Salonek Farms

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Therese at Salonek Farms. You can follow on Facebook as well.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Therese at Salonek Farms. Good morning, Therese. Good morning, Mary. How are you today? Oh, we are doing great. We're doing great. This is fun. I'm so glad you invited me. Yeah, I have. I have all kinds of questions. Before I get into them, tell me about what you guys do.

00:30
Well, we farm in Montrose, I understand you're in Minnesota as well? Yeah, in Lesour. Lesour, okay. So we're just about 45 minutes west of the cities in Montrose, Minnesota, and we raise beef. We have anywhere between 900 and 1,000 head of beef cattle here. And you know, we've...

00:59
My husband grew up on a farm not far from here. I, however, was a city girl and I go where he goes, right? And so we've been here at the farm since the early 90s. Yeah, mid-90s. And we bought the farm from his parents. We milked cows for until about the 2000 or so, 2001.

01:27
and switched over to raising replacement heifers for dairy farmers, and then ended, kind of landed on beef. And for a variety of reasons, beef isn't as intense as milking cows. And yeah, so that's what we do. Our beef goes, we have a pretty robust, private beef sales. We have...

01:56
We work with several processors in the area to sell privately to beef. And then we also sell, obviously, into the major beef markets. JBS in Wisconsin is where our cattle are shipped to. So yeah, that's what we do. OK. So is producing cattle or raising cattle for beef less intense than for dairy?

02:26
gets contaminated, you lose all that milk and it costs you money, is that part of it? No, because that's a pretty rare occurrence that that would happen. It's more, dairy animals require every day, twice a day milking. Some people do three times a day, we never did, we did morning and night. And they also are a little bit more finicky.

02:54
as far as how you feed them and how you carry. Dairy cattle are hardier, or beef cattle are hardier than dairy. And so, yeah, so that's kind of the difference between, and actually, sadly, dairy farmers are not, they're dropping out the small dairy farmers that are milking 60 to 150 animals. They're...

03:23
few and far between because the milk prices vary so much. And that was part of the reason that we got out is our monthly income could vary $15,000. And that was in the early 2000s. And that was just, it was frustrating to us because we didn't have that control. And so milk would go up, milk would go down. And it was just too frustrating. My husband loves.

03:53
farming, he loves livestock and he's good at it and he's done it his whole life. But you have to look at the economics of it. And that's why I think you see so many in the last 20, 15 to 20 years, dairy farmers going out and you're seeing the major 2000, 3000 cow dairies pop up because that's really the only way I think you can survive. You know, I'm sure there's people doing it, but for the most part, you're seeing all of that.

04:24
all of those dairies just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's tragic. There's a lot of empty farmsteads around here where you see, obviously, they had cattle probably for many, many years. And they went out of cattle. And yeah, so. OK. All right. I just didn't know why dairy was more intense than raising for meat. But thank you, because if I don't know, other people don't know either.

04:52
I feel, okay, I'm going to say this, this is my opinion and my opinion only. I feel like farmers and teachers don't make nearly the money they should be making. Well, with, it's the control of, I always said to my husband, you know, we would send a cow on a truck, right? And then to be butchered.

05:20
then once it gets there, they tell you what they will give you for it. Well, it wasn't in their best interests to give you, if they didn't have to, to give you a high price. So the farmer was kind of like, okay, what are you going to give me for it? And they're not going to be able to take the cattle back, right? It's already been there. So it always kind of frustrated me. And I say to my husband, this was years ago, you guys should unite, you know, because

05:49
It just didn't, it never, who else puts their product out there and not knowing what they're going to get for it and then just be stuck with whatever somebody deems it to be valued at and you know, but farmers are, are independent bunch and to not want to collaborate, which always confused me as well. I thought, why don't you guys get together?

06:17
have breakfast once a month and share your ideas so everybody can do well, you know, all boats rise with the tide. But farmers are, you know, kings in their own kingdoms. I probably get in trouble for saying that, but. It's been my experience that they, you know, are independent and that's probably what makes them, you know, successful and satisfied with their jobs.

06:47
and satisfied with what they do because they do work incredibly hard and, you know, don't always get the recognition they deserve. But it's a very fulfilling life, and I think that's probably what drives a lot of them. Yeah, I think that anyone who appreciates the food that they get from their local growers should hug their local grower when they see them. It's a thankless job, typically.

