Be You. Get Paid.

#015 Regenerative Farming & Bitcoin, w/ Jake Wolki

• Amy Taylor (& friends!) • Episode 15

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"My opinion on the environment is - if it IS degrading - we have all the tools at our fingertips to fix it. We know exactly what to do - but do we want to do it? All these little things that the environment movement wants to talk about- they're not the hill to die on. For me it's that we need to get more animals grazing on land, we need to be shifting to nuclear power - there's a few really obvious things to me. We don't have to nitpick every little battle. | The pastures, they're my factories, they're my canvases, it's my unpaid workforce. All the microbes, all the dung beetles, all the worms - I go to the farm and I take my shoes and socks off and I walk around and sit in a corner for an hour just to feel the health of the place, just to hear it and smell it and understand how it's going. | The whole "the world's going to end by 2030 unless we do this..." That doesn't do anything for me."
___________________________

Jacob Wolki is relatively new to farming and entirely self-taught. He founded Wolki Farm in 2019 and is all about “restoring balance - at home and on the land”.

He is also one of many Bitcoiners willing to publicly push back against mainstream narratives surrounding the so-called climate “crisis”.

Jake believes we have everything we need to work towards undoing the environmental damage of the past, healing our land and bodies. 

Regenerative farming methods are among the most effective solutions we already have at our disposal to achieve this.

Originally, Jacob got into the farming space to put high-quality food on the table for his young family, after battling with allergies for years. It wasn't until he started paying more attention to the food he was putting into his body, that he quickly grew passionate about growing his own food and sharing it with his local community in New South Wales, Australia. 

Check out Wolki Farm at https://wolkifarm.com.au/
Follow Jake on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeWolki

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Jake:

My opinion on the environment is, if it IS degrading, we have all the tools at our fingertips to fix it. We know exactly what to do - but do we want to do it? All these little things that the environment movement wants to talk about- they're not the hill to die on. For me it's that we need to get more animals grazing on land, we need to be shifting to nuclear power - there's a few really obvious things to me. We don't have to nitpick every little battle. | The pastures, they're my factories, they're my canvases, it's my unpaid workforce. All the microbes, all the dung beetles, all the worms - I go to the farm and I take my shoes and socks off and I walk around and sit in a corner for an hour just to feel the health of the place, just to hear it and smell it and understand how it's going. | The whole "the world's going to end by 2030 unless we do this. That doesn't do anything for me.

Amy:

Hello human, thanks so much for tuning in to the BU Get Paid podcast. I am your host, amy Taylor, and I have one goal by being in your ears To explore as many conversations and perspectives as possible on stuff we did not learn in school. You know, stuff that would have actually helped a lot more of us thrive, rather than just survive as grown-ups in an often challenging and ever-changing world. As the title might suggest, this includes anything involved with knowing ourselves, understanding money and generally anything that might offer some insight into how we can all be happier humans With that in mind, wherever you're listening, you'll find links to some of the best resources I have personally found to help with all of those things. Sometimes I'll talk about these in a bit more detail, and I want you to know I will only ever recommend products, services and companies that I am a customer or user of myself.

Amy:

Now, real grown-ups here, and as such, you'll possibly hear the occasional use of grown-up language. More importantly, anything discussed here is personal opinion and intended for conversational and educational purposes only and should not be taken as financial or investment advice. As the housekeeping done, let's get into what I hope is some helpful chat. Cool, so welcome. Thank you for joining me. I was already thinking of the title for this episode. I was thinking Food Farming and Bitcoin, which is Cool. I love it yeah good.

Amy:

Selfishly, really, because I guess I've gone on all sorts of journeys with my diet and I've always been pretty healthy. I self-elected to be vegetarian as a child for about 10 years, from the age of about eight, and that was because in primary school we did a project with a certain teacher where we hatched our own chickens and I just could not bear the thought of those chickens being on my plate. So, being an eight-year-old emotional female, I was like no, I can't eat animals. And then, at the age of 16, I just decided to go back. I was at a barbecue, fancied a burger, completely switched, and then fast-forward about 15 years, slowly brought into the, I guess, mainstream narrative that was evolving around veganism go-plant-based, because that's the only way we're going to change the climate crisis. So I'm just giving you a bit of context as to why you caught my attention and you're obviously here in Australia. You're Albury, is that right? Where is that? It's between Victoria, and that's right. It's on the border, isn't it? Between Victoria and New South Wales?

Jake:

That's right, we're on the Murray River, we're on the New South Wales side, so we're about halfway between Melbourne and Canberra.

Amy:

Okay, I've got a couple of friends in Wagga and I've got a cousin who I think is still in Albury, so I'll have to put her in touch with you if you don't already know him. I'll have to put her in touch with you if you don't already know each other. So tell me your backstory. Are you like a third-fourth-generation farmer, or is it something you decided to take up yourself?

Jake:

Sure, I've been farming since 2019. All right, well, look, I've got a bricks-and-mortar retail background. So my family's been merchants here in Australia gift stores, fast food shops, record stores, firework stores, shop selling basketball cards and trading cards. We've done a really eclectic sort of you know whatever we thought we could make a buck. So when I left school, I went to work for my father in the record store at that time and a few years later we closed that business with a rival of Lime Wire. The record industry just tanked with illegal downloads and streaming and everything. So we got out of that industry and I purchased a bike shop with my folks bicycles and we opened up a restaurant that had joined the bike shop.

Jake:

Yeah, that's right. Electric bikes and hybrids, mountain bikes.

