TD (00:01.634) Hey Charlie, welcome back to the Fearless Podcast. How you doing today, sir?

Yanasa TV Charlie (00:05.627) Pretty good, are you?

TD (00:07.15) Great, great. Thanks for coming on. You just reached out to me a couple days ago to make me aware of a video you just posted and you did a write up on your website about an 87 year old farmer in Washington state. And what it looks to me from my observation is like a punitive fine basically to steal his

Property by proxy and I thought it was very important information so I wanted to have you on so that we can create some awareness around this and Just so you all know. I mean the reason we're talking about this is One to create awareness because this isn't like a standalone incident, you know, this is like more a larger bureaucratic

And for all of us that have our own property, have our own animals, obviously, uh, you know, everybody needs food and water and shelter. So there's lots of people in, uh, 2025, they're talking about civil rights and, know, all these rights, but I mean, a human right, you would think is if you own your property,

And you're trying to farm and provide for yourself and others that you would have some type of right to the water on your property. And here you have generational legacy land that's been in the family. They're jumping through all the hoops. They're filling out all the paperwork, but because of some type of bureaucratic red tape, they're basically weaponizing these laws that

And bureaucracy that have some merit, right? But they're weaponizing them against people to, in my opinion, steal their land. So, what say you, maybe you could kind of update us on the story and what's going on.

Yanasa TV Charlie (02:14.807) Well, yeah, so this he's a he's 85 but 87 85 I think you're still in the same ballpark Harold Greif, but basically what they've done here so he's been farming this land nonstop since his dad bought it back in the 1950s and he applied for water rights back then and

So water rights, having to have a permit goes back to like 1917 in the state of Washington, but they haven't always had the best system for tracking all of those water rights, which is why at the beginning of the year, the state went and sued 30,000 people in one county and said, you have to prove that you have water rights with the state if you want to keep them. Because they just, the bureaucratic process didn't track it all or they didn't.

finalized the water rights and people have just been operating under the assumption that they had water rights for decades. And so that's kind of, you know, where Washington is with a lot of this stuff. But here you have an 85 year old man who's being fined a hundred thousand dollars. And then they placed a lien for that hundred thousand dollars against his property for watering his property for 20 days over the summertime. And basically,

you know, if you think about it, and a lot of people, you know, when it came to Joe Biden, they wrote a lot of this stuff off like, he's just an old guy, he doesn't get it all. A lot of these people don't understand this system because we've had regulation over regulation and lots of rulemaking over the span of those decades. And so what he thinks was done correctly, and it could have been, that nobody really knows because it was so long ago.

Then he tried to transfer water rights from another 69 acres to that 69 acres and there was something missing in the paperwork. So he didn't, he didn't get it. But, know, these aren't people who are very technical savvy. That's not their generation. They're not people who are used to having to navigate around so many rules and regulations. They think they're doing the right thing. And then the state is basically coming in, giving him a fine that there is no way he would ever be able to.

Yanasa TV Charlie (04:32.249) pay and then leaning his land to basically take the land to pay for the fine. So, and that land is going to be pretty much worthless without water rights in the state of Washington. So, I mean, it comes down to a land grab, whether intentional or not. But that's kind of the gist of it. And because when I heard this story, I was looking at it and I listened to a news interview with this man and I was like, he doesn't have any help.

in this. probably doesn't even know about the Institute for Justice or some of the people he can reach out to. He just wanted his story heard. And so that's what I'm trying to do is help make his story heard. The law might be on the state side as far as, we can assess fines. You have to have a proper permit to do what you're doing. But the system doesn't have the right mediation tools in place to help people.

his age and the fine itself is considerably higher than anything the state of Washington has done. Usually they're $5,000 fines, $10,000 fines. We've seen as much as $23,000 fines, but this is $100,000 fine. I mean, it's definitely the optics of it don't look good when you're concerned about these states pushing policies