07:16
And I try to thank everybody for anything they do for me, even if it's the tiniest thing, because I think that thanks is a really important word. I also think, Mary, that in going forward, people need to understand where agriculture is going, the demands being put on the farmers, regulatory, et cetera, and where prices are gonna go, beef prices. It's alarming to us as producers.

07:46
to see the futures, right? Because that's our bread and butter, right? So we follow that kind of stuff much more so than the average person. And the futures are pretty alarming for cost to consumers. Yeah, tell me about that, because I was reading your Facebook post about that. Tell me more about that. Well, beef prices are rising. The country had a...

08:15
very significant drought, especially in cattle country across Texas and a lot of those areas where because of the drought, they didn't have the feed to feed their herds. A lot of them were on grass, right in the open pasture, that type of thing. Well, when there's no rain and no rain for a really long time, grass doesn't grow. And it's cost prohibitive for them to

08:45
People say, well then, truck down hay or whatever. Well, when you have 1,000 animals out on a pasture, that's a lot of feed. It's cost prohibitive to bring feed down from someplace that didn't have drought. Therefore, they had to sell off their herds because they couldn't feed them. Well, they not only, they sold off the cows as well. Well, the cows are the ones that produce the next generation. So you see.

09:15
You know, chickens, you can turn around and grow a chicken and, you know, I'm not a chicken farmer, but we've had chicks in, you know, 55 days or 85 days or whatever it is, and you've got a chicken that's ready to eat. Hogs are a little longer than that, but not nearly as long as it does the life cycle of bringing a steer to market. So that's why you're going to see beef prices rise is that there wasn't the cows were sent to butcher as well.

09:44
So the next generation wasn't anymore. And then you add into that, South America had significant drought as well. And so that affected a lot of beef comes from South America and that affected. So it was kind of a perfect storm in the last couple of years to reduce our beef hurts. And then you look at some of the growing third world countries that are

10:12
their middle class is growing and they're demanding more and more beef, which I, you know, which, you know, with exports. So there's just a lot of demand placed on beef and there's less beef around. Okay. We had bought a half from a local butcher like a year and a half ago, and I was not in love with it.

10:37
I think it was grass finished and I really like green finish because I'm old school. I like my beef to be green finished because I think it tastes better. And so what I was going to ask you is how does this... I don't even know how to ask this correctly because I know nothing about raising beef. So I'm going to try. What's the difference between growing or raising or finishing grass fed?

11:06
versus finishing grain fed.

11:12
Well, I'm not an expert in grass fed, but from what I understand, grass fed is leaner. It does have a different taste, but they're also older because, you know, there's not the caloric intake that there is with corn. For instance, a beef steer, we can turn around in about 14 months to finishing weight. And I think grass fed is significantly.

11:41
longer than that because they're fed a different grain. The corn fed or grain fed is a richer diet and so they grow faster. Okay, then that might be why. I'm not going to say who we got the beef from because I'm sure that people love their beef. I just don't like it.

12:08
I assume that if the animal is older, the meat will be tougher. And that's where I'm running into the issue. It tastes different to me and it's really tough no matter how we cook it. Yeah, to be honest, I've never had grass-fed. And so I don't really know. I only know anecdotally what people say about it. But yes, that's a question many of our customers will ask them is, you know, is it grass? Some prefer the grass-fed. And I think that's a good point.

12:37
and I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it's more expensive too. Grass-fed is more expensive. But there's, yeah, it's personal like and dislike, I think, but for the most part. And also grass-fed is a little tougher up here where we live, right, because of winter. Yeah. We can't have them out on pasture. There's, because people say, well, are they out on pasture?

13:06
Well, that's a great idea for spring and summer, but it's not such a great idea when it's 35 plus zero. No, no, because once they eat whatever is dried from what had been growing and died off, it's gone. So there's nothing for them to eat. Right, right. Yeah, so you see primarily green feed up in our region, I would venture to guess. OK.

