(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of AG."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth-generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

They say everything is cyclical: bell-bottoms are back, mullets are back, and apparently raising livestock in a pasture is back.

Alright, today we're gonna talk with Rosalie Trump from Clare, Illinois.

How are you doing, Rosalie?

- Good.

Thanks for having me.

- Good.

Where is Clare?

- Northern Illinois up in DeKalb County.

- Okay.

Well, thank you for coming here.

Man, what's it been like having Trump for a last name the last few years?

Does everybody ask, "Are you related?"

- When we got married in 2015, so at the time that I decided to take my husband's last name, it was just kind of a funny joke.

Like, oh, the guy that's like, "You're fired," right?

That's who Donald Trump was at the time.

And then right after we got married, he announced he's running for president.

And I'm like, "Oh no."

All of a sudden it's a political statement, and I didn't mean to do that.

So yes, anytime anyone like asks for an ID or anything, I'm like, "Ugh."

- Yeah, you always get this or.

- I'm like, "Here you go."

Okay, hold my thumb over the last name.

Just, just... - Just let me through.

You grew up on a farm?

- I did.

- What kind of farm?

- A little bit of everything.

So back when I was little, I remember having pigs on pasture and cattle.

And my family's always done corn and soybeans 'cause we're in Illinois.

So that's what you do.

And then eventually the farm changed, and, you know, pigs started moving indoors and our cattle on pasture grew quite a bit.

And then when my brother and I went to college, we had to scale that back down 'cause my dad was like, "I'm not doing all these chores.

You guys left."

And now we're kind of back and the animals are back out on pasture and growing a little more every year.

- Funny how that works, isn't it?

- It is.

It is.

- It was, I don't know, I'm gonna say it evolved, but maybe the late '70s, early '80s, that when really everything went inside.

They were getting rid of all the A-frame houses and all that stuff.

And I don't know, it's kind of funny to see, like I said, that cyclical thing.

Now, is this something that you always thought you were gonna be doing?

- No, no.

So I moved about 100 miles during college.

Went to college in Central Illinois, Illinois State University, and had my first job (bell ringing) down there as well.

- Go Redbirds.

- Go Redbirds.

- Yeah.

- So I had my first job in Bloomington as well.

And kind of thought I would end up down there.

- [Rob] What were you doing?

- Life took me back up north.

My first job was for Illinois Corn Growers Association.

- Oh, yeah.

- So I worked down there.

I was an intern with them in college and ended up having my first job there.

And then kind of dove into ag communications and got hired with an ag communications agency, and made my way back north to the family farm.

- Okay.

You got married.

Where'd you meet your husband?

- I did.

I met him at the local 4th of July festival for fireworks night (laughs).

- Oh, how romantic.

- I know.

It was romantic.

- Did you guys kiss that first night when the fireworks were going off?

- No, I was actually there with a different boyfriend at the time.

So we had to take care of that situation first before I could pursue my husband.

- Okay.

I'm just gonna let that go.

Yes, I'm glad one ended before the other one.

- That's right.

- But sparks were flying though.

- Yeah, that's right.

- He is not from a farm, right?

- He is not.

Nope.

So I'm the farmer in our house.

- Okay, I mean, was he... What's the word?

Was he a little worried about going back to a farm?

- No.

So he's from a small enough town that it's not completely foreign to him.

But, you know, he grew up in town.

And you could, you know, ride your bike to your friend's house.

So that's not really a thing that we're at.

Actually, I believe we were still dating or maybe engaged.

It was early on.

And he had helped my family work some cattle out in the pasture, and they were sorting some cows and stuff.

And the bull challenged my husband and he stood right up to him, no problem.

- The bull challenged your husband.

Like took his glove off and slapped him.

- That's right.

And my husband didn't back down.

My family was impressed.

They were like, "Okay, not bad."

And then after they got done sorting cattle, they were giving him credit.

And my husband goes, "There's a bull out there?"

(laughs) So it turns out he wasn't so much brave as maybe naive.

But, you know, in the moment, my family was very impressed.

- (laughs) So tell me about that process, right, of you coming back.

Now, are you guys farming on your own?

Are you partnered with your parents?

How does it work?

- So my parents, my brother and I all farm together for Pasture Grazed is the name of our farm business.

We really brought it together and kind of made it its own thing about maybe five to seven years ago, kind of when I started coming back.

And we knew we all wanted to do something together and on the farm.

And this is just sort of what it evolved into.

My dad and brother have really dove deep on the regenerative ag and soil health stuff.

And a lot of that has to do with grazing and how you graze on your pastures.