Amy:

Yep.

Jake:

And then we opened up a cafe joining that, and a few years into that journey I started becoming really interested in food and organics and health and animal welfare and it was just all these different interests aligning and then I just thought maybe I should try farming something. It sort of bit accidental the way it happened, but here we are.

Amy:

I was not expecting that story To me. I guess it's just assumption, but to me, farmers that take farming to the degree that you appear to have done I've just been going through your website. I just assumed oh, you were born into it, you've grown up doing it, that's really interesting. So how did that go? How do you start to decide oh, I'm gonna be a farmer. What did you start with?

Jake:

Well, for us. It started with wanting to raise some food just for ourselves. So my wife and I had just had our first child, otto, in 2017, and we were doing a bit of organic no-till gardening in our suburban backyard here, trying to grow carrots and eggplant whatever we could, and just going through YouTube rabbit holes of different guys teaching how to farm and garden. I came across a few really interesting livestock farmers and I thought you know what I'd love to get organic beef that I know hasn't been treated with antibiotics and hasn't been wormed, and I wanna know how it's grazed and what it's eaten. Hasn't eaten any grain.

Jake:

And I went to the local farmers markets and I couldn't. I wasn't really satisfied with the transparency of any of the local producers, of which there wasn't many. Like we're in a massive farming region, but everyone just sells into commodity markets. You know they just sell it to the abattoirs or the stockyards. So my dad has 110 acres out of town and I asked him if I could lease it and put a couple chickens and a couple cows on it just to grow some produce for my wife and I and our little son, and it just. I get really obsessed. I'm a massive rabbit hole venturer. So it wasn't too long before we were full tilt into selling pork and lamb and chicken and eggs and honey and beef and all sorts of stuff.

Amy:

So what you've glossed over, something that I imagine was a really grunty, hard worky journey, but it was obviously a labor of love. How long did it take you to go from just producing and eating your own food to going your first step into it being a business? How long was that period?

Jake:

Well, they were hand in hand really because the way we like to manage things is we like to replicate natural systems. So if you think about ruminant migrating, so you've got your big herds of buffalo or wildebeest and you watch your David Attenborough documentary and how you've got hundreds of thousands of them and they're all on a big journey together. We tried to from the get go. We knew that we wanted to mimic those natural systems. So we wanted to move our cattle to fresh pasture every day and keep them mobbed up type, because there's a really beautiful ecological relationship the cattle thrive and the landscape thrive when you mimic those natural systems.

Jake:

So you can't really do that very effectively with one cow and if we're moving, if we're going out to the farm and moving one cow to a fresh pasture every day or we're moving 20 cows to a fresh pasture every day, it's the same amount of work. So the mob of cattle that we started with was 20 cattle and then when I sent the first one off to the slaughterhouse to get processed, I thought it's 200 kilos of beef. Like Ann and I don't need 200 kilos of beef, so I thought I'll just put on Facebook does anybody want some beef? So, like the first animal we processed, half of it was sold to friends and family, which was probably the hardest sales pitch of my whole career. We're trying to sell products that you're invested in to those nearest and dearest to you is extremely difficult. I've said it forever and I'll keep saying it forever your friends won't become your customers, but your customers will become your friends but that's really how it started.

Amy:

It was just growing for ourselves.

Jake:

Yeah, no one wants to support you. So when you get it going they might be interested to have that conversation at the dinner table, but when it comes time to pony up and pay for it, they all disappear.

Amy:

Oh, I love that so much. Not, I don't love the fact that, because I get what you mean. I started off in affiliate marketing, learning to market and sell online which we'll get onto that, by the way because you've done a fantastic job with what looks like your online store and I think a lot of people think it's network marketing. Or these home parties like Tupperware or in the UK, a big, a famous one was Ann Summers, which was basically adult toys, and you think you're going to a party but everybody knows you're gonna get sold to and so that you get taught, just bring your friends and family and it's like no, that's hideous.

Amy:

I don't want that to be how I build a business. So I get what you mean Like no one. It's hard because I don't know. Let's just touch on that quickly. Do you think when your friends and family see you doing that I mean, you came from quite an entrepreneurial family, by the sounds of things Do you think it's just because it's new and unknown that they're afraid you're gonna fail and they're afraid for you? Or is it a bit of jealousy, do you think? Or what do you think it is, or what do you think?

Jake:

it is? I don't think it's either of those things. I think it's just apathy and just being not interested. And I've got a bit of a different situation because most of my family's vegetarian.

Amy:

So you know, when I started selling beef, no one was really interested yeah.

Jake:

I mean the few family members that did eat meat, that I sort of, or friends that I hit up about it it was.

Jake:

This is Jake's latest fad. There's not much of a range because it's fresh beef and you can take a five kilo box and you get what you're given. It's too expensive, it's inconvenient because I just buy, like most people I know, go to the supermarket nearly every single day on the way home from work and they buy the ingredients and go home and cook it. So when you're trying to process a body of beef every month and like we sell all of our produce frozen, which is a massive barrier for, you know, just volume commodity markets, so yeah, I just think it just didn't tick the level of convenience that people needed and it didn't tick their price. They just didn't see the value in it because even though I get really passionate about organic farming and high level welfare and looking after the environment, nutrient dense, there's a lot of people out there that just couldn't give two hoots. They just want the cheapest cut off the shelf. You know, and I'm related to them.

Amy:

Wow, that's really interesting because I would have just assumed it's well, you can't make assumptions about massive people with anything, but I would have thought, given are you from or Brie, or did you move out there? Is that generally the area you're from?

