this, like some of my friends growing up and looking at them, or kids that I grew up with, and I look at them, and I’m like, they had to have been neurodivergent, probably never, never diagnosed and probably didn’t get the support that they need.

And then they ended up with these huge anger issues, or they turn to alcohol or drugs or something like that to help self medicate. And then their kids are now in school with my kids. And I just see that same cycle go on and on and on.

And that’s where I think it’s so important that like, if we learn how to support our kids right now. And I mean, my goal is that they grow up to be productive members of society, right? And they can be like the best version of themselves that they can be. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to punish them into doing that, or try to get them form to do that.

Kids, Capability, and Farm Responsibility

So you know, I totally get that, like our autistic son, he actually runs our dairy.

At 12, he wanted to raise a dairy heifer. I couldn’t find one anywhere.

I finally found a farm. And they were like, oh, your son’s an autistic showman. That’s so cool.

We’ll sell you a heifer. We now are on our third generation of this heifer’s lines on our farm, and he runs the whole dairy. But then like, at the same time, I’ll like catch him doing things like, I don’t know, I was like, did you feed the cows this morning? He’s like, no.

Yeah. Why? You’re like, well, but yeah, right? Yeah. And he’s like, well, we only had like, that alfalfa that had some weeds in it.

And I didn’t know if we were supposed to use that. And I’m like, you drove over to the farmer’s field and picked that hay out of the field yourself. Yeah.

Like, yes, we’re feeding all of it. It’s cows. It doesn’t matter if there’s weeds in it.

You know, like, yeah, for him, it was like, there’s no hay, like, right? And there was, you know, and it’s so interesting, because, you know, when you say that, like, your son’s running the dairy, a lot of people would think, like, how can an autistic kid, you know, you wouldn’t expect them to be able to take that on. But like, with one of my sons, he’s the kind of like, he loves to be outdoors. I was looking at your survival stuff, like he has, he calls it a homeless camp back in the trees, like, which is his, like, you know, little survivalist camp that he has back there.

And he just loves to chill out there. He’s always been super into animals, animal science, geology is the latest thing, like, you know, those types of things. And I’ve always like, even in kindergarten, when they were like, Isaac struggling with his reading, you know, he’s struggling with knowing the letters and counting.

And I’m like, can you quiz them on the dinosaurs? Like, and then now that’s transferred into more, slightly more practical, special interests for him, you know, but like, he’s really into besides the animals, like he’s taking shop classes now, because he’s in high school, go into shop classes and his FFA and like that type of thing. And I’m like, I love it’s different abilities, you know, it’s not that he’s doesn’t have the ability to do something really amazing. It’s just that it’s different.

And like, to your son’s point, well, the alfalfa wasn’t exactly right. So I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to use it like my kids do that too. Like, it’s kind of black or white, like it’s either right or it’s wrong.

And like, to teach them like, Oh, okay, like this, we’re gonna make do with this, right? So yeah, like we are 20 year old has ODD. I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with that. It’s oppositional defiance disorder.

ODD, PDA, and Natural Consequences

And we had an incident with him when he was probably about 12 or 13, where the kids would do rotating chores.

So like one week, you’re in charge of chickens, the next week, you’re in charge of like the goats or whatever. And because you know, we have six kids, so we would just rotate it.

And he went out there every single day. And I’d watch him because like the chicken coop was like, I could see it out the kitchen window where I was like doing dishes and stuff in the mornings.

And I’m doing my thing.

And I’m watching him like, take the water thing, go into the barn, go back, you know, go through all these motions. At the end of the week, it switched and somebody else went in. And basically he hadn’t fed or watered them the entire time and our rooster had died.

Oh, no. And I was so frustrated with him. And I was like, why didn’t you do it? He’s like, I didn’t feel like it.

And but it’s just like that defiance thing. And I was like, why? And I’ve seen this in him for years now, but he will go out of his way like to do the action of walking with the water over so that I would think he did it. But just so that he could not do what he was told to do.

That’s really interesting. And I’d gone I’d gone into like a Facebook group for ODD kids and was like, Oh my gosh, what do I do with him? Like, I need him to understand that this is animal cruelty. And, you know, all these things.

