TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Clarence Ogle (CO)
INTERVIEWER: David Todd (DT)
VIDEOGRAPHER: Jody Horton (JH)
DATE: November 11, 2005
LOCATION: Fredericksburg, Texas
TRANSCRIBER: Robin Johnson
REELS: 2317, 2318

Please note that the numbers correlate with the time codes on the VHS tape copy of the interview. “Misc.” refers to conversation that is not connected with the interview topic.

(misc.)
DT: My name is David Todd and we’re at Ogle Farm, about six, seven miles outside of Fredericksburg, Texas and it’s November 11th, 2005. And we have the—the good fortune to be visiting with Clarence Ogle, who is a accomplished organic farmer, who’s—seems to have found the recipe to be a—a quite self-sufficient and diversified grower and raiser of livestock. And I wanted to thank you for spending the time to—to talk to us and explain your—your work.
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CO: Well, I’m always—appreciate someone who has a genuine interest in the subject. Most people, it’s a very casual one. They’re interested in the produce, but not the effort it takes to produce it. One of your questions here, I noticed, was how did I first become interested in agriculture? I grew up in a town of 1200 people and all of my friends and colleagues and that sort of thing were—lived on farms. The farmers supported the community and I spent a great deal of time on their farms and the family always raised big gardens every year. My mother canned and all that sort of thing, put up food and that’s what we ate in the wintertime. One of the luxuries that we would get at
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Christmastime was a navel orange because there weren’t many of those—that type of produce available in the wintertime. See, we’re going back quite a number of years—I’ll be 87 years old next month and so I have a long history. But my interest in agriculture and animal husbandry is long—longstanding. And organic—well, I always tried to minimize the use of chemicals because they were expensive and the other manures were readily available. So it—it just—a natural thing and my interest in organic culture here
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really began with the fact that I had the place and was gardening. And I was stationed in Panama as a civil servant and we were sprayed every night with pesticides that were prohibited everywhere else in the world. And my liver swelled up so big I couldn’t wear a belt and I and half a dozen other men went through Gorgas Hospital and they tested—turned us inside out and tested everything, couldn’t find out what was making us sick. And I thought well, I—I love diving. I did a great deal of diving down there and I got so I couldn’t even swim. I didn’t have the energy for it. And I thought if I get back to the
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States, I’ll be all right. When I got back here it was worse. I almost died. I became so intoxicated, if you will, with pesticides that I couldn’t find my way to the bathroom, you know, in the house. And a little old lady that I thought was dingy—and I still do—she says well, I think it’s something you’re eating. And I thought, ah, come on, I eat the same thing everybody else eats, you know. So my doctor sent me in to San Antonio for brain scan. He thought I had advanced Alzheimer’s. Okay? This is twenty some years ago. And they turned me inside out again. Said no, it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. They didn’t
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know what the hell was the matter with me, so they sent me home to die. And this little old lady said well, I still think it’s something you’re eating. I thought well, what could it be, you know? So I narrowed my diet down to a single cereal, oatmeal. That’s all I ate. And after about 30 days, I began to come out of it. It takes your liver that long to metabolize the pesticide buildup that you’ve acquired, okay. So then I slowly introduced one food at a time to see what reaction I got. I found out most of the things that I’d been eating were toxic to me. I had (?) acquired a sensitivity to pesticides from the exposure
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that made me hypersensitive. So now, any little bit would do it and beef was the worst. The ear tags they put on the cattle? They’re not just for identification. This is a systemic pesticide injector and it keeps the flies off his tail. They bite the cow and they drop dead, okay? Wonderful for the cow. But then when you eat the meat, you’re ingesting some of that pesticide and it’s even in the hooves. They made Jell-o from the hooves, incidentally. I can’t eat Jell-o. That’ll poison me. So what alternatives do I have? I have my own garden, which we then began producing more of and adopted fish. Fish
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were a problem. I went to the ichthyology station over at—in Ingram and talked to the ichthyologist about it. And he said oh, you don’t have to raise them. He said you can go down to Cal—Lake Calaveras, you know, in the wintertime when the—the fish go up to the discharge tubes of the power station to keep warm because they’re tropical fish—tilapia—and he said you can take a throw net and get all the fish you want. I thought well, hell, that’s—why—why should I raise fish? Said I’ll go down there in January
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when we have a cold front and I’ll fill my freezer. He said I don’t think you want to do that. And I said well, is it illegal? And he said no, no, it’s not illegal. He said you have to remember those lakes are a drainage basin for all of San Antonio and he said there’s stuff in the water and you don’t want to eat that many. You might eat a few fish, that’s all right, but he says you don’t want to fill your freezer with them. So I came home and built a tank and raised my own fish, clean, okay? That’s a step toward biological control, okay? My garden is fertilized with the by-products of the fish harvest, the heads and
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entrails all go in the garden, along with the manures from the animals. And, of course, I have a Grade A dairy out there, goat dairy, and raise one pig a year, usually. Not this year because I haven’t eaten up last year’s pig yet. All by myself, I don’t eat that much. But everything here is organic out of necessity. But the—the gardening and the rest of it, I was doing regardless of that. But the—I keep it strictly organic ever since because I can’t eat food that has residual pesticides in it and most of the foods you get in the grocery store do have chemicals added to them, or residual chemicals that—or the—
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the—they say oh, they’re just trace amounts, you know, just small. But for me, because I’m hypersensitive, I can’t have any pesticides, okay? So that should explain my interest in organic growing. Now self-sufficiency is an illusion because, you see, I buy the hay, I buy the grain. The—on three acres, you can’t raise enough to feed all those animals that I have. So really, you’re not truly self-sufficient. I do produce most of what I eat, but with outside help. And then I have to be careful in my selection of hay, in my selection
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of grains. We mix from our own feed, do it ourselves in a cement mixer, and it is satisfactory. Works out very well. Well, I owe the fact that I am as old as I am and still healthy to the fact that…
(misc.)
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CO: …the fact that I do eat organic food. Someone once said well, I can’t afford to eat organic food. And I said can you afford not to? And I think that gave them reason to think about it anyway. But I think—you see, the doctors’ offices are all crowded. You—you have a long waiting list even to get an appointment, several days or a week or more, because so many people are half sick. They’re not seriously ill with a specific something, but they’re not well. And I attribute it to their ingestion of toxic materials that are in the food supply that make them look good on the shelf and they keep longer, you know?
DT: So it’s not just the fertilizers or the herbicides, it’s some of these chemicals that are used to extend shelf life that you’re concerned about?
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CO: Yes. Yeah, yeah, they fertilize with it and they—they also put preservatives in it to make it—your cereals, they put things in that make them stay crisp longer, you know? It keeps the shelf life extended, but they’re all toxic materials to one degree or another. And to me, it’s a maximum degree, so I—I can’t handle it. So I don’t. Oatmeal and shredded wheat are clean. That’s about it.
DT: Well, now you had explained that—how you came to be interested in agriculture as a whole.
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CO: Yeah.
DT: And—and organic agriculture, in particular, but I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about once you had that interest, how you actually learned how to do something which can be very complicated.
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CO: Well, it is complicated only if you’re unfamiliar. If you have ever gardened or raised animals of any kind, you won’t encounter any really strange situations because—but if you have not, then you’ll say well, things grow in the ground like that? Which is a quote, unquote. And—yes, they do. That’s where most of our food comes from. But, oh, I’d gardened most all of my life, even in Panama. I had—I grew orchids and other good things down there just because I enjoyed the process. And it has saved my life for all intents and purposes. I’d a been dead 20 years ago if I had continued eating what’s
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available in the grocery store. Sad fact, but my health generally is very good. My doctor is extremely thorough, said well, I don’t need to see you for another six months, you know. Ain’t nothing wrong, except this back that had surgery. Well, okay.
(misc.)
DT: Did you learn about organic farming techniques by going to school or by visiting with informal teachers, mentors, family members, or reading books? How did you learn about this?
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CO: Well, some by reading, but mostly by trial and error. I would ask local people who have farming backgrounds and they said well, I think Grandpa did something like that when—I—I don’t really know how he did it. And making cheeses and so forth, it’s a lost art. They don’t know. And so it was largely cut and dry—cut and try and we buried a lot of mistakes. One thing I’ve learned about cheeses you might find interesting, you do introduce a bacteria culture in the process and these bacteria are very defensive. They protect that cheese as well and that’s why with raw cheeses—cheeses that are not made and—and pasteurized, these cheeses, you can scrape mold off of them safely and eat the cheese. But a processed cheese, you can’t because the bacteria have been killed and mold is on it, it penetrates the whole cheese. I buried some cheese out in my compost pit and several years later, I—I got down to where they were, they’re perfect, just like I put
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them in there. They hadn’t changed a bit.
DT: Well, maybe you can tell us about some of the mistakes you’ve made and how you’ve mended your ways and sort of trial and error that you’ve gone through?
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CO: Yeah, trial and error with the cheeses was interesting because there were some recipes—some people made some beautiful catalogs of cheese recipes, which we bought, but you couldn’t eat the cheese, you know? And then the best cheeses I’ve found was a little old man named Angelo in Pennsylvania who would mimeograph little half pages like this of his recipes and those were great. Every one of those worked perfectly. But it was—the fanciest catalog, throw that away.
DT: Well, have you found that there is a network of people like you who are trying to do many of these things on their own?
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CO: No. No, I don’t think they’re out there. If they are, I’ve never found them.
DT: Well, were they once out there? Do you think they’ve…?
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CO: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
DT: Maybe you’re trying to restore something?
