(dramatic music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag".

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

I'm also a farmer, which means when I was Young Robbie I used to walk beans.

Do you know what that means?

Not many people do, but our guest today, well, he's gonna explain it to us.

Today, we're talking with Sawyer Cottrell from Eureka.

How you doing Sawyer?

I'm good.

- Yeah.

You know what walking beans is?

- I been there údone that.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Well, let's get right to it.

What is walking beans?

- So, in our area, there's a lot of organic producers.

And so, they raise corn and soybeans organically.

And in order to do that, they can't spray commercial fertilizers or commercial chemicals to kill their weeds.

And so, they use conventional tillage and things like cultivators and rotary hose and harrows and stuff like that to try to kill their weeds.

And whatever weeds they can't kill with those tools, you gotta go out and pull 'em by hand, or haul 'em, or hook 'em, or whatever, and get the weeds outta the field so they don't create seed bank for the next year.

- It's basically, walking through a bean field, picking weeds.

- Yeah.

Yep, walk to the bean field, pull the weeds out by the roots, lay down in the row so they don't grow and put on seed.

- Oh, we used to use like just a hoe, but you're pulling.

- Yeah, we pulling.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- All right, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, you did not grow up on a farm, did you?

- I did not, no.

- Okay.

How did you get the bug, the itch for agriculture?

- Well, I would say from little on up, I always, I mean, I grew up in Eureka, Illinois, so it's small co-op town, I mean agriculture everywhere, right?

And friends and family, not as much family, but a lot of friends involved in agriculture.

And just saw agriculture everywhere I was and just always had an interest in it, but never felt like I was gonna ever have a chance to be a part of it.

I felt like I was kinda on the outside looking in and didn't really see a path towards that in my future.

And so, went through high school.

- Which was the mindset?

I mean, literally.

- Yeah.

- And it was almost kind of preached.

Did you ever have like, people kind of, oh, too bad you didn't grow up in a farm family?

- Yeah, 100%, man.

I feel like that's definitely the mentality is like, if you don't grow up in it, you're not gonna be able to farm.

You know, I think people are open more now to like, you might be able to be in the agriculture industry, but I feel like just even still now, I feel like people are pretty adamant that, if you don't buy into it or marry into it, you're probably not gonna be able to farm for a living.

- Definitely that mindset.

- Yeah.

- It's fun to see a lot of people proving that wrong, but I would say, if you ask the majority of people in agriculture, that's exactly what they would say.

- Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

- But you didn't listen.

You didn't know the assignment or whatever the kids say anyway.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

- So, you started working on a farm.

How'd that happen?

- Yeah, so I was in high school.

Well, so I walked the beans.

Walking beans was kind of the thing to do in our area to make money.

It was kind of the first job you could get, 'cause it was a need, and there was local farmers that were wanting to hire kids to walk beans.

And so, it was kinda the first chance to make money, right?

So, I mean, growing up my parents informed me that I was gonna have to buy my own vehicle and pay for my own gas and all that stuff.

- [Rob] What the heck?

- Yeah, I know.

We were, yeah.

It's next to abuse, almost like.

- It's next to.

- Yeah.

- It's standing right side it.

- Yeah.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I know it's unbelievable to think somebody had to pay for their own things, but yeah, so I mean, like, I was looking to make money, right?

And so, bean walking was the way to do that.

And so, I had walked beans for a guy from church growing up, and then once I was in high school, I kinda went back to him and asked, "Hey, do you need help around the farm or whatever?"

And he said, "Yeah, actually, I could use some help feeding cows."

And so, I started feeding cows for him after school when I was a junior in high school, and just kind of went from there.

Just turned into more and more opportunity involved.

- Whoa, let's not jump over, because I do, I've interviewed you before and I know there's a rather embarrassing story that I would like you to tell this audience.

- Yeah.

- Tell me about some mistakes you made feeding cows.

- Oh, man.

How long do you wanna be here?

- [Rob] Just the one that's really embarrassing.

- Yeah.

So, the audience might not know that you can't feed cows that comes straight off of grass, straight corn, or they'll bloat and die.

- And everybody knows that.

- Really?

Yeah.

I did not.

- Yeah.

- So, somebody didn't know the assignment didn't tell me that.

So, I did not know that.

So, Pete, my employer just said, "Hey, start feeding those.

I got some heifers back there on the pen behind the shop."

He said, "Start feeding them a little bit of corn."

And so, I started dumping corn and one day I showed up after school and he was dragging the last of several dead heifers out of that pen.

- How many?

- I don't remember.

It was seven or eight somewhere in there.