13:35
I've been trying to figure it out because I was so excited to buy a half and then ate the first steak from it and I was like, I don't like it and now we're stuck with a half steer of this particular animal. Yay. Luckily, my husband and my son think it's fine. They're not thrilled with it, but they think it's fine. So they have been eating a lot of it and every time they're like, you want to do steaks or do you want to do burgers? I'm like,

14:05
Okay, and I eat like three bites and I'm good. So it's been it's been very frustrating and very disappointing for me. And honestly, we're probably going to hit you guys up for a half when we need to buy one again, because I was looking at your website, and I was like, I think we need to go see them. That'll work. Well, that's very nice of you to say. At Salonek Farms, I have I run the private part of the of our farm. And we have about 1200 private customers that we

14:34
have serviced and we guarantee our beef and if you don't like it, you can bring it back. We will give you your money back. We never ever want Salonek beef in a freezer that they don't want it in. But I can tell you that that never happens. I make that really clear because integrity in our business is our highest priority. And we always seek to be more than fair and probably maybe.

15:03
Sometimes I overdo it by making sure that our customers are happy. We're proud of what we do. We work hard every day to grow the best beef available. When we ship to Green Bay, we get, obviously, they send you what your steers get. We 35 steers fit in a semi. Okay. And then they grade them and we come out 95, 96% of those 35.

15:34
animals come out at primer top choice and often a third of the herd will come in at five star reserve which is the highest you can get. So we're very proud of what we do. We save our best steers for our private customers so we are very confident that people will be very pleased with our beef. Like I said, we guarantee their satisfaction.

16:02
that's just the way we want to do it. I never want anyone questioning our integrity. Fantastic. I am absolutely gonna talk to my husband about getting the next half from you guys because I really wanna like the next steak that I eat out of the next half we buy. I really do. So you were saying that you were a city girl, so was this a hard transition for you or was it okay? I think I wept.

16:29
When I think back on it, I think I wept every day on the phone to my mother because being a city girl, I wasn't used to the dirt, I wasn't used to the smell, and I wasn't used to the work ethic, unfortunately. I'm not proud of that. And so we moved to the farm just after our first born. We have seven children just after our first born. And unfortunately, my husband fell off the roof.

16:59
the day we moved in and broke his neck in several places. And that was not a good start. No. We were milking at the time and, you know, God really showed up and he healed and he was able to, you know, eventually get back into the barns. But so that's how we started it off. And so I was feeding him in the living room with a

17:28
Yeah, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And we were poor as church mice too, which is not very fun. And yeah, so I did. It took a lot of getting used to. I was used to a nicer home and that type of thing. But like I said, I go where he goes. And having a husband that's satisfied with this work, and doing what he wants to do, and doing what God's called

17:57
is, has to be your highest priority. And we moved here, we made it ours, we, you know, continue to grow our family. And it's been a wonderful life. It's been a really wonderful life. One of the things my husband is really gifted in is care is young men that are struggling. Many of them are fatherless. Some are just kind of

18:26
struggling in adolescence. Some are, you know, parents are struggling with defiance and that type of thing. And so that's really his ministry here. And part of the reason he continues to farm, because we are in our mid-60s, is that it really provides him an opportunity to have these young men come out to the farm and to hopefully help them to become...

18:56
men, good men, for them to see what a good man is and to see the satisfaction of hard work, to spend that time talking to them about issues in their lives that maybe nobody talks to them about. And it's something that the farm provides that opportunity for him to teach him honest day's work, to show them, put a wrench in their hand and show them how that wrench works and to give them

19:25
because they have no father at home to show them that. You know, moms, God bless single moms, but there comes a time when a young man, adolescent boy, I think needs a strong man to guide them and help them to make good decisions and that type of thing. So we have done a lot of that over the years and continue to do that. Whoever God brings into our lives, we...

19:54
They're welcome here and it's not always easy and we don't make it easy on them, but they are loved and they are guided. Awesome, that's fantastic. And I'm gonna jump the gender gap here a little bit. With girls and boys or with boys and girls, I think that they all need to have really good role models of each gender besides mom and dad.

20:25
because women learn from quote unquote adopted aunties and adopted grannies, just like boys learn from adopted uncles and adopted grandpas. And I tried really hard when I was raising my four kids to make sure that the people that we had in our lives who were adults taught the kids things that they knew that we didn't know, if that makes sense.

20:50
So yeah, what your husband is doing is amazing. And it's really funny when men, men are a different animal. They can't just sit down over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and be social and chat about things that are deep. I feel like if they're working on something, they just naturally start talking about things that mean something to them.

21:20
And I think these young men crave some guidance. They know, you know, some know that, you know, the path that they're on isn't the best path for them. And it's not like you're in the army now, it's not boot camp, but they respond to that. And I've said to my husband so many times, you can't talk to a girl like that. And, you know, because it is true, it is different. And, you know, you...

