Written transcription:

Nadia: Hi. This is Nadia Korths, co-founder of the Murray Hill Farmers Market. This is the 2nd episode of interviewing the vendors of the market so we can get to know each other more. I'm now interviewing Kyle Harper from Clover Farms.
And we'll start off, with you telling us about your farming operation and how you got here. 

Kyle: Thanks for doing this, first of all, and for getting this market up and running. I think it's great.

So Clover Farms started in the 2019- 2020 timeframe. We, at the time, had cattle. We were selling beef, but we weren't a label. And so we decided to become a brand. Clover Farms was born. We decided at the same time to incorporate pasture raised eggs into the business.

And, it's been well received by the community. I think people have really enjoyed having access to local grass fed beef and the non GMO corn and soy free eggs. 

N: Oh, I can totally see why! 

May I ask about how many head of cattle you usually have? 

K: Well, when we started out, I had a lot more. They weren't mine. I was managing them and then buying them from the owner and then selling the meat as ours. And, we actually used the cattle to regenerate the land. We had about 200 head in total, which is a really big, really big herd.

Now I have a very small herd, of about 20 and I’m slowly building that back up. And so we've got about 1,050 chickens. That is small for us too. 

N: Wow. 

K: That's about half of what we had. 

N: That's a lot of chickens!

K: A lot of ladies to keep happy. 

N: Yes, it is!

Next question. Let's see here.  What's your acreage? 

K: Well, again, we started off on about 450 acres.

It was my ex-wife's family's property. After the divorce, I had to pack up the farm and move. That was quite a challenge. But God provided and I found a small farm down in Starke, Florida to move my chickens to, and then I found some acreage in White House to move the cattle to. And so we are leasing land to farm on/and we're in 2 different places, a total of about 150 acres. 

N: I think that's a great model to make people aware that it's an option.

K: I mean, we're doing it successfully. Lease an acre or 2 and grow tons of food. I don't have a green thumb, but if somebody wanted to grow local food, you don't need that much space and you don't have to own it. 

N: Yep. That is such a great thing. 

So you're talking about regenerative practices. How did that start? 

K: Well, a family friend,  Alan Skinner, had gotten into soil and the soil business of figuring out soil biology.

And he knew I was farming, and came out and saw me. We talked. He suggested I go to a conference called the Grass Fed Exchange. It's a nationwide conference that happens every year. It's for regenerative grass based farmers. 

He told me, when you go there, you need to find this guy, Allen Williams. 

N: You spoke with Allen Williams? 

K: Doctor Allen Williams, in fact.

N: Wow!

K: Yeah. I went to the first conference and told him, “Hey, Allen Skinner told me to come find you.” and we had this hour long conversation in front of one of the conference rooms. I ended up hiring him as a consultant. So I was very, very fortunate to be taught by one of the best. And so Allen came to the farm quite a few times. He worked with me and helped me develop everything from the grazing grid from how the cattle were going to move around the property to even the cattle handling facility. He helped us with the phenotype of the cattle, making sure that we had the best, animal body shape and size for grass-fed beef.

N: I can't believe how lucky you were.

K: Yeah. He was fantastic. 

N: Did he also do cover crop? Like, what did he say? 

K: How to do cover crops, and (he) helped helped me create the first blends that we did.

We called them a cocktail mix. So they would have clovers in them, peas, beans, hairy vetch. It was just a complete mix. I had a grass summer mix and a winter mix.

That's how I started regenerating the soil out there. I'd plant the cover crops, let them come in, run the cattle through them, and they tear them down and eat them up. It was working really well. That model works really well.

So, hopefully, I can start incorporating that same practice into the property I'm on now. But I need a longer term lease before I start investing that much in the soil. 

N: But that's incredible because I just, by chance, have been listening to a podcast with John Kemp and Allen Williams. 

K: Yeah. John Kempf. 

N: About the ideal vision of regenerative livestock rotation management. And the amount of detail that they go into. It's incredible.