And somebody gone on and was like, you shouldn’t make him do any of the animal chores. You’re the who decided to have animals, not him. And I’m like, that’s not how real life works.

Right? No, for real. One thing that I’ve been looking into for my kids recently is PDA. Have you heard of that pathological demand avoidance? Yes.

Some people also refer to it as a pervasive drive for autonomy. So like, that they just really want to have control of things. And I think that there’s some kids that the ODD might overlap with PDA or, you know, and sometimes I wonder, like, that’s made me think of your son, the story that you just told that persistent drive for autonomy, or, you know, a demand avoidance is it’s almost like that.

I’ll do it because I want to not because you told me to type thing. And I know, when I am really, really stressed, for whatever reason, lately, it’s been I have a grant application due next week, and I’m traveling to give a presentation, you know, and so like, it’s all the things, like, if somebody puts even the littlest, like, extra thing on me, like, Hey, can you go what, whatever, like, that feels like a demand that is like crushing me, you know what I mean? Maybe some weeks I can handle it. But maybe some weeks I can’t.

And I feel you on that one. Yeah, right. Like, when I started learning about it, I was like, Oh, this one really resonates for me personally.

And sometimes the demands are not just like somebody telling me to do something, but it’s like, it’s almost like sensory, like somebody touching me, or you like my kids touching me in particular, or my five year old, he likes to be right, like in my face of whatever I’m doing, but he doesn’t like quite want to touch me or snuggle, right? He just wants to be right there. And I’m like, Oh, yeah, I wanted to go back to what your chore thing for a second, because this has worked really well with my kids, too. And I hope that this is helpful, again, for your listeners is like, rotating weekly.

Chore Systems and “Management” Roles

You know, a lot of like chore charts, I feel like or parent guidance is like, almost like rotating daily.

And that was like, too fast for my kids.

And they don’t retain the information.

And yeah, and there’s not enough routine for them. And so we actually rotate more slowly than weekly.

Like, but I think that that’s a really good strategy to do it even monthly or build up to weekly.

A lot when they were little now that I have a couple of the house and then two that are teenagers and two that are real little.

We do more we call them management.

Yes.

Yeah.

So you get to like, kind of move up the ranks.

Yes.

Like starting with chickens.

And like, it’s like Savannah, like my daughter, her management role is like the kitchen and preps. My older son, his management role is the dairy and feeding the pigs seems how he’s already up there in the mornings.

And then the little ones, like, they have to do like, you know, dog food. And they all have their like, own management roles. And you get promoted into like a new management role.

So like my son who you know, he’s still doing the dairy. He’s starting to do ag mechanics with my husband and works on the neighbor’s farm. And so then that’s part of his role now too.

But then the little boys will help pick up the slack with his like pig feeding, you know, and I love that. Yeah, I think that that like, especially for their neurodivergent kids, like they can get really good at that one thing then and it becomes like a routine and a structure and it’s and it’s easier on us as the parents to not be like, okay, you know, for example, at my house, the dishes didn’t get unloaded today, who was in charge of the dishes? Oh, they had piano lessons and they had, you know, like, it’s much easier for me to just be like, Adam’s in charge of unloading the dishes right now. So he’s the one that I’m going to go yell at to get it done if it didn’t get done that type of thing.

So one thing we did do is whoever loaded the dishwasher the night before had to unload it the next day.

So they didn’t do a good job on it. It wasn’t somebody else’s job to clean up there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was super smart. We I’m probably too soft on this, but my my Adam doesn’t touching the dirty dishes is a problem for him. We should do it kind of as exposures that like, yes, he has to touch the dirty dishes sometimes, but we have an agreement.

He unloads and daddy loads. Actually, daddy’s in charge of loading dishes. So yeah, that’s the other thing we’ve tried to do on our farm is that especially with me working full time, like it doesn’t have to be the traditional gender roles or you know, that’s been we definitely don’t have those.

Yep. Yeah, too much to do. And you know, our older son who’s moved out, his roommates love it because they have a new baby.

