#64 - Jody & Crystal Manuel + Brei Larmoyeux @ Gruff

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #64 - Regenerative Organic Ancient Grain Grits - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with AI and is not 100% accurate.

Kyle Krull - 00:00:15
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators and investors to learn about the consumer brands, supporting regenerative agriculture, and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle. Joined about my co host, AC, is going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:33
On this episode, we have Jody and Crystal Manuel and Brei Larmoyeux, who are the co founders of Gruff. Gruff is supporting regenerative agriculture with its regenerative organic certified ancient grain grits. Gruff's grits are made from organic cracked farro and our table ready in just 12 minutes. In this episode, we learn about Jodi and Crystal's journey transitioning their farm from conventional to organic. Plus all the spectacular nuance of how they're currently weaving annuals, perennials, and animals to create a winning regenerative organic system. Crystal shares the story of how feeding their many children and nutritious breakfast inspired the creation of Gruff. And we have Brei and Kyle side barring on how we can bring these new trish's grits to bodybuilding bros and other performance athletes across the world.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:13
Gruff is a vertically integrated farmer led regenerative brand with a great story and a ton of growth potential. Super fun to dive into all of this with Jody, Crystal, and Brei. Let's dive in. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. Very excited today to have our friends, Jody Crystal and Brei from Gruff joining us. So welcome y'all.

Kyle Krull - 00:01:45
Thank you. Yeah. We're super pumped. Anthony knows I'm especially pumped as somebody who eats savory oats every single morning. I was doing a little bit of brand research, and I was like, man, I'd love to have some savory Gruff to change it up a little bit. So I'm really excited, but, give us a quick lay of the land. For those who are unfamiliar with the brand Gruff, what sort of SKUs do you produce, where can people find your products today?

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:02:09
So right now, we are you can find us online. We have an ancient grain grid. We have one skew right now. So that skew is pharaoh. We've cracked down the ancient grain pharaoh. There is plans to expand, but right now, that's the one that we have. You can find us online. You can find us in Azure Standard. We're distributed all over Montana with small distributors, Cisco, quality foods, and Western Montana Growers co op.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:37
Nice.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:02:38
We're in 2 colleges. We're in the 2 colleges in Montana. So We're pretty excited about the growth growth happening.

Jody Manuel - 00:02:45
Amazon. Right?

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:02:46
Amazon. We're also in Amazon.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:49
Excellent. And just the the website is grubgrains.com for anybody interested, and we'll reiterate that later in the episode, but just want to ensure that everybody has the the option to go find the product if they're to look for it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:00
Yeah. It's a good it's a good segue into the origin story because there's some really cool copy on the website about, obviously, you know, the background here with Jody and Crystal and the farm where this all all this stuff is happening and sourced from. And, you know, it's a really cool story in so many ways. And, yeah, tell us tell us how it all got started. Joining, Crystal.

Jody Manuel - 00:03:18
We would probably have different versions of that story, but

Crystal Manuel - 00:03:25
I'll correct him when he goes

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:27
wrong. Yeah. There you go. There

Crystal Manuel - 00:03:28
you go. Alright.

Jody Manuel - 00:03:31
Well, so for me, it it it it I'll do my best to do a very nutshell version of something that goes way back because we've just literally been here on the on my family's farm and ranch. You know, from the beginning. And, since I would say the time of our, conversion to organic in 2007, We just it's been an amazing journey, but this has been with me at the helm of all of that. And, you know, Crystal has just been the supportive wife and all of that, but for so long, like, she's wanted to do something to take it to the next level. It's just that she was too busy raising children all the years. And so so I think we both knew there was going to come a day. And for me, for my perspective, it would just be kind of stepping aside and being in a a supportive role of whatever that might look like.

Jody Manuel - 00:04:17
And there's been so many possible, options over the years of ideas like this that she has explored, but then you know, I I'll the the day that stands out in my mind, it goes back to January of 2000 14. We're right here in our kitchen, and I I got to witness these 2 meeting each other face to face for the first time. And it it just it became clear, like, wow. There's, like, major potential here for Yeah. Many cool things to happen and and So that was kinda I know that goes way back before the official origin story that ties in with COVID and all of that, but, That's where it begins for me where it was it it's never has been my thing. It's been crystal's thing, but now seeing the way things have unfolded, it's also occurred to me that one of the biggest challenges for farm families is transitioning farm to the next generation.

Jody Manuel - 00:05:14
And

Kyle Krull - 00:05:29
all

Jody Manuel - 00:05:29
of a sudden, it's like, well, what a perfect way for us to have Another direction to go to to build something new and different and exciting. And at the same time, step aside and hand the reins over the next generation. So that's that's kinda how I'm viewing this at this point.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:05:46
Wow. Well, set set the stage for us here a little bit on what what has happened on the farm in the last 10 years. You know, what do you grow? Just set the scene maybe for folks on on what the operation does look like.

Crystal Manuel - 00:05:59
Well, the The farm has transitioned from a conventional farm prior to 2007, to certified organic. And the reason for that was because Samir's back, I ended up getting pretty sick fairly quickly, so it seemed. And So we learned a lot about that process because I had been diagnosed with Graves disease, but by the time they figured out exactly what it was, the the symptoms were in in pretty full swing and fairly severe. And so I really wanted to know why I had an autoimmune disease as opposed to just being treated for it conventionally through Western Medicine because they weren't really looking at the why they were just looking at the at the at a thyroid removal. And that didn't really resonate with me because I just kind of needed to know. So that's where we deep dove into the study of, like, what causes an autoimmune disease. And it was interesting. That was literally the first thing that I ever googled.

Crystal Manuel - 00:06:53
Like, Okay. Wow. And I kinda think this.

Kyle Krull - 00:07:06
Amazing. I didn't

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:07:07
know that.

Crystal Manuel - 00:07:08
Yeah. And we had babies at the time, so I was, like, googling late at night, and he was, like, hike in something and then have to wait, like, forever in a day to get your answer back.

Kyle Krull - 00:07:16
Yeah. Yeah.

Crystal Manuel - 00:07:18
But we I just You know, it was amazing because even way back then, it was all pointing toward chemicals, which we knew that there was a lot of. Now I will never say that that was the The only reason why I ended up sick will never really know the answer to that story. Yeah. But I do know that I had a lot of exposure to that kind of thing. And at the time, we weren't even the ones farming here, but we're just in a community where there's a lot of conventional farming. And so That kinda it's like once we once we started down that path, it's like the more that you learn, the more that you wanna know, And then you just can't not know it. Right? So for us, it may either had to make a conversion or just not farm and ranch here anymore.

Crystal Manuel - 00:07:56
Because there was just no way to continue going forward the way that it was. And so we began, we began our journey there. We, the very first thing we did was go to a Moa Convention, a Montana Organic Association, and then where we just met an incredible people that are still so supportive and great mentors to us today. The like David Oian of timeless foods, We we began Jodi began growing rentals for him. Bob Quinn of Camuto International. These these and so so so many more.

Crystal Manuel - 00:08:24
There's just so many incredible people there doing every kind of spectrum of farming, from gardening to orchards to to dry land and and everything in between. So Anyway, that's kinda how we got our start. We kinda jumped in. We got our first certification going in 2007. And then, and and that's basically the the beginning of of the organic journey, but it has led us to where we are today. And, you know, so many so many lessons learned and every year is different, and has been over the course of the journey.

Crystal Manuel - 00:09:07
But at one point along the way, Brei and her family moved to Montana, and they worked with us. So she lived here for a period of time. And and that's where we really kinda discovered the joy of of food and families and and really got to kind of explore that because collectively between our families, we have 11 children. So Wow. Wow. Farm labor.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:09:41
Lots of money.

Crystal Manuel - 00:09:42
They're getting yeah. Yeah. The labor the labor force, especially on our end, we're really blessed to have the help that we have, our our kids, do a good job. And and some of them are here and working pretty much full time and on a regular basis, but

Kyle Krull - 00:10:00
Super appreciate you sharing that. AC and I both come from places with some health issues in our past as well, and it one of those recurring themes on the podcast of how many people who are, like, deep into this regenerative movement come from this place of, like, why why am I sick? This doesn't seem to make sense. So that really resonated with me, and I'm sure AC as well. I'm curious to get a better sense of, like, you know, you mentioned the form was conventional before this this transition. What were you growing then? What are you growing now? And most specifically, like, why FARO? And let's talk into a little bit about, like, the FARO develop and why you chose that specific, grain.

Jody Manuel - 00:10:37
Okay. Nutshell again. That's a long span. So back when when this health crisis took place for crystal, show show them your neck, by the way. Like, there should be a scar here for a removed thyroid and there's no scar. Every doctor was telling her this is what you have to do. You'll have to have your thyroid removed, and you'll have to be on medication the rest of your life. And she saw different answers and found those answers, and it was very eye opening for me. I was very Baugh Humbug, probably like most every other person in agriculture in in this area at the time. But at the time for us, we we weren't farming.