21:48
want to have those positive role models in their lives and especially for our girls, I don't know if you raised girls, but we have four of them, is to hopefully have them pray for them to choose good men because that is their life, right? If they make a bad choice, that is life altering for the rest of their lives. So our girls have chosen wonderful men that treat them well.

22:18
love the Lord and it's heartbreaking for some of my friends to have their daughters in tough situations. So yeah, you're right. It's who you allow your children to spend that time with in their formative years really defines their values and what they will accept and what they won't accept. Yeah. I have a daughter. She is the oldest of four kids. And she...

22:45
She managed to find herself a really good man. He adores her. He takes care of her to a fault. And she's also terribly independent. And so she'll call me and she'll be like, mom, I married the right guy. She said, but he's almost too helpful. And I'm like, that's OK. Just that's good. Just tell him that you appreciate him offering the help.

23:15
and that if you need it, you will ask. And she's like, okay. And I'm like, honey, trust me, it's better to have one that's too helpful than one that's not helpful at all. Exactly, exactly. And you know, you watch your adult children and they still need some parenting and some guidance. And that's also a privilege as a mom. And really for you, Mary, it shows how well you raised her that she trusts you as a friend to come to you.

23:45
give you, you know, be open with you about struggles or whatever, because that's, we still need to be there for our adult daughters and they need that guidance sometimes. Absolutely. And I feel like my kids are my friends to the point that sometimes they tell me things that I don't really need to know and I blush. And I'm like, that's a little TMI guys. And they're like, no, no, no, no, it's not. I'm like, no, trust me, it's a little TMI.

24:14
But I love that they feel like they can just open up to me and tell me stuff. And even if it makes me blush, it's still an honor that they are willing to do that. So, and then the other three are boys. And again, men are a different animal. And I have had conversations with my sons that I never expected to have. You know, as they're growing up when they're little and you're like, things I never thought I would say as a mom.

24:44
Like, no, no, you can't eat cat poop out of the cat box, things like that. Gross, terrible things that you never thought you'd say. It's now turned to things I never thought I would hear. And I have to laugh. It's just ridiculous. But they're all really, really good kids and I am so proud of them and so glad that they're mine. Yes, it's a blessing. It is. Yep. My kids too, they're not perfect.

25:14
We have our moments. There's a good thing there's doors on the house sometimes, but that's part of being a family. And when you have seven, anything could happen at any time. Generally does, especially on the farm. Yeah, my theory has always been that one kid is one kid, but once you have more than one, it may as well be 100. Yeah, and then we have others too. I mean, I can have 12 at my lunch table for sure in the summertime. And I like

25:43
that and I like to cook and I like to provide a healthy meal for them because they're working hard and so, you know, there's just a lot of big personalities sometimes. Uh-huh. Yes, all four of my kids have huge personalities to the point that sometimes it's hard to have them all in the same room. So I understand that. Okay, so do you guys do anything?

26:11
else besides raised beef? Do you garden? Do you have chickens? Do you do any other kind of homesteading things that farmers do? We do. We just, I was, my mother never garden, so I never really learned how to garden. I have a friend who is a gardener and also a canner and all this stuff. And I said, you know, Sarah, we could have a garden. I would, you know, at the farm, we certainly have enough, you know, land to do that.

26:38
So we tilled up this great big piece of land out where we used to have horses and we put in a garden last year and it was more, we bit off more than we could chew. It was a great idea in the spring, right? It's a great idea. And then you get to be late July and it's like, what the heck have we done here? I froze a lot. I didn't know how to can, but I see Sarah's, she just has tons and tons and tons of stuff.

27:07
So I'm going to do that. Freezing my tomatoes and all that, that takes a lot of room up in your freezer. And I think canning. And honestly, I think some of the things going on in the world right now, it's not a bad idea to have extra things around and to grow. It's satisfying, but it's also, food security is important. I hate to be a conspiracy person, but.

27:35
I don't know, sometimes in the morning I wake up and go, what could have happened last night that will impact the world? And so I am going to start canning as well and hopefully it goes well and I don't know. So it's such a homestead thing to do that it's not really my thing, but I'm gonna try it. It's not hard. I'm gonna say this again, I've said it a couple times on the other episodes that are out.

