[00:00:22] Bridget Scanlon: I'm pleased to welcome Layton Schur to the podcast. Layton is a fourth-generation farmer and cattle producer from the High Plains in Texas, near Plainview. He and his wife, Jesse, operate a farm and direct to consumer business that produces beef, vegetables, grain sorghum, and cotton. And his farm operation and their retail store, Frontier Market, in Plainview, sells the produce from the farm, including beef from their cattle and vegetables grown on their market garden.
And Layton was recognized by the Texas Farm Bureau as an outstanding farmer and rancher finalist, and later received statewide and national recognition for his agricultural operation. And he's also been recognized for conservation and water-saving farming practices in the Texas High Plains.
[00:01:13] Layton Schur: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:01:14] Bridget Scanlon: Thank you so much, Layton, for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
[00:01:18] Layton Schur: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I'd hope the conversation is fruitful for others and, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think we got a, maybe an interesting story maybe to, to tell, so.
[00:01:31] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And maybe you can convince others to join the force, no?
[00:01:36] Layton Schur: Sure. Maybe.
[00:01:38] Bridget Scanlon: So Layton, I heard you speak at a conference in Texas Tech last year in January in 2025 at Texas Tech University, which I guess is your alma mater, and you received a degree there in agricultural economics. I was very impressed with your presentation and what you're doing in the High Plains because as a hydrologist I'm very interested in how the High Plains region and how the farmers there are going to manage the declining groundwater levels and help transition maybe from conventional irrigation practices.
And your intensive vegetable gardening and beef production is really an excellent example of what can potentially be done with less, much less water. Maybe you can describe what motivated you and the early stages of that development.
[00:02:34] Layton Schur: Yeah, so I'll start with kind of my background and where I've kind of come from and so I'm located between Lubbock and Amarillo on the High Plains in Plainview. And I think I'm third generation on the place we are currently. And so it's really neat to see the generations evolve.
My grandad actually was a vegetable producer, very small. He was a cucumber and a pepper guy back in the '50s and '60s, and and then my dad took over the farm, and he was kind of into some specialty crops for seed millet and seed milo. And it was... And it had that, that itch to have a specialty niche type thinking, that's kind of been ingrained in me just a little bit.
But, both of them looked at trying to get the most out of their groundwater and most out of the water that they pumped, and you can't fault them for it. I mean, they did a great job and what they did was pretty remarkable on a little bit of acreage. And so I think our cattle came into play, might've been the late '70s or early '80s.
I really haven't got a really good idea of when they actually showed up. But we've had cattle integrated in our farm for a very long time. And so when I went to college, I actually, one of my senior year projects was a deal about analyzing your farm and, and seeing what was the issue maybe on your farm and presenting on that.
And I recognized pretty early on that we had a cattle herd that was seed stock driven. We were a Limousine producer, eventually a Limflex producer that had a Limousine-Angus cross cattle. And we could sell our bulls very well. We could sell our females very well, but these, this great big middle we were just missing.
And so that's when we decided, man, instead of hauling these things off to the sale barn, let's try to capture some margin. And so that's when we started selling some direct marketing. That happened in 2019, was our first little stab at it. And, we sold those steers, fortunately unfortunately during COVID in about 30 minutes on Facebook.
And so it was like, well, if we can sell three in typical farmer fashion, let's just see if we can sell 10. And we can sell 10, we can sell 20. We can sell 20, we can sell however many. And it worked very well. It was very encouraging. And so in that time I was... I started farming in 2016 into row crops, and I was just very traditional.
I was cotton and milo. I ended up picking up a section of land to be able to farm on. At that place had threepivots on it. I think each pivot was nozzled almost to 500 gallons a minute on each one of those. And so I was pretty comfortably I could water 300 to 400 acres of, yeah, 300 acres of really good irrigated ground.
And so I was pretty comfortable as a bachelor out of college and can make some good crops. And so, yeah, life was pretty good. And then right there around, I think it was about 2019, I really saw a significant drop in my water table. And yeah, so then it was time to, okay, now I can only water maybe 200 acres.
And then this past year I've only planted 105 acres of irrigated crop because that's all the water that's left. And I'm saying that because I'm trying to calculate four gallons per acre per minute, is what I'm calculating for. And so, that's kind of been my evolution.
So then go back to the cattle. We decided we're selling those quarters and halves, and it was going really well, and then everybody's freezers got full. And I was like, "Oh man, so now what are we going to do?" Now we instantly thinking about piecing these cattle out. And I had no intention of being retail at this point in time.
I had no intention. And I was like, "Okay, well, we have all these cattle on feed, and there's a big demand for this direct market. Let's just open up storefront." And so we did. And then it was like, well, if we're going to have beef, we might as well have vegetables too, right? And so let's see where this is going to take us.
And so it turned a 900 square foot hobby garden into a 50 acre vegetable farm, if you will, that's a highly intense drip irrigated farm. So it's, it's wild how fast it's spiraled in and out of control, if what I mean. So it's been really kind of fun to see it.
[00:07:08] Bridget Scanlon: So, so you said you picked up a section. And the section is 640 acres, right?
[00:07:13] Layton Schur: That's correct.
[00:07:14] Bridget Scanlon: and you irrigated about half of it, like 300 acres?
[00:07:19] Layton Schur: Yep, yep. That's about all that was irrigated then. I mean, it's kind of a cut up section that's not true.
[00:07:26] Bridget Scanlon: Continuous, yeah.
[00:07:27] Layton Schur: Yeah. So it's, it's, got some, a lake bottom as part of it. So that, but it was a very good irrigated farm when I started.
[00:07:34] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And so when you said it had a lake bottom, was it a playa lake?
[00:07:37] Layton Schur: It was. It's got a big playa lake on one side. Yeah.
[00:07:40] Bridget Scanlon: Right. We did a lot of studies on playa lakes way back when, looking at recharge from playa lakes. and you're in... You mentioned, you're in Hale County near Plainview between Lubbock and Amarillo.
And so that's the thick part of the aquifer. I mean, the aquifer is much thicker. Lubbock, the aquifer is pretty thin in the county south of you. But then as you go into Hale County, the aquifer is much thicker. But the water levels were dropping a lot. So how deep was the water table to begin with, and then how deep did it get?