So, yeah.

- I wanna laugh, but that just hurts.

- Yeah, yeah.

It was not good.

It was not good.

So, he was super gracious to me and didn't blow up and just was.

- He didn't even yell at you?

- He did not yell at me, no, he did not.

- Oh, my gosh.

Was he, 'cause he was crying or what?

(Rob and Sawyer chuckling) - No, he was super good to me.

I mean, I think he knew that I didn't know any better and so, it was definitely a teaching moment for me and something I won't ever do again.

- Did you feel bad at all?

- I did.

- Because at the last interview you said you didn't really care.

(Sawyer chuckling) - Well, I didn't know what I did, like I had no idea.

At that point, I didn't even know, I kind of thought, hey, part of owning livestock is owning dead stock, right?

That's what everybody says.

So, I mean, like.

- I'm really glad you didn't say that, right?

- Right, yeah.

So I mean like, I just kind of, I didn't realize even the magnitude of like what those animals would be worth or anything until probably a couple years down the road and I was like, it kind of dawned on me, I'm like, I cost him a lot of money and a lot of time, right?

- It says a lot about him that he just didn't like start bully whipping you.

- Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and that was kind of the, I mean, he was really good to me in a lot of ways.

I mean, that was not the only thing I broke or tore up or killed.

I mean, there's a laundry list of things that I kind of cut my teeth learning things the hard way most of the time.

- Yeah, it's easier to learn on other people's stuff that you can break- - 100% - than your own.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Glad you learned that lesson.

- Yeah, right.

- So, this guy, you were feeding, you were helping with the cattle, but you were also walking beans for this guy, right?

- Yeah.

So, when I started working for him, I don't even know for sure, it was somewhere in the ballpark of maybe 800 acres between him and his dad that they were farming organically.

And they were still like transitioning ground, picking up more ground, and they're kind of building the row crop operation, but it was all organic.

And so, you know, roughly half or really roughly a third of that kind of, 'cause the way they do the rotation with corn, soybeans, and wheat, roughly a third of that usually was in beans.

And so, when I started, it was me and about five other guys that walked his beans that summer.

That's just all I did that first summer when I worked for him.

Me and five other guys walked all of his beans.

And so, then it kind of turned into my thing, like I was kind of responsible to get that done every summer to, you know, make sure we had enough help lined up to get that done.

So, the next year, you know, just kind of build up.

He had more acres and so we needed more kids and it's just kind of.

- [Rob] You were the crew boss.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Well, and this, you know, it sounds lovely, right?

Just walking through a bean field like a meadow.

Oh, here's a weed.

No, it's work.

- Yeah.

- And not only that, I mean it's, you're pacing yourself, because you've got a lot to do.

- Yeah.

Yeah, right.

And I mean, yeah, we walked, I mean, yeah, back in the day we walked a lot of, when we'd start pretty much daylight and we wouldn't quit until dark.

I mean, we'd walk beans all day long stop for.

- You start about 11:00 so you don't get the dew all over your.

- Yeah, later in the year, once the beans are tall and the dew comes on, yeah.

And now, we still walk and we start at 06:15 every morning.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So, how'd this evolve into a company?

- Yeah, so basically, kind of fast forward a few years and I got married in 2017 and then kind of was starting to go through kind of a little bit of a trying to figure out really long term what I wanted to do.

And really wanted to be in agriculture, but didn't really feel like where I was at.

Working full-time on a farm was really super conducive to family life and just didn't really know what that path looked like for an actual career.

And so, I was kind of looking to maybe do some things on my own.

Had some different options I was thinking about.

And so, this bean walking thing had just been kind of picking up every year, because Pete would pick up more acres and we'd need more kids.

And so, I was always just hiring, just, you know, lining up the kids and running them and keeping track everybody's time and doing all that stuff.

But I was still just getting paid an hourly wage through him and I was kind of just told like, "Hey, this is what you can pay the kids."

And I didn't get to control who got paid what.

I was just kind of managing them.

And so, we had started to have a pretty good crew.

I think the year before we turned into a business we had about 40 kids- - 40 kids?

- were on the list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, we had like 40 kids on our list that I would kind of text every day and you know, we get probably 20 a day was probably a good day that last year before we turned into a business.

And that was kinda the point where I had some other producers starting to call me and say, "Hey, when you get done walking Pete's beans, would you be able to come and walk mine?"

And so, it kind of just turned into, I was like realized like, hey, there's actually maybe a business here.

Like if there's a need for this service, I think we could turn it into a business.

And so, that was that next year.

Then over the winter we kind of went to work and got it all set up as a business, an LLC.