Jody Manuel - 00:11:05
We were just, my father and I were running our cow herd together. We had farm land that we leased out to another family member But, anyways, this is what kinda started things taking for us. And after after, spending time with these people that we met at Montana Organic Association. We decided to just jump jump back into farming and, you know, caused,

Kyle Krull - 00:11:43
years long family rift that that that

Jody Manuel - 00:11:47
that was very that was very much a struggle for a very long time. But anyways, so so, Emma, I was introduced to Emma through timeless scenes that's been mentioned, David O'am, he he he's a he's a giant in in the organic industry. I mean, books have been written about him and his story, and but the but that was my introduction to to to Emma to ancient Grains.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:13
Jody, is Emmer a different word for Ferro?

Jody Manuel - 00:12:16
Yes. Okay. For some reason, when it's growing, when we plant it and and it's growing in the field, it's called Emmer, but when you see it on the bookshelf, it's Ferro. Yeah. It's, you know, as you, I'm sure are familiar. It's very similar to spelt. It's just spelt. It gets planted in the fall. Emmer gets planted in the spring.

Jody Manuel - 00:12:23
The the plants themselves look quite different, but the but the end product is almost indistinguishable as far as from a visual standpoint. They do cook differently, but, I I've always found it's a very easy crop to grow. It's great in our rotations. And honestly, it's just it's It's where these 2 landed on on on, you know, over the years, there's been so many things that could have been could have been a a granola company could have been, marketing on beef, which, you know, is still something on the on the horizon maybe for, the next generation, but but but that's where they landed during this COVID time when Brei wanted to back up here with all of our kids. And it was like it was like we were all stranded here. And they had all these kids to feed every day.

Jody Manuel - 00:13:20
And and that was how they, I mean, a a big part of how they did it. 30 chickens outside, but there was 2 dozen eggs that we were getting consumed.

Crystal Manuel - 00:13:37
Except when out of this broke.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:13:39
I know when my son would throw him against the wall. Okay.

Crystal Manuel - 00:13:47
What was he, like, 3 then?

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:13:49
He was tiny.

Crystal Manuel - 00:13:51
Anyway, if we had sent him out to gather the eggs, they'd come in with none.

Jody Manuel - 00:13:57
Literally egg on his face.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:13:59
So so it sounds like we need to go to breed or wrap the origin story. But before we do, Jody, I would like you to touch on kind of the ancient grains, more diverse grains information, like, a little bit more in-depth because I I do think even a lot of our listeners don't even know about that. Like, we live in a world where The vast majority of of grain rotations in this country is corn, soy weed, maybe some oats. And, you know, like Kyle has already said, like, he eats oatmeal every day, and there's not a lot of choices beyond that. So can you just talk about, like, from a farmer perspective, what was that journey like really diversifying into these lesser known crops or that might not have as much of a market and how has, like, that been commercially in terms of what the market was to produce those.

Jody Manuel - 00:14:42
Yeah. So so from my perspective on that, probably starting with spelt. There's, another company up here in Montana called Montana Milling that there was really there there there still is to this day a nice market for spelt. I'd never heard a spell before, but I found out where it works the seed, and I planted it. And Yeah. What I remember, it's just beautiful. You know, you plant it in the fall, and it it if you get a decent year, it grows nice and and tall. It's it's easy threshing, easy to harvest, and It looks very different. Of course, we're where we are here in the Golden Triangle. We grow.

Jody Manuel - 00:15:12
We every farmer here, we grow. We we we once in a while, maybe somebody might throw barley in there. We grow winter wheat and spring wheat, and that's what we grow. And I I I literally remember my dad who who I'd been, you know, we've been locking horns, over all of this, but I remember him riding on the combine. With me. Combining spelt, and he would he just I lost track of the number of times he would turn to me and he'd say, now what call this stuff again.

Jody Manuel - 00:15:40
And how much is it worth again? And they would want me to just kinda shake his head. And, so anyways, it was just it was introducing something that wasn't even that big of a stretch. It's another small grain. It's were were used to planting those. We're used to growing them, but it's just, it it it was just something different for the rotation.

Jody Manuel - 00:16:04
I think from a from a nutrient standpoint, though, they're the that's a whole another conversation about the the the proteins that are different. The the glycemic sensitive sensitivities that don't seem to be a thing with ancient grains. Like, you hear about more and more and more. But, anyways, that's a nutshell version of of my perspective when we when we first started out on this journey with ancient grains.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:16:35
So it all started with spell, and now it's grown into a rotation of of what.

Jody Manuel - 00:16:41
Well, okay. So so So spelt an hammer of these 2 ancient grains, timeless seeds, their their focus is lentils. And so that's always a part of the rotation and they're fantastic because they're lajume. And so they they would with the protein that they bring from the air, but also they've expanded into chickpeas. Those crops, the grain and the rotation, but they're really they're they're much more difficult to to grow and harvest. They're they're

Kyle Krull - 00:17:06
they

Jody Manuel - 00:17:06
don't suppress weeds because they're so short. They they come with their own set of challenges at the same time. But another another, it's not really an ancient grain, but there's a there's a variety of purple barley that we've grown for them. We we grow rye. Of course, barley oats, all of the small grains. Wow. Plus those legumes However, currently, the the biggest thing that's happening on on the farm here with our cropland is that we're converting it all into perennials with focus on Kurza, and actually Kurza interceded with Alfalfa. Like, so we have a grass and a legume growing together. We can raise it. We can hay it. We can harvest the Kurza.

Jody Manuel - 00:17:39
That's a journey we began in 2020. And so it's it's still unfolding. And and So in that, we're we're trying to we're trying to get away from tillage as much as we can. And we so now we'll we'll be able to go span of years without tilling the ground and letting the micro highs of fungi and every everything being able to leave it alone. But even in that, we'll still be rotating those perinials out. And so on on a much smaller scale, we will have some acres to grow these annuals the the the the emmer and the spelt and the lentils and the chickpeas and all of that.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:18:25
That's fascinating.

Jody Manuel - 00:18:27
And but our our operation probably should be noted,

Kyle Krull - 00:18:32
you know,

Jody Manuel - 00:18:34
Two thirds of our acres are just native native grass and, you know, trees. And so it's the other third that's the crop land that's surrounded by native grass. So it it all works within our grazing system.

Kyle Krull - 00:18:46
As well. Did you ever graze over the the row cropping or the the grain cropping area?

Jody Manuel - 00:18:52
Yes. Yes. That's the that's the our our cattle are steeply integrated with our cropping system.

Kyle Krull - 00:19:02
Amazing. We can get more into the agronomy in a moment. I do wanna pivot to, like, why cracked floral grits. I wanna get to that point. In this story. So I think Breeze is not in her head like she's ready to go there. So take us there. Like, why, you know, you're growing all these amazing crops You decide to start a brand, why start a brand, and why that specific crop.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:22
Brei sun's throwing eggs everywhere, but you still trust her enough to do business with her. Right.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:19:29
Oh, right? Well, I well, with Ferro, it was like, we actually didn't start with the idea there. We actually thought we were putting spelt in a box. And so if they called me, we've got the box design ready. The name is on there. The I've got the I've ordered the, the bar code. Like, everything's ready to go. And they're like, actually, what about FARO? And I'm like, What? I'm like, I'm literally about to send this to print, like, 5000 boxes.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:19:48
Like, we wanna do Ferro now. And so then I get on then I get on Mo's when I so I start doing Google search, not Google search. Ma's searches of, like, marketing It's a marketing website where you can look up popular what's more popular. Right? Like, who who is searching for pharaoh? Who is searching for spelt? So it turned out that people more people were searching for pharaoh. So I was like, okay. Like, we can do this.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:20:17
So, originally, it it was gonna be spelled. We had more. I believe the issue was there was more pharaoh in the bin. Is that correct at the time? So we decided to make that flip flop.

Crystal Manuel - 00:20:39
Yeah. And I'll just add to that. Like, the actual idea for doing the the pharaoh in a grit form. Yeah. Really just came about from feeding 11 children and needing, and that's what we had a lot a lot of here. You know? There's like, not a lot of time to food prep, but grains are always we always get back, from the places that we sell to our grains cleaned and ready to go, but they're always in whole berry form. And I have a large grinder that sits on our counter. You can see a picture of it, I think, on the website, but We discovered that you could feed children who are a little fussy, ancient grains round them up a bit because the texture is better. And as an added bonus's moms, it cooks in 12 minutes instead of 45. You know? So So that was a huge bonus, but they ate it.

