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

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

Like the old nursery rhyme: "Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any...?"

You know, we always know it.

Sheep, you cut the wool off and then you make a sweater or something, but does that ever get done?

Well, today's guest is going to tell us how he's doing it.

Today, we're talking with Will Kleinert from Ashkum, Illinois.

How are you doing?

- I'm doing good.

- You do that stuff, right?

- Yeah.

A professional shearer, five years running now.

- It's kind of a lost art, isn't it?

- Yeah.

It's something that is very hard to professionally get into, because, unlike Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, and some of those countries where shearing is really prominent, and sheep are really prominent, out here, a lot of times it was maybe the shearer just handing you the pair of shears and saying, "Alright, kid, figure it out."

Or you needed to shear your own sheep, so you just went to hacking and a-whacking, hoping that the wool got off.

- Yeah, like going to Great Clips.

- Yeah.

- I've been to New Zealand.

It's unreal how many sheep they have there.

It's sheep and dairy, and we think we have big ag here.

But I don't know, I can think of two people in a 50-mile radius of my house that have sheep.

It's just not as common, is it?

- Especially here in Midwest territory, you're starting to see the decline in that, and in livestock overall.

And sheep wool values in the Midwest have gotten really, really poor.

So a lot of guys, unless they're chasing ribbons at the show, are getting into more of the hair sheep, where they don't have to try to, A, find a shearer, because that's a really difficult thing to do, and, B, obviously have an extra cost that they have to swallow.

- In your area, are you the only shearer?

- Yeah.

I would say, within a hundred-mile radius, I'm the only sheep shearer.

And then as far as the state of Illinois goes, I'm the only one certified through the American Sheep Shearer Directory.

That is in the state of Illinois.

I do know of one other shearer up in the northern part of Illinois, but he does a lot of going around, doing show flocks and things.

He's got his own, obviously, family farm, and his own sheep flock that he tends to as well.

- If you ever meet another shearer locally, do you guys fight?

- No.

It's one of those things where it's really cool to actually meet another shearer, because it's so hard to meet other shearers.

- But they're taking your business.

- There's enough to go around.

There's not enough of us.

There's not enough of us.

- Okay, let's go back.

Were you a farm kid?

- Yeah, I grew up farming.

My family's been farming forever.

On my mother's side, they came off the boat from Italy and started farming.

On my father's side, my uncle was able to trace our family lineage all the way back to the medieval period, when we were farming.

It's just so ingrained in me that it was about the only option I had.

(both laugh) - You started farming early, though, as far as your age?

- Obviously, I grew up farming with Dad, Grandpa, and my uncles.

But as a teenager, I was that rebellious teen, and so I wanted to do it on my own, and on my own terms.

So right out of high school, my grandfather gave me the opportunity to rent 13 acres of hay ground.

And 10 years later, we've grown that to just over 400 acres.

- That's a lot of hay.

Is it all hay?

- Yeah.

- Whew!

- Thankfully, some of it's only cut once a year because it's cover crop that's cut for cattle.

And then they plant beans afterwards.

But all the acres I do are forage.

- Are you round baling or square?

- Small squares are my majority market.

I do a lot of equine sales.

(Rob laughs) I know where you're going to go with that.

And then my round baling is mostly custom work.

I don't do a lot of round bales for my own personal production.

- Uh-huh.

Your clientele with the equine, are they unique?

- They can be.

I've had some very interesting characters over the years.

I had one gentleman who, he told me that, thought my grass hay was the best thing ever because there was no clover in it, no red clover at all.

I never advertised it as having no red clover, to kind of set the stage.

But he said, "Oh my God, this is the greatest hay ever.

It's so clean, my horses love it.

They do so great on it, and everything."

And I had another lady, another horse lady, that I was selling the exact same hay to, who said, "Oh my goodness, I love this grass hay that's got the red clover in it.

It's so good for my horses.

My horses love it."

And it was the same exact hay I was selling to both people.

- Did it have clover in it?

- Yeah.

My uncle and I share a grass hay field, that's been a grass hay field, that my family has harvested for, like, 40 years.

And so it's just whatever basically grows out there at this point.

We cut it twice a year.

And it's got red clover, just regular grass.

It's just funny that sometimes, with the horse people, you can get two totally different opinions on the same exact product.

- How are the rodeo gals?

(Will chuckles) - They're interesting, they're interesting.

- We got time.

- I know what you're doing.