[00:08:13] Layton Schur: We were operating pretty good in that 100 to 120 foot of water in a hole. And about two, three years ago we've had, not that place, but there has been some wells that's went dry this past year or two. And so it really has shook the farm economy up here because that water is a derivative of your bank account, because you can, you can overproduce.
I mean, it's not hard to do it. You can push your crop to the limits and make whatever you want to as long as you have the water to do it. And once we don't have the water to do it, we're now dependent on a rain-fed system and it's time to farm.
[00:08:49] Bridget Scanlon: Pretty tough, yeah. And so you said 100, 120 feet of water in the in the well, so how deep were the wells?
[00:08:57] Layton Schur: All of ours are between 280 and 3... We may have a few at 360 ft. But the majority of them are in that 300 and 300 ft even range is our aquifer.
[00:09:07] Bridget Scanlon: And, when we chatted previously Layton, you mentioned that there's a lot of variability in the groundwater resources there, and then your wife Jessie is from about 25 miles away, and there's very little water there, hardly enough to support. So, so where was where did she come from?
[00:09:25] Layton Schur: So she's from an area that's northeast of me. I went real far to find my wife. I went 25 miles to find my wife. But she, she's in a little area called Claytonville, and it's always been a very consistent area to have just good old-fashioned water. Don't have a... Never has had a lot, but it's always held.
But that there's a lot of places around there that doesn't have enough water for house water.
And, and so actually some of that ground is being taken out of grassland and back into farming because that's actually... I mean, if you can't water a cow, there's no reason to have it, so.
[00:10:00] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And so the tradition in your family, well, you mentioned your granddad did vegetables, cucumbers and other things, and then your dad into seedlings and stuff like that. And so I guess the tradition in your family then, has not been the conventional large center pivots or...
[00:10:19] Layton Schur: Yeah I would say that. I just, Dad served on the TAWC board for a long time, Texas Alliance of Water Conservation, and so it was ingrained in me for a long time about water conservation. And it took me a long time to define what water conservation was because they don't... the majority of farmers, including myself, you're going to pump the water, and so because that is basically your income statement. So it's... Now it's a question of how are you going to use that water the most effectively? And I think that maybe is a better definition of a conservation effort than just not pumping, I think if, if we could have some type of movement toward that, it changes a little bit of the subject of the conservation aspect. And that, that may be my own opinion there, but I just don't see a farmer shutting off wells to conserve water, if you will. And so, and no fault of their own.
That's kind of the cards that are dealt. So, anyway, but so my Dad, he pushed a lot of his efforts into some type of specialty crop. He still had cotton rotation, but the big one was seedmilo and seed millet. That was for a local seed company. And it took as much water as a corn crop did, but it generated twice the amount of returns.
And so, like I said, it was a very effective way of using the water.
[00:11:45] Bridget Scanlon: And how big was your dad's farm?
[00:11:48] Layton Schur: Yeah. He hovered right around the 20, 2000, 2,500 acres or so.
He was very respectable for the size.
That area still is, so.
[00:11:58] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, Layton I come from Southwest Ireland and our farm was, like, 80 acres.
[00:12:05] Layton Schur: Yeah. I know. But you're probably 4X more productive than we are here too. So you have got to remember like the, it's all relative. Acreage doesn't matter, it's just how productive the farm is.
[00:12:15] Bridget Scanlon: Right. But uh, my dad had beef too, heifers and stuff, and, my mom taught. When I was at that conference at Texas Tech, it really impressed me, seemed like a lot of the people there, even the professors and stuff. They already had done a day's worth of work.
They were up at 4:00 in the morning and out doing all this stuff, and just such hard work. It's just amazing. I was just very impressed. I felt like a true wimp. All I had to do was get up and go to the conference.
[00:12:40] Layton Schur: Well, West Texas is definitely not scared to work, I will say that. But no, and I guess my big transition... And I'm still farming that ground. I'm still row crop farming. But my big transition has been maybe even a more specialty into the vegetables. And so we put that on drip.
100% it's on dripped, and it's... I control it to about 10 gallons per minute per acre, is kind of what my... the amount of water that I have for that... because it... I mean, vegetables are… they are a thirsty booger. They like to drink. And so, but the value that you're pumping is so much higher than for cotton or corn or milo.
It's just such a better use of the water, I think, is for food production. And I think that's where we have fed in, is to my favorite thing that I started with is, what is the value of water? And the highest value is a bottle of water that's 16.9 ounces. When you convert that to an acre-inch it's almost $240,000 per acre-inch.
And so that was like, "Man, I want to open me a bottling plant up, we're going to bottle this water and sell it." And then I quickly, moved away from that, but... But no, I just trickled that down. So what is the next highest value? And then what is the next? And what's the next?
And so I think on our farm, the highest value is celery actually. That's the highest value. But I can't sell, I can't sell much celery so... But it's interesting which crop actually generates the highest return per acre-inch.
[00:14:23] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, I've spoken with agricultural economists in Australia in the past, and of course everybody is trying to go to higher value uses for water and stuff and so vineyards and stuff like that. And then I said, "Well, maybe we'll all be drinking wine and we won't be eating," and...
[00:14:39] Layton Schur: Well, there you go. I mean, that...
know?
the-
[00:14:42] Bridget Scanlon: Someone has to produce the food, so, yeah. And, your vegetable plot has increased substantially from 900 square feet initially in 2021, and then you were selling the vegetables at the back of a pickup, you mentioned. And then now it's 50 acres. And you have vacillated between up to a maximum of 42 different vegetables, and now down to maybe more stable number 24 or something like that.
[00:15:08] Layton Schur: Once you go direct, the direct marketing, you really have to become specialized. And I started getting on YouTube University telling me kind of what I need to plant, and I was like, "Wow, I don't... I've never ate Swiss chard in my life, but I'm going to grow Swiss chard," so. We grew 42 different cultivars at the peak, and I just had to do that to experiment what West Texas is willing to eat and what do they enjoy to eat and what do they not enjoy to eat.
In the East, kale and some of those collards and stuff is a very big thing to eat, and I can't give them away here. And so why grow them? And so it's taken me these trials to really dial in what I need to grow. And it even gets wilder that each town has its preferences, too. In Plainview we have a very high Hispanic clientele, and so naturally tomatoes and onions and cilantro and corn, sweet corn, and those sell really well here.
Where you go to Lubbock, they have a different class of vegetable that they love, and Amarillo is even different. They're really heavy on tomatoes and they love squash and onions. I don't know why, but they do. So, it's just very interesting that even each town has its kind of its own taste and preferences that you have to navigate.