Jake:

Yeah, I was born in.

Amy:

Yeah, so you're a rural family, I guess, and it's just interesting to me. I would have assumed people would be more conscious of that sort of thing over there. But it's proof that you know that convenience thinking in today's world is just far and wide, right into the regions and everywhere.

Jake:

It is funny marketing beef or you know any sort of protein in an area that's surrounded by primary production, because you know you'd expect people to be more connected but there's almost just this level of you know. My uncle does that and that's sort of his wheelhouse and I don't. Because we've got that, you know, one degree separation, I feel like I'm connected. I don't need to do any research or, you know, step out of my box or anything. So there's a lot of people that have that one or two degree separation from food production and because of that, I feel like they just use it as a reason. It's sort of addressed within their family network. They don't need to get into it. I definitely don't. I have in my experience the most passionate foodies that I service from the cities.

Amy:

Wow, ok, because they can only access it through good restaurants, do you think, and they just trust that the restaurants are sourcing good ingredients rather than doing it themselves.

Jake:

It's easier to do than a restaurant.

Jake:

I'm talking about, like the most passionate foodies in my business, to people that I, you know, would regularly sell the most produce to in their urbanites. So you know, and I think it's because they're so disconnected from the food system they don't have an uncle that farms and they don't drive past the farm on the way to work every day and seal the cows lining up. But all these different things that are seen in the country might take for granted that when they have that paradigm shift and they start to question welfare or question meat quality or question provenance, that you know they really go down a rabbit hole and have real paradigm shifts, whereas, like I was saying earlier, I think when it's just around you, even though you don't really know anything about it, it's hard to think it's something that needs thinking about. It's right there, like I sort of I'm surrounded by it, so therefore I don't need to do my homework.

Amy:

That's a bit like it's completely different topic, but it's a bit like when people used to say to me like why would you leave the UK to live in Australia when you've got Europe all around you? You know you could go every weekend and it's like I guess the whole time I was there and I did do a fair bit of traveling around Europe, Like you don't bother because it's, it's right there. It's just, it's odd, isn't it the way we're programmed in that way?

Jake:

Yeah.

Amy:

OK, so you start this business and it's obviously gone extremely well. I mean 2019, that's only four years ago. You've now got a full blown retail store that's got self access. You let people let themselves in as a member. And is that just a trust system that just works?

Jake:

It's, it's big brother trust. So you know the way the butchery works is it's open 24 seven and it's staffless. Customers get a unique pin code to let themselves in. Yeah, and the only way you can get a membership is you have to come on one of my farm tours. I try to do a farm tour monthly. I do a lot more than 12 a year but I try to like. I do a lot of school groups and a lot of special interest groups, but I try to do just open to the public tours once a month and if you come along to one of those tours, they're three or four hours of walking around the farm and really talking about different production models, what we do, what industry does, yada, yada, yada.

Amy:

Yeah.

Jake:

And if you can sit through me lecturing you about my passion for three or four hours, I'll give you a code to the butchery for free and you can go in and serve yourself. But when you let yourself in, the code's tied to you so I know who's in and out. I've got movement logs and there's also high def cameras in there so I can see and hear everything that happens in the shop. You know so there's passive surveillance. I've had it's been going for almost three years now and I've had no theft or any issues like that.

Amy:

I love that. I love what that actually says about people, that people are good generally speaking. You know we assume there's a lot of wrong in the world that's caused by humans, but I think when we assume people will do the right thing, it's funny how they do in a lot of cases. I love that. I also love how conscious you are of. You seem to be a very good marketer. You clearly have a handle on technology with what you've just described your self service shop being. You're a bit coiner. We'll get onto that. But just to step back a couple of times and I guess, going back to my story with food and eating meat, they're not eating meat, so you're a regenerative farm. That's something I've only just started to learn about and that's been part of a part of as a result of being in the Bitcoin space and hearing you know meat is good when it's done. Well, describe in a nutshell for anyone who doesn't know what regenerative farming is, what it is and how you practice it.

Jake:

This is one of those new phrases that has really got everyone in the industry riled up, like you've got the regen people and then the people that don't like the phrase and everyone's got their own spin on it. So when I'm going to, I'm going to give you my definition and there'll be heaps of people that'll be pulling their hair out because it's not their definition. But I just think about it really simply that to be a regenerative farmer, you've got to be regenerating something, you've got to be improving something. So my whole premise is that we want to regenerate the commons, and commons to me, are shared resources. So you know, if you, in common language, you'll talk about the commons being the state forest that we share and the river that comes through the countryside. It's a resource that we all share.

Jake:

I expand on commons to be air quality, water quality, soil quality. There are three resources that we all benefit from or we all lose from If they. If you're next to a factory farm that's got big extraction fans pumping at ammonia, because all the animals inside are just laying down all this manure that's not getting cleaned out, whatever it might be, Even though you don't live at the farm.

Jake:

You're just next door. Your air quality is ruined, so they're destroying the commons. So we've got air quality, water quality, soil quality, and I also believe that community health and community wealth should be viewed at as common resources, because it is saying that we all either benefit from or don't. So we're just earnestly trying with our farming management and systems to make sure that every decision we make that goes towards yielding more and producing more and making more. We're thinking about those things the health of our environment, analysis and our community.