28:04
Canning is not hard. It's just a lot of steps and you want to make sure you have the time To devote to it in one day Yeah, once you start you got to finish. Yeah. Yeah, but it's not hard It's just it's just it's just many many steps to make sure that it all gets done correctly So you don't get botulism from something you eat six months from now Yeah, so you got to follow the steps and you got to be careful, but

28:33
you if if you like it the first time you do it you will be hooked for the rest of your life. Well you got to have the stuff for it. I don't have the stuff for it so I got to find the stuff for it which you can get at garage sales or you know estate sales that grandma died and they got all this stuff and the kids don't do it anyway but so I got to keep keep an eye out for the stuff. Yeah absolutely and

28:58
I know what you mean about not wanting to be a conspiracy person because I don't want to be that either. But there are some mornings I wake up and I just have this feeling that something happened that I don't know about yet. And I'm almost afraid to turn on the news because so many strange things have happened just in the last six years. And we have always lived like something was going to happen where we couldn't get to the store to get milk.

29:28
So when we shop, we always shop for at least two weeks worth of stuff in the house. And we can because we have a big garden and we always have surplus and canning is better than sticking in the freezer because in the freezer it just gets buried. And if you have a shelf full of jars of jam and jelly and pickles and tomato sauce and

29:56
satisfying to go open that cabinet and see all those jars of food and be like, okay, we're good for a little while. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine that we would have been thinking that, you know, five or, you know, 10 years ago that we should, you know, I remember hearing about peppers and thinking, well, that's ridiculous. Why would anybody, what could, and now more and more, we're not alone in that where people are, you know, it's, it, you see commercials for

30:26
25 years of dehydrated food you can buy on mainstream TV. And so people are obviously concerned about the possibility. And that's a tragic turn of events, I think, for the country, but one that possibly nothing would ever happen, but to even think that possibly something could happen is disturbing to me. But...

30:53
And we have the resources, right? And obviously out on the farm, we'll always have what we need. It's the inner city where Cub Foods is their only option. Well, Cub Foods could run out of in hours if there was a major. You know what I mean? So there's some vulnerability that I feel for. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And part of the reason that we live outside of Lesor, Minnesota, is because we wanted to be able to grow a big garden

31:23
preserve that food for the winter because it's Minnesota. Things happen like blizzards and ice storms and situations where you can't necessarily get anywhere for three days. Yeah, for sure. And hopefully you have power because we have waters here for a thousand, so that's where we are like, we have generators and whatever, but losing power is a big deal on the farm.

31:48
Yeah, we have a generator that kicks in automatically, which is an absolute blessing. Like if the power goes out, we have power back within 10 minutes as long as there is fuel for the generator to run on. It's so wonderful. It just, anytime that, every week the generator kicks on for like 15 minutes Tuesday night so that it runs during the year in case, it just, it keeps everything working. And every time it kicks on on Tuesday night, I'm just like...

32:18
Generators running it still works. So it just it just calms me down because the idea of not having power and Losing everything in our freezers and our refrigerator and if the power isn't working We don't have water because we're on a well. Yep. We don't either so yeah, it's it's a it was a There's a word. It was a bucket list thing that we wanted when we looked

32:47
for this place, we wanted a generator that just would come on automatically. And our realtor who's a friend, she was like, that's kind of a bigger ask. And I said, if the place doesn't have it, that's fine. But if it does, yay. And she's great. I'm going to be interviewing her in June, actually, because she's a realtor. She knows about the market. And people who are looking to buy a place to start a homestead, she's going to be able to tell them things that they might not.

33:17
think of. So I'm looking forward to interviewing her too. But she's great. She basically found us a place that had all the check boxes checked for us. And we love her to pieces. She's now a member of our family, basically. That's very sweet. Good to know. Good for you. She's lovely. I just, every time I get to spend time with her, she's so bubbly and she's so happy and so friendly.

33:44
I'm just high for like four hours after she leaves. Those kind of friends are great, priceless. It's really fun to visit with her. And I asked her if she wanted to be on the podcast and she was like, absolutely. I'm like, okay, good. Let's do that. That'll be fun. So anyway, Therese, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

34:05
And as soon as we need to replace our half beef that is getting whittled down, I will be messaging you because I want to try out your beef next time. Well, we'd love to serve you in that area. So you just let us know. And it's been really fun to talk to you, Mary. You seem like somebody I probably wouldn't have coffee with. It's really a privilege to have been on your podcast. So thank you for that.

34:34
Thank you so much, Therese. Have a great day. Bye-bye.