I think that's what scares a lot of producers, too. There is not a guarantee in what we're doing, there is not a guaranteed sale. And so... and I always say like that's okay because if, if you produce enough of the gross product, you don't have to worry about your waste as much. You should be able to make that up in margin.
And so, but here's a really cool thing. We ran a 2% waste last year. And the only thing we didn't sell was what we didn't get picked. That was, that's, that was a demand that we had in our couple markets. So that was a very intriguing... Exciting to see it ? There's a lot of room for other producers to come into the space, and I welcome them to it.
I mean, a lot of... there's a lot of people that don't want competition, but I think more competition would really help the local food movement, if you want to call it that. It makes everybody a little bit better, and...
[00:17:25] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, there's the demand.
[00:17:26] Layton Schur: More local food.
[00:17:27] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. And you mentioned 2% waste. That blows my mind because, I mean, what is the shelf life? You have lettuce and all of these things. So, and then your storefront is open from Tuesday through Saturday, I think, or something like that, yeah.
[00:17:43] Layton Schur: That's, something very interesting that I didn't know until I was in what I was doing. The majority of our lettuce production is in Arizona, Mexico, and California. Generally between those three makes up, 80 to 90% of our lettuce. When we started growing lettuce here, we had lettuce that lasted anywhere between three and four weeks shelf life.
And when I recognized that, then you see exactly how long your food has been on a truck. And so that transportation cost gets so ate up by the consumer paying for it, for that transportation. And so once I saw that, then I was like, "Man, there's a really is a big demand," and the taste is just incredible when you have fresh product like that.
And that's what really built... I always laugh. That's what built the farm, was fresh lettuce. That's how we got started and got going, was on a brand called Salanova lettuce from Johnny's. That's what really started or catapulted us. And so it was very interesting to see how far we actually are from the food source.
I think that's what we really need to focus on more than organic versus conventional, or whatever that, all those... All of us agriculturalists like to fight within one's each other. Why don't we just figure out how to make a really great product and we don't have to worry about selling them?
[00:18:56] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And you mentioned, how much time it must spend on the truck and stuff like that. But also, I mean, you experimented with shipping and stuff like that. And you felt like that didn't fly, and so you pivoted to...
[00:19:10] Layton Schur: Any local producer, I would very highly discourage you from shipping. I guess my thing is it puts too much cost on the consumer to make your product too expensive, and you can't compete with the conventionally grown food in a grocery store. And so unfortunately it does pull down the price sometimes, and you have to still become competitive with the conventionally grown product or, a grocery store product.
So that's what me and my wife's determination was, is we're going to produce a really great product at as good of a price as we can do without sacrificing too much margin. And so that's how we landed on what we were going to grow and where we're at. That was a great decision by us.
[00:19:51] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And what about shipping beef?
[00:19:54] Layton Schur: Yeah, that's another no-go.
We have experimented with that too. Whatever it costs the producer or costs the customer to get it to their door, it costs them in shipping. So if you have $100 order, it's going to cost you $100 to ship it. And so that, that's just too high for to make the shipping game work. And that's why...
And honestly, we've had a lot of calls come in, will you ship to California? Will you ship here?" It's like, "Why don't you just find a local producer in your area?" I guarantee there's one that's trying to make a go out of it and support them. And I think that's what's going to make it way more resilient than what we are today.
[00:20:26] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And Layton, you have been recognized for water savings and conservation, and I can see because your dad was involved with TAWC. So it was in your DNA.
[00:20:38] Layton Schur: Dad was, it was remarkable on his, in finding some amazing efficient technologies that helped water. That was, that will always be one of dad's accomplishments that he'll probably never take credit for, so.
[00:20:53] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And so, how do you manage the irrigation, the drip irrigation in your system? Do you have any sensors or?
[00:21:00] Layton Schur: We did. But we have done all the gamut of things of managing. And I hate to say it, but our vegetable crops are so sensitive they have to have water. And so truly, we just boil it down to an inch and a half a week is what they need. It's just if they need it or not, they're going to get water an inch and a half a week. And that's what... because you're not, you're not worried about necessarily yield, you're worried about taste as well, and that's how you create a consistent taste, is making sure it has good flavor.
[00:21:29] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. Yeah, so, and you've tried various sensors and all that sort of...
[00:21:34] Layton Schur: Oh, yeah. That, we've tried every one of them you can imagine. It's like, ah, that's awesome, but it still says we need to water, so...
[00:21:42] Bridget Scanlon: And when did you expand from Plainview to Lubbock and Amarillo, or did you do that early on?
[00:21:48] Layton Schur: Yeah. That's awesome. So we started in Plainview, and it was really neat. We started on the sidewalk before our building got opened. And we started... we sold cucumbers, radishes, and summer sausage on our first little day. And I remember we made 100 and, like, $67 and something, and we thought we were just rich.
And it was a... We were high-fiving, man. We got something going on, right? and then there was a pretty good market starting in Lubbock, a good farmers market that was going, and we went to it, and then we went to the Amarillo farmers markets for a while, and we continued that for three, almost four years, or three years, I think.
And grew very, very rapidly that way. The issues with the farmers market though is you only have three to four hours to sell your product once a week. And that's a great thing, but that's a bad thing, too, because you concentrate your customer base, but you also concentrate your selling time. And so I was getting very frustrated withI don't have enough days to sell to keep fresh product.
If you pick a cucumber on a Monday and don't sell it till Saturday, it's not going to be the same product as a product picked on Friday ate on Saturday, So there, there was just some issues there, and so we were getting to a volume level that the farmers market model wasn't quite fitting us.
We were still going. We loved our Canyon Farmers Market. It was one of our best markets. We were serving between 400 and 600 customers in four hours, and it was a really, was a awesome market. They had some rule changes, and basically we didn't quite fit their client- or their scenario. And so it's okay. We were going to start delivering to your door. So a lot of those customers have already picked us up, so it's pretty crazy.
[00:23:43] Bridget Scanlon: No, that's great. And some farmers, I mean, some parts of the country, they have community-supported agriculture, CSAs and they seem to grow pretty well. I mean, I have some friends in Ohio, and their daughter was doing vegetables and flowers and stuff like that, , and. But you, you- did you try that at all or,
[00:24:02] Layton Schur: Flowers or what?
