Hogs Heifers Worms

Story of Gilbert Keys – Hog Farmer Extraordinaire

Gilbert Key, Owner Key Packing Company

Gilbert, a young 71, is a common sense, get-er done person. He began his employment as a big rig truck driver. “I would be gone five days at a time,” said Gilbert. I was married, raising kids and gone too much. One day a friend told me about a farm for sale that was nearby. “I didn’t have two quarters but I got a loan from the bank for $200,000 and I bought the farm”, he said.

His main income from the farm was a chicken coop. “I had eight pigs and I liked raising them. They were easier than chickens. So I switched to just hogs.”

Storefront

Today Gilbert owns his farm — all 74 acres buildings and equipment.  At first you might think that he just got into farming and pigs at the right time but you would be wrong. No, he continued to drive his truck, raise pigs, raise his family and in his spare time he sold ice cream at local festivals in North Carolina and surrounding states.

Lemonade not lemons

You could say that Gilbert was sold lemonade but got a bunch of lemons. Gilbert is a sharing man. Over the last 3 years he has been visited by many. College professors, other hog farmers and want-a-be worm farmers. His entry into this worming business was a disaster. “I bought into this whole concept. The promises were great. I would make lots of money selling worm castings and worms.

Part of his deal was to let the worms multiply (studies show that red worms reproduce at a rate of 10 per week if all conditions are right). Then the company that set him up with my initial worm stock would buy them back from his first harvest of worms. Seemed like a good deal to Gilbert since I would have 10 or 100 times more worms by then.

“I paid $65,000 for the initial stock of worms ($16 per pound) and they would buy back the same number of worms for $45,000. So, their expertise and my initial stock of worms would only cost me $20,000.

I spent $250,000 on a shed, plumbing, tanks and other equipment. I wanted to be assured that I could get some of my money back and it seemed reasonable. They were going to buy my castings too. It seemed like a win-win. So, the deal was done.

Start Up Problems

There were many problems with the construction of the windrows. Many things did not work as planned and I had to improvise a lot. I am not bitter, just disappointed. Gilbert is not one to bad mouth anyone so he named no names but the one person he remained in good standing was Tom Christenberry. Tom has been in worms a long time and appears to me, based up my own independent research, to be one of the good guys and very experienced with all facets of the worm farm. Tom has been an invited guest to many a worm symposium at North Carolina State University and others. But, finally the worms were in place and the show began.

Open House

Visitors galore, they came from North Carolina State University as well as Ohio State. You would think I had discovered gold. According to the guys that sold me on this, that is exactly what I had done. Only it turned out that they struck my gold.

Inventor

But, Gilbert is not one to dwell on mistakes. He is a lemonade guy. He became the worm expert and is now on track with his crop of worms and castings. He was told by a professor of agriculture that the best he would do is to remove 50 percent of the water from the manure, he got to nearly 80 percent.

He has designed his own worm harvester machine as this is still one thing that can take a lot of labor.

Lessons for others

I admire people who are not afraid to admit a mistake. But, lets face it, he had nothing to gain from revealing these facts and experiences. His motivation seems to be that he does not want others to make the same mistakes. Maybe the reason he is so accommodating and open can be found in this story he likes to tell.

He was at one of those festivals and saw a man making ice cream right there. “He was selling it faster than they could scoop it up,” he laughed. “I went behind the booth and saw the owner running the homebuilt ice cream machine and I asked him a lot of questions. He was very open and forthcoming with his sales and profit numbers and from what I was seeing out front he was not overstating the earning potential. So then I asked him if he would make me one and he said yes for $2,500. I said fine. Two years later (a longer story) I finally got my machine and my wife and I hit the road on weekends to sell ice cream at festivals. During one five day festival we grossed $27,000. I was getting little sleep. Keep in mind that I was still driving the truck during the week, farming pigs and now selling ice cream on weekends. I did this for 12 years. We would normally make $3-4,000 a day. Life was good but I had enough.” he said. Gilbert had another younger man begin to watch him at one festival. He liked him and told him that you bring me $50,000 and I will see you my business, my bookings and I will go with you to get you started. SOLD!

