Here to Sage Creek farms.

Honestly, wiregrass farmers with a bunch of £1200 employees.

What we do is make grass.

We manage that grass with lots of red meat, production cows, sheep, goats and pigs that all run around outside and do that grass management for us.

Our family has been here for 80 years and it's been a wonderful tradition and we've had the opportunity to continue on and stand on the shoulders that our fathers and grandfathers.

We're doing business together as a family consistently and constantly.

And that is such a blessing that it can truly be a family farm that all of our family is involved and.

Throwing our shoulder into making this work together, family dinners are also business meetings and mom has to say OK, stop talking about that so we can.

We have actual family time.

God has blessed us to or entrusted us.

Maybe I should say with 1700 acres of Creek frontage of land and I feel like we need to manage it in the very best way we steward it.

The very best way that we can.

And for us that is a system that is sustainable to the environment.

For my family and for the land 4th generation here in the same.

Place on the same patch of ground and.

I think to me that really means something in part because you know I have the opportunity to do this because of responsible use by the last three generations of fries.

Good morning, it's always just making sure that everybody's got their breakfast.

So we'll feed pigs.

We'll give grass strips to cows.

Make sure goats and sheep are doing alright where they're at.

Her last batch was 14 little pigs, so she's got hopefully at least that many little pigs in here.

And so as they are getting ready to come out and so having little pigs what we call farrowing show kind of slim down just a little bit go from being quite wide to get a little bit narrower, and then milk will start to drop into her utter here.

The smallest pin they'll ever have after a week, they'll get access to a couple 1000 square feet.

This is where little pigs want to be outside.

This is where they're happy, like when it was snowy for a while.

They were inside as soon as that door was cracked, they were all darting out.

Started running around.

I don't know if there's an Olympic event for little pig skating on ice, but they took to it pretty quick.

When COVID hit the cattle market plummeted, we had a heavy percentage of our revenue.

Our sales come from local restaurants and those disappeared as restaurants shut down and that really had a big impact on our bottom line.

In December of 2020, we had a contract with Butterball for a Turkey production contract and very abruptly and unexpectedly we lost that contract due to some.

Cutbacks within the company that was roughly 50% of our farming income, which meant we had to make some very hard decisions.

We had to let two very good men go.

One had been with me 17 years and it was difficult to part with them, but it was the only way we could survive the loss of the contract.

It's in those crisis moments where you have a turning point.

You have a decision to make, and I think our commitment was to our family farm.

Ours went up, pay went down.

It's not not a comfortable cushy thing, but I believe in what we're doing helped us stick around.

My grandfather purchased original 60 acres in the 40s and it has changed dramatically from his day 80 years ago.

My grandfather moved here and bought this property to 60 acres here.

We purchased this property in 2017 about 600 Gwen change in farming from my grandfathers.

Time to mine has been the disconnect between product.

In the consumer, we get farther and farther away from the person who's actually using our product.

Our business model is essentially is direct to customer.

We want to sell to the people who are around us.

Our main customer base is in Northwest Arkansas.

We sell into Harrison and Branson some in northeast Oklahoma.

We raise our cattle.

They are bred, born and finished on the farm.

That is one thing that I love about.

Our business model is being able to interact with the people who are using it to get.

Feedback from them directly.

What we're doing well or what we're not because of our direct consumer or direct customer model.

Our prices have stayed consistent.

We could have very well hiked our prices up very high and some people would say that we probably should have but trust in our name carries the day.

Passenger side wasn't it.

Like not putting weight on the driver side, a more localized regionalized food system can be more resilient, environmentally responsible, and just food system better for our animals.

Better for our customers and better for our family.

The system the idea is to imitate nature, imitate the way God set up pasture to be managed.

We we.

We saw the Buffalo herds in the plains.

They grazed an area and they moved and then that area would have plenty of time to rest and recover and the grass has got to a cover.

This protecting it both.

Now while we're in cold weather and we're needing the root system to stay active.

But also in summer time when it's 100 degrees the sun is off the soil.

It's on this so that is helping lower the soil temperature which is.

Helping our root system and our forge to be able to thrive in a more difficult environment.

I tend to think about the next generation a lot as the 4th generation here.

The only reason I'm here is because of the legacy of three generations before me.

There's a foundation set in.

This farm making money and in us being able to do this full time and make a living doing this full time.

And so, as I think about my first child, that's on the way.

Now, my hope is that he or she would have a chance to do this at some point in the future.

And so that's part of my responsibility here.

If I view this property as mine, that this is my land.

My animals, my farm.

I'm going to treat it much differently than if I view this as something that I am stewarding that God has entrusted me with that I am stewarding for future generations for his Kingdom.

And I'm going to manage it much differently.

I'm not going to hang on to my rights and and my stuff nearly so tightly.

I'm going to be able to share that with others and and I have an eye toward passing it down to my family.

You call the cows.

You call in.