[00:24:03] Bridget Scanlon: No, the community supported agriculture.
[00:24:03] Layton Schur: Oh, the CSA? I, there was something here that I don't think the clientele, the market loved. I think it was the commitment they had to eat at home. We got a pretty big eating out culture here. And so, I think that's where we kind of ran short on that one. We did well.
We were up to 80, 90 subscribers at one point in time on the weekly subscription boxes. It was okay. But a lot of those customers even said, like, "There's just too much food, we just, we weren't consuming it all." So we just kind of pivoted from that and just said, "Okay, well, just order what you want and we'll deliver to your door and kumbaya, and we'll go home."
If you're starting out, a farmer starting what we've done, like, you have to market. And there is no cheat codes for marketing besides you got to go sell your product. You can be the best flower gardener, you can be the best XYZ gardener in the world, but if you can't sell it, you might as well throw it in the trash.
And I have been very vocal with a lot of farmers, saying, "You have to go market your product." It's 70% of your business is the marketing. And we all love the production side, but it's the marketing is what's going to keep your farm afloat.
And so that's where we put a big emphasis on is trying to keep the consumer and the customer dialed in.
[00:25:26] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And you provide vegetables 365 days.
[00:25:31] Layton Schur: Yes. That's what... We are very unique, and this is probably one of the most exciting things that I've came to conclusion of. We're not quite like Austin, in the South Texas where y'all can grow, basically triple crop tomatoes and all kind of wild stuff that y'all can file into West Texas is in zone 7A, I believe, if you're a gardener.
And so what that allows you to do is to be very comfortable in having a winter crop, and then you can have a summer crop, and then you can have a fall crop. And the outskirts is all in most time brassicas and your lettuce and spinaches. But our farm will harvest all but about three weeks of the year.
And we'll have a fresh... We'll have fresh something in our store every single day or every week.
And so that's what's made us, I think, really stand out because we have a lot of consumers say, "Oh, y'all grow that here?" It's like, yeah, we... It's amazing what you can grow in in our climate, in our area.
And so man it's been rewarding to see the consumer on the board, on the bandwagon, on the board with you. We got known for like fresh carrots, they just love fresh carrots. But yeah. So it's a good question.
[00:26:44] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. And you also have some greenhouses, but I understand that's a pretty small part of the entire system.
[00:26:53] Layton Schur: Everybody, everybody is convinced that we grow everything in a greenhouse, and I'm like, "There's no way that we have this much production on a greenhouse." But we have two 30 by 120 tunnels, so that's a 10th of an acre in under plastic. And really those have more transitioned into just a germ house is what they've kind of moved to.
Everything else is almost exclusively outside. We may have a few early tomatoes that will go into a greenhouse, but that's kind of the extent of it. We try to push everything outside, and it's the cheapest growing space is outside. The greenhouse is a very expensive growing space.
[00:27:31] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And to be able to provide 365, were you impacted by the cold freezes in the winter or, oftentimes West Texas you get these windstorms and...
[00:27:42] Layton Schur: Yeah. yeah. I fought those. We, we've got to be really good at retarping a greenhouse. They'll handle about 65 miles an hour, but they won't handle 80. And so, no, that's been a challenge, too. We gotta fight the sand. And in the spring of the year, it is very challenging getting some of these crops established just because of the sand.
They will blow out and get to replant and try again, but that's the nature of it. So, there's some things that I've come in that I think I can beat that. I think I want to go to maybe, 150 acres, but only farm, maybe 35 of it, and the rest of it be in a cover crop rotation where you got really good crop residue on the ground.
I just haven't got there yet. I don't have enough years under my belt to do some of these things that I want to get accomplished. One of them that I think we have accomplished here that I was probably most proud of is strawberries. That's been the crop that has been the most surprising that we can be pretty successful at.
I'm not saying I have it figured out, but we're getting closer. This is year three, and we were harvesting anywhere between 850 to 1200 pounds a week off of strawberries. And so I was pretty proud of that. It took a while to get those accomplished.
There-- I know you're in strawberry... you're around Poteet, so there's strawberry central, but here there's no such thing as a fresh strawberry.
[00:29:07] Bridget Scanlon: Wow, that is amazing. When I was at the conference, and of course growing up on a farm, I mean, I didn't do a lick of work.
[00:29:13] Layton Schur: Right?
[00:29:17] Bridget Scanlon: I'm embarrassed to say, my dad had beef cattle and he was a bit- and my mom was a teacher. So, my dad was a bit of a gentleman farmer, and he had show jumping horses and greyhounds that used to race, and all of those sorts of things. But you ha- if you have the steady income of one, which I saw from the conference, oftentimes they will have a farm, but then a couple will have a stable income and it's kind of the way.
[00:29:41] Layton Schur: Sure. I would say that's the majority of West Texas farms, is one is a off-farm job and one works on the farm.
[00:29:50] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And it's such hard work. Is it difficult? I mean, everybody's having problems finding workforce these days. Can you describe, how many you-
[00:29:58] Layton Schur: Yeah, that...
[00:29:59] Bridget Scanlon: have working with you and?
[00:30:01] Layton Schur: We have this question probably daily, but we have, we are very fortunate. We are 100% local work and the majority of our employees come from about two and a half miles from the farm, and they... We have a great crew of people. We'll get up to about 12, 12 people, and then we'll contract out some hoeing and stuff.
But man, yeah, it's, the labor has been awesome. I guess I better knock on wood because I'm probably one of the few, but we have a... There's a lot of perks that come with working on the farm. They get to take home basically as much produce as they want to, to feed their family. We're very generous with the produce for the employees and, and they love it.
And when they have a hand in what's going on and they enjoy it even more. And so you could tell that, that they take a lot of pride in the product that they're producing. And so I think that's a, that was a huge mind shift shift for me. From a commodity standpoint, I don't think the employee understood that their wheat crop was going to make bread, wherever.
But they do know that that tomato they're about to eat, that's going to impact them. And so that's just seeing that shift of people back on the land, their hands are in the dirt. That was encouraging to see.
[00:31:21] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And what's a typical day like, for these people? What time do they start, and what's the scheduling like?
[00:31:30] Layton Schur: When we started, we were, our hair was on fire every day, because we didn't know what was going on. But we're fixing to be just a straight up 8:00 to 5:00. I think we can get just as much work done 8:00 to 5:00 as we can from 6:00 to 6:00 or 6:00 to midnight. If you put a time limit on it, I think you can get it done.