Crystal Manuel - 00:21:23
And they, some of them were on the fuzzier side, and even they really liked it. And we always started out. It started out as a hot cereal where we would serve it sweet usually with raspberries and maple and whatnot. But we soon learned that it was very, very delicious savory. And now we got 2 more 2 more meals out of the deal because we gotten happy to lunch without without setting it up all day. So, anyway, that was sort of the That was how the grit kinda came about, but but yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:22:08
Okay. I'm gonna ask you a question that's gonna feel really rudimentary for you farmers. Somebody who doesn't spend a lot of time on a farm, like, so you you you harvest the grain. And then, like, it it it's hard, and then, like, you actually have to crack it with this this device you have on your counter. Walk me through that because I, as somebody who just buys a bag of oats at the store, I don't really understand how that works in why those processes need to be there.

Jody Manuel - 00:22:31
Yeah. So, not only but long before it gets cracked, when we harvest either spelled or MR. It's inside of a very thick hull, and there's usually 2 kernels inside of a hull. So it has to first be de hold. There's some losses there. You're you're you if you're lucky, you'll get 60% of your weight back from that. And then it gets cleaned and cracked. And and that's really it, you know, but you're mentioning oats. So that's a a whole other animal altogether since we've delved into the the retail end of the world.

Jody Manuel - 00:22:59
I I'm learning things that I didn't even know, but with oats, of course, it also has to be de hold. It's a much smaller kernel. And something I've learned in the process is that when oats is dehaled, there's a certain enzyme inside that hole that will cause the seed to go rancid. So they have to heat it. To take out that enzyme. And and and then they can either make it into groats or roll it into flakes.

Jody Manuel - 00:23:29
And then So, like, we we would love, you know, we we have another endeavor of this company cream of the west, and we have products that use oats. We would love to be able to use our own notes or reach out to other Montana farmers. The problem is we don't have any of that processing in the whole state of Montana. It all comes out of Canada. Wow. You know, so we we can buy organic oats, but it's likely going come out of Canada, and it's it's just because of those processing challenges.

Kyle Krull - 00:24:03
Wow. Crazy.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:05
And that that's just because, like, that manufacturing has moved elsewhere and and just too capital intensive to get stood back up and

Jody Manuel - 00:24:12
Yeah. It's never really even been here. I mean, if there's any remnant left of the wild west, we probably have it here in Montana. You know, there's there's just There's a lot of wide open space and not a lot of, support for those type of things. I suppose, but,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:31
Yeah. Be before we pivot a little more into the agronomy, because I think there's more to talk about there. Chris, so I know is your jam. Just like, can you talk about the nutrition a little bit? And can you talk about actually what it looks like to make this? You were just you were just going there a second ago because it's not like this needs a ton of consumer education to know how to use this product, but it's not like reading ice cream here. Right? So do you bring it to a boil? Like, it's rice or or oatmeal and then you let it sit, like, just talk us through, you know, production at the home and, like, the the nutrition profile.

Crystal Manuel - 00:25:02
Sure. Well, Brei mentioned earlier that we have one SKU, which is a little bit of a challenge when you're trying to come to market. But the thing about our SKU is it does a lot of things. I mean, we're breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We cook in 12 minutes so we have the quick base covered. Especially for a whole food. And, and it's really easy. I mean, if you can boil water, you can make our grits. So, seriously. Fair.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:25:31
I I think I could do that. I think I could do that.

Crystal Manuel - 00:25:34
Yeah. So but one of the funniest things about it sides the fact that it goes really nice sweet and savory is that you can play with the texture, which if you think about it, you can't really do that well with most other things that you cook. I mean, you cook it too long you ruined it, or it gets mushy or, you know, it it does weird things. Our grits are cool like that. Because they they can either handle the water or you can back it off depending upon the texture that you wanna use. So think everything from rice to risotto in texture, but with an ancient grain grit that's superior and in quality, way higher in protein far easier to digest, than any other, you know, kind of grain. Or conventional grains at least that were used to, and it's a whole grain. No enriching needing to happen here. Because it's the whole cracked kernel.

Crystal Manuel - 00:26:19
So all components of it are are still intact when when the grits are cooked up. But those are those are our favorite features. The sweet and savory aspect and the and the way that we can play with texture.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:26:41
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's amazing. What what has it been like on the marketing side? Like, do do you find that consumers know what it is? They need to be educated? How has that been? Like, different between e Commerce and retail. I'm I'm kinda pivoted into commercial here, but, you know, curious on that front.

Crystal Manuel - 00:26:58
Well, I can I can say that when your best friend is actually from the cell,

Jody Manuel - 00:27:04
and you

Crystal Manuel - 00:27:04
call her and tell her that this COVID baby food that we created with all these children, and we called it porridge back then,

Jody Manuel - 00:27:14
originally?

Crystal Manuel - 00:27:15
And and then one day I have this, like, this vision, and it's like, ugh, but it's sweet and it's savory. So and it's a cracked grain, which I'm just gonna say education the word grit by definition means coarsely cracked grain

Jody Manuel - 00:27:31
does

Crystal Manuel - 00:27:31
not have to mean porn. Southern friend. Yeah. We had to have. She wasn't quite sure that we could call this grits because it's, you know, not what she knows.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:27:45
Yeah. I think going into the marketing piece, what we've understood is that, okay, when they called me and they said, what if we are we're having conversation. What if we called it grits? And I was like, I don't know that we can do that, guys. Like, I don't think you understand what the what the cultural context is in the south. So there is a very big difference between the cultural context of grits here.

Kyle Krull - 00:28:08
Yeah.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:28:08
And in north because in the north, you just don't it's not a thing. It's like, there might be cream of wheat, Right? Or or variations of that, but in the south, grits are corn. Yeah. And if I were to go if I were to say, no. It's not, then it's like, like, my I can see the conversations I have with my family. Right? Like, because of the because of the culture that it is right here, But what I've come to find is that it actually went back to mods and looked at that.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:28:27
What are people Google searching right now? Are there more searches on porridge or I'm sorry, grits or porridge, and it was grits. So I was like, this is what makes us, what do we call it, defensively unique? Jody's at the word

Jody Manuel - 00:28:50
Mhmm.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:28:51
That we use, because it's just the truth. You can make it out of anything. And the marketing piece that you were alluding to earlier has been we we call it not your granny's grits because that's one of the marketing campaigns that we have, because of the sustainability aspect of it, is so very different and defensively unique as compared to conventional corn that people understand it to be here. But there's quite a bit of education aspect of it. It's I don't feel like people immediately pick it up and they're like, oh, we know what to do with this until we say, It's like the consistency of couscous or rice. And then that starts the that starts the wheels turning. And as crystal was alluding to earlier, We can use this for any meal of the day, and we don't call it on our website. We have a concept called now and later meals. To break down that concept that is not leftovers. Like, you make more on purpose. You know?

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:29:46
So it can be used throughout the day for different things. So we have that. I believe that's a blog post on our website, the now and later meals. Education is a huge part, huge part, especially with the sustainability efforts.

Jody Manuel - 00:30:08
Mhmm.

Kyle Krull - 00:30:09
Yeah. You know, there's enough regenerative brands out there who struggle alone the regenerative sustainability messaging. In addition to the fact that you all are finding the, I don't wanna call it the additional uphill battle, but the Relatively unique product that you have. So it's like a double education front that you have to fight, which kudos to you all for doing that. And I really think, you know, love this product already. I haven't tried it yet, and I can't wait to. But it really aligns with, like, I try to get I do a workout in the morning. I need some protein in car, I'll make a bone broth savory oatmeal.

Kyle Krull - 00:30:35
Now I'll be making a bone broth savory for breakfast, and that satisfies my nutritional needs for, you know, the first half of the day, which is fantastic.

Jody Manuel - 00:30:46
Yeah. That's that's my favorite way to eat it. Sorry, Anthony. I just

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:49
Oh, you're good, Jody. I I I agree, Kyle. And we've also seen with a lot of the other brands talked to that they need to go to a known form factor to make a market for a new for a new ingredient or a new crop that the farmer needs to grow. That's why I feel like is the the cool opportunity here. And we know that that could work. So, yeah, go ahead, Jody.

Jody Manuel - 00:31:10
No. It's just I was just chiming in that that, having this, like, in a really good beef broth is is Fantastic.

Kyle Krull - 00:31:18
Do you do a little cheese on there too? I do some cheese and then, plum seasoning, which is like an Oregon meat based seasoning. So it's like a true nutritional powerhouse.

Jody Manuel - 00:31:27
I suspect you might be leaving your oatmeal behind.

Kyle Krull - 00:31:30
I I'm excited. I can't wait.

Crystal Manuel - 00:31:33
That was actually our most recent review. It was on the Azure Standard website. And, if you look up our rates, you can on Azure Standard, you can see it, but There was somebody that wrote in that said that, oats were I don't remember quite how she worded it, but they were replacing oats in her home.