00:15:07 – 2317
CO: A hundred years ago, everyone did what we’re doing here. There’s no novelty. They say, well, your place is—is very unique. Well, it is today. A hundred years ago, it wouldn’t be unique at all. It wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Everyone was doing it. We do now, here, what they used to do on the family farm. In addition, they cultivated many acres for a commercial crop, you know. But they did what we do—they dried, they canned, you know, they ra—had a garden. They had chickens, they had a milk animal—frequently a cow, in this country—and it was common. But now it is uncommon because
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it’s labor intensive. This is the—this is a room. You have to get your hands dirty and this program—this astro program has been very interesting. People who have an errant youngster, or maybe not so young, they figure, well, any moron can be a farmer. Send him out to the farm, you know. Hell, they even sent me one from England who, would you believe, a woman who didn’t know her ass from third base. And I said well, can you cook? She said well, I can boil potatoes. You know, can’t drive, couldn’t get a license. So what the hell are you going to do with somebody like that? I had to feed and house her for a week till I could a return ticket authorized. [Laughter]
DT: So you found that we’ve lost some of these skills and kinds of knowledge because it’s just too hard, the work is too hard.
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CO: Well, that’s right. It’s too much work. There’s easier ways today. So it’s a lot easier than—instead of raising your own food, you can go down to the ACB. They have a beautiful display. You can buy just what you need and they’re perfectly preserved and appear clean, you know, nice. No strand—air conditioned building. Nobody can stand out here in my hot yard and pick tomatoes. They won’t do it. I feed them to the pig. And it hurts my Scotch soul to do it, but they’re not wasting them. I got milk—right
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now, I have a surplus of milk, okay? And it makes wonderful cheeses—we’ll have some cheeses for samples here a little bit later. And it’s delicious milk and very nutritious. It’s raw, it’s—animals are inspected—well, I test them once a month and they’re inspected once a year. They’re disease-free and have always been and their nutrition is number one. Everything going into it, perfect, and handled in a sanitary manner. And if I would deliver it, I could get fifteen dollars a gallon, okay? No problem. But they won’t come
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to get it. You know, and bring a container. They won’t do it. Too much trouble. We got a lazy society. Now what worries me—they’re talking about a pandemic. If eighty percent of our food is imported right now, that means it’s transported, isn’t it? If we have a pandemic, the first thing they do is quarantine the cities. Food will be brought in on a rationed basis by the military, if it—at all. If they’re not all sick, too, you know? Now that’s just one example. A major earthquake would create a similar situation. Food—the average store today has food on the shelf for 24 hours, period. If the trucks stops
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running, there’s no more food. People don’t think about this and there’s a continuous pipeline and if anything disrupts that pipeline—a fuel shortage, a strike, an earthquake, a pandemic—there won’t be any food in the store. You see this whenever there’s a threat of a hurricane strike, they’ll empty the shelves in the store. Doesn’t take them long. And that’s without even an actual because—it’s just an anticipation of a crisis. And there’s no way these people can feed themselves—if you see this miles and miles of apartment houses, there’s nothing they can do to help themselves. Not a blessed thing. They have
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no resources, no backup system, nothing. And if they quarantine the cities, they can’t leave and if they left the city, where would they go? There’s no place for them in the country either, you know? What are you going to do? Something to think about. That isn’t why I’ve done what I’ve done here. I’ve given you the reasons behind that, but I see this shaping up out there in the world and it causes me some apprehension. These people not only—they don’t know how in—to take care of themselves. They’re dependent on a system that is fragile, very fragile. Your European cities retain a greenbelt all around
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them and fresh produce is brought in on a daily basis from the surrounding greenbelt, okay? That’s why Europe has been able to survive many wars because the food supply was fairly located around the cities, okay? We don’t have that anymore. We did once. It’s gone. It isn’t there. Few livestock raised here and there is about the size of it. So we have no local source of food anymore, it’s imported. You can get it made cheaper—well, a pig farmer, see. I raise a pig a year, usually, and obtaining a pig is almost impossible
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now because the farmers can’t recoup the cost of the feed it takes to raise a pig when they sell it, much less their labor and all their other expenses. And they can raise them in Brazil where there are no restrictions on anything. Land is cheap, labor is cheap, they can raise the pigs down there, slaughter them, ship them up here and then distribute them for less than our farmers can raise them for, okay? Just one item. And this is what has happened to our whole economy. Now that’s great as long as the system works. If the ships don’t run or those trains and buses or trucks don’t travel, we’re in deep hurt because
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we can’t support ourselves anymore. We don’t have the capability. We’ve destroyed the farmers that did it; we’ve put them all out of business. But, of course, I don’t come from that kind of a farming background because my family ran restaurants. They didn’t—they—I hated restaurants.

[Laughter]
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CO: When I went in the military, I never mentioned I knew a damn thing about food. I didn’t want to end up in a kitchen somewhere. But…
DT: Why do you think we’ve lost this farming culture, or farming economy, especially the locally raised and locally available foods?
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CO: Well, they can’t make it economically. It—it’s just no longer feasible because of competition from other sources of food. The distributors—Archer Daniel Midlands can get it somewhere else cheaper, so they won’t pay the price.
DT: It’s this problem of competing with a global…
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CO: You know, anywhere—anywhere they can get it done cheaper.
DT: I see.
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CO: That’s why they’ve exported—you buy a Ford car, it’s made in Mexico, you know. If I buy a wagon, it’s made in China. It isn’t made here anymore, you don’t make anything anymore. Mousetraps—I bought a mousetrap the other day. Made in Pennsylvania. I thought, well, I’ll be damned. Something we still make. But you see, as long as that system is functioning to everyone’s advantage, it’s fine. But if anything happens to that system to disrupt it, we’re in deep hurt because we have—our resources have been destroyed, for whatever reason, okay?
DT: Well, you’ve managed to keep some of these resources alive here on your farm. Maybe we can talk about, for example, the tomatoes that you mentioned earlier. Maybe you can give that as an example of how you would go from cultivation through harvest in a typical year.
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CO: Well, you wait till they turn red and then you pick them. [Laughter] It isn’t very hard. And, in the meantime, our soil here is alkaline, okay. Our water is alkaline. So everything you put in the garden has to have a acidic tendency. I’ll soon be gathering up all the oak leaves all around with a—a big mower I have that picks everything up and depositing it in the garden for spreading because oak is acidic in its reaction and so are the manures that I gather. And this will all be tilled in. I have mulch that deep in my
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garden before I till. I have a six-foot tiller that goes on a tractor. I make the first cuts with it. Then I have a Troy-Bilt that I follow up and smooth it out and then I have a Mantis that you can go down between the rows, tilling. Now, I have not found—the only way I can alleviate the labor intensivit—tensivity that goes along with food production is with machinery and if we don’t have gasoline, that could be a problem. But in the
00:25:18 – 2317
meantime, I have cultivated soil—you can take a look at it in the garden out here and it is—you can run your fingers through it, so if you had to do it by hand now, you could because years of incorporating all this material into them every year has produced a type of soil that’s easy to work with.
DT: Well, part of the idea of using all this mulch and compost is to restore the pH balance or…?
00:25:49 – 2317
CO: The pH and the tilth—the general texture of the soil.
DT: Can you talk about tilth and why that’s important?
00:25:57 – 2317
CO: Well, you can’t get too much humus in the soil. No matter how much you put in, it’s broken down. Now if you add humus to the soil, it will draw bacteria and nitrogen-producing bacteria from the soil. So you put it in when the ground is fallow, when you’re not raising anything in it. That’s when you add into to soil—you add the additives. And then, you can add mulch to the top and it does not deplete the nitrogen below. The bacteria necessary are in it at the surface and they don’t take it away from the roots of the plants. But they do conserve the moisture and they break down and release nutriments to the plants. So mulching is—and it also keeps the weeds down. I like that part.
DT: Well, you mentioned bacteria. Could you talk a little bit about microbial life in your soil here?
00:26:57 – 2317
CO: Well, it’s tremendous and the chemical fertilizers tend to destroy it, incidentally. And here it’s also full of worms—earthworms—mostly these red Egyptian earthworms that I imported many, many years ago and they—my compost bin is it—seeded with them. And I never turn the compost. All I have to do is keep it moist. So worms don’t have any teeth, you know. So you keep it moist and they break everything down. And then once a year, I take all but a small block of that material and scatter it in the garden and turn it in. So we have those worms everywhere now. And they continually turn the
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soil as long as you’re feeding them. Now if you don’t feed them, they won’t be there. They’re just like other livestock, you know. So—but we have no shortage of the manures they love, so we see that they’re fed.
DT: And the manure that you use, where do you get it? What kind is it?
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CO: Well, it’s primarily goat manure. Although pig is one of the ones that—I mean, most years, we have some pig manure for about three months. I get a weaner pig and, incidentally, we feed him—you can’t feed him the usual commercial pig food because it’s full of all this stuff you don’t want. So sow feed is the one feed that is clean. The reason being, if they put all those chemicals in the sow feed, she aborts. So they can’t have that, so they’ve got to keep the sow’s feed clean. Can’t have all these chemicals in it. So we raise our pig on garden scraps and sow feed, okay. We don’t fatten it. I don’t never—I never—we don’t corn feed it or anything like that to fatten it because don’t need that much fat. Animal fat is good—it’s very good for you. And remember the amounts,
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you’ve got to be reasonable, you know. So lard—I let the—the slaughterhouse keep the lard. But it ends up with a pig—I wasn’t aware that the flavor was appreciably different until one year I gave a couple racks of ribs to a friend who was having a barbeque and he decided he needed a couple more racks for the number of people he was going to have. So he went down and bought a couple racks of ribs, you know, see. And he said could you ever tell the difference between the two. He says just all the difference in the world.
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Said yours is far superior. Well, I didn’t know that, but—because I had no basis of comparison, you know. But that was some feedback that I got.
DT: Well, maybe you can go in a little bit more detail about how you raise pigs?