And, you know, what you see is the animals, and kind of the product you take off of it is the meat.

But what we're really working at every day is what they're doing to the soil and how we can make our land more healthy to be able to produce what it does for our community.

So it all kind of got born out of that, which is why we have livestock, you know, kind of back outside and on the pastures.

And just figuring out how to work with Mother Nature instead of against her.

And it's worked well for us.

And we, you know, are able to feed a lot of people in our local community, which is pretty cool.

- Regenerative.

I mean, I don't even know what that means.

I'm a farmer.

- You know, so sustainability was the buzzword for a long time.

Maybe it still is.

But rather than just being able to sustain where we're at, it's actually regenerating; so regenerating nutrients that are in the soil instead of just wanting to keep it at a certain level.

You're actually trying to rebuild some of what we've used over the last decades through our different farming practices.

- It sounds kind of hippieish.

- Kind of.

Yeah.

- Is it or is it legit?

- No, and it's growing, actually.

You know, I'd be surprised if you don't start hearing regenerative ag more just as kind of a term.

And it's kind of growing.

I would say my dad and brother were kind of on the forefront.

They like were the first ones to go to like some of these classes that people are having out on their ranches and stuff.

But it's really starting to gain momentum.

And especially with even different companies, you know, like the Pepsis of the world are being challenged to, you know, source their products that are being grown a certain way.

So even from that side of things, it's kind of changing the industry and what our expectations are as farmers.

- Okay.

So what all are you guys raising on your farm?

- We have beef cattle, pigs.

We also have sheep.

And my dad and brother do corn and soybeans as well.

- [Rob] Is that more of the traditional ag than the corn and soybeans?

- Yeah, they've also been working on transitioning some stuff to organic.

It's a whole process.

- Yeah, it's a long process.

- It takes years to be able to officially transition.

So figuring some of that out.

And the same as any farm, you know, there's generational stuff going on where, you know, Dad wants to slow down and my brother's in his 30s, so he's wanting to grow things.

And just those family shifts as well of, you know, how much help you have and how much energy you have in a day to do things.

- So the cattle, right, everybody gets that.

Hogs, they're kind of rough on the ground.

- They are.

- And how do you handle that?

- They are.

So we actually have, each year they get a much smaller section of the pasture, and they absolutely demolish it every year.

But each year we move which section, where they're gonna be.

So we only have pigs on pasture basically during the warm months.

So we get 'em after weaning in the spring.

And then by the time cold weather really starts to hit, their life cycle has ended and they go to the processors.

So we're not wintering them on the pastures.

But they get a different section every year so that the section they destroyed has time to heal and regrow.

- Do you have any timber?

- We do, yeah.

We have some tree lines and stuff that go through.

- That's a big thing right now is like getting the pigs into the timber.

- Yeah.

And you've gotta be able to provide shade as well.

So you either have to put up a building to give them shade, or if you're lucky enough to have trees in your pasture, that kind of becomes part of the equation of where you have your animals set up, especially during the summer in the heat of the day.

- When you say you gotta have it, is that just, you know, for the comfort of the animal?

Or is that like rules - Absolutely.

- for whatever you're doing?

- Well, it's comfort of the animal, but also an animal isn't going to perform well for you if you aren't keeping them healthy.

So if an animal's under heat stress or anything like that, they're not gonna do well, and it's gonna impact your bottom line as well.

So it's never good for a farmer for an animal to be uncomfortable in any way.

- And sheep, I heard they're dumb.

- We do have sheep.

I don't think they're particularly smart, but they're smaller than cattle, which makes 'em a little easier to correct when they're not being smart.

- They're dumb but they're smaller.

- Well, there's that.

- You can push 'em around.

- I don't know if cattle are really all that smart either, but they're a lot harder to correct when they're going the wrong way or not doing what they're supposed to do.

- There's a myth out there about cow tipping.

Can you actually tip a sleeping cow over?

- No, you cannot.

You're welcome to try.

And I guess I'd be impressed.

But considering that they sleep laying down, it'd be impressive to tip them over.

- Well, what if, like you just like aggressively ran up to one that's standing?

And with all your might - It would probably - just put a shoulder in.

- be the same as like a ladybug hitting you in the arm.

It's probably not gonna knock you over.

- So right here, right now, we're putting it to bed.

- I'm busting it.

- There's no cow tipping.

No, I've never seen anyone tip a cow in my life.

- Okay.

Unless the cow was your waitress.

- (laughs) Perhaps.

- It's the first time I've ever seen the cameraman laugh.