You're going to see me turn bright red now, because you're going to get me in trouble, not only with the barrel racers, because I know that's what you're doing to me, but also you're going to get me in trouble with my other half, who might murder me.

- What's more important, your other half or the rodeo business?

- The other half.

That's the one who's going to murder me when I get home.

- We'll move on.

They're unique, right?

- They're unique.

- The rodeo, they're unique.

- They're unique.

(Rob laughs) - Let's switch gears, how about that?

- Alright.

- The sheep and the shearing, how'd that all start?

- So to try to kind of make a long story somewhat short, I had my hay business that I started in 2015.

I was also raising sheep at the time.

My family, my grandfather on my dad's side, Darryl, he raised hamps forever and ever, and had one of the best hamp flocks in the country back in the late '70s, early '80s.

- Which is a breed of sheep.

- It is a breed of sheep: Hampshire.

Kind of your stereotypical breed, black face, white wool.

So there again, me being a very rebellious teen, wanted to do it myself.

So I had my own sheep.

I had Columbias, which are these really big, tall, and they're like small horses with wool on them.

I mean, they're just giants.

And I will say, since becoming a sheep shearer, I'll never own Columbias again.

- Just too much to handle?

- When you set one on your butt and it's taller than you standing up, I mean, that's too much.

- Can you ride one?

- Oh, sure.

Sure.

That's mutton-busting perfection right there, them Columbias.

You put a 5-year-old on that, and it looks like they're on a regular broncin' bull.

- I didn't say a 5-year-old.

I said, "Can you ride one?"

- I could ride one.

We had a ram, his name- - They're that big?

- I had a ram.

We called him Stud Buck.

Stud Buck was like 350 pounds, and his shoulders stood taller than my chest.

He was one you could get... because I did.

I won't get too deep into the detail of the story, because there may have been drinks involved with some buddies.

- What?

- But yeah, we did.

We acted like a bunch of hillbillies riding poor Stud Buck like a cowboy there.

- Did you go eight seconds?

- No.

So poor Stud.

I mean, you could ride him, but he'd maybe give you a solid four and then he'd just sit down.

I think he just kind of was like, "Screw this.

I don't need to put up with this."

(Rob laughs) - So you had sheep, and is that where you were forced to learn how to shear?

- No.

I'd grown up showing sheep.

So I knew how to put them on a stand and trim them all up for the show.

That's how I sheared my own sheep.

But in 2017, I had taken a night shift job at an organic pasta company that's no longer in business.

My neighbor down the road, who's got dairy cows, had gotten into a head-on collision coming back from church and was in the hospital.

And he asked if I would milk the cows.

So I was haying in the daytime, milking cows, and then working the night shift, plus sheep somewhere in between.

I was doing just a really poor job of keeping up with my sheep flock.

I mean, it got to a point where I would walk into the barn.

None of them are dead.

Here's some feed.

You got water in a bucket.

Out the door I go.

- The basics.

- Like, the bare minimum.

I thought to myself, when I got to the end of that summer, if I'm not going to do a good job with this, I don't want to do the job at all.

And so I ended up putting them up for sale.

Actually, a young woman from Eureka came and bought them.

Her and her ag teacher came and purchased them so she could have an FFA project.

And from the day that she took those sheep home, I got a phone call or a text asking, "What do I do with this?

Hey, I'm seeing this."

You know, just questions.

I was really happy to help and give the bit of knowledge that I had, but it got to a point where I didn't have any more knowledge to give.

I had flat run out.

- She wanted more than you had.

- Yeah, I was flat out.

I was not smart enough to answer the questions she was starting to ask me.

So I gave her my uncle Mike's number, because my uncle Mike is real big into the sheep.

He took it over when grandpa kind of stepped down, and Uncle Michael turned a two-minute conversation into 24.

So he was perfect for this girl, because she also loved to talk.

- We all have an Uncle Mike.

- Oh, let me tell you, let me tell you.

I love my uncle to death.

I owe him so much, even though I'm about to maybe take a slight dig at him here in the story.

(Rob laughs) He can talk, man.

He's a talker.

I gave the girl my uncle's number, and she called him and said, "Hey, I need to get these sheep sheared.

Who shears your sheep?"

At the time, there was a shearer who's been shearing for 40 years, but he had been threatening to retire for about a decade at that point.

Every year, he's saying, "This is probably my last year."

And then, you'd get the letter in the mail from him saying, "Hey, when do you want me to come shear?"