K: I've heard him teach classes too.

N: So we've talked about regenerative practices that you've experienced and whom you've learned them from. It sounds like you're knowledgeable enough that people could reach out to you if they wanted some advice on how to start regenerative practices with their livestock. 

K: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

N: Okay. So that is something. 

K: I've talked with Allen. He's now involved with a group called Understanding Ag, and the group is consulting.

And so I've talked to him about going under that umbrella of Understanding Ag and becoming a consultant in this area for other people that want to do regenerative farming. 

I've got a lot of experience. We literally took raw land that was  just sitting there for probably close to 20 years and turned it into a thriving, working ranch.

And the soil! We did a soil test every year. We're watching the organic matter come up. And showing good results. It takes seasons and seasons.

It's not something that happens very quickly. Getting a couple of really good seasons of planting, running animals over it, and doing it, you know, the right way, that organic matter is gonna come up pretty quick. Yeah. I'm amazed.

N: To do something like that!  Within 4 years, to have something go from 2 inches of organic soil to 15 inches in 4 years. Yeah. It's incredible. I mean, that is blowing me away.

And we're talking about the soil out in the Midwest. A third of what’s monoculture out there. It’s basically dead. You're talking about something that can totally transform that.

K: Well, I've watched guys take a desert in Mexico and turn it into a thriving prairie. And you look at the fence line where the neighbor is doing (regenerative) and it’s thick (with grass). And on the other side is a desert. It is sand and rock and pebbles and little cactuses. Regenerative farming works. And you could do it anywhere.

N: Yeah. If he can do it in the desert, you can do it anywhere. It's so context based as well 

I'm gonna start asking questions more related to the market. You've been at the Murray Hill Farmers Market since the beginning because MJ was selling your eggs.

How did you two connect? 

K: Some of us were in Murray Hill at the Silver Cow. And MJ was in there that night. I don't want to say she was eavesdropping because I have a loud voice.

But she heard that I had chickens and was a farmer, and she just walked right up and said, hey. I'm starting this, and I'd love for you to be a part of it. And so she was just super forward. She did a great job. She's done a great job with this market.

N: So that's how it started. She's so active on recruiting what we need here. 

K: She is. She just came right up. “I need you.” she said.

I'm like, “okay.” And at the time, you know, personally, she was willing to sell my eggs for me here. I wasn't in a position to be up here once a week because I had just gotten divorced. I had to move off that property, and I spent the first year setting up an entirely new infrastructure on another property.

And so I was working 7 days a week, you know, 12, 16 hour days. It was exhausting. So that's why it kinda took me a while to get here. 

Once that infrastructure was in place. That's when I started selling myself and being here every week. 

N: What are the products that you sell now here at the market? What can people come and find with you? 

K: So at the market here, I'll have a small assortment of grass fed, grass finished beef every week.

I usually have some tallow that I rendered. That's it right now.  I'm not selling eggs because Charlie's Chicks is here selling eggs, 

N: One thing that I love that you do and others do here is that you're so respectful of other people selling, and it always seems to be worked out amongst us. 

K: Yeah. 

N: And you are really, really wonderful at that, Kyle. You were known to do that because you also have done that with Toni with Cartwheel Ranch. 

K: I think there's room for everybody. 

N: Now tell me a little bit why, if people don't know what to use tallow for, people would want to use tallow rather than butter or vegetable oils?

K: Tallow is really a cooking oil, super healthy for us. It's very trendy right now. It happens to be because people are learning that the foods we eat are what's causing so many people to get sick.

And, one of the major ones that people want to stay away from is seed oils. And we've been using seed oils, as a country and as a people, for cooking for a long time now.  People are wising up to the fact that they're not healthy and wanting to incorporate something that is still (healthy) and going back to our roots.  We're finding out that the fats from animals are not issues for our bodies. They are actually good fats or healthy fats, and we need them.