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CO: Well, it—he’s raising his hand.
(misc.)
00:30:08 – 2317
CO: Well, it’s really very simple. I have a—a concrete slab out there and it’s fenced and I have an automatic pig feeder. They help themselves. And I have a automatic waterer for the pig so he can have a drink of fresh water anytime he wants it and all the food he wants. And he has a rubber mat in a shaded shed with a sprinkler system
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overhead which dribbles—you mustn’t spray them because they—they inhale the vapor and get pneumonia. So you dribble water on them on hot afternoons. They have no sweat glands, you see, and that’s why they roll in mud holes, to keep cool. So you—you—on hot afternoons, you have to provide him with a shower, okay? A dribble, just enough to keep you—so he lays on a—a rubber mat and has this cool water dribbling on him and he’s in hog heaven. And twice a day, I pick up the manure with a scoop—pigs
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are neat if you give them a chance—in one spot (inaudible). You pick it up and put it in a five-gallon bucket, okay? When the bucket’s full, it goes into our compost bin, buried about two inches deep, covered over. No flies, no smell. The worms take care of all of it. And the pig gets a shower bath every afternoon because you hose down his whole area and they run and squeal and they think that’s just wonderful.
DT: And you run this all the way through from—you buy a young shoat?
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CO: Yeah. Don’t care what it is. Sex doesn’t matter.
DT: And then nine months later, you harvest—slaughter?
00:31:51 – 2317
CO: About three months later, we load him up and take him down to the Dutchman’s Market. So they slaughter them, package them any way you want them. One pound packages of ground is what I have a lot of and pork chops and—and ribs, but I usually give the ribs away, I—but the pig operation was interesting. And—and is profitable. Now loading a pig is a challenge. You see, by then—by the three months time, he’s going to weigh, oh, two hundred, two hundred fifty pounds, see. And there’s no place to take a hold of a pig, you know. You can’t—you can’t force it to do a damn thing it
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doesn’t want to do and they don’t want to get in the trailer. Well, there’s many, many theories about how to get a trig—pig into a trailer. I tried them all. Once in a while, one of them would work. One was put a—a bucket over his head and he’ll back up and back him right in, see? That works one time, one pig. It never works again. I thought well, damn, I thought, well, I’ll just use this electric zapper, you know. That’ll get him in. Ha ha, he ran the other way, you know. (misc.) He wasn’t going to go in that damn trailer.
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So I went through frustrations many times. I tried old block and tackle even. Thought winch him in, you know. But that doesn’t work very well, either. You got a ramp, he (?) walked right in, you know, and you got to go. Ah, the simple way, painless, effortless. You back the trailer up the week before you want to take him to the market, okay. Put the ramp down, everything’s enclosed. And then you start putting his food in the trailer. What the hell, he walks in and eats. Drop the tailgate and drive away. Simple. Most systems that work are simple, but damn, they’re hard to think of sometimes. [Laughter]
DT: Could you give us some other examples of systems that you’ve ended up with after trying a number of different things?
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CO: Well, one of the things that you need to do if you’re going to have chickens in this part of the world is keep the raccoons out because they will come in and kill them. And they’re systematic about the killing and they don’t even eat that much, you know? So you—it’s a bit of a chore to go out every night and lock them in and go out every morning and let them out, you know. And, so I found that putting electric fence wire all the way around the pen—I had one gate. I let them run in the daytime and they come in
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at night and I close the gate, that’s easy. The—and so the raccoon starts to climb the fence. He—if he gets past the first wire, the second one’ll get him for sure. They don’t like that electric fence. So chickens are safe. Electric fence is the way to go. Now a perimeter fence are woven wire, but the—and the chicken fence is woven, but all the rest of it’s just electric fence. I got electric fence this high that keeps the goats in. Now they can jump it easily, no problem. They know that. But they’re happy, that’s their home.
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They don’t want out. What do they want out for? I can leave the gate open, they don’t come out unless I invite them out, you know. And I had a tree trimming crew in one time with a big rig, you know, the front end loader on it so they could get some high branches off the building. And they drove that into the goat yard; every goat jumped the fence and took off. [Laughter] They’re not going to stay with that thing coming in. No, I—I know they can just come and go if they really want to, but they don’t want to. They’re happy
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the way it is. They’re well treated. Have a good rapport with all the animals. I like animals and we’ll go out and take a look here in a bit.
DT: While we’re talking about goats, for example, maybe you could tell about how you raise goats and milk them and so on?
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CO: Well, they’re like most any other animal. They have to be fed and cleaned up after and tended and their feet have to be trimmed. They grow and deform, so you have to—about every six weeks or so, you—you have to trim their feet. And you train them. They all know their names, they come when called and my goats are the biggest goats you’re probably going to see. My does will weigh 200 pounds apiece or more and the bucks—well, 350. They’re big, but they’ve been selectively bred in a small herd,
00:36:54 – 2317
selectively bred for over 20 years, see. I just keep the biggest, the best producers and the ones with the best-flavored milk. You see, no two people smell the same or taste the same. No two goats’ milk is the same. And we had—one year, we took goats in to keep for the winter for somebody and one of those goats never produced milk you could drink. No matter what—you got the same diet, same everything that everybody else did, but its milk was just—it wasn’t good. So this is part of the selection process. I never have problems selling any goats; I have waiting lists for people that want goats. I don’t raise that many, you see.
DT: What breed is this?
00:37:42 – 2317
CO: They’re Nubian and they came out of Nubia and Africa. They were taken to England and crossbred with other European breeds to produce what is known as the English Nubian and they tolerate the heat the best of all the goat breeds because they came from a hot climate, originally, you see. They’ll lay out in hundred degree sunshine, you know, and take a sunbath. They don’t mind the heat at all. Other—your Alpines, you have a terrible time in the heat. And so not with—not with them.
DT: I’ve heard there’s interest in some areas in going back to, I think they call them Heirloom breeds—goats, chickens, pigs that were raised before industrial agriculture really took hold. And I’m wondering if any of the breeds that you have here have that kind of trait?
00:38:40 – 2317
CO: Well, the thing of it is, the strains that I have have been selectively bred for milk production and size and confirmation all, you know, but milk, primarily. That’s the only reason I have them is for the milk. Of course, the—the male goats, you don’t need very many of those, so they spend the winter in the freezer, you know. [Laughter]
DT: So you raise some of these males for cabrito, or…?
00:39:09 – 2317
CO: No, I don’t retail anything. You can—it’s all loser. I had a doctor visiting me—I have—I have doctor friends, too. And this one—then he said well, how much can you save by doing this? And I said save? You don’t—you don’t save anything. You spend extra for the privilege. Well, he lost interest right away. Said, hell, he ain’t going to mess with that, you know. Can’t make any money at it. Well, you can’t. I can’t. A young goat, for instance, I can sell one for two hundred dollars, okay. Now, that’s a
00:39:43 – 2317
three month old. Now for the first three months of his life, he gets a quart of goat milk a day, okay. That quart of—of goat milk—and you multiply by the outside of ninety days and see how much you’ve got invested in milk alone in that animal. And then you turn around and sell him at a loss, you know. So there’s no incentive for increasing production. And I produce for our own consumption, that’s it, because beyond that, it’s a total loser. And increasing it would just increase the expense, that’s all. Hay costs me
00:40:24 – 2317
about seven dollars a bale for alfalfa and that’s the cheapest I can buy it. To get it at that, I have to buy 20 tons at one time. Okay, that’s a truckload. Then I have to pay to have it off loaded and stored and I have to have a place to store it. And so that’s what I do. Because if I have to buy locally, I’m going to get any crappy hay they’ve been able to pick up somewhere and sell it to me at top dollar—ten dollars a bale, you know. So I had that experience a few times and said there’s got to be a better way. So I buy directly from the grower in New Mexico. He loads the truck and they bring it down and—and I have a
00:41:11 – 2317
crew waiting to offload it. But cheap it isn’t, see. That’s the thing. I have about seven dollars a bale in it by then.
DT: Well, I guess feeding these animals; you mostly talked about the ones with four legs. Can you talk about the tilapia that you raise?
00:41:30 – 2317
CO: Okay. Tilapia. Well, I decided I’d like to raise fish. I read about the—that this was a feasible project. I think it was a, oh, one of the—one of the magazines had an article on tilapia. I thought well, that’s something we could do. So I thought I’d build a tank to put them in, but before I did, I went over to Ingram to an ichthyology research center, talked to the ichthyologist about it. And I said well, I’m thinking about raising some tilapia in a tank. And he said well, he said I don’t know why you want to do that. He said you could go down to Cal Bay—Calaveras and—on a cold day when the—these
00:42:17 – 2317
are tropical fish, so you walk around the discharge tubes of the power station and get the warm water. And he said with a throw net, he says, you can—you can catch all you want. I said well, hell, I’ll go down there in January when we’re having a cold front and I’ll fill my freezer. Oh, he said, I don’t think you want to do that. I said what, is it illegal? And he said, no, no, it’s not illegal. Then he said you have to remember that that—those lakes are drainage basins for all of San Antonio. He says there’s stuff in that water; you don’t eat that much of. You don’t want to fill your freezer. You eat a few,
00:42:53 – 2317
that’s all right, but. And I said well, thanks just the same. You’ve answered the question. So I came home and built a tank. Now everything you see here, except the house, the garage and one tin barn, I did myself with my own hands. The landscaping, the grading—this was cow pasture when we bought it and I contracted the house and garage and the rest of it, I did it myself. But I was younger then, I was only in my 60’s and 70’s, you know.
DT: And this tank that you built for your tilapia, how big is it? How is it configured?