That was the only way people knew if he was retired.

- By a letter?

- Yeah.

That's how he did it.

He would send a letter out, and you sent him a letter back that basically said, "I want my sheep sheared in March or whatever."

- Like an old-school... - This is before cell phones.

He'd sheared well before cell phones.

- Oh, okay.

I gotcha.

- So that was how he communicated with everybody.

He'd been threatening to retire, and sheep shearers are so hard to come by.

There are so few of us that, my uncle, basically he said, "Well, so-and-so shears my sheep, but he's going to retire, and my nephew Will's actually going to take over for him."

- And he didn't ask you?

- He never told me.

No.

I got the phone call from the girl saying, "Hey, I hear you're taking over for such-and-such shearer."

And I went, "What?"

- So what you're doing at the shows is more trimming.

- You're fitting them for show.

You're getting them super clean and crisp.

- Had you sheared a sheep at this point?

- Properly?

No, never in my life.

And that's how I started, too, is I- - Uncle Mike.

- Uncle Mike volunteered me to do this.

- Voluntold.

- Voluntold.

I thought about it a minute on the phone, and I said, "You know what?

Yeah, I'll be a sheep shearer.

I can't let Uncle Mike be a liar.

I can't stand that.

No."

Screw it, drove out to Eureka on a Saturday morning and brought my- - This poor girl.

This poor FFA girl thinks she's going to get her sheep sheared, and what did you do to it?

- So I brought my stands, because I still had all my stands and everything.

I also brought my little electric clippers and 13 gallons of oil, because you've got to have oil on hand for them things.

They get so hot in your hand.

- Oh, really?

- The little electric end motor, they're about that fat, and they rattle like crazy.

And you get done in a day shearing 15 sheep, because that's about the best you're going to do with that equipment, no, your wrist is killing you.

- That's not what you got here?

- No, that is not what I got right there.

- This is like the you've grown-up version.

- Yeah.

This is the Handypiece Pro.

It was developed in New Zealand in 2009, originally made for shepherds to be able to grab sheep on the range.

Say they had flystrike, it'd be just real quick, just zip, zip, get the flystrike off and everything.

But as the battery technology's improved, now it's being used by professionals like me to go in and do small hobby flocks and things.

Because normally when you're setting up... I'll set that there.

When you're setting up, you've got a big motor, a drop arm, and then the hand piece.

And so you've got to find a place to hang the motor, which, at a lot of hobby flocks, they don't have infrastructure.

- Sure.

- I know other shearers, who I'm friends with, that do a lot of hobby flock-specific shearing, and they'll have tractor loaders that are holding their motor up, or a tree limb over here in the back paddock.

- Whatever you can do.

- Whatever you can find.

And then running power, too, that's the other thing.

We run into, like... I got one job in particular down in Robinson, Illinois, which you might know... - I know him.

- Yeah.

Right.

No, I can't... Mr.

Tic-Hello, TikTok.

God dang it, I can't think of his name all of a sudden.

- Oh, Tony Reed?

- No, not Tony Reed.

You've had him on your... - This is fun.

- I'm blanking, I'm blanking.

Tell you what, I might as well be 80 years old.

I look like I'm a baby, but I'm an Alzheimer's patient.

I tell you what, it's bad.

It's Tom Fuller.

Tom Fuller.

- Okay.

- You've had him on your RFD-TV, the clip thing you do.

- We should probably move on.

(Will chuckles) - Sorry.

- Good Lord!

- My bad, my bad.

I'm sorry.

- So you go to these places.

- Like, this one place in Robinson, they don't have any power.

It's this old Italian dude, like true old Italian.

He's got no power, and he's just got these sheep.

He'll just go out there, grab one, butcher it, and that's what he eats for supper.

That's what he keeps them around for.

- That's old-school.

- No power or anything.

And so we've had years where we've had to bring a generator and things to run our equipment and everything.

Obviously, this makes a big difference, because otherwise if we didn't have a generator with us, we'd have to run power from the neighbor.

And mind you, it's a main road.

- Is he Amish?

- No.

Just an old Italian.

- Just doesn't have power.

- Just an old Italian, he bought this property because it had a fence and he could put sheep on it, and that was it.

- But that one you can turn on.

- Yeah.

If you can flip the switch right there.

- This?

- Yep, that switch right there.

So it just runs like that.

- How detailed can you get?