Mitchel Key - Dad's right hand man and butcher.

The Tour

The more you talk with Gilbert the more you realize this man wears a cape with the letter “S” on it. Michell, one of his boys is working the farm with Dad. He is the butcher. Yep, somewhere along the way Gilbert got tired of dealing with butchers so he built his own state-of-the-art slaughter house. He butchers pigs, cows and sometimes deer. “See that office? That is where the FDA inspector is. I had to build him an office. He is here every day. All of our meats are USDA inspected. We vacuum pack each steak. 95% of the air is removed and this meat will last 5-7 years in your freezer. And it will taste better than store bought “fresh” meat because we age all of our meats 24 days. A store kills Monday and chops it Tuesday. The blood is still in the meat. But that is why they do it. The steaks weight 20 percent more.”, he said.

Finding Gilbert

While doing some research on the internet, (Gilbert is not a computer user, so don’t bother to try to email him) I found an article written in 2006 about a big worm farm installation. I had been looking for someone local to visit and learn about worm farming and his story was very interesting. I wondered why there were no follow-up articles. Maybe he was not in business or his worm farm fizzled out. Well, I found his home phone and gave him a call.

Sometimes phone calls to people you don’t know can be anxiety-inducing, Gilbert was immediately friendly. He is a christian, loving and sharing person. He is proud of his accomplishments and quick to tell you his failures too. We spoke for awhile and we planned my visit for when they do their next worm harvest, though we did not know when that may be.

I woke up the next day and thought, I am going to North Carolina. I called, but Gilbert was already at the farm. I took a chance, packed my camera and drove 4 hours. It turned out to be a good day.

Worm House is 400 feet long and full of worms in windrows

The Worm Shed

We began the trip at the worm shed. It is a big shed 400 feet long. As you can see in the photo, it has windrows to contain the worms. I am first going to tell you about the farm and later tell you what he would do different the next time. Each windrow is 4 foot wide. On each side of the windrow are dirt ledges used for the tractor wheels.

They have worms in all windrows and stagger their harvesting. They occasionally till the soils with the gardening till to keep the soil from getting too compacted. They feed the worms using a standard spreader and tractor, but the axels have been extended from 6 feet to 8 feet to match the windrow widths.

Installed piping make watering fast

Feeding the Worms

I watched them feed and it took about 30 minutes for the entire shed. Next, Mitchel turned on the water sprays. They put out a mist. They only stay on a minute. They wait to see if it needs more and repeat the process. Worms hate drowning.

As soon as the feed was on top you could feel the heat in the soil and see the whiffes of fog on top as the hot moist air condensed in the more cooler shed air. If you put too much food down you can kill the little guys with this heat. If it is hot the worms will go to the sides or down to escape the heat.

The feed looks like breakfast cereal. Ok, maybe not.You can see whole grains that evidently did not digest or were just dropped on the floor. It is moist but not sloppy thanks to a special process of Gilbert’s own discovery.

Manure is falling from separator.

Preparing the manure

Separators are not uncommon in the farm business but this one will remove as much as 80 percent of the water content. And that, my friend, is why you can use hog waste for feeding worms. Any more water would cause a lot of problems for the worms and for the feeder. These feeders are designed to feed dry fertilizers, not wet manures.

Now I don’t now how unique this is. I can only say, this is the first and only hog/worm combination farm I have seen and according to Gilbert, he does not know of another.

The flow of manure

Here are the basics of the feeding operation.

The pig houses are sprayed down. The pigs never touch dirt so there is no dirt in the flush. Just food and manure. The flush is guided via gravity to a collection  tank where it sits until it is either pumped out for separating or overflows into the lagoon.

Collection tanks (three of them) hold manure until needed.

Once it hits the lagoon it stays there. The lagoons are large. They are designed to hold lots of waste water. If you have to pump it out the cost is as much as $100,000 and you need to hire HASMAT- type people to do it.

When they need worm food, they start a pump that takes waste and pumps it to this huge tank. In fact there are three of them in case they want a lot of food.