00:43:30 – 2317
CO: Well, it’s 18 feet in diameter, about 44 inches deep. It’s now in a greenhouse, I built a greenhouse around it, see. I had it before I had the greenhouse. And I raised 400 three, four, five-pound fish in there. And we just finished harvesting them; we do it once a year. And I have friends and neighbors come and we have assembly line, works real well. And then we have a big dinner afterward. We don’t serve fish that day, though. [Laughter] And then all the waste products go in the garden for fertilizer.
DT: And so you kill the fish and then you’re filleting them?
00:44:15 – 2317
CO: They’re filleted and skinned, ready—ready to go on the stove.
DT: Do you freeze some it or…?
00:44:21 – 2317
CO: Pardon?
DT: Do you freeze some of the fish or…?
00:44:23 – 2317
CO: Oh, we freeze all of them, yeah.
DT: All of it, okay.
00:44:25 – 2317
CO: Yeah. Then you just reach in and grab a fish and throw it in the pan.
DT: Do you do any vacuum sealing or…?
00:44:33 – 2317
CO: No. No. They’re double wrapped—freezer wrapped first and then brown wrap and they keep fine.
DT: How did you choose tilapia rather than catfish or other…?
00:44:45 – 2317
CO: Well, you can raise catfish in a same tank, a same environment and you can raise them with tilapia. The first year, we did that and we ended up feeding the catfish to the dog and we ate the tilapia. They’re a better fish. Not greasy, it’s very dry, very lean and very mild flavored. So we preferred the tafia—tilapia by far to catfish. But we went the route, we tried. That—that was one of those that didn’t work too well, project that didn’t fly, you know.
DT: Well, maybe you can tell us again about some of the experiments that didn’t fly because it seems like those are some of the most valuable lessons.
00:45:29 – 2317
CO: Well, cheeses that didn’t work and catfish that we didn’t eat and pigs we couldn’t load. You know, we had a lot of problems in this area. And then our water system—the water here is alkaline and it has a high concentration of calcium—calcium carbonate and if you spray it on plants, they turn white from the calcium, you know, and then the photosynthesis stops. You lose your garden. And so I’ve put in a very elaborate drip system, drip irrigation. That’s the—only went to the roots, okay. Well, that’s labor intensive to install and to maintain and to operate. It’s a pain in the butt, okay. But it works. So then I read about s—somebody that claimed that magnets would change this. Well, I thought oh, come on, you know. So I went on the Internet and the scientists say no. Magnets have no impact whatever on calcium, you know. Iron, maybe. But you’re
00:46:44 – 2317
just wasting your time and money. But they kept—someone else kept insisting, well, try it and see. So I thought well, I’ll get a magnet, by God, and try it. No more calcium on the leaves. Now it does something, I don’t know what. So I—I bought a bunch of magnets. Now one mistake I made, I put them on the fish tank. Well, any concrete project that you have has some porosity, no matter how careful or what you paint on it to seal it, sooner or later, it will develop some leaks. Minor leaks, you know. It’s
00:47:24 – 2317
inevitable. But as long as the fish were in there and the water was—had the calcium in it, between the two, the manures and the calcium would—kept all the little leaks stopped up. Never leaked—no leaks. Hell, I—I put magnets on the line and the damn water ran down the road. The tank leaked so bad. I said well, that’s a mistake. It apparently does something to draw the—the—well, they claim, you know, clean your water pipes. If you got calcium buildup in your water pipes, put the magnets on and it’ll all go away. Well, I can’t vouch for that but I know it raised hell with my tank. So I took the magnets off the
00:48:09 – 2317
fish tank, but I have them everywhere else. And I can use sprinkler system now in the garden and in the greenhouse, never get that white on the—on the leaves. I don’t presume to know how it does it or what it does. The scientists say there’s no way, but it does something.
DT: Well, you had mentioned this tilapia tank is inside a greenhouse and maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you’ve learned to grow crops through the winter in your greenhouse?
00:48:43 – 2317
CO: Well, I have a nursery tank. Then we harvest them all the last weekend in October because deer season starts on the first of November and nobody’s available, okay? My wife and I originally did it all ourselves and then we gave away half of them. Then I thought well, hell, if we’re going to give them away, let them come and help harvest them. So they do. They come from far and wide (?). We have a big—oh, I think last year, we fed around 25 people, you know. Had lots of hands, everybody knows what to do and how to do it and you got filleters that are real experts with it. No problem.
00:49:21 – 2317
Electric knives, I provide. You have to have two sets of those electric knives because they get so hot because they stand there—they start at eight in the morning and—and finish by noon, if we’re lucky. It’s sometimes one or two o’clock. There’s a lot of fish. We had a cattle baron from Wyoming here one year and visiting and he—he wanted to get in on it. He knew how to fillet fish, he said. I said okay, well, come on in. So we put him to work, filleting, he was one of three that there were filleting. And one of the
00:49:57 – 2317
comments I made—he was about half through—I said nobody ever believes I got 400 big fish in that tank. He says I believe it. [Laughter] But it’s a success, a total success. You see, a pound and a half of feed will produce a pound of fish. Now no other livestock will do that for you. And the other—they have to have temperature control of the water, 70 to 90 degrees is the range at which they can metabolize food. Below that, they can’t process
00:50:32 – 2317
it. You see, they’re—they’re dependent on the ambient water temperature for their body temperature. [Phone ringing] They don’t generate heat. Okay, they’re dependent on what exists and, as a result, if the water temperature drops too far or goes too high, they can no longer metabolize the food. Their system shuts down. So you have to—temperature control and after we harvest all the adults—in the meantime, I have trapped the young out of the tank and put in a nursery tank for next year’s crop. We’ll see those
00:51:07 – 2317
as we go out back. But it’s successful operation. Now this year, when I took the fish out, as usual, the tank began to leak. So I have dolomite, which is a clay that is used in well drilling and other uses. It expands and forms a gel and stops up the holes, so I had to throw in some dolomite and within an hour, well, all leaks were stopped.
DT: Do you maintain the temperature for the tilapia in this tank by having it within the greenhouse?
00:51:44 – 2317
CO: The big tank, the greenhouse does it, yes. And the little tank, which is a nursery tank, I have heaters in it this time of year—if it’s the summertime, I don’t need anything, you know. But…
DT: Well, tell us about the greenhouse and how big it is, how you chose the configuration?
00:52:03 – 2317
CO: Well, I ordered it mail order, do it yourself kit, you know. The damnedest truckload of pipe you ever saw in your life, you know. No instructions, not a damn piece of paper. I’d had a picture of what it was supposed to look like. Took me just about the whole summer to get that damn greenhouse put up and operational, you know. Because you had to figure out which pipe fit into what other pipe to make it work, you know? Had it all laid out and a lot of things didn’t fit and didn’t know what the hell to do with
00:52:40 – 2317
them. One of them, I had to call the guy. I had a crank. Said, what the hell is this? What are you going to with that crank? So I called him up. I said what the hell is this for? And he says well, he says that’s the way you roll the sides up. [Laughter] The sides roll up for ventilation, see, and I hadn’t gotten the—the top on yet, see, so I didn’t have anything to roll up. But cut and try.
DT: What do you grow inside your greenhouse?
00:53:13 – 2317
CO: Pardon?
DT: What do you grow inside your greenhouse?
00:53:16 – 2317
CO: Well, peppers, tomatoes, salad greens. Our winter garden, I haven’t gotten it done this year, but this is normally what we have in there, as well as the fish, of course.
DT: And is it—are you growing in soil or a media or…?
00:53:34 – 2317
CO: Soil and a mixture that I mix in the cement mixer, put in big pots and works great. And I can fertilize them with the fish tank, you know. Works good. My fish has—my fish tank has a center drain and when I have fish in it, twice a day, I open that drain and the effluent, which just the can—the bottom of the fish tank slopes to the center drain and all the heavy materials end up there. And they irrigate and fertilize my pasture, see.
DT: Now I understand that you’ve also got an orchard, is that right?
00:54:18 – 2317
CO: Well, I had a small orchard, yeah, it’s just a mixed orchard. Little bit of everything and a few nut trees. It’s been pretty much neglected this year because when my wife died, I’ve been trying to get the whole world back in order, you know. That’s very disruptive. And some of the things got neglected. Your time is—is spread so thin that you can only do so much, you know, in a day and you do the things that must be done and then if there’s any time left over, why then you take care of some of the details, you know.
DT: What sort of fruits and nuts do you grow?
00:54:57 – 2317
CO: Well, pecans and walnuts, both—English walnuts, the big—never get one of them, the squirrels get them all. I need a—I need a about a 14 year old boy to sit out there with a—a pistol or a shotgun and take care of the squirrels. I can handle it on this side. I see them and the dog sees them, but they come in from the neighbors over there. I never see them come, but the ground is just covered with half shells, you know. I get a big crop of walnuts; I don’t get to harvest them. And they’ll take them before they’re ripe even, you know. So…
DT: Do you have the same problem with the fruit trees?
00:55:37 – 2317
CO: Yes, yeah. Every once in a while, you’ll see a peach up on a—on an oak tree, you know, where it’s been carried up there by a squirrel. Not quite as bad as—as the nuts. They—they—they prefer the nuts. But figs, I still have a couple of fig trees and some pears. Had some apples—apples don’t do well here. There’s soil organisms here that attack them and about the time they get into production, they die, so I’ve lost most of my apples. But the pears survive all right.
DT: Well, tell me. You mentioned that there are these soil organisms. Some folks would probably use a pesticide to take care of that problem.
00:56:20 – 2317
CO: Well, yes, there are chemicals.
DT: What do you do?
00:56:23 – 2317
CO: Nothing. I put animal manures on and that’s it. Oak chips. Now I have a big pile of oak chips on the property next door, which I also own, and the power company has to prune oak trees in this area that are in the power lines, you know? So they have a crews out with all the equipment to prune and chip all this material. Now when they get a truckload of it, they have to pay to dump it. I don’t charge them anything to dump it here, see. And we use those chips for mulch, too, you see. They’re very good. They’re acidic also, see.