And he’s in there like whipping up nice dinners. And nice, like, yeah, it takes a turn with the baby at night sometimes like, I don’t mind. I’ll make a bottle and set up with the baby.

I’m like, that’s a typical like large family homeschooled kid. Yeah. Yeah.

And oldest child to probably like not but yeah, he’s not. Yeah. But that’s very sweet and very helpful.

And like you said, they really appreciate it. And like, who knows how long it’ll be until he gets married or you know, that’s a great skill for him to have. So it absolutely is.

We have a friend who has a son who’s more profoundly autistic than our son, but still very high functioning. Like he stars in local plays and stuff like that.

But like the other day, he was mad at his laptop. And so he threw it and broke it. So guess what he got to do? He got to be a farmer with the hanners for the because they buy all their raw milk from us.

And so they’re like, okay, the amount of money we have to spend on your tablet that would have went to our raw milk. You’re not going to go at their farm. Yeah, that’s great.

And then he gets that experience. But he gets pushed out of his comfort zone. And he’s doing it with like friends, you know, so that when he does have a meltdown or something, I, I am comfortable walking out there and being like, Hey, I know that this sucks.

But sometimes we just have to do things we don’t like you did something your parents don’t like. So now you have to do something you don’t like. And it’s a natural consequence.

Like if he was an adult, and he threw his computer or tablet, and he would have to figure out how to make money to buy a new one, which may include doing some work that he doesn’t want to do. Yes, you know, so definitely big on constructing natural consequences. Exactly.

Because sometimes they don’t always just happen, you know, right, right. Or like, you know, the tablet, he needs a tablet or computer to do school. So his parents have to give him another one.

You can’t just say, Oh, your natural consequences that you don’t have one, you don’t have one. Right? Yeah. No, I think that that makes complete sense.

Back to Meat: Legalities and Processing

Yeah. So I’m circling back to meat because I mean, sure, I can talk about this stuff all day long.

But I think it’s important because so many families out there are dealing with neurodivergent kids and the chores and all that stuff.

So it’s absolutely yeah.

But so you talked about how you guys do have a online marketplace, but then you were talking about the difference between custom and retail. So let’s talk a little bit about the legalities of custom versus retail.

Yeah, okay. So I think that really confuses people a lot. Yeah.

So there are a lot more processors across the country that can process for what’s called custom exempt. Because the regulations it’s still inspected, but it’s not the same. Usually like state inspected.

Yeah, usually state inspected. There doesn’t because it’s custom exempt means that you are you, you own the animal, you are having it processed for your own family’s consumption. And now if I own if my if I own the animal, and I want my aunt and uncle to have part of it, I’m going to sell them a quarter of the live animal.

And they are having it processed for their own consumption. And so you don’t have to have a USDA background site. It’s a local health inspector was telling me she’s like, you guys sell custom meat all the time.

You don’t need a whole certification to sell chicken. Because as long as that person is okay with you butchering it, and they own it 30 seconds before you stick it in the cone. You’re good.

Yeah. And that makes that a lot of laws, poultry laws across the country. I mean, there is a a it’s I’m looking for the right word.

And I can’t think patchwork is the word I was thinking quilting. Yeah, there’s a patchwork of laws across the country. It is different in almost every state.

But most states allow you to process poultry on farm up to a certain number per year. And then the custom exempt piece is is there. Some states also have state inspection where you can get you don’t have to sell the animal in advance, you can get retail cuts cut and you can go to the farmer’s market and you can sell a pork chop to this person and a pork roast to this person or sausage to this person.

If it’s state inspected, though, it cannot cross state lines. So you cannot ship it outside of your state. And so if you want to sell retail cuts, and you want to ship it having a USDA processed facility, or a USDA inspected processing facility is really what you want to look for in order to sell those retail cuts and to be able to ship them, which unfortunately are becoming more few and far between to for especially for small producers to get into.

Yes, it is. You know, we work with producers all over the country. And I will say that there are some there are some states that have heavily invested in meat processing, especially in the last five years.