And so, we've shifted to that and don't see a drop in productivity at all. And so that was yeah, that's probably not something people want to hear either, but we...
[00:31:56] Bridget Scanlon: it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah,
[00:31:58] Layton Schur: We shifted to that and man it's been awesome. So...
[00:32:02] Bridget Scanlon: I think I dawdle much of the day and probably could get the work I do done in a quarter of the time.
[00:32:08] Layton Schur: Yeah, most of the time. Most of the time. So yeah we basically, everybody goes home at 5:00. what I found is you'll have about seven or eight weeks that are just really tough, you really have to get through. And that's most the time. There's a couple in August, there's a couple in June, and then that's the bulk majority of it.
And so those weeks we'll hire extra people. There's always friends, family, groups. It's amazing where people I don't know how, how they find us, but they do. And that's always, that's what we've kind of resulted to.
[00:32:43] Bridget Scanlon: Is that because you're planting a lot at those times?
[00:32:46] Layton Schur: Yep. Right. Most of it's the harvest. The vegetables, I truly believe that three of us could take care of the whole garden beside the harvest. And then because we have invested pretty heavily into some equipment and it's pretty cheap equipment, to be honest with you, comparative to the commercial ag.
We bought a transplanter. We bought a corn, sweet corn picker, a pea picker, that kind of stuff that just dramatically improves everybody's life. And so those couple things, but other than that, we're... It's a lot of it's hand labor, so.
[00:33:19] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I know when I called at the store, it was, I think it was your mom that answered. So, so you have the family support there.
[00:33:27] Layton Schur: Oh yeah,
[00:33:28] Bridget Scanlon: And it's great that you and your wife are so involved in this enterprise because otherwise it would be much more difficult, I think
[00:33:36] Layton Schur: And my mother and dad is too. They're highly involved in it too. I mean, they got a lot of, a part ownership in this business too. So it's nice to see a true family operation that's completely both generations have made a shift, and that's something I would really want to deep dive too because it's probably more remarkable the mind shift that my mom and dad took than what even what I've done.
They have had a very successful career in farming the way they have, and they've recognized the fact that maybe this is not the right way we need to continue the next 10 to 15 years. And so that, I really do admire their, those two people's mindset change and evolution change and what they thought they should be doing.
And how the next generation going to take it on. That's a kudos to them. It was
[00:34:25] Bridget Scanlon: Yes. I'm impressed because, I mean, we get more entrenched as we get older, and it's very difficult to change our robotic habits.
[00:34:33] Layton Schur: Yeah, it does. I think it's almost more remarkable to hear their change than anybody's.
[00:34:38] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And so you mentioned you would like to have maybe about 35 acres or so on the vegetables and then, but have a total of about 135 so that you could fallow. And what kind of, what cover crops are you thinking would you be growing then on the other acreage? And then would you rotate every year or would you rotate after a few years the vegetable part?
[00:35:01] Layton Schur: No, that's a good question, because there's a lot... I got so many ideas of how this actually should work. I don't know which one's actually correct, so. The mindset I have today is I don't like a cereal crop in front of a cash crop. I've seen that from the cotton side.
I've seen that where we're trying to terminate a cover crop and then try to plant into it. That works where you have rainfall, but in an arid environment that we have, that is a recipe for a dumpster fire. And so I think we're going to have to have some type of summer layout cover that falls through the winter, and then you're going to plant into it.
And it may, you may have to have two-thirds, go from cereal into that summer cover crop, then to a vegetable crop. And I maybe robbed a little bit of this from Eliot Coleman. If any of your market gardeners are listening, they're going to love this, because I love Eliot Coleman but he talks about it takes four years to have enough fertility in the ground from cover crops to actually have a good vegetable crop, and I agree with that 5,000%.
And so, I guess that's the approach that I'm taking. I'm just modifying it to West Texas over Maine, where he has high rainfall.
[00:36:16] Bridget Scanlon: And what are these cover crops?
[00:36:19] Layton Schur: You can pack a sorghum-sudan, millet, cowpea. You can, there's a 50 million of them if you want to blend them together, but that's the... that's the bulk majority of it
[00:36:29] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, I know there's a lot of interest in no-till agriculture and and and the cover crops and stuff. But when I spoke to people at Bushland, US Department of Agriculture in Bushland. They said, those cover crops in the winter would take up a lot of the water that you really don't have, so the soil moisture, you'd be starting out...
[00:36:48] Layton Schur: I agree with that. I'm very much in agreeance of that. I just think we're going to have to have a summer aspect and then the winter to fallow it, to let they have an extra catch catch some or...
[00:37:01] Bridget Scanlon: To give it a chance to pick up some.
[00:37:02] Layton Schur: I am so against the cereal in front of the cash crop. So that, anyway, yeah, that's a good point.
[00:37:08] Bridget Scanlon: And at the conference last year you mentioned the various types of vegetables. I can't even name 42 vegetables, but-
[00:37:16] Layton Schur: Yeah, there's a bunch of them
[00:37:16] Bridget Scanlon: But you mentioned tomatoes generated a lot of revenue. And, you mentioned the people with the different types wanting different items and stuff.
And so I guess tomatoes, there's nothing like a homegrown tomato.
[00:37:28] Layton Schur: Yeah, that truly, like, the things that you dream of a summer garden is what sells well. Okay? The past year I've really dialed into that. It's like, okay, tomatoes, onions, sweet corn maybe a few peppers. But I mean, the things you get excited about going to eat is what generally sells. And so.
[00:37:47] Bridget Scanlon: Then do you also have potatoes and turnips and all of those?
[00:37:51] Layton Schur: Oh yeah, we tried all that. And so I call it the small garden. We have just a small acre that's in drip that supports lettuce, roots all the really fast crops. What's really unique about, that's the highest, most productive ground that we have because you can get seven plantings and harvest on one piece of ground in a year.
It's super intriguing to see it. When you think of a cash crop, you're not thinking of 30 days, but you're getting... Some of these crops can be ready in 21. We can really cycle it if we're on our toes, and we're not that good most of the time, but you can. And so, but those crops generally just don't sell near as well, as the summer favorites.
And so that's what we've kind of had to shift toward more of, is just more summer favorites.
[00:38:39] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. So moving to the beef side then you started off with three steers or something like that in 2019, and you sold them in a few hours on on Marketplace or something.