Kyle Krull - 00:31:50
From

Crystal Manuel - 00:31:50
here on out is how she kinda worded it. But, yeah, super fun. We love cooking them in broth. They take on a savory flavor really nicely cooked in any kind of any kind of broth, beef, chicken, bone, vegetable. But we also play around with them with herbal teas and such which is a fun thing to know about. So we sleep them. We'll pick them in green tea or Jasmine tea. You can kind of get an Asian weather thing going on.

Jody Manuel - 00:32:17
A bunch of weird dippies.

Crystal Manuel - 00:32:19
It's awesome. We just start opening jars and making infusions, but, But really fun to play around with other kinds of herbal teas. We've had people steep them in in herbal teas and and let us know what kind of, like, cool porridge, you know, breakfast concepts they were coming up. But it's it's a it's a gourmet ingredient for one ingredient in a box you can do all kinds of crazy with it. It's as simple as you need it to be, even just butter is fine, or it's as as artisan as you would like it to be.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:32:57
I like to call it uncomplicated artisan food. And, Kyle, I'm really glad that you said something about adding it to your your routine as an as an athlete or as someone who lives, or I'm not sure what your exercise routine is because I do I strongly feel like we have messages. Let me

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:17
just This man's basement doing burpees lately. So

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:33:22
Go you, first of all.

Crystal Manuel - 00:33:24
I was looking real easy about a lot of bird Yeah.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:33:28
So there's the what I like, and I think the messaging for us that we're trying to figure out for athletes specifically is this is a very efficient carb. So you have something you have something like white rice, which my son is on a on a body building regimen and He eats, you know, his mom has an ancient grain company, and he's like, white rice, white rice. And I'm like, okay. But that's like, right. It's like the insulin spike That's that's way more than the in the body than you in your body needs it to do. Right? And so what I like about our our product is it's very efficient our body uses it very efficiently. Mhmm.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:07
And I think that's a great call.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:34:08
Know that. Mhmm.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:09
Totally. And I think, you know, I so I sell Bumbrough for a living. That's what I do. For kettle and fire. And we think that that that community is relatively underserved. You know, they're looking to constantly tracking their macros. They're very conscious of their carbohydrate. Approaching their fat intake and to develop a super food breakfast like this that can meet those strict macro goals, especially for somebody like your son who's trying to body build, and it's trying to get, like, you know, probably, I mean, I don't know how much your sun weighs, but probably close to a 150 to 200 grams approaching a day with a pretty significant amount of carbohydrates. Like, this is powerhouse meal, that doesn't require cooking any meat, which you have to do for the other meals in the day. So it's super efficient from both the, like, what is that? A mill metabolic perspective and a time perspective in the kitchen. So I'm already on board.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:46
Clearly, I really wanna try this stuff but, yeah, totally.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:58
We are multidimensional. This is now a fitness influencer podcast.

Crystal Manuel - 00:35:02
See, if

Kyle Krull - 00:35:02
you should read.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:35:04
Well, I feel like that is a very good point because there is a place where whole food nutrition needs to meet the people who do body building because the more that I'm the more that I'm in this space, the more that I realize people are eating a bunch of crap. And what's happening is they're getting they're getting, like, body results, but but then they're having other type of symptoms. Like, they're they're tearing up their gut because they're not building. They're not they're not supporting what's in what's in there. And so you develop eczema. Right? You develop insulin resistance. There are things that come along with the result that you're not necessarily hoping for because you're not supporting what's inside.

Kyle Krull - 00:35:44
Right. We're gonna go way down this rabbit hole because we're here already. So as well, Yeah. Yeah. Organic Valley, the dairy company, I think in, like, 2012 ish launched a campaign called Save the Bros. And it was all about these, like, super fit guys and how they're consuming bad dairy products and these supplements that are really bad for them. So they're like, give them give them, like, saved the pros. Like, they're so strong or whatever the campaign was. It was hilarious. Yeah. But exactly what you're talking about.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:02
Like, meet people where they are, give them that whole food alternative, that can still satisfy their their macro goals, but can also take care of, like, their whole body and not just, like, make them look jacked. Yeah.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:36:20
That's right. That's because the point is sorry. Go.

Crystal Manuel - 00:36:25
We're gonna say the same thing. Go ahead.

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:36:28
Well, the point is, right, it's like and I and I as a as a mother with a son who is actively doing this. And I'm I'm watching this process for him. And it's like, you know what? You have to these might be the results that you get with x, y, and z supplement. But what else is your body telling you? Like, you are so sluggish. Like, you're telling me that you feel awful and that you're sluggish. Right?

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:36:49
What are you doing to the filtering mechanisms within your body, right, like your liver, like like your kidneys because of what how much, number 1, how much you're trying to consume, and the fact that our body doesn't even recognize it as nutrition. So So and then and then not to mention, right, the long term effects that we see of people in their forties and their fifties who are just their their inflammation in their body, and they're just it's their dung. Right? And so they've they have some sort of metabolic issues, like long term.

Kyle Krull - 00:37:25
Right.

Jody Manuel - 00:37:25
It's a

Brei Larmoyeux - 00:37:25
soapbox of mine. I'm sorry. I don't wanna I don't wanna over take that. It's a soapbox of mine.

Kyle Krull - 00:37:30
Yeah. I will share that soapbox with and we can we can join on that. Take on the world. I also wanna bring it back to not only is it better for all those reasons, but then you're also growing a crop that is from more nutrient dense soil that is improving water infiltration rates that is mitigating climate change and doing so much great stuff for the planet So, like, this this feels like a good opportunity to kind of pivot back towards the agronomy, and I'm curious, Jody, to get a sense of, like, what changed on your farm that you noticed what, and I don't know how much like soil testing you're measuring or if you're doing water filtration rate tests about diversity, you know, observations, but what changed on the farm, like, with your own eyes as you started to make these transitions towards regenerative?

Jody Manuel - 00:38:13
Great question. And the the quickest way to talk about that is to say that it's it's continually unfolding.

Kyle Krull - 00:38:25
One

Jody Manuel - 00:38:25
of the things that it it it, you know, it it's always been frustrating every year because we're we've never been able to do the amount of sampling that we would like to because it it we're always so busy from about about 15 days from now until October 1st, we're just slammed. And but in the last couple of years, I will say this, we've been working with Matt Ag that I know you guys are familiar with. And Yeah. They've been doing some I mean, you you you can't even believe, the the things that they've literally sent teams out here to do all of these tests, the soil samples, the haney tests, uh-uh, water infiltration, Insect counts, bird counts, there's this really cool project in the works that involves a local beekeeper that keeps hives on our place where they literally have these special entrances that that screw onto the one of the hives that collects the bee pollen, and they're now taking the heat pump. Sending it to this lab over in Europe, and they're they're they're analyzing it for that we we know now every single plant that that pollen is being collected from as well as Amazing. They're testing for ag chemicals residue and heavy metals. And

Crystal Manuel - 00:39:39
And we do those. Those tests were performed multiple times on a very cyclical regimented basis last summer for the first time. So we're about to get on a call, pretty soon to collect all the information from from those results, but literally looking at the DNA of the things growing here, not just in 1 week, but in multiple weeks and what we're finding because they've been sending bits of results along the way. And what's really fascinating about those results that we're really excited about is the variance, the variance that they're finding from you know, a few weeks apart. And it's an opportunity to look at a regenerative program above ground. Because we've put a lot of attention and, toward toward the things that are happen happening under the ground. But really a regenerative as a full spectrum system. It's, you know, it's we're looking at everything. And so this was a really unique opportunity via them Mhmm. To look at above ground Also appliances.

Jody Manuel - 00:40:41
Part of that project. Some oats that were growing for purely Elizabeth, and that was a contract that was also arranged through Med. They're doing nutrient testing on that crop that will be linked to this this, beekeeper project. So that's that's all of this. There there's major things to unfold. It's all gonna take some time, but in the meantime, it answered question, like, just what things can you observe, from a very non scientific perspective, it's playing his day on on on the fields that we planted to Kearnsa 4 years ago now. I do have pictures of video from last spring, but I I just I went out to walk across those fields, and and we we we are in an area where we have very heavy clay soil. And the more you till that soil the denser and harder it gets, and it just it just gets to where it's like concrete.