So there’s pockets of the country where USDA processing is not an issue, you can get scheduled, they may not offer all of the services that you want, or that type of thing, they charge a ton, or they charge a lot, or they don’t have a long standing reputation, you know, maybe they are newer. But it’s not impossible in some areas of the state of the country to do it. There are definitely pockets across the country, though, where it’s really hard to get in.

And I think in general, there’s enough demand that it’s almost everywhere, it’s hard to get into the best processors, you know, like all of North Idaho only has one USDA plant. Yeah, everywhere in like the panhandle only has one place to go. And because everyone else is so slammed, we can’t get even still five years after COVID, we can’t get animals into Washington or Montana plants, because they’re like, Nope, we’re dealing with our own people.

We only have one plant to go to, and they won’t do anything custom, like here’s the list of cuts you can get. And this is how we do it. And so everybody in the panhandle selling the exact same product.

Oh, so you can’t even like, say, I want thicker chops on mine or anything. Maybe a little bit you can. But I mean, if you’re, if you want thicker chops, it’s an extra like 50 cents a pound for them to cut it.

And it’s like, goodness gracious, like that adds up really fast, right? And then your chops look more expensive to people too. But you know, you know, pork in Iowa, I would always go for a thicker chop personally. But anyway, so there’s, there’s those two ways of selling you can do the custom exempt and you can do the retail cuts.

Pros and Cons: Custom vs. Retail

One of the things you know, there’s pros and cons to doing both ways.

And I think custom exempt, the con is like you mentioned this when we were chatting earlier, Cody, like, you can sell quarters or half hogs to your neighbors all day long, but you only have so many neighbors and they can only eat so much pork. Right.

And like you said, they need education on how to use the different cuts and that type of thing. So it’s a lot of work.

And it’s a lot of money, maybe not as bad on hogs as it is for beef.

But when you’re selling a quarter of beef, even a quarter of beef is a lot of money up front for some people like it is not everybody hog is for us is almost $400 though. So I mean, that’s still yeah, still, that’s a big, that’s a big check for them to write, especially if people are living paycheck to paycheck or things are tight. So that is one of the barriers or one of the challenges of selling quarters, halves and wholes or custom exempt.

The benefit is though, that you don’t have to store the meat. Usually, you know, a lot of times they pick it up directly from the processor. You don’t have to worry about what to do with the hams and the roasts.

If they don’t, if they don’t want them, that’s for them to figure out what to do with, you know, if you are selling a retail cuts, benefits are the customer has more flexibility. They can choose like, you know, they can choose, they can say, my family really likes pork chops. We’re just going to buy a ton of pork chops from you.

And we’re not going to touch anything else. And that is a big plus to them, especially as we talked about, if they don’t know how to cook those other cuts, or I sell like variety packs where they get like, it’s a lot cheaper. It’s about an eighth of a hog.

Yeah. And I can, but you can’t go down that far, right with the custom exempt, but with retail, I can go down that far. And then they get a sampling of everything, but they don’t end up with 10 roasts.

They have one roast and they can try it. And if they don’t like it, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s a really smart way, like a hybrid way to go in between there, because the challenge of selling the retail cuts is definitely like carcass management and getting the, you know, getting all of your cuts sold and not just like selling out of pork chops and still sitting on all of these other cuts that you, you know, pork chops and bacon are going to be the first things that go typically. And then you sit on these other products that you just can’t move and you can’t move. And then your family ends up having to eat them.

And we see that with pork. We see that with beef, lamb. I mean, it’s, it happens with all of them.

There’s premium cuts and then there’s cuts that aren’t as common and are harder to use.

Pricing, Carcass Management, and Cornell Tools

Yeah. And that’s where that education piece comes in, where you’re either having to like constantly send out emails or constantly showing up on social media, which is exhausting in itself.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that’s where one strategy is your pricing strategy.

If you are selling out of bacon and pork chops all the time and you can’t move your roast, like we actually partner with, he would be a great guest on your podcast too. Matt LaRue from Cornell has developed the meat price calculator. I have seen that.

Yeah. It’s really kind of a neat tool and you can go in there and you can start to play around and say, okay, I typically have this many pounds of pork chops. If I price them at this price and I typically have this many pounds of roast and I price it at this price, what does my total value per carcass, you know, my retail value per carcass end up at and does that cover my costs? And is it making sense? And so you can start to play around with beef producers.