Amy:

Yeah, and it was the first thing on your website actually about your About page. I was just browsing before. You say about Wulki Farm we're the connector between the conscious consumer and quality produce and I just think I guess I have an optimism that you've just almost disqualified, I guess, but that more and more people are waking up to that and wanting to even potentially pay a little bit more for quality produce. I know there's a lot of farms, markets around near where I live and whenever we go, you know, we kind of note the fact that it probably is a little bit more than going to supermarket, but to us it's worth it because we know where it's coming from. So I want to try and link this conversation to, I guess, the mainstream stuff that's propaganda-rised to a degree the vegan movement, the climate change conversation.

Amy:

What was your take on all of that before you went down this rabbit hole? Like, were you someone who was doing your best for the environment? Like where were you at with that and how has this journey revolutionised your thinking? Because then we'll get onto Bitcoin, which is probably a similar thing. But what was your take on the environment, especially with someone with children? Were you worried about the catastrophe of climate change? Were you eating vegetarian or anything? Tell me the journey and how it's kind of radicalised your thoughts.

Jake:

Well, you know, if we flash back to Jake, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, even five years ago, my position on climate change would have been total hoax and even if it's not, don't care anyway and my position on veganism would have been, you know, a really good donate the burger because I want to. You know both.

Jake:

I would have had really confrontational you know, offensive teenage boy opinions on both of them and, to be completely frank with you, my end of the day, my opinion on both of them probably hasn't changed that much. But the reasons I believe, what I believe now, have changed a lot. Back then it was just because who cares? Like I sell bikes. I completely didn't care if they like it just didn't mean anything to me. And now, like I still.

Jake:

You know I'm a massive advocate for eating meat. I think meat is what we need to thrive. The environment I'm not a doomsdayer Like I. My opinion on the environment is if it is degrading, we have all the tools at our fingertips to fix it. We know exactly what to do. It's just we want to do it. And for me it's. It's, you know, getting rid of plastic straws, just like, don't use a straw. You know, drink from the cup, whatever. But you know all these little things that the environment movement wants to talk about. You know they're not the hill to die on. For me it's we need to get more animals grazing on land. We need to be shifting to nuclear power, like there's a few. You know really obvious things to me. We don't have to nitpick every little battle.

Amy:

So you know.

Jake:

I do think humans have an impact on the environment, like that's what we're here for. We're here to steward it, and you know, what do we want the impact to be, what do we want our legacy to be? So, you know, I, I put things in the right bin and I don't use any chemicals on my properties. Like we, I actually have a. I have a really intimate relationship with my properties that I farm. You know these are, they're my canvases. You know the pastures, they're my factories, they're my canvases. It's my unpaid workforce. All the microbes, all the dung beetles, all the worms.

Jake:

Like I, I have a. I go to the farm and I take my shoes and socks off and I walk around and sit in the corner for an hour just to just to feel the health of the place, just to hear it and smell it and understand. You know how it's going. So I you know I'm not very good at it, I guess, explaining where exactly I am, but the whole big the world's going to end by 2030 unless we do this. You know that doesn't do anything for me.

Amy:

Yeah Well, because, like you said, you've seen firsthand now and are using the tools that you believe we have available. We just need to use them. There's no point in having a bag of tools sitting in the corner and not picking them up, right?

Amy:

Is that kind of what you're getting at and you're you're a hands-on yeah someone who's actually taking the ball by the horns, quite literally, no pun intended, and you know, providing and producing just to. I don't think it'll be the episode before you, but I've just recently finished editing an episode with Ben Justman. He's another Bitcoiner in America, very similar views as you. He's a winemaker, but he trades with a lot of other farmers for meat and cheeses and all that kind of thing. So, with that all in mind, I had a specific question I wanted to ask you next and I've forgotten it. So you, when did your Bitcoin journey start or when did you first discover Bitcoin? Because I can't imagine. This is completely unrelated.

Jake:

Yeah, well, the for me when we purchased the butchery. The reason my wife and I bought that butchery which was a freehold the business had finished, so we purchased it. It renovated, set up again wasn't to open the staffless shopfront. That was an afterthought, because somebody basically dared me to, so I did it. But the real reason we bought the butchery was because we needed our own space to butcher our own animals. The local butchers couldn't handle our volume. You know, it became very apparent to me that production, processing, butchering, was the biggest bottleneck and there's no way we're gonna be able to build a tiny business without our own facility and in that boning room that we operate now we process for other farmers. So other farmers, or whomever, will send their beef or lamb or pork carcasses to us and we can slice it, put it in a cryback bag, put their logo on it, put their barcode on it and then they can go and sell it at the farmers markets or through their CSA or whatever it is. Somebody called me and said I heard you do this, can you do it for me? And I said yeah, sure thing. And he sent in a couple bodies of beef and then he sent me a spreadsheet with all these lines and it was the person's name, how much beef they ordered, delivery address and phone number. And he wanted me to pack everyone's orders and write it all on the boxes and then give him the boxes and he'd do final delivery. And we don't love packing orders because it's a pain in the butt. But I said, yeah, I can do that for you. And when I was going through this spreadsheet, one of the columns was payment method and it was Fiat, fiat, fiat Bitcoin, bitcoin, fiat Bitcoin and I'll this is, you know, covid.

Jake:

Lockdowns were just sort of ending a little bit and I had been day trading crypto currencies with a friend of mine on one of the exchanges.