We need them, our brains need them. Our bodies need them to function properly. And so having access to good clean fat that you can cook your eggs in or saute vegetables in or also use as a skin product. Put it on your face, and it's a natural, you know, sunscreen.

N: A sunscreen!?

K: Yes. It's a natural sunscreen.  It cures eczema. it's got so many great qualities and properties to it. That's why it's getting very trendy.

People are realizing, man, there's so many great things you can do with this stuff. 

N: What kind of cuts do you have meat wise? Is there a variety? 

K: Online, we have everything from roast, steaks, ground beef, organ meats, tongue, heart. 

N: Oh, you have tongue! I saw that. I went and looked at your website. 

K: We sell oxtail. We sell shank, bones.

N: So could someone order via the website and come and pick it up here (MHFM)? 

K: I'm not set up to get the orders to this market yet. Okay. Theoretically, I could do that. It would take some logistics on my part.  I'm, you know, the only one doing everything.

So I would have to change my week a little bit. Yeah. To get those orders here. But, yes, that is possible. 

N: What other markets are you at? 

K: So I'm selling at Atlantic Beach. I sell eggs there now. I'm also selling beef at Atlantic Beach, which is a blessing.  And I sell at 2 markets in Saint John's that are fairly new markets. One is the Shearwater market and one is the Southampton market. And those are once a month markets.

People can find me if they follow me on Instagram. I post those markets the week of. “Hey. I'll be at this market and this address on this day.”

N: What's your handle on Instagram? Is it clover farms? 

K: CloverFarmsFL

N: And your website is Cloverfarmsfl.com.

K: Yeah. You gotta include that Florida. Okay. Clover Farms of Florida. 

N: Let's see. You've done a number of collaborations with other vendors here. Tell me about 1 or 2 of them. 

K: Sure. Okay. So, Vital Acre Farms, Brooke, she's done an amazing job creating tallow products, skin care products; like a body body balm, face creams, lip gloss.

And I've been wanting to sell something like that for a very long time. Met with her. We worked out a deal where I will provide her the rendered tallow. So take a step of some work away from her, and she will, in return, kindly give me kind my own brand of  Tallow Body Balm, which I'm really excited to finally have.

Yep. She actually has brown jars, wooden tops, and my little Clover Farm label on them, and they're very cool. So that's one way I've collaborated.

Another is also with the tallow with  ScumBucket Soaps. Brandy's actually taking my tallow, and she's gonna make me a man bar soap, it’ll be black. 

N: Cool!

K: It'll be Wow! It'll have charcoal in it and tallow, and it's just gonna be a solid black bar of soap. And it'll have a little Clover Farm logo on the label, made by ScumBucket soaps.

I've tried to work with other vendors whenever I can.  Give them a little business.  Give me more products to sell at markets where I can only sell one or two things. 

N: Oh, I love it. I'm starting to realize when I do these interviews that I am finding out firsthand some of the stuff  that I want to try myself. So I'm realizing I have great advantages to doing this. 

Next question. What is there about this market that makes it different from other markets? 

K: Yeah. For sure. I would call it my week of social hour market. I feel like this market is a family of vendors.

It has a different feel than other markets. I think, you know, a lot of the other markets are bigger. They have a lot of foot traffic, and it's just all business. You go in. You sell, sell, sell, sell, and then you pack out and leave.

Here there's just a lot of camaraderie between the different vendors. I personally look forward to seeing everyone. 

N: I agree with you. I mean, tonight, I just had so much fun here.

We've finished our interview. You can find Kyle from Clover Farms here every Wednesday from 5 to 8 at Fishweir Brewing Company on Edgewood in Murray Hill. And that's it. 

Thank you, Kyle, very, very much for taking the time to have this interview with me. I really appreciate it.

K: My pleasure.  

Nadia: We'll be posting it on the website, and it'll be going out with the next newsletter. 

Kyle: Super. Thank you.

End of interview.