And I ended up kind of stepping away from Pete's operation for that next summer and just ran the business.

So, we started an LLC and hired.

- Was he okay with that?

- Yeah, I think he really saw the opportunity and the need for more of an organized system.

- Plus he probably wanted to get you off his farm and stop breaking stuff.

- Yeah, right, right.

He was like a killing me, killing heifers.

So, yeah.

- So, where are we at now with it?

What's it look like?

- So, we got about 120 kids on payroll.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- That's not supposed to happen.

- Yeah, right.

I would agree.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's honestly, it's been a huge God story really.

I mean that the last year that I was doing it when I was still working for Pete, you could ask my wife and she would tell you that there was mornings she had to about kick me outta bed in the morning to go walk beans in the summer, 'cause I hated it.

Like I absolutely hated it.

I had no real ownership in it and it was just a drag go out and walk beans all day long, and I hated it.

And then the next year when I had ownership of it and I could pay the kids whatever I wanted to pay the kids and I could take 'em to Casey's at lunch, I could get off at three o'clock and go swimming if we needed to.

It's 110 and these kids don't need to work and that.

- Well, if he took 'em to Casey's, they probably needed to get somewhere at about one o'clock.

- Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I feel like it's just been really neat to see how God took something that I absolutely, honestly despise doing.

And it's been a huge blessing to our family.

- How do you do that?

How do you, I mean, you despised it.

How do you get those kids to like it?

- Yeah, so we have like, a part of it I think is just building relationships with 'em.

I mean, I think that was kind of the start of it.

Me it was just, I really tried to have a relationship with every kid that we hired and rarely would I actually, necessarily like take my own rows, I'd just kind of walk with kids and kind of teach 'em the ropes and just get to know 'em a little bit and establish a relationship.

And then just, we kind of set up some things like, so these hats here.

This one actually, was our very first year of CIB and it's signed by kind of all the kids that walked that year or all kinda like the main kids.

And then this was I think our second year.

So, if they work for 150 hours, they get a hat.

But before that, if they work for 30 hours, they get a CIB T-shirt.

- Yeah.

- And then 150 hours they get a hat and then 300 hours they get a sweatshirt.

And it kind of creates a culture.

At the end of the year, we take 'em on a trip to Six Flags, if they get enough hours.

And so, it's just kind of created a culture that they, you know, they wanna get a hat, because it's not about the hat.

It's a $15 hat.

Like they can go buy it anywhere, but it's about earning that hat.

Like they've worked their tail off and they've earned it.

- You're giving 'em a sense of accomplishment?

- Yeah, right.

Yeah, and it's become kind of a, you know, a lot of kids do it in our community.

And so, I mean there's a social aspect to it.

They come out there, 'cause their friends are out there and they enjoy it.

And we can, you can walk and talk, like you can get stuff done and still have conversation and just enjoy the day even though you're breaking your back.

I mean, it's hard work.

- How many rows do you take?

- All depends on the field.

And we've walked to the fields where we did, we try to help a guy this summer on a field that it was an 80-acre field and we started on one end at 06:15 in the morning and we didn't even get to the end of the field.

- Oh, half mile.

- by noon.

Yeah.

It was a half-mile rows.

We didn't even get to the end of the field and they were taking one row a piece.

I mean, so it just.

- Oh, no.

- Yeah, it was, I mean it was bent over one weed at a time and just stacked.

And so, I mean every field's different, every producer's different of how clean they want it.

And we try to kind of tailor to that.

- The problem with you is there's too much to talk about.

- I know.

- Let's jump way ahead.

- Okay.

- You are now teaching FFA.

- Yeah, so I'm an ag teacher.

So, I teach agriculture classes at Eureka High School and then I'm the FFA advisor.

So, yeah.

- Okay, was that ever on the Bingo card when you were doing all this early stuff?

- Not really.

I mean, it was something that, you know, I went through the ag program at Eureka High School and it had kind of been up and down and a little bit rocky.

Had turnover of teachers and stuff.

And the teachers that I had were great people and they really tried their hardest and I did learn some things from them, but it didn't up working out.

And we've had I think eight ag teachers in the last 12 years or so.

- Oh.

- 14 years.

- That's wrong.

You were like, oh, I need to get my turn.

- Yeah, right, right.

Yeah.

So, I kind of seen that decline and I've just always really enjoyed working with kids.

Obviously, with CIB, that's just, that was something that once we did that first year of CIB and we saw it as a, like, it was a legit business.

Like we made good money doing it.

It treated us very well and it was scalable.