Jake:

Like because we were all locked down and couldn't do anything because everything was closed, my mate and I would decided just to put 500 bucks each in and let's have a race who can day trade? And well, gambling, you know we fully looked at it as gambling. But just through trying, doing a bit of research, and because I had no previous experience with any sort of anything in that world, just for doing a real bit of experience, it became very apparent to me very quickly that not all cryptos are equal and there was a few that were coming to the surface, that they actually had a little bit of technology behind them. And then so, when I read this spreadsheet and this guy was selling his beef for Bitcoin, I just gave him a call and I said are people really paying you in Bitcoin for this? And he said yeah, they were. And this, this Bitcoiner who's in Melbourne, took me under his wing and taught me about you know, not your keys, not your coins. Get it off the exchange.

Jake:

And really helped me set up a lightning wallet and then that's right, Bitcoin, not crypto, so we're not involved in any shit coins. Now you know we're on the straight and narrow. He helped me set up a cold wallet, Like he really, you know, fathered me along. I'm very appreciative to him and that was sort of my first real exposure to it from just coming from this like gambling crypto for a laugh, to burn time while we couldn't leave our house to all of a sudden. I've always known the monetary systems bugging. I just didn't know Bitcoin was the answer until then.

Amy:

Okay, so the guy in Melbourne wasn't the farmer who asked you to process the stuff that was set, but it was his.

Jake:

I was the same guy yeah, that was him, that was him oh wow, that's awesome.

Amy:

Farmers looking after farmers love it. Okay, so just to backtrack quickly as well. So your my head goes to the business and the income opportunities and how you've grown this like this brand. So have you now got like a business within the business where you process for other farmers Like the?

Jake:

book tree is like business within it, or it's not huge.

Jake:

We do a financial year just ending, we charged about $80,000 labor doing custom processing for other people. So to give you an idea it's about you know, processing one cow for somebody costs about 1200 bucks. That's what we bill out. A lamb's about $115, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I'm actually looking at reeling that in and lowering that enterprise because it's getting to the point that the amount of space and labor we're dedicating to clients processing their products is eating into our own production potential. So it's on one hand, I really don't wanna lose these clients, but there has been an actual attrition rate of people just giving up because it's not easy. So as people are now leaving, I'm not onboarding new people, so I'm expecting that to dwindle in the future.

Amy:

I think that's really interesting point. Just to tie it back to lessons people learn through starting a business of their own. It's like you can so easily buy yourself another job. It's obviously something you enjoy doing, but you're now just working you're still working for someone else, right? Because you've, I'm probably in love about what you've done.

Amy:

Is it really for the considering it's been four years. You've really just got on with it, rolled your sleeves up and figured it out as you go. I mean, I guess your family had other businesses. Do you consider yourself kind of? You have a natural affinity for something like marketing and branding, or is that something you've had help with?

Jake:

I'm just a really honest, transparent person and I get really passionate about things. I think when you're really passionate and transparent, you know people. Just some people are gravitated towards it.

Amy:

So you know, I honestly even better Because that is, yeah, I just get fired up and yeah, and that is that is what my brand is all about. So I love that, and I think that's a lesson in itself, right? You you've you get fired up about something. You've obviously got a message, and it's all come from personal desire, I guess. You saw a problem that you wanted to solve yourself and you've gone and done it and it's grown into something that is now a thriving business 100%. Oh, it's awesome.

Jake:

Yeah, and because I believe our system of production internalizes so many costs. So what I mean by that is you mentioned before that you know our food's probably not the cheapest. Well, our food's definitely not the cheapest in a monetary sense. So you know, we would, we would be top. There'd be nothing more expensive than the sort of farming and production that we, we do for the end consumer, especially considering our small volume. But what we? And? So we're not attracting people who want to save money, but we are. We are attracting people who don't want to buy food that's been subsidized by other things. So we, we don't subsidize the cost of production by treating animals crawls and jamming them in a shed for efficiency's sake.

Amy:

And there's a difference.

Jake:

You know we don't subsidize production by using chemicals. So there's all these externalized costs with cheap food and what we're trying to do is sell people real food with no externalized costs, people that want to pay the tab upfront and not pay for it later with their health, with the environment's health, with the conscience knowing that the animal's been abused, and so we. My point to that was we're able to market to so many people because some people only care about the welfare. Well, like that's really important to us. Some people only care about the nutrient density and the and the what the food can do with them being chemical free, and that's really important to us. So we pick up people that want our food for lots of different reasons because our production model is really holistic, like we've tried not to leave any piece of the puzzle unturned.

Jake:

Well, some, some people only care about the welfare. Some people really want food that's chemical free and organic for their family's health, because they don't want to pay that price down the journey with the health deteriorating and glyphosate destroying all the microbiome in their stomach. You know, some people really care about the environmental footprint. Some people really liked the social, transparent aspect we bring. So we're able to because we've developed this really holistic farming practice that tries to leave no box ticked, and we're trying not to use any externalised subsidies. We're attracting people with lots of different interests in what we're doing.

Amy:

That's really cool and see listening to you explain that and layered on top of what you said about natural systems, with the migration of, I guess, nature at scale, I think of the conversation I heard recently with Jack Malas and Jack Dorsey, where they were talking about how money has basically gone through a similar extraction from nature, like it's just become so complex and not simple. Was that something that struck you as you went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole that you now feel strongly about, or was it a slightly different orange?

Amy:

peeling that had. You see that way.

Jake:

My family's, I guess, reasonably sophisticated when it comes to finance, just due to our three generations of being self-employed and being in business. But we don't consider ourselves like, we don't talk about ourselves that way. The family's little motto is buy it for a dollar, sell it for two, like that's. When we step back and we look at what we do, that's all we do. We buy it for a dollar, sell it for two, and we just try to keep costs of production under a buck in the middle.