DT: And is there—is it the chips themselves or an organism among the chips that helps protect some of these trees?
00:57:12 – 2317
CO: No, it’s the chips themselves are acidic because tannic acid is one of the components—they used oak bark to tan leather with way back, hundred years ago, because it’s full of tannic acid. And that acid benefits the soil. And they break down slowly so you don’t have to put them on too often. Works very well. Due to do that about now, after my tilling is all through.
DT: Well, it sounds as if when you run into a pest problem, you treat it with compost or with chippings?
00:57:50 – 2317
CO: Well, we—I use a dormant oil in the wintertime, which is good, plus the fact if your nutrition is high for the plant, they—they develop their own pesticides. They repel the insects. You get healthy plants—if you got a sick plant, man, that’s where all the bugs will go. So you try to keep all of your products healthy and with the soil and nutriments they get here—and the tomato plants, they get six feet tall and don’t travel at all, you know.
DT: And do you raise some plants to trap pests or to attract or distract them?
00:58:27 – 2317
CO: No, no, I don’t do that. It isn’t necessary. When I do have to spray for pests, there are two things. One, I have a garlic spray that repels them. One year, we had a grasshopper infestation. God, they came through here, clouds of them, and they ate everything, you know, except the oleander, which is poisonous. And, damn, they just about wiped me out before I figured out what to do. But, called the Ag agent and they say well, you can try this poison and this poison and that, but he said if you find nothing that works, let me know, you know. Yeah. In other words, nothing stops the
00:59:10 – 2317
grasshoppers. But a garlic spray will repel them and that’s all I care. They can go somewhere else and have dinner. So I have garlic spray concentrate. Th—they—they sell it. I made some up to test some first, before I bought some because I thought, well, I wonder if it really does work, you know. So many things they advertise don’t work. So, yeah, I made some up and, yep, sure enough, they—they didn’t touch it. So I bought a gallon—85 dollars a gallon for the concentrate—and sprayed everything with it. No more grasshopper problem.
DT: Are there other…?
(misc.)
[End of Reel 2317]
(misc.)
DT: Mr. Ogle, earlier you were telling us about some of the trial and error that you’ve gone through to learn your craft here. I was wondering if you could also talk about some of the successful things that you’ve learned through that process.
00:01:12 – 2318
CO: Yes. I have a few of those. One of them I’m especially proud of is in my goat habitat out there, their sleeping area. They have an inherited trait that is little bit disconcerting when you’re trying to keep a sanitary environment is they urinate in their bedding. Now dairy goats that you leave the wet bedding will get mastitis that’ll destroy the goat. So every day, you took out the wet hay that was their bed and put in fresh hay every blessed day for them to sleep in so that they didn’t get masi—mastitis. And one
00:01:53 – 2318
year I thought well, why don’t I just keep adding to it, you know. Put fresh hay on top and maybe I don’t have to do this every day. Well, that was such a mat of material at the end of the season; I had to use a tractor to get the stuff out. It was worse than doing it every day. So I said well, that doesn’t work. So at the end of fifteen years of frustration with wet bedding, I came up with a solution. They now sleep in a small area with rubber mats and over top of it, at about, mmm, must be 38 inches, the height of the goat’s back, I
00:02:38 – 2318
have a—a roof over it, like a shelf, okay, over their sleeping area. Now they can—they can go in there easily, walk right straight in. They love it; it’s secure, cozy and draft free. But if they want to urinate, they can’t assume the position. They bump their head. No more wet beds. But it took me fifteen years to think of that. Works beautiful. Clean
00:03:10 – 2318
beds all the time now. [Laughter] No more wet hay. Now that won’t work in a cold climate, you understand. It will—well, it would work if you used hay instead of rubber mats, yeah, that would work. But I don’t even use hay in the bedding at all. So this—this I’m proud of. That—that really solved a nasty problem. But…
DT: What were some of the other innovations you’ve come up?
00:03:40 – 2318
CO: Okay, well, I bought a fine milking machine. My wife developed mastit—or she developed carpal tunnel from milking because she did the milking. And so I bought a milking machine, and one made in Germany. It’s just an outstanding machine, beautiful. And hooked it up and milked the goats with it and got mechanically induced mastitis. Now you’ll find that in all the goat magazines, many, many milking machines for sale. This is why. The—it’s too harsh. They’re designed for cows. So I saw an ad in a
00:04:25 – 2318
magazine, goat magazine, this man had an 85-goat dairy in Wisconsin and he oh—had it for sale. And I thought now, that man knows how to milk the goats in the milking machine because all the references I could find gave me the cow specifications. All the people I talked to said well, you get mastitis if you use a machine. Well, I found that out, okay. So I called the man on the phone and I said you’ve got to know what the secret is. He said I’ll tell you, it’s very simple. Here it is. And he told me to change the cups to a smaller diameter one that’s readily available, American made, and the inflations, which is
00:05:09 – 2318
the rubber inserts inside that actually do the milking, from New Zealand, would you believe it? (inaudible), you know. So I did just what he said. He said then you increase the pulsation rate to 90 pulsations a minute. Little goat nurses faster, see, and you also reduce the vacuum from 13 inches of mercury to 8 or 9 at the most. He said you won’t have any trouble. Beautiful. So that’s what I use now and that’s nowhere written anywhere. You can’t find the reference anywhere that will tell you that. He’d had a cow dairy before, then he got—went to goats because they got—they’re easier to work with.
00:06:02 – 2318
And then they got too old for goats, then he had to sell that. And he wanted to know what formula I used for my grain mix for dairy ration, so I mailed him the formula and a box—five-pound box of feed to—good old boy. He told me what I needed to know. Nobody else that I ever talked to knows. And every goat magazine you want to pick up has got milking machines, used milking machines, goat milking for sale because this is the problem. They use too much vacuum and the wrong cups. Now those—the ones made in Germany are beautiful, but they’re too big.
DT: So your innovations partly came, it seems, from being observant, noticing the position of the goats to urinate and also listening to people who…
00:06:57 – 2318
CO: Well, yeah. Finding someone who knew. That was the secret because most don’t know. I talked—oh, hell, I talked to all the people who sell the equipment and everything else, you know. They didn’t know. They give me the same old stuff. Wrong. Okay. Now my milk cooler, the smallest cooler you can buy for milk is a 50-gallon drum. Well, that’s much oversized when you get at most a gallon of milk a day, maybe, you know. Or maybe two. Fifty gallons is ridiculous. So I had to make a milk cooler. So I took an Igloo chest and some copper tubing and I wrapped the copper tubing into coils around a
00:07:43 – 2318
five gallon water bucket and inserted them in the Igloo cooler and hooked it up to an old refrigerator compressor. I’ve got columns of ice now and I set the bucket of milk right in the column of ice for a quick cool. And you have to cool milk quickly in order to keep the bacteria count from going up, no matter how carefully you handled it. And you need water immersion; ice water is what it needs. You can put the jars or cans or containers in a freezer, it doesn’t cool it fast enough. So I have a milk cooler that is total innovation all the way. Beautiful, works fine, outstanding. And it—when I wanted to charge it off, I
00:08:36 – 2318
didn’t know how else to put the Freon in, you know, because it’s different, see. So I got—finally got—prevailed upon one of the primary refrigeration companies from Fredericksburg to come out and charge it for me. I’d soldered it and I put it all together, see, but now we got to put the Freon in. I had Freon and I had the gauges, but I didn’t know how much, you know. Well, he didn’t know either so he burned up my compressor. You see, it’s a liquid that you’re pumping. You pump a liquid. It vaporizes in the tubing and that’s the cooling effect that you get. And then the vapor goes back to the compressor to recompress to a liquid and recirculate it, okay? That’s—I understood
00:09:22 – 2318
the system, okay. That—well, the problem is, he put so much Freon in that the liquid went all the way back to the compressor, compressor can’t—made—designed for vapor, can’t handle liquid. Destroyed the valves. So I tore it all out, got another compressor, hooked it all back up again. And then I kept thinking what the hell am I going to do now? How will I know how much is enough? So there was an ad in the paper, they were conducting a training course in Fredericksburg—in Kerrville on refrigeration. So I thought ha ha.
(misc.)
CO: So I…
(misc.)
M: So I’m going to unplug. No sound for a while. Is that all right?
DT: I think that that’ll work, what do you think?
M: I—I think we could just—why don’t I do this—why don’t I just get sound with this (inaudible).
DT: You know, if you’re not getting noise, why don’t we just shoot sound with it?
(misc.)
00:10:36 – 2318
CO: …on these doors, you might find interesting. You have to look at it from the backside. It’s an innovation because they’re all framed with PVC pipe, no wood. Simple, easy, cheaper than lumber. The top rail is steel—steel pipe, it carries the load and everything else is PVC. You don’t even glue it together because when you tack the skin on, that holds them together. So you—ever get three dollars for two by fours that look like (inaudible), you know. That’s why I can’t make a door out of that. So all my doors now are made of PVC framing. Twelve-foot doors out in one of the storage buildings, PVC. Works fine.
(misc.)
00:11:48 – 2318
CO: Nice lightweight doors. And that’s a—that’s an innovation.
DT: Here now, Big the pig?
00:11:58 – 2318
CO: Pig, no, no pig yet.
(misc.)
00:12:10 – 2318
CO: Those ridges you see there? That’s where the (inaudible). Of course, now I irrigate with sprinkles because I have magnets on the (?), okay? Here’s one of the magnets right here. (inaudible) These are magnets, okay. And that makes the difference. The scientists say no way could be. It does something. I don’t know what it does.