And a state of Washington, Oregon, California, and actually Texas has lost a lot of farms. So has a lot to do more with the, the data center boom going on in Texas. But if you look at California, Oregon, and Washington, they continue to push policies that are forcing farmers out. And, Washington's lost 3,700 farms in the course of five years. That's a lot of farms for the state of Washington. And it has a lot to do.

with these types of things. And then you look at California where they're reattributing farmland to minorities, they have a grant program out there, but then they're constantly pushing legislation that is putting farmers in the spot where they just have to give up. I Potter Valley is one example, Point Reyes is another example. You can go through a whole list of where their actions have forced farmers to basically

Yanasa TV Charlie (06:59.641) give up and now there's a grant where they could just submit their farm and get paid out and then they'll reallocate that farmland.

TD (07:07.788) Yeah. What's fascinating to me is in America where you're supposedly innocent until proven guilty, the bureaucracy in the County can come back to you and say, Hey, prove to us that you have water rights and you've been there generationally. I would say that the onus is on them to prove that you don't have water rights. Like,

If you, know, and plus you're this man is 85 years old, and doesn't have the resources and then you're going to penalize him four times. mean, the optics clearly see seem like it's a, a proxy land grab over some type of technicality. And here, this

guy that he's all he's doing is farming and he has no type no type of resources or he doesn't have a voice you know he certainly doesn't know about social media you know he doesn't have a social media channel or whatever so he's left to just

take the injustice, you know, okay, so we'll sell your land to this, solar company. What, what we're seeing a lot here in Texas is we're seeing lots of dairy sell to solar companies and they're putting in solar farms. And then the other thing we're seeing in our immediate area is Dallas wants more water. So they want to put in a reservoir and, then they want to reclaim.

thousands of acres around the reservoir to preserve the habitat and all these different things, you know, so it's just, it's a very similar strategy. What's going on here that we're all dealing with. And that's why it's such an important issue. I think to all of us because

TD (09:07.074) this could very well be coming to a town near you. And that's why I think it's really important to bring awareness to it. And then anything that we can do on our end, either to, you know, call the powers that be that are responsible for this and say, hey, you know, give what kind of remediation does this elderly fellow have that's just trying to farm his family's land, you know, and not lose it.

It's it's rather Incredible to me to even think about it

Yanasa TV Charlie (09:41.916) Yeah, I mean, he's a hay farmer. How many years is he going to have to grow hay on that 69 acres to pay off a hundred thousand dollar fine, especially when he doesn't have any water. But the that sixty six thousand acre reserve down in Texas, I forget how much it ends up when you add on all the land around it to protect the water that they're putting in there. But I mean, 200.

TD (10:08.238) 200,000 acres.

Yanasa TV Charlie (10:11.663) That's a lot of land. And it's all to create, I mean, more water for Dallas, but then it's also, mean, Texas is kind of becoming an AI hub and all of those data centers need more water. And then we wonder why they're cloud seeding two days before a tropical storm, because they don't have enough water. mean.

TD (10:12.792) Yeah.

TD (10:31.726) Exactly.

Yeah. And what, and what you're watching, like with the, with the watershed and the water reservoir, you know, this plan has been in motion for about 50 years. So basically what it does is it devalues all the properties within the footprint. So the farmers and ranchers in that footprint, the property is worth nothing. So they can't sell it because the buyer already knows that it's potentially allocated, you

So a buyer's not going to take a chance and buy it because if the deal goes through the property becomes worthless. And then this buying group is going to

Uh, damn up this lake and then they're going to sell waterfront property on this lake for, you know, uh, millions of dollars. And, you know, and meanwhile, all these people that are growing food, growing cows, growing timber, they're left with absolutely nothing. And, uh, yeah, this is the struggle that it's hard enough to farm and to, um,

Yanasa TV Charlie (11:27.151) millions. Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (11:39.962) Yeah.