We talk a lot about like, if you are sitting on hundreds of pounds of ground beef that you can’t move, but your steaks are selling out the day that you tell people that they’re in stock, you probably need to increase your steak prices and decrease your ground beef prices. And I know it’s a lot easier for me to just say that then to actually, you know, but that’s where the price is hard to do. I’ve actually, I have a couple of cuts that I think we actually like lose money on, but like that’s in quotations, you know, because then when it’s bought as like a pack, people are able to buy bacon for $7 a pound, for example, but normally but they’re also selling paying $7 a pound for just plain ground, you know, exactly, exactly.

So yeah, you can start to like balance that out. He also has a new tool out called the bundle builder. So and Matt and I have worked collaboratively on a few different projects.

And he is willing to get one on one with people if they need help with that sort of thing, too. So definitely. Yeah, yeah.

Marketing Without Burning Out on Social

The part that we really focus on is like the smart marketing techniques that you can use so that you don’t have to show up on social constantly because I, you know, I’m a little bit older now than when I started blogging, but I was there for the rise of Facebook. And you used to be able to have a Facebook page. And like it actually reach people.

And now it feels like it feels like you get on social and it just to me feels so defeating because you don’t feel like you’re getting anything out of it. You know, so yeah, are you like you post a reel or something that you’re like, this is solid gold, it’s educational, they’re gonna love all my products, you send it out there and you get like five views on it. And then I turn around and like post a video of like my husband flipping me off or something done right, something silly.

And I think like we darn near went viral on it. But then like I got all these followers, but they don’t convert because they’re just funny. You know, right? Yeah, yep.

No, to completely social media, organic social is really, really hard. I think one of the best strategies that I’ve seen farmers use is go to a farmer’s market to develop your customers. So like a real live actual farmer’s market, get them onto an email list, which I know, again, is easier said than done.

But this is why we talk about the strategies we have. Actually, we have a free webinar that’s on our YouTube channel, YouTube, look up chop local meat. That’s all about email and getting people onto your email list.

Get them onto your email list and then stay in touch with them that way. And that’s what we’ve seen really work. I always tell people to use farmers market as part of their marketing expenses and operating expenses.

Yes. Oh, yeah, they’re going there and you’re meeting customers. And then you’re training them to shop from you.

Yes. And the big thing is like, and even say things like if you’re wanting to order for next week, I will bring that pack for you next week and you have people showing up and meeting you to get those packs and you’re not having to seek out new customers all the time. Exactly.

And those customers there like they are looking for local foods like they they it’s they raised their hand and said, I want to buy local foods. I want to support local farmers. I want to know how my food is raised.

Like it’s really hard to just like you said, you can go viral with a real, but you don’t know if those people care about local foods, if the real is something funny or clever or whatever. So you’ve got your audience right there. But we like you said, we want to encourage them to start pre-ordering in advance.

We want to encourage them to order a year round after the farmers market closes. And I really firmly believe that the best way to do that is email. Yeah, I agree.

On the flip side of that, farmers markets are not for everybody. Maybe you live in an area that doesn’t have a good one. Maybe it’s saturated.

I think you really have to think about advertising and being smart about using Google and meta ads to again, you want to find those people that are saying, I want local foods. And there’s there been some advancements in Google and Facebook ads that make it a lot easier to do. But it’s it’s probably not a DIY thing.

It’s probably you’re probably going to have to find some five years in business. And I still cannot figure out Google ads. Yeah.

In my Facebook meta ads. I think I have I have those down, but I do them all on gut. Oh, I haven’t heard of that.

Interesting. I’m doing it myself. Like, oh, by your I thought you meant that it was like a sorry, I thought you meant it was like platform that you use.

I get it. No, it’s just you know, I’ve worked with coaches and stuff before they’re like, what is your ROI on your ads? And I was like, honestly, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. Because I do a lot of in person events.

And they come up to me and go, Oh, I saw your ad. I’ve been wanting to see this in person. That’s what my curriculum I meet.