(misc.)
00:12:59 – 2318
CO: (inaudible) And they needed feeding and they need mulching. A lot of care they didn’t get. Now, you see this disc hanging here? That’s the best bird repellent that was ever invented. I have them over the berry patches everywhere and this is the on—first year. I’ve tried everything else. That’s what these tall posts are for. I’ve had ribbons that fluttered and all kinds of good things, but the birds got more of the berries than I did. But when I put that damn thing up—I read about that.
DT: What kind of berries are you growing?
00:13:38 – 2318
CO: Pardon?
DT: What kind of berries are you growing?
00:13:40 – 2318
CO: Oh, okay. Those are red raspberries; these are boysenberries and black raspberries.
DT: And do you make preserves or jellies?
00:13:50 – 2318
CO: Freeze most of it and make cobblers. I like cobblers or pies. But it’s neglected. Something had to give; I couldn’t keep up with all of it.
(misc.)
00:14:11 – 2318
CO: My orchards over there. Those tall trees are—are the pear trees that survived. (?) they do well. The apple trees died.
DT: Looks like you have a persimmon tree.
00:14:21 – 2318
CO: New persimmon tree over there, two of them.
(misc.)
DT: Is this about as close as we’ll get to the goats?
(inaudible)
00:14:53 – 2318
CO: (?) house, that the next owner didn’t love. Damn goats. Come in.
DT: Thank you.
00:15:03 – 2318
CO: Well, this is the milking room and the reason for all these tubs out here, the floor gets scrubbed after every—every milking, the floors—scrub them. And I’ll call in a couple girls and you can meet them.
(misc.)
00:15:34 – 2318
CO: I’ll show you that compressor that…
(misc.)
00:15:42 – 2318
CO: Okay. Here’s the milk cooler I told you about. You need the columns of ice and the milk buckets sit right down in there. The PVC is only there to keep the buckets from tipping. One of a kind. But this guy told me, this professor, says you add Freon and watch the frost line. That’s the point at which the liquid is vaporizing. And you watch and when it gets over here—this is the return line, it goes back to the compressor—when it starts freezing here, stop. And you got it. He says the reason he knew—the others
00:16:26 – 2318
don’t know because he’s a—you got formulas for all this, see—the reason he knew is he had worked in Florida where the fishing fleet wanted to refrigerate compartments of the boat, see. Different size, different shapes, different requirements. And he learned that this is how you do it. You won’t get that in a book, either, but it’s essential.
DT: From Florida to Texas, from fish boats to a goat dairy.
00:16:56 – 2318
CO: And I—I put this in the trailer, rushed over to Kerrville and said professor; I got a class project for you. And he was very helpful. Now everything in here is stainless steel or glass and sanitized and a separator. If you’re going to make butter, you have to separate it.
DT: Can you tell us about making butter?
00:17:22 – 2318
CO: Oh, yeah. Well, first you have to make cream. You get cream out of goat’s milk because the fat globules are so fine that it—the cream doesn’t rise to the top. So you have to have a separator. So you separate it, get your cream out, then you churn the butter and agitate it (inaudible) the—the cream until it becomes butter. It’s fairly simple process. And cheeses—here are some cheeses that are aging. Here’s one with some herbs in it, here’s a plain one. This is bleu cheese, which is aging. When it’s two or three years old, it’s even better.
DT: Do you also have kefir?
00:18:13 – 2318
CO: What?
DT: Do you also have kefir?
00:18:15 – 2318
CO: Yeah, well, that’s at the house. I’ll give you a sample of kefir and I’ll give you the wherewithal of making it, if you’re interested.
DT: I’d be curious.
00:18:22 – 2318
CO: Because you can’t—well, it’s real hard to find the real stuff. They sell what they call kefir in the health food stores in a powdered—an inoculant. And they’ve taken part of the ingredients of kefir and put it in that. But it’s not the whole product; it’s just part of it. What I have is the original from (?) and it’s different. It’s kefir.
DT: Well, let’s go see the goats where all this good stuff comes from.
00:18:53 – 2318
CO: Okay, okay. I’ll call them in.
(misc.)
00:19:09 – 2318
CO: Scarlet, Sheba. Come in girls. Just Scarlet and Sheba. Scarlet and Sheba. Come on in. Come on. We’ll bring them in and put them on the stand and let you have a close look. These are milk goats. In you go, girls. Get up on your stands, come on. Up you go. That’s a good girl. Well, she says there isn’t any grain in there. [Laughter]
(misc.)
00:20:13 – 2318
CO: You got to get up on the stand if you want any of this. You want some of this? Get up on the stand. Go on.
(inaudible)
00:20:24 – 2318
CO: Scarlet? Scarlet (inaudible). That’s Scarlet. Get out of there, come on over here. Come on. Scarlet. Help. There’s something different here. Up you go. You get up on the stand, come on. (?) Come on, here you go. Go on, up you go. Come on. Don’t usually have this problem. That’s a good girl. Now that’s a milk goat, she’ll run over 200 pounds.
(misc.)
00:21:12 – 2318
CO: The first year, so she’s not producing as heavily as she will next year. This is first (inaudible) also, she’s dried. I dried her up. I have too much milk.
DT: And for how many years can you…?
00:21:30 – 2318
CO: Oh, anywhere from nine to twelve.
DT: And each will produce a quart or half a gallon?
00:21:39 – 2318
CO: Oh, they’ll produce a gallon apiece.
DT: A gallon apiece.
00:21:42 – 2318
CO: Yeah. In their second year.
DT: And how does the butterfat compare to cow?
00:21:47 – 2318
CO: Well, it’s higher than most cows and certainly any that you can buy because it’s all standardized, you know. We’ll give you a sample when we get up to the house. I’m proud of the milk.
DT: And you milk them once a day?
00:22:08 – 2318
CO: Once a day. They should be milked twice a day, but I couldn’t fit it into the schedule. So I milk the young one and—and, of course, when they’re three months old, they all have people waiting for them (inaudible)
DT: Well, you said that you couldn’t fit it in with the schedule. What is a typical day like for you?
00:22:32 – 2318
CO: Well, you get up and fix your breakfast, then you go out and do the chores. Take care of your feeding all the animals and cleaning the pens, and if you milk, you would milk then. And if you have young stock, you have to feed them separately—differently. And then you go up and tend the garden, whatever needs to be done up there, take care of the tilling and weeding and mowing and hoeing and all the rest, you know. Then you go in and do the laundry. Put that away.
DT: And it’s ten o’clock by now. In the morning.
00:23:09 – 2318
CO: At least.
DT: Maybe later.
00:23:11 – 2318
CO: Sometimes closer to noon. And they just had to open bales, all the—all the feed. Spread it out, clean the pens, you know. Goes on and on.
DT: Do you take a break in the afternoon and then go back out in the evening?
00:23:27 – 2318
CO: You get a break in the afternoon, but some—between one and four, I got some free time unless I have to mow that day. This field needs mowing right now over next door.
DT: How do you spend your free time during the afternoon?
00:23:43 – 2318
CO: Well, sometimes I sit down to read and go to sleep. That’s been known to happen.
DT: A little nap is good.
00:23:51 – 2318
CO: Well, I check the email and see what’s going on in the world. Check the news. Read. And by then it’s four o’clock, time to go out and milk. And you have to check everyone’s food, bedding, check all that stuff again and water. Be sure everything is in order and milk and you clean up after you milk. You clean up all the equipment (inaudible) some of that.
(misc.)
00:24:28 – 2318
CO: This is the best (inaudible) the best you can buy. This is the unit that comes with the (inaudible). It’s a beautiful unit, you see, just great. That’s the one that gives you mastitis, okay, and you can compare them. See the difference in the—in this configuration?
DT: Sure.
00:25:10 – 2318
CO: And the insert, which is this thing, comes from New Zealand, (inaudible). That combination doesn’t create mastitis, this one does. Mechanically induce—induced. No bacteria involved. Look, it’s (inaudible). And then you cut the vacuum down and increase the pulsation, right? It works. This is on wheels for my convenience. But it’s (inaudible) it’s a good one. I made the base on it. Put some wheels on it, I like wheels.
DT: Another innovation.
00:26:06 – 2318
CO: Yeah. Everything is air dried after it’s sanitized, no—no dishtowels on them. You did it. You all through? You’ll have a good rapport with the animals, yeah. They’re nice guys.
DT: Can you talk a little bit about humane treatment of animals and things like pets?
00:26:36 – 2318
CO: Well, you have to respect the fact that…
(misc.)
00:26:39 – 2318
CO: They are living creatures and I talk to them. They all have their names and they know the routine and they’re not unhappy. They’re never abused. You do? You want one of those? After dinner mints. Pampered goats. Okay.
(misc.)
00:27:23 – 2318
CO: Yes, Scarlet, I’m coming to help you. [Laughter]
(misc.)
00:27:39 – 2318
CO: There you go. Okay. There isn’t any water there, have to get a drink somewhere else guys. Out you go. Out. Everybody out, come on. Out. They used to get a drink of water there. Out. Find the training tool. Well, this is a device I rarely have to use (inaudible). But their familiar path, they—they know it. See where they’ve gone? Now it’s everybody out, okay. Let’s go. Come on. Get you home. They know what I’m saying, see.
(misc.)
00:28:46 – 2318
CO: Uh uh. Uh uh. Hey, hey, no. Says don’t I get to come in too? No, out—out you go, Scarlet. Out, come on, out. This is the nursery. They come in here to give birth and we monitor them and assist them, when needed. And then it becomes a—the nursery after—afterwards. We—this gate swings across here and they—you can funnel them in and out. And if your camera is capable, we’ll walk on through here.
DT: This is where you store your alfalfa?