Water is pumped to the top of this separator. Gravity and high pressure rollers return the water to the lagoon.

Then that tank is pumped to the separator where, with the help of gravity and 2,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, most of the water is removed and the remaining solids dump into a spreader waiting below.

Pretty slick. All the free food you can ever need to raise about 5 billion worms.

I wish to thank Gilbert, Mitchel and the whole Keys family for the wonderful day. Gilbert recommended the sirloin, I had it tonight. It was just as you said Gilbert. GREAT!

Here are the benefits of using worms for waste management on a hog farm:

Less stress on the environment, reduced particulate going into the lagoon, the lagoon lasts longer, the entire operation has no offensive odors and you are recycling something that is harmful to the environment and returning it to the environment with a huge mineral and fertilizer benefit. Where brown turns into green, you will most likely find a worm.

Contact: Barry for more information at 888-462-7844

If you ask Gilbert if he would make you one, he will. But this time he will not be selling the “trailer” because it would be priceless.

Barry Rickert

CEO

Nature’s Own Organics

Cumberland, VA

888-462-7844

Senior Talk – Silver Coins

Why Senior Talk?

At first, I was thinking that the radio blog would be for seniors about seniors but then I realized that what seniors have to say are of most interest to the kids, the grand kids and youth. OK, you think I am out to lunch on that, right? Maybe, we will see. But let me tell you why I think that younger people want to listen to seniors talk.

It is my experience from conducting interviews of other seniors that their experiences with mom and dad growing up were very similar to mine. We seldom talked to our parents. Seldom got advice and seldom confided in them. Most of the time we felt like we either did not need it, or it just never occurred to us that we might actually get some good advice from them.

Which now leads me to my first story for Senior Talk “Silver Coins”.

This story is mine. It is not one that I am proud of but I can now see how powerful this experience was to me and how it affected my life for a long long time. It is nothing extraordinary. No movie will come from it but it may get you to remember a similar story that you can tell your kids.

====

I do remember one time I conducted a silver heist when I was maybe 8. Yes, silver dollars. I remember my grandparents had a safe in their bedroom closet. And in there were a lot of gold and silver coins. Wonder where they have gone? I could now use a few.

Here is what happened and here is one time I remember my dad giving me advice that I remembered to this day.

I was playing outside on the sidewalk at someone else home. Yes, back then we went outside and played in the street. REALLY! Anyway, this one kid had a Red Flyer wagon. And in that wagon was a quart glass jar with no lid. And, it was full of silver dollars. Now I was eight but I knew what you could buy with that much money and I thought this is just too good to be true.

Of course, the devil and good guy were fighting in my head for a minute or so and then the kid left crying. HE HURT HIMSELF! We ran into his house and there I was. Alone, with maybe 50 dollars of Silver Coins. Now I thought, about taking the entire jar. I could lift it. But where in the hell would I hide it. My pockets were not like the ones you see today. You know those pants with huge pockets. Like six on each leg. Two water bottles, a folding knife/pliers kits, handgun, ammunition… No, no just kidding but I was told these pants were designed by a chronic shoplifter.

Back to me and the RED FLYER wagon. Here I am, what else could I do. I reached in and grabbed an fist full of Silver Dollars. I put them in my hip pocket as at 8 you are not carrying IDs and a wallet. I looked left, I looked right. Twice or three times my head rotated about like I was in a horror show. My heart was pumping. Thump Thump Thump. My hands were sweating and I was starting to get a little sick to my stomach too.

Then I looked up and crap! I did not see his sister climb that tree. She was staring right at me. The sun seemed to get really bright all of the sudden. I remember getting blurry eyed and then I fainted.

Next thing I know, this kid, his sister and his mother were hovered over me. “You alright?” I guess. “Where am I”, I said. I knew that they knew and I knew that I was in serious trouble so instinct took over. “I am not feeling well. My head is going around in circles. Maybe I have something wrong with me”, I said. The sister looked right at me and said, “cut it buster, you are fine. You know I saw you steal those coins. Now give them back.” I sat up and said, “what coins”.