Jake:

And it became very apparent to me a long time ago that the system is no good and I got really attracted to all the gold bugs. I traced it back to the gold standard and they debased the money. And listening to guys like Peter Schiff, who's our best friend us Bitcoiners love Schiffy, but it you know I really resonated and related to everything that the gold bugs were saying about the economy. But there was no solutions. It was just we know where it went wrong and we're just gonna complain about it. And it's like no one in the gold bug movement is even sort of trying to get money back on the gold standard. I don't know if that'll ever happen without some sort of catastrophe. You know they're just whinging about it. They're just complaining about something that happened in the 70s or whatever it was.

Amy:

Yeah, I've never thought of it that way. You're absolutely right. Pinch of ship is one of them. It's like we all agree on the problem, but the Bitcoin is the only one that are offering a solution.

Jake:

That's right and he doesn't like it. So when Bitcoin came along, I thought this is really interesting technology. And then when I started learning a bit about mining and you know Red's Summer Safedine books and you know it's a solution and people can argue, they can poke holes in it and argue about it and you know you can sort of like what's your solution? You know whether Bitcoin is perfect or not. It's like what's your, what's the alternative? Is it to? Is it? Is it quantitative easing? Is it like? I've won 12 interest rate rises in the last six months? You know my electricity bill in the butchery is $100 a day at the moment because of the state-based electricity price hikes. You know like the current system is failing us. What's the solution? So you know, and then you see Bitcoin actually be adopted by governments around the world. This is really exciting stuff and no one else is no one and nothing else is stepping up to the plate.

Amy:

True, I think that's the issue with a lot of problems that people complain about. Everyone's complaining about all sorts of things, whether it be rising prices, how hard it is to have three jobs and not be able to support a family. But it's those short-term decisions, right? Is it peel back? Keep going, keep going, keep going.

Jake:

You'll get to Bitcoin or you'll get to money. Well and it's. And talking about people complaining about things you know it's like fat people complaining that they that they don't. They're not comfortable on an airplane Because the chairs are too narrow, so we'll lose some weight. You know that's directly in your control. Like you yourself could address that issue without needing anyone else around you to do anything. The victim mindset is truly offensive.

Amy:

I could not agree with you more. You put that really well. So, just going back to the nature piece, with the systems and the migration, I think I started to ask you that before. What is it about? Or when did the penny really drop for you, as someone who I guess was already passionate about food needing to come back to its roots and be part of nature and really tap into natural systems? When did you see that crossover, Because a lot of people talk about fiat foods or you know a lot of.

Amy:

Bitcoiners talk about fiat foods and the impact. When did that penny drop for you and you realized how much of a connection there was between what you do?

Jake:

Well, I was doing organic gardening in the background and I knew that chemical inputs were bad because you read the label and it. You know farmers will fight tooth and nail and give you all these studies defending their beloved atrazine and glyphosate. You know half of these chemicals are banned in Europe and you know all around the world we're still using them all here in Australia. But the reality is is when you pick up a bottle that says poison on it and you know one plus one equals two poison bad. So I knew I didn't want to be farming or doing anything with chemicals on it. But when I was, I said that I was going around YouTube and I went down this rabbit hole.

Jake:

There was a video I watched with a farmer in America, joel Salatin. He has a farm called Polyface Farm in Virginia and Joel Salatin is the OG with this, with promoting this style of farming multi species, mimicking natural systems. And I remember, I remember the exact video and I remember where I was when I watched it. But he was. He made farming cool again, he made it so romantic, he made it make a lot of sense and he painted this picture where you were working with nature, not struggling against it, and he was explaining the migratory animals.

Jake:

But beyond, beyond the mice, when animals like let's take, let's break down this herd moving, when the big herds of wildebeest are migrating and moving every day, they're constantly moving away from their manure so they're not getting sick because they're not drinking water that they've defecated in, they're not standing in their own feces, needing to be fed subtherapeutic antibiotics to boost their immune system, all this so that they're healthy, the landscapes having all this really concentrated organic fertilizer and natural disturbance deposited on it.

Jake:

So the landscapes like Hallelujah, this is exactly what we're made for. Give us more of that and the landscape thrives. But then, three or four days after the animals, the ruminants have been through, a big flock of birds come through because they're following the ruminant, all the bugs and parasites that are hatching out of the manure of the herbivore. The chickens eat it, and so the chickens but this would be the passenger, whatever it might be they're eating all the bugs out of there and doing their own ecological service by cleaning up the passenger, the insect load, putting down the ruminant manure. And so you know, we're on the farm, we're moving our cows and we're also chasing them with chickens. We're trying to take this whole natural system and replicate it tip of the hat and honor that system as best we can. And when somebody explains it to you and you've never heard it before, you're like well, that makes sense.

Amy:

That's exactly what was going on in my head. I've never heard this before. You know, little towny person, suburban person, who I guess I'm one of the people that you would have described before, who's more of an urbanite, being from London, but also, I guess I was on the Gold Coast, which is pretty urban, so I get it. It's. How do we get that? And especially, you know, if we get to this point of supply chains slowing down? This is something that Ben touched on, the winemaker a couple of episodes ago. You know, it's so, so important that we have access and knowledge of this inner community in a world where, again you mentioned before, you can jump online and order anything from anywhere in the world. Well, that might not always be the case Not to catastrophize but so how far and why are you able to ship to supply a broader community delivery wise?