[00:38:51] Layton Schur: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:52] Bridget Scanlon: Or Facebook Mar- whatever it is. Facebook, I guess.
[00:38:56] Layton Schur: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:57] Bridget Scanlon: But you've been expanding over time, since then and how is that evolving?
[00:39:02] Layton Schur: Yeah, so the beef side's probably just as intriguing as the vegetable garden. And my original mind was is my my, my previous mindset is I'm going to raise that animal from birth to death and conception to plate. And I thought that was a great... because it sounds amazing when you say it like that.
You own the animal from birth to death. But the problem with that is, is there's, it takes you two, basically two years to get that animal, actually it's three years if you're going to add conception into that, to get that animal to your plate. And so I was finding myself, I was planning three years out for that animal to hit the market.
And we were growing so fast we couldn't keep up with our own cattle. By the time you sold your bulls off, by the time you had your replacement heifers, by the time you kept your herd intact, you're out of cattle pretty fast. You just didn't have enough. And so originally we just started buying from our bull customers back into the herd, their steers or whatever, and that was a pretty nice system.
The producer got paid for his calves. It was a local guy that got to use our market. It was a good partnership. It worked very well until the price of cattle got to the point that they are, and now those economics doesn't quite work out. We're looking, I think today we hit 265 live cattle.
I mean, so a live calf is almost 4,000 bucks coming into the market. It's pretty tough to make that work. So, so those systems weren't... I had to re-adapt my thought. And so, I went to, I'll make a big shout-out here because it changed my farm completely, went to a sell-buy marketing school with Ranching FYI, and that basically showed how to sell cattle and buy them back.
And mine was we had a bunch of cattle that were overvalued, and they were a, basically a three to five-year-old cow that's in the prime of her life. And so we ended up selling those cows and, we replaced them all with feeder heifers. And so now we've made a complete shift to a feeder heifer program that where they're either going to get, they're going to breed, they'll be sold as a breeder calf.
If they come up open, then they'll be fed for the market. And so that one thing has, it really allowed us to grow fast and now we're going to be able to, name how many cattle we need and they can go to the market- we can buy them
[00:41:30] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. So that allows you to be more versatile, I guess, not have to plan so far ahead.
[00:41:35] Layton Schur: Yep. A hundred percent.
[00:41:36] Bridget Scanlon: And you mentioned limousines early on. But the name is familiar to me from childhood, but what breeds do you have?
[00:41:44] Layton Schur: All Angus now. We... The Limflex deal, that was a remarkable beef to go to direct market. You had the tenderness traits, you had some really good stuff going on there, the major beef, very good. And they would marble with the Angus heterosis. But like I said, now we're just buying really high-end heifers, and they got genetic- they got better genetics than what we had, so it's been a, a pretty neat way to pivot to what we have been doing.
[00:42:14] Bridget Scanlon: Well, it's really impressive, how you take the data in, and of course having a degree in ag economics, you're not going to sink the ship with, and so you're continually monitoring how things are going. But I'm very impressed with how flexible you are. Maybe you get that from your parents and it's in your DNA.
[00:42:33] Layton Schur: I'm always... I think it's just me and my personality. I just have y'know, I've always been pretty anti this is the way it's always been rule kinda guy. I've always acknowledged the way the generation done before me, but I never have... I've always challenged the principles of why.
And so maybe that's my benefit or detriment, I don't know yet, but it has been, it has served me well so far.
[00:42:57] Bridget Scanlon: And so how many heifers do you have right now this year?
[00:43:00] Layton Schur: Yeah. I think we're fixing to end the year at 300. we'll be able to kill... We're planning on marketing 150, I think is what our plan is through the store. So.
[00:43:12] Bridget Scanlon: Through the store, wow. Wow, that's amazing. And then do you have to keep them indoors in the winter, or.
[00:43:19] Layton Schur: No. No. We, this is amazing- this is one of my favorite plant things. We are amazing feeder cattle country. This country was built on wheat pasture cattle, wheat, and, and of course, cotton came in later, but we are the climate for wheat pasture cattle. And so the mindset of a cow-calf, I, I was born with that mindset of a cow-calf, keeping the cattle on your place, building genetics, doing the thing.
That was fine, but it didn't quite fit our environment. Our grass needs to rest, our grass needs some time off and give 'em some better grazing skills there to... And then the heifers just allow us to have the flexibility. If we need... do we need 1,000 head or do we need 200?
It's just dependent on rainfall. And, a grass system is a lot, more adaptable, easier to manage than a row crop system, so.
[00:44:12] Bridget Scanlon: Are most of your cattle then grass-fed, or do you have
[00:44:16] Layton Schur: No. This is a great one. So, that's the big rave. I know grass-fed's a big rave, but I am a corn finish, fat finish kind of guy. I like seeing fat cattle. And so we did do some grass cattle. We had enough requests. I finally was like, "Okay, well, we're going to do some grass calves." And so what those cattle were was basically a two-year-old heifer that didn't breed.
And so of course they got super fat on grass. They were marbled up. And I just, there wasn't as much demand as what has been pushed. We could sell, gosh, I think we sold four. That has been our most in a year. And so four out of, 100 or 150. That's not really, that's not much.
You- that just shows what the demand actually is in our area. I'm not saying in Austin or in Missouri or in the East it's not different, but West Texas, well, they obviously want some grain-fed beef, so.
[00:45:15] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. Well, I guess finishing it off, polishing it off with that kind of gives us a good texture and...
[00:45:22] Layton Schur: Oh, yeah. Good marbling, good fat content. Oh, yeah, that, if that grill isn't on fire at the end of the day, I don't know if we did our job right. So that's what I would say.
[00:45:30] Bridget Scanlon: So and, I see in the storefront online, you also have maybe some pork or some?
[00:45:37] Layton Schur: Yeah, we've partnered with a few local farms. There's a pork producer south of town. He's got it's a pretty small operation, but what? It's awesome. I think we're, we probably going to sell, I don't know, 20, 30 hogs this year. We have some lamb that's off the Cap. That's about 50 miles to the, let's see, to the east of us, off the Caprock.
And Dorper sheep, great lamb. I don't eat it, but it sells very well, so kinda cool to have some other people's products. And then we have started partnering with other people with, we've have sold some wheat to a sourdough lady. She makes bread. Product comes back to the store.