Like we had all the work that we wanted to, we realized like, okay, like we could do that.

And then it kind of got us thinking like, okay, this is maybe our transition into kind of doing our own thing.

And then it kind of opened the door to like, well, what else?

Like what do I actually wanna do?

And that was kind of really when the calling, I felt like I was, God was really calling me to go back to school to be an ag teacher.

I just, I saw where that program was and I felt like my skill sets were a good fit for that.

Not that I'm the only one that could do it.

I mean, there's a lot of other people that could do it just as well.

But I felt like God was kind of uniquely positioning me to be in that position.

And so, I didn't go to college or at all after high school, so I would start from scratch.

So, that was kinda the first big hurdle I had.

I was really pushing back hard.

I really didn't wanna go to four years of college and at that point I was already married.

- Are you not a good student?

- I was not the best student, no.

- I said, are you now?

- Well, I try to be.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

So, I basically kind of got to the point where I felt like that's definitely what God was calling me to do.

So, I went back to college and got my degree, and yeah, I kind of got really blew opened the doors, while I was going through college.

We actually were able to, I mean, my intent was to teach at Eureka high school.

I didn't really have the intent to really teach somewhere else.

I didn't really wanna pick up and move and go.

I really wanted to serve our community.

And so, I kind of decided like, if I get in with college and there's not a position open, I'll wait.

Like I'll go back to farming or whatever.

And so, yeah, the doors opened up, and yeah, I'm in my second year of teaching now and I love it.

- Does your wife think you're insane?

- Sometimes, I think she does.

She still loves me.

- I didn't say that, but I mean.

- Well, I know.

- Checks her into that, you know what I'm saying?

- Yeah, she's good for me.

She keeps me in check, tries to.

- I imagine, maybe not so much in school, but you're very driven by your faith.

Like when you're doing, when you're walking with these kids in the bean field, are you able to share that?

- Yeah, 100%.

And that's what I actually love about CIB, especially now teaching at the high school.

Obviously, it's a public high school, so to be a little more careful about that, right?

I can't just share.

- Gotta respect it.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Right.

And, that's valid, that's good.

I try to live, try to maybe share the gospel a little bit more by my example at school, right?

But then after, you know, if I can hire a kid, offer 'em a job now it's kinda like everything's fair game in the bean field.

Like they work for me.

So, I feel like at that point, I get a chance to really talk to 'em and really ask them, you know, really where they're at and stuff like that.

And had some really neat conversations in these field.

- That's a perfect teaching, because God hates Waterhemp.

- Yeah, right.

- So, you can always use that as an example.

Don't be Waterhemp.

- Right, exactly.

Oh, there's so many great examples in the bean field.

Yeah.

- All right.

- You Legacy Ranch.

- Yeah.

- That's your ranch, of all the other things, somewhere in the middle you actually started farming too?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we started Legacy Ranch when I was going to college.

We live on a rented farm.

We had 10 acres of pasture and I was just raising Angus cows and selling 10 calves a year at the sale barn and realized that that was just an expensive hobby and I wasn't making any money.

And so, it kind of was like, hey, while I'm going to college, you know, why not try to do something else?

So, we're like, I think we could do better by direct marketing our beef.

And then I kind of started the conversation, well, what kind of beef do we wanna sell?

Because anybody sells Angus beef, right?

And so, I had heard about Wagyu, and kinda heard about the breed and what the opportunities were within Wagyu, and started to get really excited about that.

- So, people know it, right?

You've got, you know, Wagyu is the top.

Angus is pretty high, and then you got like circus animals, right?

So, I mean you're going from a good cut of meat to you want premium.

- Yeah, and there's even within Wagyu, I mean Wagyu is a Japanese breed of cattle, just means Japanese cow, that's all it means.

Wa is Japanese, gyu is cow.

- That's it?

- Yeah, simple as that.

Yeah, it's kinda lame.

- I almost wish I didn't know that.

It's kind of disappoint, anyway.

Still means Jedi warrior to me.

- Yeah, right.

So I mean, and there's like, you know, we're breeding full blood Wagyu bulls to Angus cows and so, we're getting percentage cattle.

We're not dabbling in the full blood stuff at this point.

We have full blood bulls.

- It's too much.

If you had a pure Wagyu steak, - Yeah, I agree.

- it's fantastic for about maybe five, six bites and then it's like eating a stick of butter.

- I 100% agree.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I feel like our target market is more people that just want really high-end, prime quality steak.

And I think sometimes we overlook just all the other cuts, roast and stuff like that just phenomenal.

The flavor that you get from Wagyu is incredible.

And so, that's what really drew me to the breed.