Jake:

Farm is the easiest part of this business Processing, sales and freight and logistics all three of those are so much harder than farming. So at the moment we're doing we're doing local. You know Aubrey regional, so just the rural areas around here. We're shipping down into Melbourne and Greater Melbourne you know Gippsland, that sort of area weekly and I've been trying for probably 12 months to get freight to Canberra, sydney, brisbane sorted. Yeah, that includes South Coast and all the beaches, and five minutes before I sat down to talk to you, I finally had an email with suburb list and price codes. So I'm hoping to be able to ship Canberra, sydney, brisbane, northern beaches, south Coast. I'm hoping to be able to do all of that by September of 2023.

Amy:

Wow, that's huge progress, Congrats.

Jake:

And it's been really difficult.

Amy:

Yeah, what has the challenge been?

Jake:

Well being from Aubrey, we do everything frozen, which adds a layer of difficulty. You know, fresh is fresh, is easy to sell because people like it arriving fresh, and fresh is easy to freight. There's more refrigerated options than freezer options. But it's harder to plan our business and hold inventory and process, like when my lambs, when my sheep lamb down and those lambs are ready to be processed. Five months later I'm going to have 100 of them. Then I've got nothing for the next 12 months. I need to be able to stop, pile that inventory to get me through. So frozen's added a issue. But, being in Aubrey, I have to get it to Sydney. No one from Sydney that does that. The metro runs will come to Aubrey to get it. So I have to get it to them and then and so that's, you know, one piece of the puzzle. But it just comes down to minimum viable scale. Okay, mr Wolke from Wolke Farm, how many boxes a week? I don't know.

Jake:

Two 15, 30. I, you know let's, let's say five to start with. And it's just, they're not used to dealing with little baby businesses that have no idea what they're doing. They're expecting six pallets on Monday, 14 pallets on Thursday, like this is sort of what they're used to. So I've been and it looks like it's just worked I've been actively trying to sell myself. Well, it's probably going to be six pallets, six boxes this week, but we're hoping in six months that it's going to be a pallet at a half and yada, yada, yada yada. So we're we're you know scale and volume spent the massive barrier there.

Amy:

And do you have? How many staff have you got? Or is it literally just you nonstop working?

Jake:

No, there's there's two butchers in a packer in the butchery there. So then the one butchers full time, both butchers are basically full time, the packers as needed. So two, three days a week, you know they slice bacon and pack orders and cryback me and then on the farm where you know about two, one and a half, two full time equivalents at the moment.

Amy:

Wow, you sound like a very busy man, and you've just had your third baby, is that right?

Jake:

Yeah, we just had number three six weeks ago. A little Esmeralda, six weeks old.

Amy:

Oh, congrats, very cute. Yes, you were expecting her when we were arranging this, so, congrats, good to see you. She's all safe and healthy.

Jake:

Great little baby. Yeah, we had her in the living room just here and she's happy and healthy and doing great. She's a low birth weight and a high weight gain rate. So with animals, you'd like, your, you'd like to compare this to a cow. I could tell that A cow, that's right yeah.

Amy:

And you thought it was going to be the next thing out of your mouth. Carry on, I want to learn.

Jake:

My wife's behind the laptop in a roll that arises at me. But you want the progeny to be born slightly smaller if possible, because it does less damage and it's easier. But then the genetic trait you want underlying, which is partly mum and partly child, is you want them to be putting on weight ahead of schedule, which is exactly what Esmeralda's done. She was born I think it was 400 grams or 300 grams under average and she was putting on. She put on 20% birth weight the first fortnight, another 20% fortnight after that. You know she's been ahead of schedule soaring. So very good little heffa calf.

Amy:

She's just about to say she's been paying attention in the womb to how this goes in the farming world Awesome. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned a lot and it's I think there's a lot of parallels and crossover with Bitcoin, or why it's important. I think I'm conscious of a lot of these conversations. If a non-Bitcoiner was listening, they won't really get it.

Amy:

So I'm trying to start with topics that I think are trendy, that people are becoming more interested in, like where our food comes from, wanting to make more of an effort with our health, people waking up to, I guess, some of the mainstream narratives we've been sold in recent years perhaps not being as extremely viable or remaining unchallenged, right. So the cuspiricies on Netflix and all that kind of thing. I was sucked in, as were a lot of my friends and potentially still are, but I just think it's important to start having these conversations that raise the other side, and you've done a great job of that, so thank you. A couple of questions I always like to ask people how old are you? Do you mind me asking?

Jake:

32 32.

Amy:

Okay, so two questions I always ask is what advice would you give to your younger self about being yourself, being you Anything you want, about, I guess, wisdom growing up? And then, secondly, what advice would you give to your younger self about money?

Jake:

So I guess in my management journey when we purchased the bicycle store, I was 20 and I was managing people that were in their 30s straight away and I think I did an okay job. But I put on Mr Middle Management persona. So I went from this authentic knockabout kid through school and the record shop and then I turned up and I tried to be really buttoned up, slick because I needed to be the image of what a manager was, and a backfire and all the staff hated me. It took me quite a few years to figure that out. So it's so redundant.

Jake:

Be yourself whatever, but when I look at myself in the business, I'm honest, I'm hardworking. I like to have a laugh If I could sit down. 20 year old Jake. It's like don't worry about what the 35 year old thinks about you, whether you're professional enough. Just show him that you're putting in 14 hours a day and that you're willing to look after customers and staff right and just get on with the job. Because that took me quite a while to figure out and it was difficult for me. I struggled with that for a while and in terms of money jeez are we talking about? Make sure you bet on this team on this date like back to the future style.