But and so I could never tell you what my ROI is, because it’s completely I’m getting it coming back to me in a lot of different ways. Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things about the ads, too.

And even with Google ads, you know, you don’t always see the return right away. I do think there’s some value in saying I want a minimum return. And if for people who’ve never used Google or Facebook meta ads, both platforms tell you what your return is, to some extent, you know, and so you can say, I want to see this minimum out of the platform.

But I also know that there’s probably residual, for example, you probably saw an ad for our shipping course, right? That’s probably why you signed up for it. I never dreamed that then I would do a podcast interview and be able to reach your audience with my resources. And that’s a value added piece that goes.

And I got that course almost a year ago. So I mean, it’s like, it all just kind of builds, you know, and a lot of things are seasonal. You know, for us homeschool curriculum, someone might see an ad today and not purchase from me until next fall.

Exactly. Right. They screenshot it, I’m going to look at that later.

They find it a year later and go, oh, we wanted to do this, and then they buy.

Educate, Connect, and Play the Long Game

Okay, so thinking back to the meat, like, this is the other thing that I coach people on is like, they’re not you can’t just say, hey, we have meat, and they’re gonna buy it immediately, right? Like you do have to get in front of them several times, and start to convince them that this is the right decision for them that this is the right meat for their family that you have the options that they want. And it’s hard for people to think through that whole process.

I understand because when you start a business, you need the money, you’ve got expenses, you need the sales right now. But you need to educate and connect. Yes.

And that was the other thing I was gonna say is like, especially the first couple few years, like, growth feels really slow. But then you start to after you have a couple years under your belt, you start to benefit from those things that happened a year ago. You have repeat customers coming in, they’re telling their friends and neighbors, you’re filling that funnel.

Yes. And it becomes like a flywheel that just keeps like, going and going and going. And that’s and it does get easier, but it’s not.

Like, I think when COVID happened, a lot of people thought that selling meat direct to consumer was like a get rich quick scheme. And it is not there. It does give other options.

But yeah, yeah. Because when you are struggling, like you’ve always been a conventional like beef razor, and you’re just like, I’m going to take them to auction and then they go to slaughter plant. And I don’t see him after they’re six months old or whatever.

Right. Whereas now, they can’t the slaughter plants were down the in the auctions not buying anything. And they needed another way to sell and right online made sense.

But yeah, it’s not a get rich quick. It’s a, you know, like, even for us, we were doing fine just selling to our friends and neighbors. But because I have a nationwide presence, I would go to events and they’re like, we want to buy your pork.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, this makes it where I can expand I can, you know, and so it’s a different concept.

Selling Meat Online: Weight, Pricing, and Customer Expectations

Can we talk a little to what it Yeah.

So there’s a couple, I get one thing I’m thinking about here is that a lot of farmers think that when they sell online, they need to sell by exact weight the same way that they do at the farmer’s market or grocery store where they sell like, you know, they say like, this package of maybe bacon’s about example, but this package of bacon is 1.07 pounds. And so I’m going to calculate that times my $14 a pound and it’s going to come out to 1484.

Did I? Yeah, whatever. Okay, so they’re just gonna and then they’re gonna say, Well, this one’s only point 96 pounds. So I’m going to calculate that and like, and there are some platforms that will allow you to do that.

But very challenging as a customer. Okay, if let’s say it’s not bacon, let’s say it’s a ribeye steak.

And I go to the grocery store, and I go to my meat counter, or I go to the butcher shop, and I go to the meat counter.

And I’m like, I need some steak for my family. And the butcher holds this one up, and he puts it on the scale.

And he’s like, Okay, here’s how much it’s gonna be.

I might go, Whoa, way out of my budget, we’re gonna have to have smaller portions of steak, give me a smaller one, right? You can’t have that back and forth online. And if you do this whole deposit, and then you charge them for the full amount later, like some platforms do, that’s super confusing to the customer. And because they don’t know what their total is going to be, it makes them really apprehensive to actually make that purchase online.

So what we found is that customers really like they want to know exactly what it’s going to cost them at the end, even if that means that this package of bacon is going to fluctuate from point nine to 1.1 pounds. They still want to know it’s $14. That’s it.