And so yeah, we started that, just bred some cows to a Wagyu bull.

I had some cows and got three calves on the ground and then kind of started getting pretty excited about it, but realized like, these things take two years to finish, we're gonna have to do something sooner than that.

And so, we found some fat cattle to buy and kind of got the process started.

Set up a website and really haven't looked back.

I mean, it's been steady growth, but it's been, we're a far cry from where we wanna be, but it's definitely growing.

- You're selling direct?

- Yeah, we're selling everything direct to consumer.

- Are you selling local?

- Yeah.

Yep.

So, we have a little farm store in Eureka that we sell beef out of, all frozen.

We do a little lunch stand farm, little lunch grill during the summer months.

Actually, we're kind of wrapping that up right now.

We do burgers and broths.

- [Rob] Who cooks them?

- So, I help during the summer most of the time, but then right now I've got two employees that work.

- Do you overcook them?

Be honest.

- No.

Try not to.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

Everybody's kind of, everybody's different though.

Some people don't want any red in the burger and that.

- I like it half mooing still.

- Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So that, but that's wrapped up.

- Yeah, that's pretty much wrapped up for the year.

So, I mean, so we do local sales, but then we also ship nationwide so we can ship any of our cuts directed to your door in two days.

- Like I said, we've interviewed you before and I just can't get to everything, but I know one of the things that is most important to you is Abby and your three kids, your wife and your three kids.

How important have they been to not just helping you get to where you are, but grounding you?

- Yeah, that's a really good question.

- [Rob] Thank you.

- Yeah.

- So, you're not dealing with a chimp here.

- Yeah, super important.

I mean, I think, yeah, I think as a husband and a father, I mean that's by far the most important role that I have.

You know, they ask before the show what I want my title to be.

And I mean, there's a laundry list of things that I do, but, you know, I feel like at the end of the day, being a husband and a father is the most important thing that I do.

- That's what they should put down there.

Now your name and husband slash father, - Husband slash father.

- Little extra work for the people in the back.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, it really is.

I mean, I think they really ground me to, I mean, no matter what I do during my day, ultimately, I mean they're my reason why I'm doing what I'm doing.

I feel like that's my first ministry.

I have a lot of other ministries, but they're my first.

- It's good to hear.

I mean, because, yeah, we can all have fun, you know, joking at our spouses and kids or whatever, but you can always tell that the people that truly love them and you can tell that comes through when you speak about them.

I don't know what they see in you.

- I don't either.

I really don't either.

That's a mystery.

- So, at Central Illinois Beanwalkers, the ag teacher, Legacy Ranch.

I mean, is it hard, it seems like it'd be incredibly hard, especially ag teachers take so much time.

It seemed like it'd be incredibly hard to balance all that.

- Yeah, so I had a kind of a mentor, somebody I look up to ran into him at Casey's.

And he asked me pretty much the same thing, like, how do you balance or you know, how are you doing kind of balancing everything, whatever.

I think I said, I think I told him like, you know, "It's kind of hard to balance everything sometimes."

And he's like, "You gotta stop looking at it as a balance.

You gotta look at it as a blend, because balance makes it feel like you're running over here to try to take care of this and then you gotta run over here to take care of this."

But when all of it kind of ended, that's the beauty of, I feel like all of that we have going on and it really does work together.

I mean, our my family is a part of the ag program and a part of Legacy Ranch, and a part of CIB.

I mean my kids have some of the most amazing role models.

I mean, they look up to all, you know, high school kids that are just super solid kids.

And I love to see how it just kinda all works together and blends together.

But I think really, yeah, ultimately, it's about relationships and putting the right people in the right places.

I mean there's a lot of the things about Legacy Ranch and even CIB that I don't really do anymore.

I just facilitate and really, I really kind of really try to trust young kids to take on roles and take responsibility, and that goes a long way.

- Sawyer, the thing about, we had you on the weekend XM show and every break I say your name and I don't think I got it right one time.

- I don't think so either.

- So, pronounce your last name for us.

- Sawyer Cottrell.

- That's not the way that it looks like it should be.

- I know, I know.

- Cottrell, Sawyer Cottrell from Eureka, Illinois.

Sawyer, congratulations on all your success.

It is earned.

You've earned every bit of it.

And that has to be an incredible feeling.

Congratulations on, you know, trying to spread that grace to others.

You're not a selfish person.

And that says a lot about you too.

So, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show.

I know you're a busy guy.

Sawyer Cottrell.

- There you go.

- From Eureka, Illinois.

Everybody else, (Rob laughing) we'll catch you next week.

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