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Today I'm talking with Taylor at Acres U.S.A. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Taylor at Acres USA. Good morning, Taylor. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you doing? I'm great. You're in Wisconsin? Yes. Did Acres USA start in Wisconsin? No. It's... 00:28 It started in Kansas City and then moved to Austin, Texas. And then the company that acquired it from the founders had moved it to Colorado and that's where we ended up buying it from and then moved it to Wisconsin. Okay, cool. All right. So, tell me about yourself and Acres USA because no one who hasn't heard about it probably knows what it is. So, tell me all about it. 00:56 Yeah, well, Acres USA was founded back in 1971 and the founder was Charles Walters, who truly was a visionary and he was inspired by his youth when he was a farmer in Kansas and then he ended up becoming an economist. So he believed from early on that farming had become disconnected from nature and it was becoming destructive to the soil and human health and the environment. 01:25 So through Acres USA, he began to champion the principles of ecological agriculture and published some groundbreaking research by soil scientists, farmers, and thought leaders like Dr. William Albrecht. And then over the decades, Acres USA grew from just a magazine into a full movement. And we published books, host conferences, have digital resources. And the goal is to... 01:53 empower farmers to work with nature and also profit from it. So today we remain committed to Charles Walter's original mission and that's to prove that ecological farming is not only sustainable but also economically sound. And I think that's always kind of a key part of Acres USA is, you know, we talk about ecological principles but we also focus on the economics behind it. 02:23 Is that right? Correct. Okay. How did that happen? Well, that's kind of a long story. That's okay. We've owned it for just over a year now. I grew up in southwest Wisconsin and did not have much agricultural background at all. I always liked land though. My first introduction to land was through hunting. 02:51 And I kind of have a little bit of an obsessive personality. So I was kind of obsessed with hunting and interacting with the land. I became a police officer when I was 20 and that was the first career that I jumped into. I knew, you know, shortly into that, that it probably wasn't going to be able to get me into a position to actually buy my own farm or have my own land to manage myself. So. 03:21 I jumped into the entrepreneurship world, learned about business. When I was 25, I moved back in with my parents and said I was going to make a go of it in the business world. And then two years later, we were able to buy a farm. And while we had that farm under contract, the initial idea was still revolved around farming or revolved around hunting. And I knew I kind of wanted to create a. 03:49 a media company that talked about managing land and interacting with land because I did love – I've always loved just interacting with land and manipulating it and doing different things with it. I found Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown and Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard and I got bit by the regenerative agriculture movement and I realized Mark was actually just 20 minutes from me. 04:19 So I started, I probably listened to his book that winter five different times and I would just drive by his farm and try to figure out what all he was talking about in that book. And finally, I just knocked on his door and Mark and I have been working together ever since and Mark is, you know, like I said, the author of Restoration Agriculture which is probably the highest selling book that Acres USA has. 04:49 So I got introduced to Acres USA, bought a ton of books, and that's how I began my journey into regenerative agriculture. My business world from the side had kind of morphed into marketing agencies and working with tech to help business owners create books and courses and events, but it was completely separated from agriculture. 05:17 COVID happened, that business kind of took a little bit of a hit just because the majority of our clients were pretty affected by COVID. So I jumped into real estate, took our agency and began doing more of a local type marketing services and then became a realtor specializing in working with land and helping people find regenerative. 05:46 or find conventional type farms with the plan of transitioning into organic or regenerative type practices. And Mark was always kind of in ...