We've sold some cucumbers, and they come back as pickles. We sold some strawberries, come back as jam. I mean, it's a very cool little economy that you're building inside of yourself that, other people get to profit off of your farm, and that's really kinda got me excited to see where we're going to head the next couple years.
I think there'll be more people... I think the more people that come into the system, the better, and that's the whole point of local food.
[00:46:38] Bridget Scanlon: And you mentioned before that you have a kitchen in your store and it was impressive at the conference when you mentioned, If you half the melons and if you quarter them , and
[00:46:47] Layton Schur: Yeah, that,
[00:46:47] Bridget Scanlon: how much more you make?
[00:46:48] Layton Schur: I've always joked that my knives are just so cheap because the watermelon is the best example. And so you take a whole watermelon, they sell it for... I think we sell ours for $10. And so you cut it in half, you can sell them for 14. Cut them in quarters, you can sell them, I think it's $28.
And then you put them in these little plastic cups, you can just pop open the lid and eat you some watermelon. And we've had some watermelons that. We had one melon that was like $200 gross on that one melon. And so I've always liked to tell everybody, like, "Just go buy the whole watermelon and eat the heart out of it and throw the rest away.
Like, it's a way better deal." But hey, that's what people want to do. So, but no, the kitchen has allowed us to do something. The value add compounds very quickly. And so my... Last year we had a tomato problem. We had a bazillion tomatoes at the end of the year. It's like, what are we going to do with all these?
And I looked at, at my head employee, actually the farm manager now. I was like, "Ishmael, what are we going to do here?" And he's just like, "I don't know." I was like, "We're going to make these people drink these tomatoes." And he kind of chuckled at me. I was like... So we started making Bloody Mary mix. So we bought a little Hamilton Beach juicer from Walmart and juiced all these tomatoes.
Well, we ended up selling, I don't know, 75 gallons of Bloody Mary mix in the holiday season. It was crazy. And it, it turned a bushel of tomatoes from $50 into I don't remember what it was, like $550 a bushel at 10X, basically. So the value compounding is pretty severe when you start value adding.
There's just a limit to it. There's only so much you can just physically do to do it well.
[00:48:27] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And I mean, Plainview is a pretty small town. The population, I don't know, is it 20,000 or something like that.
[00:48:34] Layton Schur: Yeah. Yeah
[00:48:35] Bridget Scanlon: But, Lubbock and Amarillo, they're, two or 300,000.
[00:48:39] Layton Schur: Oh yeah, sure
[00:48:40] Bridget Scanlon: but I mean, even still the storefront in Plainview, but then you're willing to deliver to customers, so they order online. And then you deliver.
And so you take stuff up to Amarillo, or Lubbock or whatever.
[00:48:51] Layton Schur: Yep. Yeah, it.
[00:48:52] Bridget Scanlon: And you mentioned, would be helpful if you had a stable large market, like a schools or something like that.
[00:48:59] Layton Schur: I would love to see that. I think there'd be more farmers that would probably join in what we're doing if there was some type of cooperative sell. I'm probably against that more than I'm with it, but I also see the value for a producer that doesn't... Most producers hate marketing, period.
And so if you have the availability for them to sell the product somewhere, then there's... I mean, it's a better gig for everybody in the system. And so I would love to see that. I think there'd be more movement if you had more availability to access to sell.
[00:49:32] Bridget Scanlon: I can remember there was a chef in the UK and he was linking up with schools and growing vegetables and everything. I forget what his name was, but very popular and...
[00:49:42] Layton Schur: Yeah. Ogallala Commons is the one in, in Amarillo that they have done some work to try to get the schools connected to the producers. And I don't know where it's at now, but it was going to be a very good thing for everybody. And, I would love to see it happen where we could get our kids to, all the kids in the school the ability to have fresh product.
I, it just makes me quiver that we have to feed our kids out of a bag or heated up products. So
[00:50:12] Bridget Scanlon: What about the university market? I mean, do you think Texas Tech, that's a big university.
[00:50:17] Layton Schur: That would be awesome. Yeah, I mean, that'd be great. I, it's just very hard, my next breath is, it's going to be very hard for the producer to have enough exact volume to what they need on a weekly basis. That's where we fall short.
That's why I'm really pushing for some type of cooperative to take that on because you're going to have to have a group of people allocated to have the product.
[00:50:40] Bridget Scanlon: Right.
[00:50:40] Layton Schur: They're going to want it every week at X time. So.
[00:50:44] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. I think you also mentioned, having a you pick day or or whatever?
[00:50:51] Layton Schur: I got a lot of... I mean, there's so many offshoots to this local food. I've got so many ideas of where we could go, where we want to go. Probably the one other thing that I still have in the back of my mind that's still there is I would love to have an on-farm, meal VIP thing.
I think there's people in the community that need to see what happens behind the scenes on a farm. And that, that story needs to be told more often than not. I think the further you get away from people from the farm the more fearful they are of the food that they eat. And I don't care where you get your food from, we have the safest food source in the world, and so we might as well embrace it. And so even though that we have a lot of questions from consumers who's like, "Well, do you spray?" It's like, "Yes, we spray." "Oh, my goodness." Well, and I always ask, "Well, what do you spray?" Or, " what are you scared of?" And the answer 100 out of 100 is going to say glyphosate.
Well, if I spray glyphosate on a garden, I would not have a garden. It would kill everything. And so it's that type of education that really needs to happen. And so I think if you actually brought the people that need to be on the farm to see that, a farmer is doing the best job that he absolutely can because he's not going to provide a haphazard product.
I have not met one farmer yet that's like, "I'm going to go grow an average crop." He is always going to put pride in that product. And so I guess that's my biggest advocation for the whole industry. Even though that we can fight and squabble within ourselves the system is very good.
[00:52:32] Bridget Scanlon: Well, you're eating it yourself, so.
[00:52:34] Layton Schur: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:52:36] Bridget Scanlon: So you're not going to be eating crap.
[00:52:39] Layton Schur: Yeah. Yeah, I, we got the garden outside the house, so we're going to eat pretty good.
[00:52:43] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And at the conference there were people from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, trying to incentivize farmers to transition from irrigated agriculture because of the declining groundwater resources and stuff. And they had various programs, how do you see things evolving in the High Plains? Do you think people will go to dry land or rangeland or, I mean, I'm not sure that many people have the grit that you have, Layton, to do a very... and you're very generous with your ideas and everything, and welcoming to others, but it's hard work and we're afraid of that.