Jody Manuel - 00:41:29
And now you're now you're having to to tilt more, which is compounding the the the problem. And so, anyways, these fields that we've now put into perennials and we've just left them alone after 3 years, you can walk across the top, and you could just feel that top 2 inches is like a sponge because of the microbial activity that's now built up that soil. And so I wanna get 2 inches down to 6 or 8 or 10 inches.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:42:07
So, anyways, lots unfolding. The yeah. Judy, there's a really unique piece there that I'd like you to chat about, which I don't think we we've really covered on the show yet, which is, you know, obviously, commodity grain rotations are are pretty tough. Right? A typical, very conventional monocrop approach It's it's not great for everybody. Then we have kind of a step up from that, which is usually like an organic, more diverse rotation, You're all going beyond that with perennials and the animal integration piece, which I do think is very unique. And my assumption is it's extremely complex. And challenging.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:42:36
So I would love for you to talk about kind of the the perennial integration and the animal integration and just like How is all that unfolded? What's been challenging? What's worked? Why is it so important? Because that seems to be, like, such a thing that we still don't know how to really move the needle on with a bunch of a bunch of farmers

Kyle Krull - 00:42:57
yet.

Jody Manuel - 00:42:59
Okay. Tell me tell me again the specific question.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:43:06
Yeah. Like, how how has it been to do the perennial and the animal integration? Right? Cause I feel like we're doing we're doing a decent job with these diverse organic. It's great. It's been

Jody Manuel - 00:43:15
exciting. It's been exciting. You you can, you can walk out onto the fields in about 3 months. And you can like, I remember doing this last year, everywhere there's a cow pie on a Kernza field, Brown is still really cold. Right? So the the dung beetles haven't come out. The earthworms haven't come out yet, but you can anywhere you can find out. A nice big cow pie that's intact enough and you flip it over, and there's earthworms right there. It's like their own private little greenhouse that they they come up in the surface, and there's there's some bastions in there.

Jody Manuel - 00:43:46
So, In the last couple days, I I just had a, an, urge to do something that I would love to have more time to do. But I I I put together a reel that and it was done super quickly and where where I there's lots of things that need to be tweaked and honed on it, but But if and it's like, okay. Social media, you have to appeal to that 62nd goldfish brain, but you have to you have to you have to tell this key story. But, anyways, if you if you, if you go to our our Prairie gas ranch, nothing it's not not on any Gruff sites you have, but paragraphs around Facebook page, you can watch this minute and a half long reel that kinda d it it details this whole process. And didn't get into Kearns in it, but but there is Alfalfa, and we're doing the same types of things with Alfalfa and and actually eventually everything will be off off and crunched it together. But Mhmm.

Crystal Manuel - 00:44:54
But to do what we do and how we do it, one of the biggest challenges is looking at things through a different lens and having a fresh perspective on things that oftentimes farmers look as problematic.

Kyle Krull - 00:45:10
One

Crystal Manuel - 00:45:10
of those things and a challenge for every single organic, And thereby, regenerative farmer that I've think that we've ever met, is weeds. Because when because that's the reason chemicals are largely being used. They're suppressing weeds, so that they can increase yields, you know, because without without weed competition, ideally, the thought process would be that that the yields would be higher. But from our perspective, because we we have to contend with weeds in a different way, we've also learned to look at them differently. And we look at them as as just visual visual clues. You know? Certain weeds grow in certain areas for specific reasons.

Crystal Manuel - 00:45:49
And it really all comes down to, they're just telling us what's happening underneath the ground so that we can determine what to plant in order to to help get the to help settle out the the the soil ratios, whatever whatever the issue is.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:18
That that's fascinating. I wanna just, like, kinda, like, double click on that a little bit. So if if I'm reading between the lines correctly, like, if there's a particular weed call, and I I know nothing about farming, but let's call it dandelion. Is growing. And maybe that indicates, like, this is particularly phosphorus rich soil, which is probably totally wrong. But you're saying that, like, the weed is indicating what's happening underground so you can make the adjustments above ground to try to fix that soil. Is that correct? Correct.

Jody Manuel - 00:46:43
Yeah. So here here would be an example. 1 of our biggest, maybe, the biggest problem weed that we have in this area is Canada Thistle. It's a perennial. And, like, it's it's clear. It's crystal clear when you're, you know, fighting it the way that we've been fighting it. You can see the places it likes to grow. Well, we have all this heavy clay soil here. And, what I've noticed with Canada Thistle is the heavier the clay the low spots with very wet type, almost anaerobic soil. That's where that that weed likes to grow.

Jody Manuel - 00:47:06
And the more that you till and the harder your soil becomes, the the more that this weed moves in, well, it's this perennial with this really long deep top root that goes 4, 5, 6 feet down. And it's almost like

Kyle Krull - 00:47:34
Wow.

Jody Manuel - 00:47:34
It's doing something to aerate this anaerobic soil, and it's, it's problematic. It's it's this It's this fierce battle, but the the best way to combat it is with perennials, in particular, alfalfa, But one of the things that I've noticed on, some of these fields where we've fought at the longest is that all of a sudden, Like like this this week, it starts out growing in patches, and the patches will get bigger and bigger every year and pretty soon, the patches are overlapping. And then pretty soon, it's just solid. It's continuous, but I've seen it get to the point where all of a sudden, almost like that. It's like where did all the candidates this will go? It's like it's like gone. It's like it worked itself out of a job.

Jody Manuel - 00:48:16
You might see an occasional plant here and there, but the the patches are gone. And I I think I mean, there there's a there's a book that's been written about this. I can't think of the name of the authors, but it's called weeds and why they grow. And it's more like a reference manual. You can look up what types of weeds you have growing, and then they'll tell you what's happening in your soil and what it's lacking and what and it's almost like I've come to see it's like plant communities are are like human communities, and it's like, they they come into areas that are conducive to what they like and what they need. But then as they grow, they're they're consuming what's there and they're leaving something different behind.

Jody Manuel - 00:48:54
And it eventually reaches a point where it's no longer conducive for that plant to grow, but something else. And and and I guess plant progression, that that's the other thing you can I've seen patches that my my dad, broke out of of native sod and then you know, plans changed or whatever. And I remember this one particular little five acre or so patch, and it just turned into this huge weed patch in the middle of the pasture and kinda got forgotten about. And, you know, you'd you'd you'd pass by in your day to day, but 10 years later, you could not tell that patch from the rest of the native prairie around it because

Kyle Krull - 00:49:43
all

Jody Manuel - 00:49:43
that progression took place from weeds to this native pasture, which native pasture is like a picture of perfect balance. It's like this huge variety of plants growing together. And you'll never see a weed take take hold anywhere in in our native pasture because it's just it's like Sorry. We're we're fully booked here.

Kyle Krull - 00:50:05
Right. Yeah. We we have a fully functioning ecosystem, and we don't need disruption, or we, we, you don't have to tolerate disruption. Like, a, a poor ecosystem would maybe benefit from some of these weeds you're talking about for whatever period time until it gets to the point where that native grass or whatever crop you're putting in there is gonna work well.

Jody Manuel - 00:50:25
Right. Right. So we're just trying to we're trying to on our crop crop fields. We're trying to get to that point while still raising a cash crop that that can support

Crystal Manuel - 00:50:44
top root of that and how deep it goes. And it's one of our favorite, characteristics of the Karnes that that's growing, It has a very long route. In fact, Patagonia's, we have a contract with them currently for some of it, and and they're putting it into a regenerative organic microbrew called Long root Ale for that very reason. Yeah. But the reason that that is so cool and what is what we've learned is in the same way that the Canadian thistle tap roots tell us, you know, they go deep because they're mining for nutrients that are not available at the surface level, which is where the root structures are for the for the grain products that we grow. Mhmm. And so Kurza's top roots go deep and they mine those same kinds of nutrients up. And we're really excited to begin including that into, our grit into our grits, for that reason because one of the things that we like to talk about is nutrient density.

Crystal Manuel - 00:51:33
And the fact that food will only ever be as nutrient rich as the soil in which it's grown. You know? So you can have foods that look the same you know, you can have 2 carats that look exactly the same more or less, but if you look at the nutrient profile of them, depending upon the soil, they come from their going to be very different. And so we're pretty we're pretty excited to have some of these tests continue to unfold to hopefully prove the point that that we believe to be true.

Kyle Krull - 00:52:18
Absolutely. And there's a fantastic book I read. It's called the Dorado effect. I don't know if you all have heard of it or not.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:52:24
This this guy should be paying this man. This guy needs to pay this man.

Kyle Krull - 00:52:27
It's it's a phenomenal book. It's a phenomenal read. It's very entertaining. I listen to the audiobook, but a lot about what you're talking about with this nutrient density piece. And when you think about how farmers are paid, what are they incentivized to do, and it's about yield and weight Right? It's not about nutritional density. And the way we have hybridized and genetically modified the majority of our crops is to get as big as possible as fast as possible, and especially like the he did they talk a lot about tomatoes. So the tomatoes are essentially just filled with water because Yeah. Is heavy so farmers get paid for this, like, flavorless, nutritionless tomato that is big and red, and it looks nice. You know?