How little can you shave off?

- So with this style of equipment, I don't know what a good... - Can you trim?

- Yeah, you go right down to the hide.

Then you leave a little- - No, I'm talking... - Oh, you're saying take out the old goatee.

- How little can you take off?

No, no.

How little can you take off?

- Oh, I suppose, as long as you can get entry into it, you can adjust however you want.

- Can you take eighth of an inch off?

- I bet you we could take off a portion of your beard right now if you turn this motor on.

- Eighth of an inch.

- I mean, we can see.

- Eighth of an inch.

- Eighth of an inch.

- Good Lord!

(tool buzzing) That's more than an eighth.

- No, no, no, no.

I just squared it up for you.

I just squared it up for you.

- Where's all this hair from?

- Well, I use it- - How much did you take off?

Zoom in on camera one.

My gosh!

Okay.

- I squared you up.

(Will chuckles) You could've ate the wool pellets instead.

- Which if it was open, I probably would try.

- You can.

It's not sealed.

- Oh, it's not sealed?

- It's not sealed.

No.

You can open that right up.

- Oh, it isn't.

Focus.

What are we talking about?

(Will laughs) What are these?

- So that's wool pellet fertilizer.

It's a new product that's being developed as a way to take low value wool- - It smells like the county fair.

- Yeah.

There's nothing else in it.

There's nothing else in it.

It is straight wool pellets.

- If you smell this, you're like, "I'm going through the barns at the county fair."

- Yeah.

It's straight wool.

- I like it.

- Nothing else.

No additives.

No other further processing.

It's shaved wool put through a pellet dye.

(Will chuckles) It tastes a little gummy, doesn't it?

That's hamp's wool, too.

- That sounds fantastic.

(Will laughs) Do you know that guy?

(Will laughs) What kind of interview is this?

(Will laughs) So what do you do with this?

- So it's fertilizer.

It's 9 units of nitrogen per hundred weight and 13 units sulfur per hundred weight.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Nine units of... - Nine units of nitrogen units per hundred weight.

That's a pound.

- Is that a pound?

Okay.

- So this is specifically designed for your gardener, for your greenhouse, this packaging.

Say you're doing tomatoes: you would take some of these wool pellets, dig your hole, put the pellets down in the bottom of the hole, and put your starter tomato over the top.

And then this wool will, A, retain moisture.

The University of Utah did a study with poinsettias.

Grew poinsettias out to bloom.

- Poinsettias.

- Poinsettias.

Don't worry, ask my girlfriend.

- We try to be correct on this show.

- Ask my girlfriend how I say thee-dee-er.

- Your ex-girlfriend after she watches this show, rodeo boy.

(Will laughs) So you put this down there, and it'll hold the water.

- So with the poinsettia study that the University of Utah did, they grew them out to bloom and then cut the water off.

They had a control group and a wool group.

The control group was wilted and dead within three days.

The wool group did not show signs of wilt until day eight.

- Oh!

That's quite a bit.

- Major moisture retention with the wool.

- So like corn and soybeans probably are not going to have a place?

- I think it does.

And the reason I would say that I think it does is because I understand that it's not going to take over from your conventional program, but it's a great amender to add.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- Because there again, if you have really poor sandy soils, you have that moisture retention and the maintaining of nutrients at root level for longer rather than just leaching through that sand soil.

Also, you know, it's a slow-release nitrogen, and so it's feeding that crop for longer than maybe some of your conventions and things.

It's also way more stable.

When you go and spread urea, you've got, what, about 24 hours to either work it under or get a good rain.

- That's what they say.

- Otherwise you lose, what is it, 15%, 20% of it?

to the air.

- I don't know.

I never listen to the agronomist.

(Will chuckles) - This is a way more stable version of nitrogen, able to feed for longer because it takes about six months in your soil to break down.

- This does?

Really?

- About six months.

- But I could see it, like some of that real sandy soil, maybe it would.

Have they done studies that you know of?

- So I know of one study that they did in South America where they grew corn.

They grew corn conventionally, grew corn with nothing but wool pellets, and then grew corn that had both.

And the wool pellets were able to supply enough nutrient to the corn to match bushels per acre with the conventional program.

Now, you have to use a lot more, obviously, nine units compared to, say, 46.

But it's able to feed that corn at the same level and get it to the same bushels.

So when they did the combination of the two, they didn't really see a great increase in bushels, to the point where you could run your conventional program at full strength and add the wool pellet.