I’m done. I know exactly what you’re gonna charge me. I actually, I love numbers.

So every time we go to the butcher, as I’m labeling everything and putting it away, I’m getting weights. And I throw that all into a spreadsheet. And so I know what my average weight is over time.

Yeah. So if I see like, hey, you know, summertime, our pigs are getting a little fatter, where in the wintertime, they aren’t all adjust what that average is. And so then when I say you’re getting, you know, two pork, you’re, you know, you’re getting four pork chops in a pack, the average weight is x, and then I charge you per pound on that average weight.

Right, exactly. The other thing that we do see some people do, especially if they have a wide very, like, maybe they’re a cattle producer that’s still putting together a herd, and they’ve got a bunch of different breeds involved, you know, and so some of their cattle are finishing out really big, and some of them are finishing small, things like that. What they will do is they will say, you can choose a ribeye that’s 16 to 20 ounces, and it’s going to be this price.

And if it’s 12 to 16 ounces, it’s going to be this price. I we don’t typically recommend that I think roasts, roasts are a big one that people do in like half pound increments often. I don’t want you to get like, like bacon, I wouldn’t do it on bacon, I wouldn’t do it on something that you know, a pound of ground pork that might vary by a few, you know, 10s of a and or hundreds of a pound.

But for higher value cuts, like a filet mignon, we definitely do people do like two to four ounce increments, because that way, as the consumer, I can choose what fits in my family’s budget, even like I said, if that means that we’re all getting smaller portion sizes. And then as the farmer, you don’t feel like you’re losing out on money. So other things that I think consumers are really looking for, you know, there’s a lot of questions that they might ask you face to face at the farmer’s market that people don’t think to put in their online store, but it’s like, how thick is it cut? Is it bone in? How many per package? How can I cook this, you know, maybe they see that you’ve got pork roasts online, and they’re marked down.

And they’re like, Ooh, that fits in my budget, but I don’t know what to do with it. So I’m going to avoid it. But if you give them cooking ideas, like we love to throw this in a crock pot and drench it in barbecue sauce, and then we can have pulled pork sandwiches or nachos, you know, that I’m getting hungry now talking about this.

That’s what I love about working with meat, I’m always getting hungry. But then that can entice them to actually make that purchase.

Shipping, Free Shipping Thresholds, and Customer Comms

So they can make the purchase online.

In our system, they get free shipping, if they place an order kind of all we want them to choose a farmer in their region of the country. It’s not always hyper local, but regional. They get free shipping, if they place an order over $75 from that farmer, we actually help cover part of that shipping costs.

But we definitely recommend if you’re setting up an online store, you need to determine a level that you can offer free shipping, it might be 150, it might be 250, but build that shipping in and offer that free shipping. And then you know this Cody from taking the shipping course, we recommend that you only ship on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, so that it does not get stuck in a warehouse. So if they order on a Wednesday, and you ship on Mondays, they might have to wait a few days.

But what we found is that customers are generally very willing to leave a little wiggle room for farmers that they might not, you know, they might, they might expect Amazon or Walmart to deliver immediately to them. But they understand that when they’re ordering directly from farmers, and it’s a frozen product, it’s a little bit of a different system. Yeah, and we actually put that on our website, we only deliver, we only ship on these days.

So perfect. Yes. Yeah.

And I think any like, you know, I encourage my farmers, if you’ve been doing farmers markets, think about all those questions that people ask you, when they’re face to face, or think about the questions that you’ve gotten via email, if you have been selling online, and like the more places that you can put on your website, we only ship on Mondays, but you get free shipping over 150. You know, the more places that you can put those online, the better, because if a customer has to stop and ask you a question, it’s going to slow them down from making a purchase, you know, it’s in, they might find something else. In the meantime, they might have something else come up in their budget.

In the meantime, you want them to make that purchase just right when they’re thinking about it as soon as they’re ready.

Wrapping Up: Keep Growing

All right, I always take tons of notes.

I was gonna say I can see you writing.

I hope that this is helpful. It is. Yeah.

It also helps my assistant write my notes too. So oh, yeah.