On the way home, my Dad was pretty quite. That is never a good sign. No seat belts back then. He could have just hit the brake fast and blamed my head trauma on a dog running into the road. But, he didn’t. Or, did he? I cannot remember. I think I just sat there as the old 56 Chevy went flying down the road. In a few minutes we were home. I said, “Thanks for the ride Dad, I am going to Johns to play!” With one ear permanently attached to my Dads hand, I was escorted into the house.

I have seen him take off his belt before but this time he drew it out a little faster than normal.

My Dad said nothing notable or wise. He did not say, “Son, let me understand why you thought…” No, it was pretty quite in that room other than  my crying.

Those words of wisdom stayed with me a lot longer than the pain. You will be glad to know that to date, I have not gone to jail for being a thief.

I did go to the police station several times later in life, much later but that is a story for another time.

So, my Dad’s advice was, don’t steal. It was clearly not, don’t get caught. It was a solid piece of advice. One that is worth passing on to my grand kids and kids.

What similar stories do you have? Why are they important to tell? Give me your thoughts. I would like to hear them.

Barry

Senior Talk – Time Flies

Rozelia, what a wonderful, sweet, inviting name for a little girl. That is my first grandchild’s name. It makes you immediately think of the smell of a rose. It did take me awhile to learn the spelling and say it correctly.

I was there in the hospital on the day of her birth. May 8, 2008. I had driven most of the night from Atlanta. I was tired and too late for her entrance into the world. But, it turns out that I was not needed. They had everything under control.

I have been thinking about how this experience is so common to most every grandparent or parent. No big deal? After all it has happened billions of times. But even though it is a very common event to the world it is an uncommon event to a grandparent. Even if your a grandparent 7 times 7.

I just don’t see how this could ever become boring, or considered to be uneventful.

The hospital was new. Everything was perfect. It seemed like there was nothing happening anywhere. All the action was inside those heavy double doors. Down the halls in separate rooms with lots of acoustical padding.

My daughter went El Natural. No meds. She also did not have a doctor. No it was a midwife. The midwife was also the photographer. Hey! Smile! Click! OK, lets see if we can get that little thing out of there! I imagined that scene. I imagined this because, my daughter band the use of a video camera. Just stills. A real disappointment for me. Not that I needed to see another child birth video. No, I have edited and duplicated way to many of those for it to be a thrill or deer staring – you cannot turn away type of event.

But I have seen and edited enough to know that this is one of the videos that families really like to watch. The kids especially. Wow, that is me! Cool. Now if my daughters intent was to band photos of the unmentionable body parts, the mid wife did not comply. So they only thing lacking are the sounds associated with the first cry, the people’s reactions in the room and some moaning and growing of course.

Well that is over now. It is what it is.

My daughter is visiting this week. I told her about this blog and she told me that she is still so pleased with just the still photos that were put into a slideshow with the music – the first time I saw your face. She said that audio from the movie is what would bother her the most. Ok, I was not there but I have seen two natural child births and watched lots of strangers on movies when asked to edit them. What she is not taking into account is that in the final edited home movie, audio is only used when someone makes a comment that is worthy of mention. Dad, saying “its a boy”, “look at the … on him”, you know the things that you never want to forget.”

We, that is my X (Carolyn) and I, don’t have video of our kids being born. It was not as far as I can remember a conscious decision. We just did not think of it. I do not recall any photos either. But now, at this age, I am hording any mementos that may bring back a memory. Not sure why, but for some reason they are now very important. It is a phenomena. No logical explanations, nothing life/death, nothing that will alter the future of the planet. All I know is they are important to me.

Check out the movie Final Cut. It is an interesting, futuristic look into how we might improve our memories.

Maybe it is because these 60 years have seemed to have passed without living them. Did I, was I really here, did I really do those things? Ever had that feeling on a long drive that you cannot remember how you got to this present position? Like the last four hours did not really exist.

Welcome to this world, Rozelia. You are so lucky to have a great mother and dad. Paw Paw Bear too. Love you!

Barry