Kyle Krull - 00:52:57
And I I really hope that the regenerative movement can link up with this nutritional density piece, and we can start to reeducate consumers about the importance of nutritional density and size and looks like aren't everything It's really about the quality of what's in the food, and there's supposedly this new technology coming about where there's, like, this magic wand that you will be able to wave over, like, an apple. And then we'll be able to tell you the nutritional density, which I'm just really excited for the future. And I'm pumped that you guys are as tuned into this as you are, and I I don't think we ever gotten this, like, literally deep into the weeds talking about, pulling up deep nutrients out of the soil. So I'm just really excited to be talking about this on the podcast. And thank you for sharing.

Jody Manuel - 00:53:46
You know, it's funny. You you mentioned the the tomato's full of water, and it reminds me my my grandfather had two places where he summered his cattle, and he was he would split his herd every spring. And He had a lease on some some ground that was a couple hundred miles west of where we are right over next to Glacier Park. Blush, beautiful, tall, green grass. You take half of us herd there. The other half, he would take straight out north of us here towards the Canadian border. Like a desert.

Jody Manuel - 00:54:21
It it was just, oh, you'd go out there and there was more dirt blowing around and clumps of grass and and, And, anyways, he'd bring all of his his cattle back to their ranch in the fall and wing the calves and weigh them all in every single year, the calves that came off cows that were up on the desert y dry. Nothing. Like, they always outweighed the the the cows that were hammered on the The term we use is washy washy grass. Yeah, not necessarily a nutrient density, but kinda because it's a high water content, on on those on that type of grazing. Yeah. When you continually

Crystal Manuel - 00:55:05
add fertilizers the ground year after year at the ratios that people use. And this includes even in a garden, miracle grow, things like that. I mean, I'm not an expert in this field, but what I what what's been explained to us is that really what ends up happening is the plant is no longer able to uptake the micro nutrients and the minerals that it needs to actually be nutrient dense. It can get really big. I mean, that's what that's what it can be big and beautiful and very void of nutrition. The nutrition quality can be very low. It's just the way that it works within the plant.

Kyle Krull - 00:55:49
And I

Anthony Corsaro - 00:55:49
that that makes me wanna circle back to a better rounded up question that I of what I said earlier, Jody, of, like, sounds like y'all were able to work on the animal integration piece a little bit easier because you were already running cattle as a as another business. So how do we do that for more farmers? Like, how do we get more crop farmers to to do animal integration? Like, what's the unlock there?

Jody Manuel - 00:56:10
So there's Our friends and colleagues at Villegas that they they have an, an amazing organic farm, north of us up near the Canadian border out in that region I was just talking about. And, you know, we're here next to the small mountain range, so we've got We're mostly pasture. Our fence is already in place. We got good water, good springs, and but but you go that direction. There used to be fences long ago. Like, this animal integration was just a natural thing for our grandparents, but now all the fences have been taken out the crop fields are bumper to bumper. And, of course, they're in this new kind of paradigm and new system where they're they're wanting to get into this.

Jody Manuel - 00:56:48
And so we've actually been taking our yearlings out there the last few summers, which has really helped take the pressure off, at our own operation, they're planting just a whole myriad of cover crops but they're that so far, they're having to do it with electric fencing, but the biggest challenge is water. Because it's so dry out there, and there's an occasional reservoir here and there. But a lot of times, they're literally they have semi tankers that they filled with water. Every day, and you have to haul it out. And it's just it's this huge pain. So that doesn't really help answer your question, but I would just say that every operation is gonna be different, and every operation is gonna have its own challenges.

Jody Manuel - 00:57:23
We we've been on, we went to a convention in Nebraska the grass fed exchange a few years ago. Mhmm. And that's where I was first introduced to mob the concept of mob grazing Yeah. But what they have there that we don't and we have we're we're blessed with the water that we have on our place, but down there, No matter where you're at, you can drill a well anywhere and 50 feet down. You you you're doing hundreds of gallons a minute. So they have wells everywhere.

Jody Manuel - 00:57:55
They can they can run lines on top ground because they don't have to worry about freezing like we do. And they can move these cattle. There's one place we're on. They were they were move it. They had they had, like, 750 head of Highlander cattle on, like, 2 acres at a time, and they were moving them eight eight times a day.

Kyle Krull - 00:58:16
Wow. Holy cow.

Jody Manuel - 00:58:18
But as they move them, they could just they had a a water trough on skids that they pulled with a 4 wheeler, and it was attached to this water line. And they could just turn the water on and have so much flow. Well, It it was really fantastic to get to see all that, but none of that would work here or or countries far too rugged. We have put in a lot of cross fencing, a lot to to bring our pasture size down to, you know, a couple 100 acres instead of a 1000 acres. But, Our our water as good as it is here is limited. You know, it's it's only in certain locations. A few years ago, we took part in an equip contract to the NRCS, which enabled us to put in four miles of pipeline drill a well, put in 10 stock tanks, and we got the water up on top high on bridges instead of just down on the bottoms like it was.

Jody Manuel - 00:58:52
And that that was that was a really fantastic thing. So there are programs in place like that that could really help producers, through the NRCS. There's one of them is equip, and the other one is CSP. In fact, I was just in visiting, with those guys yesterday and that well, about some of this perennial planting, that's also part of their

Kyle Krull - 00:59:29
Okay. So I

Jody Manuel - 00:59:30
don't know if that kind of holds

Kyle Krull - 00:59:31
it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:32
Yeah. I I heard context. I heard collaboration, and I heard certain financial mechanisms to support the actual change of limitations. So I think you answered it very well.

Kyle Krull - 00:59:41
Yeah. I'll I'll add infrastructure, which sort of addresses all three of those. And really, like, I know that there's so many people looking to invest in the regenerative space right now and so many brands looking to get into it. And there's grain dollars available out there. And what I what I really enjoyed about that explanation, Jody, was like, it makes it feel possible as long as we can build that infrastructure to support those systems. Right? And it doesn't strike me as easy. It doesn't strike me as non capital intensive, but it does give like a legitimate solution.

Kyle Krull - 01:00:02
And if we can get legislators to incentivize that type of transition over monoculture corn, across half the arable end in this country. Like, think about the impact that can make. You know, it's it's crazy to think about how great that could be for the planet, the ecosystem, human nutritional density, you know, lack of money spent on health care. So it gets me really excited.

Jody Manuel - 01:00:30
Okay. So I just thought of something that that that on this topic, it could it could revolutionize everything. It's something I just found out more about it at Montana Organic Associates convention in December, but there's a couple different companies doing it now. One of them is called the no fence. It's pretty expensive at this point in time. But if there was ever grants, have you are you guys familiar with this or you put call Virtual Fence? And what from your phone, you can draw your boundaries. And Wow. So the the the gentleman that was presenting this told a story about He was over in Australia.

Jody Manuel - 01:00:57
He had these cattle that was he was grazing on a neighbor's cornfield. Mhmm. And there was another producer who had cattle on a cornfield right next door and and and, of course, his cattle had these collars on, but his neighbors didn't. So they had a one wire electric fence. And while he was over in Australia, he gets a phone call in the middle of the night because this this neighbor's cattle had broke through the electric fence. And they were all mixed up with his cattle on this other, producers' ground.

Jody Manuel - 01:01:31
And So he took his phone and he, he waited and he he you can see where every animal is from your phone and he they were all down at one end of the boundary. And then he just changed the boundary to keep them down on that end. And then, of course, the the other producer's cattle just wandered out and they they separated themselves. Wow.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:00
Super cool.

Jody Manuel - 01:02:02
Yeah.

Crystal Manuel - 01:02:03
Work our boys out of a job too.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:05
Yeah. It wouldn't it wouldn't mind. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:09
Virtual virtual fencing's wild. There's another company called Vents that's had some success in that space as well. I do wanna make sure we talk about Gruff commercial stuff

Kyle Krull - 01:02:19
a

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:19
little bit more. If there's anything else we wanna touch on there, One question I had from the earlier dialogue was, what's the food service opportunity here? Because y'all are talking about, like, this amazing capability of of the grains. I have all these food service, you know, foodie type of concept. So how do y'all see that as a growth channel and what's the opportunity there?

Crystal Manuel - 01:02:37
I think it's huge. I think

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:41
Sounds like it.

Crystal Manuel - 01:02:42
Huge. Yeah. You know, because of because of the origin of of the journey or my journey anyways, and learning through, overcoming Graves disease. That food is medicine. And then raising the amount of children that we have, and we just we collectively just have a passion for helping the general consumer base to understand it. I mean, Determining why we wanted to start this company as hard because it's a ton of reasons. I mean, it's really fun. To work with people that you love. You know? It's it's really fun when when you have a cool origin story.