- (laughs) Well done.

- It wasn't that good of a joke.

But here we are (laughs).

So who are you selling your meat to?

- Just people in our community.

The biggest part of our business is selling quarters and halves of beef or halves and wholes of pigs, which means you have to have a deep freezer and have some idea of being able to work with a butcher.

- Which people don't have anymore.

- I know, we kind of figured that out actually when COVID hit, and then people started panicking about food and getting kind of weird.

So all these new customers showed up.

And they were like, you know, "What do I have to do to have a quarter beef?"

And we're explaining it to them, and they're like, "But where do I put it?"

And we just never thought of, I guess, if you don't have a deep freezer; if you're in an apartment, of course you don't.

So then we kind of had to tell them like, "Hmm, you shouldn't buy a quarter beef then if you don't have the freezer space for it.

It's gonna go bad pretty fast."

So it's kind of interesting.

So then we kind of pivoted a little bit and added some freezers on our farm so people can stop out and just buy, you know, 20 pounds of meat if they wanted at a time.

So we had to kind of start offering those smaller packages, 'cause people were interested in buying from us but they didn't have a whole deep freezer.

Or they live by themselves and they don't need that much beef or pork, you know.

- How long does a steak last in a freezer?

- Oh, I mean, you're safe at a year.

It's probably safe to eat after that, but the quality is where you kind of start- - Kind of starts going down a little bit.

- So we try to eat through, you know, all of our steaks in a year.

And ground beef, maybe a little longer, just 'cause it's not, you know, a steak; you want it to be this really tender, high-quality eating experience.

- Alright, so if I put your, yeah, steak, if I put your steak up against a steak I get at Walmart, which is safe- - Absolutely.

- Is it gonna taste different?

- I think so.

And all of our customers- - You can say it.

I mean, I know you wanna be like- - I really do.

There's no wrong way to do things.

You know, and just because we have everything on pasture isn't to say it's the only right way to do the thing.

Every farm is trying to figure out what works best for their business and their family.

And this is what's worked for us, and our community is excited about it.

And yeah, we mostly, when people come and either buy a quarter beef or buy a steak from us, they are usually coming back for more.

And it is different for them.

We also grain finish.

So even though all of our beef is grass fed and eats grass its whole life, we're also finishing on grain, which brings some of that really good marbling back through.

So we really like what we're raising.

You kind of get that, you know, you get to see that the animal was raised on pasture.

If sustainability is something that's important to you, we can bring that to the table.

But we're not necessarily losing any of the taste or quality because we're able to grain finish as well.

- Some people absolutely love grass fed.

That's all they want, you know, 100%.

Not so much me.

I guess it's old school.

- I don't care for the taste in particular, but I'm kind of spoiled, right?

- Yeah.

Is that the same with the pigs too?

Are they grain finished?

- Yep.

So they're kind of the same.

They're out in pasture, but like you said, they tear up the pasture so much.

And they're not really much of a grass-eater anyway.

So they get to live outside, but we're feeding them every day.

- So what do we got here?

This is just your like brochure, or what do you call it?

- Yep.

That's just a postcard.

So that's a picture of our pasture here.

You can see most of our cows are white.

So we have British White cows, and we also breed with an Angus bull.

So using a couple of different breeds there.

And then our logo up on top, Pasture Grazed, is the name of our farm business.

And my mom is an artist so she made the logo.

I've worked in communications and marketing, so I do a lot of our forward-facing marketing stuff.

And then my dad and brother are the soil health experts.

So they bring that to the table.

It's a group effort.

- Tell me about your mom.

She's an artist?

- She is an artist.

She was a graphic designer, you know, going through college and stuff, and then made a name for herself in the art world, traveling the world, teaching people how to use polymer clay and all these precious metals to make jewelry.

And she was kind of the first one to figure out that.

- I don't know what that is.

- It's just a really, I don't know either, so don't quote me on any of this.

But it's a clay, and it contains like different pieces of silver in it.

So once you build, you know, your ring or your necklace, whatever you're gonna do, and when you put it in the kiln it comes out as silver.

So you can kind of mold, - She's an alchemist.

- mold your own silver into stuff.

Yeah.

It's really cool.

And so she made DVDs and she wrote a book and she got to travel the world doing it.

- Really?

- Yeah, so it's pretty cool.

So we had a pretty serious artist make our logo.

- Yeah.

Do you ever watch "The Smurfs"?

- No.

- That cartoon?

- I know what it is but I don't watch it.

- Yeah, the bad guy was always trying to capture the Smurfs because he could turn 'em into gold.