Amy:

No, no, just anything around.

Jake:

By Bitcoin 15 years ago Is the obvious answer no, I guess say similar age.

Amy:

then at that age, when you were, what were you doing with your money? What would you do differently if you could go back?

Jake:

Look, I probably wouldn't do too much differently. Really I probably. I wish I made my super fund self managed a little bit earlier than I did, but I didn't really do that late, like I was probably 27 when I made my super fund self managed. So you know and there wasn't the reason I waited was everyone said, oh, it's not worth doing unless you got 300 grand in there. And I think when I did it I had like $80,000, but I still wish I took control of that and started leveraging that in my own life a little bit earlier. But you know and I'm sort of still on the fence about this a little bit, amy but I drill down debt as quick as I can and I lose opportunities to, you know, capitalize on interest and loans and cash flow, because I'm so allergic to debt. So it'd be pretty obvious to myself to go just, you know, take your time and, you know, use that loan a little bit. But I'm still on the fence as to how I feel about that.

Amy:

I I Well, because interest rates have changed. Now right.

Jake:

Sure yeah like.

Amy:

Until last year, you might have felt like that. I get it. Leverage cheap debt in a good way. Is that what you're saying?

Jake:

Yes.

Amy:

Rather than yeah.

Jake:

Yeah, you know like I was so bullish about paying down the home loan that I had no spare cash that I could have invested into other, into the business or side hustles, or it actually invested. You know what's the upside? You're going to save 5% on your home loan but you're going to miss 10% on investment. But our sort of philosophy is to have as little home debt as possible and let the businesses have the exposure and the risk. We don't want to be stressing out about the electricity bill and food on the table. You know, let all the financial stress come from the businesses and we'll just be conservative and moderate at home, so I wouldn't have too many different. That's probably a question for another 10 years.

Amy:

Yeah, no, so you basically take more risk, which is probably the opposite of what a lot of people would say yeah.

Jake:

You know, like we're we're we're we at the moment, like we're pulling things pretty fine to get this farm really moving. You know businesses need a minimum viable scale and you know there's there's pressure and there's stress, but it's just. If you want to build something, it's not easy. You know you have to put it on the line and you have to lean into it. So it's just trying to be objective about what you're doing.

Amy:

Yeah, and I love that mentality. That is a common thread among everyone I've spoken to who's a bit coiner and I think, I think that just comes from this underlying value system of proof of work. I mean, you've clearly, you're clearly a hard worker. Whether or not you've tied that to the proof of work conversation, I don't know, but I certainly do. Building stuff does take time and I think you know. Going back to what you just said, they're about home loans. You know a lot of millennials. You're younger than a millennial. You're Gen Z, are you? Is that what you've fallen into?

Jake:

No, I got no idea. I was born in 1990.

Amy:

Doesn't matter. But you could almost say that the home loan is the risk now. But we wouldn't have known that until 18 months ago. And I think the more people are learning about the system even if they don't know how it works, they're feeling the impact of it. So good advice. Thank you so much. That was really enjoyable. I learned a lot. Tell me where I'll link your website, what your website is. Tell us where to find you Got my glasses on.

Jake:

Yeah, sure, so the website's walkiefarmcomau. And, like I said, we'll be shipping up the East Coast soon. I'll be placing it on the ground. Yeah, bring it on. Thank you very much. We do. I'm on Facebook, walkiefarm, instagram, but where I'm most active at the moment is on Twitter, which is just at Jake walkie, and I'm really enjoying. I've been on Twitter less than a year and I'm really enjoying Twitter because not many of my friends are family there, so I can really it's almost like I've got a mask on, even though I am myself on it. I can talk about politics without offending my mother-in-law. Or I can talk about my childhood and the way I was raised and the way I'm raising my kids, maybe differently, without offending my parents because they're not there until they read it one day when someone's screenshot something I don't think you're going to care about it, then I love that.

Amy:

That's a great point, certainly for my audience and things I'm passionate about with personal branding, because you are, you're just. You caught my attention because I asked for people for the podcast and you commented. So I was just skimming people's profiles quickly and you definitely jumped out. So awesome to meet you. Thank you so much. I will make sure that's all linked and yeah, I'll see you on Twitter. We'll keep in touch.

Jake:

Great Thanks for having me, amy, you're welcome.

Amy:

Hello, my friend, as someone who's not the best at finishing the things they start, thank you so much for making it to the end of this podcast. I hope you found it helpful. Maybe it piqued your curiosity on something new or even just made you smile for a few seconds. If any of those things apply here, then all my regular tech challenges and tantrums are well worth it to get this to you. If you heard anything at all that you think could help just even one other human being, there's a couple of things you can do that I would really and truly appreciate. Firstly, you can follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.

Amy:

On most podcast platforms, this is usually just a case of hitting a follow button or a plus sign on the main show page. This means you'll never miss an episode, which is hopefully a win-win for us both. Secondly, if you're feeling really generous, you can leave me a five-star rating or review wherever you're listening. And lastly, feel free to share an episode with a friend on social media. With any thoughts, feedback, suggestions or even criticism, it's okay, I can take it. Just tag me using the handle at Amy Taylor Says to make sure I see it and can thank you personally Any or all of these things genuinely mean more human beings see and hear these conversations. So again, thank you for being here and helping me with my mission with BU Get Paid to help as many people as possible know themselves no money and be happy. See you next time.

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Amy Taylor

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