00:29:42 – 2318
CO: Well, this is part of it, yeah. This is my working supply here. Chicken yard’s in here. No chickens in at the moment.
DT: Maybe we could go see the greenhouse in the…
00:30:07 – 2318
CO: Well, we’re wor—we’re—we—we’re working on—we’re working it back that way, yeah.
DT: Good. Please do.
00:30:12 – 2318
CO: Right. Another innovation I want to show you. You see, when you work with grains, you get bugs, right? They love grain. So to keep from having bugs in the grain without poisoning it, you use this. This is CO2 and then on top of the barrel, there’s two holes, okay? One of them is fitted, so that this probe goes to the bottom of the barrel, okay? The other one, I have a piece of bent tubing that goes through the other opening, over a votive lamp—candle, okay? Now light the candle, turn this on, very low pressure and it slowly displaces all the oxygen. And that’s the end. The CO2, which is heavy, it
00:31:08 – 2318
comes up from the bottom, displaces all the oxygen. When the candle goes out, it’s full. Okay? You won’t read about this anywhere else, either. Yeah, that took me a while to figure that out, but I had CO2 from my beer operation, see. I make beer, too, you know.
DT: Please tell us about the beer.
00:31:32 – 2318
CO: Yeah, well, it’s up at the house. We’ll give you samples.
DT: Thank you.
00:31:39 – 2318
CO: And I have a generator in there, Flash KW, helps to keep the fish alive in time of crisis. Then we have up here the (inaudible). It’s periodic, right, up to eight, ten hours; we’ll be out of power. They take it over to the city first, you know. That’s where the people are. Us animals in the country, it don’t—it don’t matter. Soft water. All the water that we clean our utensils and equipment with is soft water.
DT: Is your still here as well?
00:32:20 – 2318
CO: No, the still’s up at the house. I don’t distill the water for the animals.
(misc.)
00:32:30 – 2318
CO: Okay?
(misc.)
00:32:43 – 2318
CO: Have to snap this lock on that door because the donkey can open that. She can flip that thing open and have her nose in the bottom of one of those feed barrels so fast you wouldn’t believe it. And they’re all in; they’ve been out all morning. They’re an assortment of—of flock and I normally have had buff orpingtons, which is the tan colored ones, but they were getting old and a friend of mine gave me these. And the way she got them, she had been doing chickens and the post office knew it. Somebody sent this shipment of baby chicks through the mail to somebody else as a joke and they were a
00:33:40 – 2318
mixed lot from one of the hatcheries. So there was no—no telling what you got. And they called her because the people they were sent to wouldn’t accept them. They said no way, we don’t—no use for them. It was a joke, see? So they called her and asked her if she’d take them, so she took them home and divided them up. We got some of them, somebody else got some of—hell, I think it was 50 of them.
DT: And they’re layers or fryers?
00:34:06 – 2318
CO: Yeah, oh yeah. Mostly layers, yeah. Right now, the season’s off, but I have a timer that gives them light. They need 14 hours of light and the endocrine system is stimulated then by the light and they lay as if it were spring. So we con them a bit. Worm bin. This is where the—this is my compost.
DT: Maybe you could start from scratch—what is this again? You were telling me?
00:34:38 – 2318
CO: This is the compost pit. Everything that something doesn’t eat, including the pig manure, goes in here. There’s no flies and no smell. It’s seeded with those red Egyptian worms, see. They break everything down. And then, in the spring, we put it in the garden, worms and all, except for a small block in the end. Then we—you keep the area moist and we wash our tools and equipment here. Yike. You dig down; you’d probably find some worms, unless it’s too dry.
[Rooster crowing]
00:35:18 – 2318
CO: Usually they’re like spaghetti in there, but I haven’t put any feed in lately.
[Rooster crowing]
00:35:31 – 2318
CO: May be wetter up o—over this way, so. Find a worm? Huh.
DT: It wiggled away.
00:35:44 – 2318
CO: They’re in there, but they’re being a little shy. I’ll water it now because
(misc.)
[Rooster crowing]
(misc.)
00:36:13 – 2318
CO: That’s worm (?), what you got in your hands. They sell it by the pound down at the nursery. I need to bring some more goat manure.
(Inaudible)
00:36:38 – 2318
CO: It’s pretty dry.

DT: Can they drink too? Maybe we ought to take a look at the greenhouse here. Running a little short on time and I don’t want to.
00:36:48 – 2318
CO: Yeah.
(misc.)
[Phone ringing]
00:37:13 – 2318
CO: These are limes that—Philipino limes. These are the best oranges that I’ve ever eaten. And see that hole in the bark? Grasshoppers ate that two years ago, we had that grasshopper infestation.
[Speaking at the same time]
00:37:37 – 2318
CO: A hell of a crop of those.
DT: Do you do some grafting?
00:37:41 – 2318
CO: No. No, I didn’t (inaudible). Just for fun. This is a pepper plant. But I—most of this has all been cleared out. I have tomatoes and—should have. I should have tomatoes about ready to bear right here. Didn’t get to it. Need some help. Can’t find any help. The last man I called out to help me with the grounds, you know, he advertised in the paper. He said well, I get 35 dollars an hour. I said well, you’ll have to get it somewhere else. Well—in town, he can. Small yards they can wheel in with a mower and an edger, get fifty dollars for that small one and move on and they can do three or four an hour, you
00:38:23 – 2318
know. Then he probably does average 35 dollars an hour. He doesn’t have to drive six miles in the country to get it either. This is the fish tank, there’s no fish in here.
DT: And what are these discs?
00:38:38 – 2318
CO: Okay. Those throwaway rotating biological filter. They’re the habitat for bacteria that breaks down the liquid waste. These bacteria exist in the bottom of all lakes and streams and their efficiency is in proportion to the oxygen they can get. So you build a habitat and rotate it and in doing that, you increase their efficiency 400 percent because they’re getting all that oxygen, see. But you have to keep them wet, so that’s why you rotate, see. Down to get the water and up to get the air and down to get some water, you know. I didn’t invent it, I built them.
DT: And you built this greenhouse as well. This is the one you were telling us about.
00:39:23 – 2318
CO: Double—double layer roof for insulation.
DT: So during the winter, it would be like this. During the summer, you’d pull down these screens?
00:39:32 – 2318
CO: Yes, I could let that down if the fish tank gets—starts getting too hot. Didn’t have to use it this year.
DT: Can you show us the nursery tank that’s…?
CO: What tank?
DT: Could you show us the nursery tank?
00:39:45 – 2318
CO: Over on the (?)
DT: Good.
(misc.)
00:39:59 – 2318
CO: Catch raccoons in that sometimes.
(misc.)
00:40:08 – 2318
CO: And here you get to see a biological dish in operation. The fish say they’re hungry. They’re always hungry. I keep the food floating to keep the ants out and keep the sun off, too.
(misc.)
CO: That’s next year’s crop.
DT: How old are these?
00:40:44 – 2318
CO: About 350, around there.
DT: And how old are they?
00:40:48 – 2318
CO: Oh, I don’t know. A few months.
DT: Which they might weigh a quarter of a pound?
00:40:54 – 2318
CO: Oh, if that. No, they won’t even weigh that. They’re pretty small. But I have to keep them small to keep them in that tank. But without that rotating biological disc, I’d just have just two or three of those in there. Couldn’t handle it, you know. But it breaks down the ways.

DT: And do you have an aerator as well?

00:41:18 – 2318
CO: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That little pump over there on the far side, you hear it running? That pumps air.

DT: And how will you transfer them from the nursery tanks to the main tanks?

00:41:30 – 2318
CO: With a net. Going over here. As soon as the water temperature reaches 60 degrees—or 70 degrees in the—in the summer, in spring, then they go in here and get fed. Oh, they’ll eat three times a day. They grow.

DT: And you harvest them when they’re a pound or two?
00:41:50 – 2318
CO: Oh, no, they’ll weigh three, four pounds. They’re big fish.
(misc.)
DT: Is this another greenhouse, too?
00:42:05 – 2318
CO: No, that’s a warehouse. (inaudible)
(misc.)
CO: It seems to me (inaudible)
DT: What would she look at?
(misc.)
00:42:35 – 2318
CO: This is the bath that winds around the tank and then it goes out here on the other side and irrigates and fertilizers my pasture.
DT: Can you describe that part again?
00:42:45 – 2318
CO: What? Oh.
(misc.)
00:42:48 – 2318
CO: The valve opens a line over here and that’s from the bottom of the fish tank. And it—it vents all the material, irrigates and—and fertilizes the pasture. Don’t waste a thing that way.
(inaudible)
00:43:18 – 2318
CO: People could come in from the other side and I wouldn’t even know they were here. One evening—I lock my front gate every night. One evening, I was sitting in there, taking my boots off and I looked up and here’s a pickup truck with four Mexicans in driving real slow across here and checking everything out. So I intercepted them and I think I convinced them that if they came back, it’d be hazardous to their health. Go on in. It’s a bit chaotic, but I know where most everything is. And this is—this is feta
00:44:04 – 2318
cheese that’s aging. Incidentally, the refrigerator and this freezer are on propane, so that they’re not dependent on electricity. This is filled with fish food. It’s frozen brine. Tractor implements. I was in the process, but no one even thought (inaudible). Then I had my back problems, now I can’t work on ladders anymore so I don’t even have the fixtures hung. That’s all I need. This is my tractor. I still use it. And this is the tiller.
00:45:09 – 2318
(inaudible) You want to see a—a real tiller. And when the front end loader is on, it’s just parked in there now, then this is the counterbalance weight, see, goes on the back. What?
DT: This a diesel tractor?
CO: Yes, yeah.
DT: Have you looked into biodiesel at all?
00:45:36 – 2318
CO: Oh, yeah. I have a book on it.
DT: What do you think about that?