- Oh, see?

- Maybe your mom should look at that.

- Is she a Smurf villain?

(both laughing) - Well, that's very cool.

And the logo is very cool too.

So tell me something that's satisfying to you about selling meat that is raised the way you are, you know, on the pasture instead of just maybe more of the traditional style.

- We get to meet a lot of people and have some really good conversations with people who are curious about how their food is grown.

It's something I have a passion for.

I've even done volunteer work, just connecting.

We're not all that far from Chicago: we're about 60 miles from Chicago.

So it's kind of easy for us to connect with an urban audience and just have real conversations with people about, you know, why we do things the way we do and why maybe we don't do some of the things.

People often ask us, you know, why we're not certified organic or why we don't grass finish all the way through, and why we are adding grain into their diet.

And it's all good conversations.

And it's just great to meet different people and have those conversations.

I think people are more understanding than we give them credit for.

But there's a lot of information out there and not all of it is accurate.

So I'm a big advocate for meeting a farmer if you can and just having real conversations about how your food is grown.

'cause there's probably pieces of it- - [Rob] Yeah, but you have to be nice.

Well you have to be nice if you want people to talk to you and come buy your beef or pork.

- Okay, I'll leave that up to you.

You were awarded the 20 Under 40 award from the Illinois Soybean Association.

That's pretty cool.

- Yeah, a friend and a former colleague of mine from Illinois Corn Growers Association nominated me, which was cool for our farm and the things that we do there, but also just some of the volunteer work.

We were a part of the Illinois Farm Families.

We are the 96 campaign this year, which means my family was on like half of a second of a Super Bowl commercial.

So we're pretty famous.

- That is pretty cool though.

- I know it's a big deal.

- I know you're making light of it, but I mean, there's a lot of people that saw you.

- Yeah, we were so excited.

We were all huddled.

It was only aired in certain like regions.

- [Rob] Oh, it didn't go through- - It didn't go to Chicago, but like it was in the Rockford market and all that.

So the only TV that got the right channel- - I saw it.

- Did you?

- Yeah.

- Awesome.

The only TV that we had that got that channel was my brother's bedroom TV.

So there was like 12 of us packed into my brother and sister-in-law's bedroom with their TV on just watching.

And, you know, they've got kids everywhere that don't care about the football game.

So we're trying to tame all of them.

But then I took a video of everyone watching the Super Bowl ad.

And like the split second we were up there, we were all like, "Yeah!"

- But had you seen it before?

- Mm-mm.

- Oh, that was it.

- No, that was it.

That was when we got to see it.

- Were you happy with it?

- Yeah, I thought it was awesome.

And they're just, you know, sharing the story of Illinois farmers and what we do.

And we were just one of the families that they featured in the commercial.

- Yeah.

There was a bunch.

- Yeah.

There was a ton from all over the state.

- Yeah.

But that's very cool.

Tell me what the 96 campaign is 'cause not everybody knows that.

- Sure.

So we are the 96%.

It all goes back to a survey that they did surveying all of the Illinois public and asking what percentage of farms they thought were family owned.

And I believe the survey came back with 47% was what everyone assumed.

And actually, 96% of farms in Illinois are still family owned.

- You have two kids?

- I do.

- How old are they?

- Six and three.

- Oof.

- I'm tired.

- How are you even here?

- I don't know.

Coffee.

Brought to you by coffee.

- Are you excited about raising kids on a farm?

- Yeah, it's really awesome.

We're like double lucky.

We don't just get to raise them on a farm, but our family is all super close.

There's two houses on the farm where we live.

So my parents: grandma and grandpa are in one house and we're right across the driveway.

And then my brother and his three kids are just a four-wheeler ride away across the field.

Most people call that a compound.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- That's what we have.

But it's so fun for the kids.

- Do you have a moat?

Do you have a school bus buried in the backyard?

- We don't.

I'll think about it though.

- With supplies and ammunition.

- You know, if my husband had his way, we might.

- (laughs) I honestly, I agree.

I think that's probably the best way too.

- It's just so fun.

Can you imagine?

You can like walk to grandma and grandpa's house and ride a four-wheeler to go play with your cousins?

Come on.

- Well, I mean, your family must get along.

I mean, unfortunately, not every farm family does, and that creates a lot of trouble.

- You know, I give the most credit to my husband and my sister-in-law.

So they're the in-laws, right?

So they live in - The outliers.

- our compound with their in-laws all the time.

And I don't know if a lot of people could do that.

So I really do give them the most credit.

You know, like they're the ones that are in-law-land all the time.