- The whole thing is, the wool from a sheep, is it worthless?

- So, unfortunately, right now coarse wools are worthless in the Midwest.

There's only one wool buyer, and they're out of Forrest in Illinois.

They're currently paying a penny a pound.

- Which is not much.

- Garbage.

Because you take, like, a Hampshire sheep, they're maybe putting out a three-pound fleece per animal per year.

So you're getting 3 cents.

And if you live within the state of Illinois, you're getting taxed a cent and a half.

So a lot of these producers- - For like a checkoff?

- Yeah, for like a wool checkoff.

- What do you charge for a sheep?

- So it's anywhere from six to eight bucks a head.

- So they're way in a hole if they hire you.

- Oh, yeah.

Well, if they hire any of us, that's the thing.

I mean, even your Joe Blow down the street coming out of Kokomo, Indiana, who's charging four bucks a head, you ain't getting ahead on the shearing price.

You know what I mean?

That's where it comes back to what we talked about earlier, or I think maybe I was talking to Emily backstage.

- Everybody remembers a conversation with Emily, don't they?

(Will laughs) The thing is, though, I mean, could this bring wool into where it could be profitable?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think that, there again, right now manufacturing is in its infancy, right?

So the current machines that are on the market are producing maybe 100-150 pounds an hour on the top end.

When you talk about going out on your farm and spreading an 80 at 250 pounds an acre, it takes a long, long time for manufacturing to produce enough pellets.

So it's kind of like your Tesla cars or your VR headsets.

It's going to take the early adopters to help push the manufacturing to the next level, to where it can start becoming viable for your conventional farmer.

And that's what I hope to see over the next 10 years, because, A, I'm selfish and I love my job, so I want to keep doing it.

I need wool to get some value.

But, B, you know, ever since I learned about wool being a fertilizer, it's really just blown my mind how good this product is.

And it's so new.

It's not something that has been known for a long time.

- Well, we talked a little bit about it on the podcast, and then, one, I teased your podcast.

I put it on there about the increase in the solar farms.

And I don't carry your opinion on your solar farm, so please don't email me on it.

It's an example.

But if they're putting more of these solar farms out, since they're fenced in, you can put sheep out there.

And I know some of them are doing it.

Then, all of a sudden, we're going to have more sheep in the Midwest.

And a guy like you could be shearing left and right.

Actually, that's where maybe this could become an economy of scale.

- Yeah.

As far as the solar farm discussion goes, that's been one major positive about it is that if they're going to take- - [Rob] So, you're pro solar farm?

- I am pro putting sheep on solar farms.

- Pro rodeo girl and solar farms, it's a bold stance you're taking.

- Three times, three times you've been cornering me into these really harsh opinions.

And I tell you what, good on ya.

Good on ya.

Good for you.

Way to go.

- You took a quarter-inch off.

- Look, I could have taken a half-inch.

- I know you could have.

- We could have made some really big TV by just shhhk- - I was trusting you.

- going right up.

- I was so ready to pull my head back.

(Will laughs) Well, is the future you moving more into shearing, maybe less into haying?

- Yeah, definitely.

I've really fallen in love with the sheep shearing.

There again, as much as I might cuss my Uncle Mike for volunteering me for this job, I'm very grateful for him.

- I think there's definitely a future out there.

I've interviewed you a few times.

I'm very struck about, and we have not talked about it, the training you went through to get where you're at and the work ethic that you have.

I think you are on the precipice of maybe a new part of agriculture coming in here.

And I'm excited for you because it's going to be the early adopters with the great work ethics like yourself that are really going to succeed.

I think your future is super bright.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

That means a lot.

- I don't feel bad for being mean to you, because honestly, I think you're just going to have everything handed to you from here on out.

- I tell you what, if I do, that'd be a blessing.

Because I've got to tell you, you've missed out.

And since we've been doing our multiple interviews now, I've had a truck blow up in Sioux City, Iowa, and then had to go get it, $32,000 in damages.

I had to buy a new truck after insurance wouldn't pay a dime on the other truck because it was a mechanical failure.

We've had this cascade of events that have happened.

- I don't care.

- This year's been terrible for making day.

- It's not my fault.

It's not my fault.

That's all I know.

- I'm blaming him.

- You truly are an amazing person in agriculture, and I want to thank you for talking with us, and I want to thank you for the way you're representing all of us in ag.

Well, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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