So you’ve been like, just a wealth of information.

Like I’ve absolutely loved this. What I asked all of my guests at the end of an episode is what does keep growing mean to you?

Oh, I really, this is really interesting. Because like I said, we just celebrated five years of, you know, next week, next week is five years since we made our first dollar, you know, I feel like a restaurant that like hangs the dollar, you know, we listed turkeys for Thanksgiving, you know, five years ago and had our first sale, I think November 14.

So I am definitely in this like reflecting mode about the last five years and like what the next five years looks like for me. And so keep growing for me, for me personally, and I think you’ll see chop local continue to you know, evolve this way is that I love doing this educational piece. I love getting to know farmers.

I think it’s fascinating farmers across the country. Like I’ve got one that’s raising beef in on the New Mexico, Arizona, like 50 miles from the Mexico border. And it’s so interesting to learn about her beef operation versus the ones that are right here in Iowa.

And so I want to be able to offer more one on one coaching. I want to be able to offer more of the educational services. And but it’s really right now.

And I hope your listeners can take something away here too. It’s for me and my family. It’s really about like not necessarily adding more and saying yes to more but really like narrowing in what is fitting my passions and my skill sets the most and like you read 10x is better than 2x.

Yes, exactly. No, I haven’t. I need to say it again.

What is it? I think it’s 10x is greater than 2x. Okay, along those lines. Yeah.

But so is it along those same like thought process of like it is narrowing down what actually makes you money or brings you some sort of benefit? Yeah. And focus and like not having a linear change in that having like an exponential change in that. Yeah.

Yeah. I saw somebody posted, I think it was like on LinkedIn or something that they were in a phase of life where they’re starting to step back. And I was like, thinking about it.

And I’m like, I think I’m stepping like sideways, maybe in order to go forward. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. No stepping forward, but like maybe I need to take a step sideways and then move forward.

So that I kind of recently did that myself. So yeah, I was I got from when we first started doing curriculum, we printed ourselves in the house. For the last five years, I’ve used a print company, and they started to not meet my expectations anymore.

Yeah, so I bought top of the line, all new equipment to print myself. Nice, which is now saving me money and making it where I can help other self publishers. So yeah, that’s really cool.

That’s very cool. I’m a little bit more in the like, I think I’m going to outsource a few things because they’re not, you know, like, it’s not my path to growth to do certain things. But we’ve been supported by USDA grants in the past, which has helped us provide these educational resources.

And we’re applying, I actually have an application due next week, we’re applying for some more to continue to expand these things. In the meantime, though, everybody, check out our YouTube channel, there’s a wealth of information there. And as well as chop local university.com.

Where to Find Chop Local

All right.

So you have the YouTube channel with your webinars?

Yeah, you have the podcast, which is called the meat success. And that’s, you know, we love meat puns, obviously, chop local. So it’s me at success.

And you have your university where you have courses? Yep. And then the online platform that producers can sell through? Right? Yes. Yep.

Awesome. Yeah. And all of that.

I mean, you’ll find all of that information for producers is at chop local university.com. You can kind of see the different ways that we and we also I should mention, like, if you’re like, gosh, Katie, email marketing sounds so great. But like, I don’t have the tech skills, or I don’t know how to do it. And I don’t know how to get my farmers market customers to sign up.

Like, we we offer done for you services, too. So we can write emails for you, we can do coaching to help you with your specific, you know, needs and platforms and where you’re at. And that’s where I said, I want to do more of that coaching, because I found that there’s a ton of information online.

But when you go to sit down and actually enact it, it can be really hard for farmers. And I get that, right? We’re all busy, we have a million things going on and learning a new skill is tough. So Absolutely.

Well, I really appreciate you coming on today and helping educate everybody on what you do. And you guys definitely go check them out, see what they’re doing. Because even if it doesn’t fit something that you are doing, you maybe have a homestead friend who either wants to sell their own or buy really quality meat offline.

So yeah, off of online platforms. Thank you so much, Katie, and I appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thank you.

And it was great to have a parenting conversation with, you know, with our similarities that we have there, too. So I agree able to throw that in. Well, thank you so much.