Crystal Manuel - 01:03:23
But if I had to get right down to the reason, the reason why for me, it's just because I care deeply about what people are eating. And we sold grain on contracts for a number of years to really cool companies. And one of the things that broke my heart the most was finding out that most of the step was going out to different places. Oftentimes European markets are really high end, health food stores and really cool 5 star restaurants oftentimes. And so We kind of decided that one of the cool things that we would like to do is just to make it accessible and available. And in our country, food service is one really cool way to do that. Yeah.

Crystal Manuel - 01:04:13
So we hope that all kinds of consumers find us, but because of the nature of of food service and and the places that do it, and the amounts of people that are going through those, at the whether it's at the universities or, or different schools, There's some restaurants, you know, that that we would like to do, make connections with But we really do. I mean, it's a fantastic product for for for for food service. The colleges here love it. In Bozeman at Montana State University, they use it as a breakfast porridge at the University of Montana. They use it savory in a green bull bar. As for their grain goals. And so we continually end up having these fascinating conversations with people who lend itself to these kinds of of things.

Crystal Manuel - 01:05:01
In fact, this afternoon at 1 o'clock, I have a a I'm having a conversation with, the Culinary Institute of America,

Kyle Krull - 01:05:20
to call

Crystal Manuel - 01:05:21
to to talk to them about that. I recently got to meet Sophie Egan via a call who has helped me set some of these kinds of things up. And they they all have, a passion and infinity toward toward healthy consumer food service ideas. And then, Brei, you can speak to a couple of the people that you've helped us to meet recently because because there's been some cool conversations.

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:05:48
Yeah. We well, I think, you know, when you talk about food service, food service is very large. It's like it's a huge, it's a huge market, but when we were talking, we've we've connected with people, like, Hillary Boynton of School of Lunch in calif California. And she she's doing this amazing thing where she's bringing in food service directors to teach them how to make traditionally prepared foods. There's a lot of a lot of conversation right now around school lunches, school breakfast. There's an activist Rob Greenfield, I think he's his name. That he is, for the next month, going to be eating just breakfast and school lunches. To see how, you know, this is what we feed our kids.

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:06:26
So Oh, interesting. Our, I know.

Kyle Krull - 01:06:37
It's gonna be a supersized meeting of school food.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:06:42
It's gonna be lunchables and Tony's Pepperoni pizzas and all kinds of BS.

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:06:47
So I think that the conversation that we would like to having is if you have, you know, and, you know, we know Zen Honeycutt is doing a lot of really good work in introducing moms across America, to that same of her brand, to food that has been produced organically and even in the regenerative organic space. And so I wanna have these conversations with these people you know, if if the basis, if if we depend on nutrition, if we say this in theory, How do we take this to action? How do we take this to the everyday? How do we change, the cafeterias in America in the next 10 years. You know, how do we do that? We those are the conversations we wanna have.

Kyle Krull - 01:07:38
Yeah. Absolutely. And, CUDA, so you offer focusing on that side of food service. And the the potential unlock that has for kids and the whole generation of people who are are kind of find having to eat within those channels. You know? It's, I hate to use the word confined, but that's really how it feels. Wanna pivot a little bit and talk some more about, like, the brand side. You've got a killer name, Gruff. The packaging is super clean. Feel super authentic. I'm curious. You know, the name Groff doesn't necessarily lend itself specifically too far.

Kyle Krull - 01:07:58
So longer term, like, are there any possible able, you know, new products coming out, any any new directions you're hoping to go? Like, talk to us a little bit about that.

Crystal Manuel - 01:08:19
Oh my gosh. We have so many ideas in the vault. I'm not sure I'm not sure we'll live long enough. We have really cool ideas coming up. The word grub since you brought it up, let's talk about that for a few minutes. Because you learn things you learn things along the way that are interesting. The nutshell version of of of why we chose that name is because, because it correlates with with the folktale, the, the 3 Billy Goat Scrub. Are you guys aware, are do you are you familiar with that story?

Kyle Krull - 01:09:01
No. I've I've heard the title before, but I have no idea what the actual story is. No.

Crystal Manuel - 01:09:06
Dang it. Long day. It's ahead of time.

Jody Manuel - 01:09:09
I mean, she gets

Kyle Krull - 01:09:11
I do it. We should've got a preread, you know, apologies.

Crystal Manuel - 01:09:15
Here's what happened. I love that story, and I also have Pat goats, They're like the one animal that, art is on the ranch, well, with the exception of the donkey that lives with them, but it's just that you're fun. Right?

Jody Manuel - 01:09:31
But we we thought it was as familiar to everyone as Goldilocks and the 3 bears.

Crystal Manuel - 01:09:34
Oh, yeah. It was 6 months, and we were already I'm looking at the marketing campaign. I got this vision. I'm stoked because it's all about consumer education. Helping people overcome obstacles. It's helping people understand about regenerative practices. It's helping people understand about about Whole Food Nutrition And Nutrition Density and differences in in ancient grain. I'm I'm excited. I'm rolling with Grub. And then Brei says to me, like, literally, I think we were, like, 6 months in. Is that right?

Crystal Manuel - 01:09:57
Like, we were

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:10:05
I was a I was well, I, like, I like the story. Right? But, yes, go ahead. I like your version.

Crystal Manuel - 01:10:12
I like this. Can I tell you the story for the very first time?

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:10:18
Did you yeah. Yes. That's where I heard it.

Crystal Manuel - 01:10:20
See, I didn't know. I've got

Kyle Krull - 01:10:22
a trend. I've got a trend. Like, I'm guessing Brei went on my or Maaz, and looked up Billy goats. Right. And realized not many people were searching Billy goats. Right.

Crystal Manuel - 01:10:32
She tells me, like, 6 months in with this full grandiose, like, plan in my mind. Right? Not you do realize he said gently to me one day. Not everybody knows this full tale. I'm like, what? No. I don't know. So This comes up in conversation with our daughter who puts a, a deal out on Facebook, a pull out on Facebook. Who who knows the story?

Crystal Manuel - 01:10:49
And we find out there's, like, some people that don't know the story come to find out.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:03
30%?

Crystal Manuel - 01:11:04
Yeah. Like, 30% of the people that answer the poll didn't know. And so I test I I argue those results a little bit, though. Sure. Because my nephew said that it was his favor story, and my brother said he'd never heard of it. And then my nephew's responses, you read it to me. For error. Yeah. Just went a little back against what Bruce said.

Jody Manuel - 01:11:30
So so did the 2 of you know the story?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:32
No. No. No. This is never

Kyle Krull - 01:11:34
of our our current conversation has never heard of

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:11:37
the story.

Crystal Manuel - 01:11:37
We'll we'll pause now for a fast a fast story time.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:41
Yeah, please.

Crystal Manuel - 01:11:42
The 3 Billy goats Gruff is, a Norwegian folktale dates back I don't know. At least a couple 100 years, maybe longer. But, anyway, it's a story about 3 brother goats, and their last name is Gruff. And there's a baby 1 and a medium sized 1 and a and a great big one. And the thing is is they realize that the food that they're eating is just pretty much subpar and, it's getting pretty slim pickens in the pasture where they are, but they can see across the river that there's these lush incredible fields full of forage that they're just dying to get over in grays. The problem is they have to cross the bridge and the bridge is guarded by a hangry, greedy troll. And so,

Jody Manuel - 01:12:30
I I just have

Kyle Krull - 01:12:30
to pause. I'm getting strong Harry Potter by right now.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:34
I'm locked in. I'm locked in.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:36
I can't remember what the story is, but there's, like, the 3 brothers who have to cross the bridge and death guards of the bridge. Like, this is like

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:12:41
Oh, wow.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:42
Like, same same, which is crazy. You just have to start to interrupt. Continue on.

Crystal Manuel - 01:12:46
Oh, I'm gonna have to call Jake.

Jody Manuel - 01:12:48
Yeah. Please. Yeah. When

Crystal Manuel - 01:12:50
we get off the phone, ask you about this now. So so they devise a plan and and basically what they do is they send the little one across the bridge first. And the troll stops him, and he, you know, he's he's thinking he's gonna eat him, but the little one says, well, if you wait just a little bit longer, there's another one coming across that's a little bigger. And so the greedy troll lets him pass, and then the second troll comes across, or the second go goes across. And he says basically the same thing. I mean, you could eat me now, but there's one coming across us so much better, so much bigger. And so the greedy troll lets him go by.

Crystal Manuel - 01:13:20
And then the brother, the big brother goat comes by, and, they have this confrontation on the bridge, and and the goat knocks the trail off the bridge. And He skips across and meets up with his brothers, and they graze on this incredible food happily ever after. And We kinda look at that troll for our business. Like, the troll is so many things. I mean, the troll is conglomerative. In the food world where we've got chemical companies and pharmaceutical companies, and and there's just kind of like this obstacle that keeps people from understanding and knowing better.