- It's my favorite amusement park.

- In-Law-Land?

Yes.

- I don't know.

Talking to your customers, what surprises you most that they don't know?

- Hmm.

Probably just some of the labels they see in the store and why maybe we aren't using those.

And just in my career, I've learned a lot about food labels and what they actually mean and what you as the farmer or the person selling the food has to do to get those labels.

And so many of them lack meaning; like local, for example, doesn't actually have a definition.

You can kind of put it on whatever you want.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- [Rob] I didn't know that.

- Or natural is another one.

- Oh yeah, that one.

It has very few actual terms to it to put it on something.

So, you know, when you come out and buy a pound of ground beef from our store, there's no labels on it.

You've got to come out and have a conversation with us, and I'll tell you exactly how and when and where it was raised.

But we don't have those labels, and so I think some people feel like, why aren't you, you know, grabbing up that opportunity.

And there's just no need for it, I guess, if you're coming out to the farm.

And I'm also not really about misleading people or trying to leverage things that have no meaning.

It's just not really what we're about and what we need to do: so.

- People probably really love the fact that, you know, when they have a cookout, now they can tell their friends: "Oh yeah, we know everything about this piece of meat," and blah-blah-blah and have the whole story to it.

- And when you come out to the farm and buy it, I mean, you see the pigs and the cattle right there.

I mean, you get to kind of come face-to-face with what you're eating, which not a lot of people do anymore.

- Yeah.

Are they okay with it?

People that have no idea about farming, and they come out and, you know, they see the pig poop and all that.

No problem with that?

- No, I don't think so.

I think they have a lot of questions.

And, you know, maybe for some people, literally looking your dinner in the eye is unsettling, right?

- Yeah.

- Unless you're maybe a sociopath or something.

But it is, you know, but it's part of what, if you're going to eat meat, I mean that's what you're doing, you know.

And so I think just for people to even have that experience and get to see how that animal lived its life or how we were raising it, you know, gives them some peace in being able to have that for dinner, I guess.

- Yeah, well, I mean, you gotta give 'em credit.

- Yeah, well, I mean, not everyone's willing to come out and do that really, you know?

- What's with the bag?

Is this what people get their meat in?

- That's right.

So when we came up with the smaller bundles for people to come get for their freezer, these freezer totes are about what you can fit in a freezer above your fridge, you know, like if have an apartment.

- It's like the stuff that you get in the grocery store, right, to take the- - Insulated freezer bag.

- My wife's big on that, right?

She's like, when I grew up, mom would buy the milk in Peoria.

There was a, you know, 45-minute ride home.

Plus she would stop at Sears and JCP, what, you know, old people do and all that.

And we'd get home four hours later and we'd drink the milk and we'd get sick.

And that's just the way life is.

But my wife will not buy the milk now unless she has one of those bags.

- I'll tell you what.

You can keep it and like give it to her for Christmas or something.

It's perfect.

- Fantastic idea.

Is there a place on social media or a website that people can find out more about you?

- Yeah, so our website is pasture-grazed.com.

So that has our whole story and kind of what we do on our farm.

And also information about purchasing meat from us.

And our Facebook page is Pasture Grazed.

- Okay.

And any expansion?

You guys gonna get an ostrich, something like that?

- I don't think so.

We did recently get a donkey to hang out with the sheep.

So her job is to keep the coyotes away.

- Do you have problems with the coyotes?

- Yes.

- They'll attack a sheep?

- Newborn lambs are the biggest concerns.

So especially during lambing season, we have some extra precautions that we take.

But in theory, the donkey's job is to kind of spook 'em off.

- I've heard that it's pretty effective.

- They make a horrible noise, donkeys, when they're upset.

When she's unhappy, you can hear it for miles.

So I actually think that's like their biggest defense.

They are pretty territorial.

I mean, they'll get physical if they need to.

But I think even if she just yelled, the coyotes would scatter.

- Yeah, they're awful for people that live in town.

How awful the coyotes are.

Yeah.

- Especially, you know, we had some lambs earlier that anticipated this year, like in February.

You gotta imagine how hungry a coyote is by February.

They're willing to go after some stuff.

- Yeah.

Farm cats.

- My precious kitty.

- Mm-hmm.

- Rosalie Trump from Clare, Illinois.

I want to thank you for making the trip down here.

Really, really appreciate it.

And congratulations on all your success.

Not only being able to have a successful family business, but able to teach people in the cities more about where their food comes from.

It's not something that everybody can do.

You're so nice.

That's I think what it is.

People just want to listen to you.

So thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(upbeat music)