[00:53:18] Layton Schur: Yeah, I don't want to scare anybody away from it. It is hard work, it's, especially the... I think the hardest work is just establishing your distribution channels, your marketing channels. That is, that's the hardest part. It's not the growing. Anybody can grow whatever they want and a lot of it.
But selling it is the hardest work. And, I think the future of our High Plains is probably to get back to some type of growing some type of food. And I say that very generously because it might be beef, it could be whatever you want to put that cash crop is. I think we have to get away from growing feed and ethanol and some of that kind of stuff.
That, that's just, that's not a good system because we have to make our farms profitable enough the next generation wants them, and that's a tough sell. And, that's, that, that's a a very difficult conversation for most producers. And we built a system that is heavily subsidized and that's, it's part of the...That's how it was built, it's how it's... So that's the rules we get to play by. But if we could find, if every farmer could find some routes to make his farm break even to better, then I think you'll see more of an influx of young people wanting to take the farm on. And that's been my biggest scare, I think, in the next 20 years.
Like, is there enough opportunity for young people to actually come back to take, my, say my great-grandkids come back to the farm? That's what I'm more concerned about than my ne- than my kids. How much, how long can we go with the system that we have until it implodes?
[00:54:58] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, the demographics are interesting and you almost have to inherit a farm. I mean, they are so expensive, and then for a traditional farm, conventional farm, the equipment outlay and a million dollars for this piece of equipment and that, and it just the the kids don't have that kind of cash or whatever.
[00:55:18] Layton Schur: No, that, that's exactly it. You're... You hit it on the head. I mean, the next generation doesn't have the cash to take on the $3 million estate that their granddad built. That's the problem. And there's going to have to be a wildly profitable play, and I am probably a beacon of light here by saying a small farm is good, too.
There is some success there because you can generate, 50 to $100,000 an acre on some of these crops with not a lot of water and not a lot of land, and it's not a lot of equipment either. I mean, it's just brute force, and so that's encouraging. That, that's really encouraging.
[00:55:58] Bridget Scanlon: I think that's a really important message, Layton, because I mean, a lot of people say, "Oh, well, we'll have to irrigate more, and we'll have to expand crop production and everything to feed people." But I mean, if half our corn is going to biofuels, we're not feeding people, so there's a lot of buffer there, and and we need to optimize better.
[00:56:17] Layton Schur: I would agree. I mean, like I said, my whole thing has been back to like how do we use the water to the best value? And that's, it's going to be pretty hard to...
[00:56:28] Bridget Scanlon: Right.
[00:56:28] Layton Schur: Like the Dave Ramsey model. you spend less money, you had more money, type of deal. So, it's pretty hard to argue with that one.
[00:56:35] Bridget Scanlon: That's really cool. So I mean, it's really important to connect people with their food source and, where did you get that? I bought it at a H-E-B. Where did it come from where is this from? H-E-B, or something like that, a grocery store. So people understanding where their food is coming from and, putting more value in that.
I mean, we always tend to go for the cheapest and, and so it's important to try to change the mindset. What you eat is really important, and so you need to consider where it's coming from and make sure it's...
[00:57:07] Layton Schur: The biggest advantage the local producer have is flavor. That's what I've always tried to push some producers to is you just have to have a good, very flavorful product, and everybody likes to eat good, tasty stuff. If it's not just the cheapest, but if they're like, "Man, this thing, this stuff tastes good," then you're going to sell it
[00:57:24] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And you're going to quickly get them hooked on that.
[00:57:27] Layton Schur: Yeah, no doubt. Yeah
[00:57:29] Bridget Scanlon: And maybe your daughter Sedona, she will be in the business or...
[00:57:34] Layton Schur: Nah. I'm not going to push her to it, but she wants to come back, I'd love to have her. So that's what I've always said, I really hope we build a profitable enough business that any kid is going to want to take it on. that's my true goal is to... And if it's not for her, then there's somebody somewhere that's going to want to take it on.
And so as long as it's a profitable business, that's what I get back to.
[00:57:57] Bridget Scanlon: I was interviewing Wolfgang Kinzebach recently, and he did a lot of work in China in the farms and stuff, which are tiny, less than an acre and stuff, but they're ... now they're amalgamating and stuff like that. And he said the traditional view of a farmer, has changed so much.
I mean, most people have degrees, and yours is in agricultural economics, so, it takes a lot of skills in many different areas. You have to manage a business, you have to grow the food, you have to market, you have to do it all. So it's very impressive. And I think for young people to think that, it's challenging but also rewarding.
[00:58:34] Layton Schur: It is. It is. I just recently came back from Ranching for Profit, and I encourage anybody in the agriculture business to go to it. It's evolutionized my business already. but you do have to do it all to a point, and then it's time to find some help. Find some good people to help you.
And like I said, the reason why we can go 8:00 to 5:00 is because we have really good people that can help us now. And so I guess my next step is, like, how do we continue to do that and do that well, and grow the business while you actually are probably working less? I know that sounds wild in a business that is very hard work.
[00:59:11] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And when we chatted recently, you mentioned this book on holistic farm management, and so I downloaded some of it, was reading it. It's very interesting concepts.
[00:59:21] Layton Schur: Now, Allan Savory he's a wizard, truly. I think that's the next steps, when it's all managed cohesively. It's, it is all connected. I know that sounds wild, but it is connected. And so when I looked at grazing, our heifer deal after reading his book, I was like, "Okay, we can grow..."
I was in the paradigm of is, we can only have this many cows per acre, period. That's where I was at. And after some thought, it's like, "No, that's not right." In wetter years, you can run more cattle. You need more cattle to run the system. And in drier years, you need to adjust to that.
And so, you just mind shift alone, it's like, okay, we could be very large, or we could be very small in the drought years. Okay. Have the ability to change.
[01:00:12] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed your presentation at the conference last year. I was so impressed and I really appreciate your taking the time to talk today and on this podcast. And so I will make the script available and also highlights and more details on, on your farming practice and put those on the website and also the YouTube and the usual channels.
So thank you so much, and good luck with all your work and appreciate what you are doing.
[01:00:39] Layton Schur: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for diving in here. So Bridget, we enjoy the conversation, so I hope it had some value to it.
[01:00:46] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Thanks a lot, Layton. Bye-bye.
[01:00:49] Layton Schur: See you then. Bye-bye.