TD (11:50.316) respond to changing markets and skyrocketing beef prices and feed and fertilizer and all these different things, but then you got to figure out how to out strategize your municipality or your local, you know, and this certainly should not, it's one thing if the feds want to do what they do and steal stuff and abscond stuff, they've been doing that for hundreds of years, right? But it's

very troubling when your local municipality is like, Hey, this is a really cool racket. Like they got going on and we can monetize this too. And we can do the same exact thing. It's just like, yeah. When is there going to be no land left to grab?

Yanasa TV Charlie (12:38.394) Well, the transmission line corridors are another prime example. And I don't want to take away from 85-year-old Henry, but all of this kind of ties together in many ways. if you look at the transmission corridors that they planned across the United States, clearly we need a power grid upgrade. But half of the

solar and renewable energy that we've been putting in. you turn around and look at fossil fuel energy, we've gone way up on the use of that as well. mean, this is about increasing power 10 fold or more. mean, artificial intelligence, just an artificial intelligence search takes 10 times the energy as an old traditional Google search. So as it evolves, it's going to need a lot more power than that. And so that's

the real reason why you have these massive corridors that they've been trying to put in. under the Biden administration, the federal government was coming in backing it with the loan guarantees. They were backing it with federal eminent domain in many cases. The Trump administration has kind of reversed a lot of that, but at the same time, you know, they're backing that same industry in another way. So then you're just having the AI companies come in themselves.

to finance the power that they need. it's, the dynamics have changed, but it's still happening. And you're seeing a lot of these states where, know, when the feds backed off, a lot of people were cheering it on. And then they're finding out that they're still moving forward with a lot of this, you know, these eminent domain cases and building out these massive transmission lines and then entire farms are being sold just for their water rights. So they can.

They can cool the facilities. My question is, I recognize that a lot of infrastructure is needed, but at what cost are we going to push it to the point where we don't have people out there supplying us with food anymore? We're already paying a ton of money for beef, eggs. I mean, I'm surprised at the auction prices I see for pigs these days. I mean, that's the, at some point the scales

Yanasa TV Charlie (14:59.269) tipping in the wrong direction.

TD (15:01.206) Right. You know, we can, we continue to send foreign aid, to countries. They're just scraping together another 40 billion or whatever. And meanwhile, you know, and everybody wants to talk about making America healthy again and everything. And then when you talk about regenerative agriculture and permaculture and different things and like, well, how can you scale that to feed humanity? Hey, how about you just at a minimum leave farmers alone?

And let them do what they know how to do at a minimum, whether they're doing, you know, big ag, or whether they're whatever they're doing, like leave them alone and at a minimum, allow them to produce what they can. You know? And how about we start there, you know, and work our way back towards food security instead of like blowing up the world and all that other stuff. Like let's, let's.

Focus on our country, our people, the ability to feed them and allow farmers that have been doing it at a minimum to continue to do it, you know, whatever, whatever mode and method that they're accustomed to. And then let's build it out from there.

Yanasa TV Charlie (16:19.801) Yeah, it's amazes me from COVID until now that we still don't have something like the Prime Act in place where you could take something to a custom butcher and actually sell it. We do herd shares just because in order to get a meat license, we'd have to have a building with coolers and a large investment when most of the time it's going directly from the packer straight to the customer anyway with a bulk sale.

We do herd shares. People don't understand what a herd share is, so they don't sign up for a herd share. I mean, if they just lifted some of that regulation, which if you think about it, it's all pretty safe to eat. I mean, I've been eating, know, cows and pigs and stuff processed in state facilities or custom facilities for years. Half the time it's better.

TD (17:07.265) Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (17:17.851) I mean, it tastes better. It's a much different experience. But for whatever reason, they keep that barrier in place. And the people who it affects are all of those small producers who then can't make enough money to hold on to what they've got. just making simple changes like that could dramatically change

the prices people are paying at the grocery store because you're opening up a whole new pool of resources and that's type of stuff I can't figure out. When we had an egg problem, we shipped in eggs and I get that because eggs are necessary ingredient in everything. But we have a bunch of farmers out there who have more eggs than they know what to do with. When we have eggs coming in, we have more eggs than we know what to do with.