00:45:38 – 2318
CO: Well, it may be the way we have to go. I have to have—I happen to have a—a diesel Suburban also, so I can handle it. They can take the grease from somebody’s kitchen and run it through, make it work.
DT: It seems like agriculture’s become pretty dependent on fossil fuels and…
00:46:04 – 2318
CO: Extremely dependent. Fact, the farmers are hurting right now because the cost of the fuel that run their tractors is putting them out of business. Right now, the—they’re getting 15 cents a bushel for corn and they’re putting it into fermenters and turning it into alcohol, you know, (inaudible) fuel. But they can’t raise it for 15 cents a bushel. So that is one of our economic problems. So they’ll quit raising corn, then what?
DT: What would be your non-fossil innovation, do you think?
00:46:45 – 2318
CO: My which?
DT: Your non-fossil fuel innovation.
00:46:48 – 2318
CO: My non-fossil fuel. Well, I got one of them parked over here. This is a solar cell that will charge 12-volt batteries. Portable. But beyond that, I got a big woodpile and a wood stove. It would heat the whole house, if necessary.
DT: So you have lots of alternatives it seems like—if you’d rely on having a lot of alternatives. You had the propane-powered refrigerator.
00:47:39 – 2318
CO: I have kerosene lanterns and lamps, so I can operate that way. There’s even a propane light over there, the one that—see, I’ve got 500-gallon propane tanks. I got two of those and a 250, so I can survive a long time with just conservative use of propane. But I wouldn’t heat with it. Camping gear—all the camping gear I had when we were raising a family, it all stashed over there. Smoker, shelter, covers, dishes. I just kept it. Why not? Might want to go camping. Might have to go camping.
DT: Let’s see. I think we have about…
00:48:40 – 2318
CO: I could lock the gate and live here for a year where nobody came and went, you know. No problem.
(misc.)
00:48:58 – 2318
CO: Now, you know, ask about the hay storage. Let me show you that. This is olives, incidentally. The olive leaves are a healthy antibiotic, did you know that?
DT: No, I didn’t.
00:49:12 – 2318
CO: Yeah. One of nature’s best. Been used since time immemorial.
DT: You mentioned this olive tree has got antibiotic properties. Are there any drugs or teas that you raise here? Tinctures?
00:49:29 – 2318
CO: Well, olive leaves, for one. Garlic, for another, is a potent antibiotic, antiviral, you know, and a insect repellent, too. When I’m eating it regularly, they don’t bite me.
DT: And then, of course, you brew your beer which, I guess, cures everything else.
CO: Yeah.
DT: How do you brew your beer? Can you tell us about that?
00:49:51 – 2318
CO: Well, I buy the malt (inaudible) someone out on the shelf and buy the malt and buy the yeast and add distilled water and that’s all that goes into my beer. It’s all natural. The ye—the malts come from England, the yeast comes from Germany and it makes a very good beer.
DT: And what type is it? Is it a lager or…?
00:50:17 – 2318
CO: Dark beer, it’s a dark beer.
DT: I see, oh.
00:50:19 – 2318
CO: Because—primarily because it’s a malt extract to beer. I don’t take the grains and start from scratch, somebody else does that in England and I end up with the concentrate called et—malt extract and that makes it easy. But I open this up, taste right because hay needs to breathe, okay. And if I close this up, it’s sealed, you know, and that’s too much. So I have to air it whenever we get a nice day. So the ends of it are weathered just from exposure to the atmosphere. Inside is fine; it’s nice and green.
DT: And I see you have a ramp that’s mechanized…
00:51:04 – 2318
CO: Oh, that’s a—yeah, that’s a (?) elevator and it—it hauls the hay in or out for you. It’s a moving conveyor belt.
DT: Can you talk about some of the ways you’ve learned how to work by yourself with a tool, a machine?
00:51:20 – 2318
CO: Well, that’s the only way I can do it because I’m incapacitated. Now I can get on the tractor, hell, I’m as good as anybody else. I can do anything with that because my arms and everything else is—it’s my legs that are bad. Other than that, hell, I’m in good shape.
DT: Well, are there some other devices you use to help you?
00:51:40 – 2318
CO: I use the tractor a great deal for tilling and, of course, I got a Troy-Bilt and—and a Mathis, I told you. And well, those are the—the most important. If you only had one tool, that Troy-Bilt would be the thing to buy.
DT: Because?
00:51:56 – 2318
CO: Because it’s a tiller. It’ll break rough ground and do it for you. Turn it into soil and you can use. Here’s a area that—one of kind, too. Well, this is a diesel Suburban, I (inaudible). And I didn’t see it, see, because it was down under the car and the—the little heat indicator light never came on. Next thing I know, I lost power. It’s too late. So I saved it. Now the one I bought now, it’s just like it, but I can take that (inaudible) starter off that diesel costs 300 dollars because it takes a special zap to start the diesel. So I’m continually stripping the transmission, start converter, few items off it to put on the shelf to serve the other one. Then I’ll load it on a trailer and take it over to the junkyard, let them have it. They can have the rest of it. They can have the tires.
DT: Good salvage.
00:53:02 – 2318
CO: So anyway. But this is a 40-foot container. Now this—you’re at the seven yard firing line and he’s in your living room and it’s dark. You better be able to point and get him, okay? I was a pistol range officer for a number of years for the National Rifle Association. Okay? And the buck goats are over there sleeping. You don’t really have to see them. If you only got seven minutes left, why we better head up.
DT: Okay.
00:53:39 – 2318
CO: Now you’re talking about your watch or your—your tape time?
DT: Tape time.
00:53:44 – 2318
CO: Tape time, okay.
(misc.)
00:53:58 – 2318
CO: But if you have back surgery ever, get the best you can find. So that’s the farm.
DT: Great.
(inaudible)
[Animal sounds]
DT: I want to pass on to young people that it might (inaudible)
00:54:50 – 2318
CO: Well, find some mentor who will teach you what you need to know.
DT: You would—you want to…?
M: Yeah.
00:54:58 – 2318
CO: He’s done research in that area.
(misc.)
00:55:41 – 2318
CO: What do you got now?
DT: Your neighbor.
CO: Well, unfortunately, we have them here.
DT: Okay.
(misc.)
DT: Mr. Ogle, you’ve been very kind to show us around your farm and explain what you do and I just wanted to wrap up with two questions. One is what would be your favorite place? Is there a way you could describe that?
00:56:09 – 2318
CO: Well, my favorite place is where I am. For what is cost me to live here, I could live on the beach in the Mediterranean and have a housemaid and yard boy and all the rest, if that’s what I chose. But that is not a lifestyle that appeals to me. I’ve had that, I’ve seen it, I’ve done it. I’ve had a housemaid; I’ve had a—a yard boy and the whole nine yards when I was in Panama. But that’s not a lifestyle that appeals to me. Had a beach there, too. We had it all. Good fishing. But this is better. This is more satisfying. The inner animal that I am likes it here, okay. And I think people in the city intuitively reach and grope for contact with nature still. That’s why they have pet animals—cats, dogs, goldfish, parrots, what have you. Pet stores do a brisk business because people
00:57:07 – 2318
need—they have an inherent need to maintain a link to nature. That’s a pretty weak one, but they—they grasp at it anyway. And here, you’ve got it all. Things that grow, things you plant, things you harvest, animals you work with, it’s all here.
DT: Well, maybe you could tell us what sort of advice you would give to some of these people who aren’t as lucky to live on this place? Sustainability or the environment in general?
00:57:40 – 2318
CO: Well, to start from scratch, you better find a mentor, someone who will teach you what you need to know. There is so much to know. They think any—any moron can be a farmer, don’t believe it. There’s much to learn and much to do. And you have to have a willingness to apply yourself diligently because it’s work. Food production is labor intensive and unless they’re prepared to put forth the effort, they’ll starve to death. And read—learn all you can, for starters, but there’s no substitute for hands on. You’ve got to go and do it and find out what really is involved and most people find that rather
00:58:29 – 2318
disenchanting. They go back to the grocery store. But it’s worth the effort if you can learn to do it and you’re adapted. I’ve always—I’ve worked hard all of my life. That’s—that’s not something I just started when I came here and I’m adaptable. You better be versatile. Your demands are going to be varied and everyday, you don’t know. I had one person here who wanted me to give him a job description of what to do
00:59:00 – 2318
everyday, you know? And I said well, we can start with this. You know, I listed the animal feeding and so forth. I said that’s just the beginning because you never know when the day begins what you’re going to encounter. Can be a disaster of many configurations so you’ve—you have to be adaptable. You play it by ear. Some days, you have very little to do. Other days, you’re swamped. Same problems, you know. So find someone who can help teach you and help you out. I wasn’t able to find anybody like that. I probably didn’t look long enough; I said I can do it myself. So I did. There
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probably are easier ways. It wasn’t easy. It’s easy now. And most people won’t even accept the responsibilities that are here now and everything is set up, equipped, stocked and—equipment and everything works, you know. They look at it and run.
DT: Well, we’ve enjoyed it and I wanted to thank you for taking the time…
01:00:14 – 2318
CO: Well, you’re most welcome.
DT: …to be our mentor, be our teacher.
01:00:19 – 2318
CO: But you need—if you’re going to consider seriously doing any of these projects, you need to find someone who will teach you and help you get started in it. Any one of them, and there are many here.
DT: Well, perhaps this tape will help people get started.
CO: Okay.
DT: Thank you very much, Mister Ogle.
01:00:38 – 2318
CO: You’re most welcome. Come in and have some cheese and beer.
DT: Well, I’d love to.
01:00:45 – 2318
CO: Some milk, too. I got to give you a milk sample first, though, then the beer.
(misc.)
[End of Reel 2318]
[End of Interview with Clarence Ogle]