Crystal Manuel - 01:13:55
The marketing that's out there with false food claims. And in inflated words that don't mean anything, that the general population oftentimes is very confused by and very trusting of when they when they shouldn't be, but they don't know better. And then there's all kinds of other trolls, like like my troll, which was Graves disease and changed you know, and changed my life when I when I got past it. So the troll can really be looked at is, like, the obstacle that keeps people from making better food choices or make or doing the better farming practices or, you know, whatever it is, But in a journey, there's oftentimes, no matter who we are, there's oftentimes a troll to conquer. And, And we can look at him as being a lot of different a lot of different things, but, in our minds, in my mind, and and once I shared it with Brei, I think she could understand it a little bit better. What's my daughter's story? But it's just a fun way. You know, we we intend on using that that story line and that framework.

Crystal Manuel - 01:15:02
We have future plans for the educational aspect that we hope to share with the larger consumer audience. Everyone from little kids, you know, to adults. And I teach food classes, with a good friend of ours locally and have her. Her husband happens to be a naturopath, and her father is at Lee Bob Quinn of Camut International. So she understands food. And, we get a lot of a lot of people that come in who are really sick wanting to take classes.

Crystal Manuel - 01:15:35
And they, you know, sometimes, they'll they'll go to the doctor and they'll tell them that they need to eat better. But oftentimes, if it's not been your practice and if you don't really understand food, that's a hard thing to accomplish. And so, so we try to help them in that way tackle that troll. Right? Just the just the simple bit of education that we can share around food oftentimes can lead people on a better journey. It's been it's been our backstory.

Crystal Manuel - 01:16:01
So It's one of the ways that we like to talk about it.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:16:15
I love it. I think run with it all the way. Because I I actually liked that I didn't know about it and that I got told it, you know, through you, through the brand. So I think there's huge huge opportunity there. And I think I think through what you just shared, Crystal, you're starting to answer the final question that we ask everybody, which is, you know, how do we get 50% market share for region brands by 2050, which is obviously there's gonna be a lot of trolls we need to take down to do that. I'm curious to get, you know, y'all's take on that between all three of you.

Crystal Manuel - 01:16:46
Mhmm. My answer is education. There is simply no other way in my opinion. And if it if we're gonna talk specifically, obviously, about regenerative brands, I can tell you the one thing that I've learned that's been pretty profound to me. Because we know a lot of farmers most all organic farmers that we that we know and have mentored us, have not taken the leap toward regenerative certification. And quite frankly, they don't it's not because they don't follow the practices already. It's just for them, it's like an extra certification. I mean, The people who understand food and who are growing it for the right reasons, are already implementing practices that is going to make the soil more more nutrient dense so that they can grow food that mimics that. But in the larger consumer audience, if we're gonna talk about growth, From the years that we've been doing, what we've done, and from the classes that I've taught, I learned something that was really mind blowing to me, which is the idea that the general consumer has no trust in the concept of organic.

Crystal Manuel - 01:17:39
At all. They the people this was so shocking to me to find out this because we asked this question in the whole food classes that we teach, our classes are taught in a series where information is built upon one to the next and food terminology is woven into all of them. And so the very first question, that we start out with is what is your view of organic and They all say the same thing across the board because these people are coming in to be educated about food, and it's it doesn't mean anything. It's, like, kinda like the word natural. I mean, it's just like a a fluffy word to put on a label so that you can charge more money. The word organic oftentimes gets correlated with the idea of more expensive.

Crystal Manuel - 01:18:40
But when you have opportunity to spend time with them and talk about all the things that we've covered today in terms of growing practices and why we do what we do, how we do it, and they're specific. It's hard. Right? There are very specific reasons for farming this way. If there weren't, we'd be crazy for doing it because it's a lot, a lot of extra work. But it's the right way to do it. And when you can explain that story in its entirety, it matters to people. The word regenerative matters because it's understandable.

Crystal Manuel - 01:19:10
It speaks to a system. It speaks to a practice, and not only just a label. And so but I think that there's a lot of people really confused by that word.

Kyle Krull - 01:19:35
You

Crystal Manuel - 01:19:35
know? It's it's a word that everyone knows, but to to be able to explain how it pertains to food is a little is a lot actually more complicated. And so we hope as a brand that we can help further it by helping to educate and share that story at a world basic grassroots level that we can make, understandable to all audiences depending upon, you know, what what the reason is for wanting to know. Mhmm. But one mom at a time, one family at a time, one consumer at a time, knowing enough information to compare about making the right the right decision at the grocery store or with the products that they choose to eat.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:20:17
Yeah. Amen. That's a tough act to follow, but I'll ask if Jody and Brei have anything to add to That was that was pretty damn good.

Jody Manuel - 01:20:26
I'd say go for a break is I just I'm just alone for the ride with these 2 to get us to that place.

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:20:33
I I I yes, Crystal. I mean, yes, to what she said. I think what I would add is, investors to put their money where their mouth is and you want something different, let's make let's partner and let's make something different happen. And, infrastructure. The the hardest, you know, the thing is somebody has to go first. And that's in in this case, in their farming community, they're they're deep they're they're a representative of a very, very large farming community in Montana. And, there are a lot of people who are watching what they're doing to see. Is it worth my time? Is it worth the investment of this certification?

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:21:08
So so doing that first, seeing that there's infrastructure, there's support, for these growers who are trying to do something different, all of those things need to happen in order for there to be, kind of like a kind of a ripple effect I do believe it's coming, but, again, who's going first?

Kyle Krull - 01:21:38
Yeah. I'm gonna bring it back to the billy go, because now I know this story. But, yeah, right now, it kinda feels like the smaller brands are sneaking past the troll now to start that ripple effect and then the bigger goes and the bigger goes, we'll continue on until the movement gets the point where we could knock control off the bridge, you know, hopefully everybody's understanding what region is, why it's important for themselves, and they know how they can support it. So yeah, I I'm already I don't think this Billy got basically, like, following around for a long time. I'm gonna keep seeing that story everywhere, but,

Jody Manuel - 01:22:07
I

Kyle Krull - 01:22:07
think you're both right. I think consumer education has to happen, and there also has be a fundamental sorry, a shift in how we do business, and how we support these brands, because Chris and Jody, to your point, like, it's more work. It's harder to do. And if we don't support that transition, like, it's never gonna happen.

Crystal Manuel - 01:22:23
Mhmm. Yeah. Exactly. And it's a very collaborative effort. And I think the one thing that we haven't touched on as a company that we're kind of excited about is a concept called a grit together. And there's a couple ways that we do that. But one of them one of them is to show that that together, No matter what it is that you're making or growing in in the food world, in a in an intentional you know, organic or regenerative way. We can come together. And so we have a lot of fun with that because Brits pair with about anything. Right? We can go sweet.

Crystal Manuel - 01:22:53
We can go savory, and we can take other people's ingredients and combine them with ours. And and so it's a concept that that we roll out with. You talked bone broth. We to talk about a grip together later.

Kyle Krull - 01:23:10
For sure. Absolutely. I'm I'm definitely gonna do a we'll be I'll be doing some of my kitchen pretty soon here. It's gonna happen.

Crystal Manuel - 01:23:19
But that's how it works. And it and it yeah. It'll be a collaborative effort for sure, but those are the best kind anyway.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:23:27
And the spirit of that has been so apparent in this episode by the amount of individual people and organizations that have been named that y'all have worked with some capacity or learn from or mentored or been mentored by. And I think, Kyle, I'll definitely share, like, that's what all this region work is, like, all about and probably our favorite part is just how collaborative it all is.

Crystal Manuel - 01:23:46
Yeah. Yep.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:23:47
And I think I think that's how we get there. So love it. And just appreciate y'all so much for joining us and doing the work that you're doing, and and happy we can support in this way.

Crystal Manuel - 01:23:56
Yeah. Well, thank you.

Brei Larmoyeux - 01:23:57
Thank you.

Crystal Manuel - 01:23:58
Wearing and for for helping get stories out there.

Kyle Krull - 01:24:01
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Pleasure to meet you 3. Just a reminder for any of the listeners, the website is Grub grains.com. I will absolutely be buying some as soon as we're done with this podcast. So, yeah, thank you all. Again, so much for the time and sharing your stories.

Crystal Manuel - 01:24:16
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kyle Krull - 01:24:18
Yes.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:24:22
For show notes, episode transcript and more information on our guests and what we discuss on the show, check out our website, regen-brands.com. That is regenndashbrands dotcom. You can also find our regen recaps on the website. Regen recaps take less than 5 minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour long cover patience. You can check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform, subscribe to future episodes, and share the show with your friends. Thanks for tuning in to The ReGen Brands Podcast. Brought to you by the Regent Coalition in Outlaw Ventures.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:25:00
We hope you learned something new in this episode, and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars. To help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.