But the egg prices are often so low that it doesn't, there's no reason to try and bring those to market. Whereas they actually had an opportunity there to get a lot of, you know, family farms to come out of the woodwork and create a new market for eggs here in the U S. But, you know, when it comes to secretary Rollins, I will say, you know, when you look at the mod case, she stepped in on that, the Henry farm.

in New Jersey, I did not expect her to get involved with that because it was more of a state's thing, but she figured out a way to throw the threat of HUD housing and government grants in there. And now they're looking at a different property because they've done the math and figured out that if they lose government resources, it doesn't add up. She's stepping into Potter Valley, which is another one I wouldn't have expected her to because it's a private corporation. I don't know what she can do there, but

There actually, she is actually taking steps towards trying to protect farmers from some of these things that are happening. But, you know, then you hear about cases like what's going on down in Texas. And to me, that 60,000 acre lake is too important for anybody to want to step in and stop, except for, of course, the farmers who are losing everything that they have. And so that's the...

Yanasa TV Charlie (19:39.866) The sad part about it is you've got these massive infrastructure projects that aren't going to stop. And then, you know, in cases like California, Oregon, and Washington, it seems like you constantly have these regulations coming out where you have to question, you know, what is the motive up there? It's not necessarily data centers. And I'm not even sure that in California it is to...

reallocate the land. think that's just an optics thing. they definitely, there are large sections of those states that they like to rewild. Oregon has been under the threat of being split as a state for several years. I mean, really, their biggest problem are their farmers in Eastern Oregon. So if they could figure out a way to just shut them down, then they don't have a problem anymore.

I think that there are a lot of different things that play out there, but all of them come back to threatening the livelihoods of legacy farmers, people who have been in it for generations. They're not encouraging young people to want to get into it when there's so many possibilities of losing the value of your property or losing the, or not having accessibility to the market. That's one of the.

The biggest challenge is I think a lot of people have getting into it is just market accessibility. I can market anything and sell it, but not if I can't go through all the licensing channels.

TD (21:15.183) Right, you know, and that's where I thought since 2020, you know, the fact that

The fact that food costs go up isn't necessarily a bad thing because they have been artificially suppressed through the ultra processed food and the packaging and the shrink flation and making the packages smaller. And now that more people are recognizing that real unprocessed whole foods like eggs and like meat are nutrient dense, like food sources that

are untainted and you know, so there's an enormous amount of value there. And once you have a supply chain issue, you know, people start to recognize the frailty of our supply chain. So the solution to that is obviously to decentralize, like you were saying, using microprocessors and what we've seen in our area is we have seen an increase. We have more microprocessors now in our area and we

used several of them and they're all great and they're all relatively the same price but you know one thing that the people on the main have to get over is you know all of the propaganda about you know making food scary making meat scary and if it's not processed properly you're going to get like

mad cow or E. coli, you know, when these microprocessors, they're smaller, they're cleaner, they're family owned. you walk in, they help you unload your cow. You know, the, the one it's, it's a brother and sister. We know my name. They know who we are. We know who they are. you want to do the standard cut sheet that you got? Yeah. You know, and so we've created that relationship with them and then

TD (23:19.109) we get very high quality meat. know what the cow ate. We know where it's processed, how it's processed. We can watch it being processed. mean, it's, you know, we're actively participating in the process. We're getting a higher quality product.

It's just one being informed and then two participating because, you know, we've been conditioned to like go to Walmart and get the tube ground beef of the, you know, $3 stuff, wherever it came from, like where, who knows where it was sourced from, you know? And we do know, you know, the one advantage of buying at Walmart is there's, they never recall any of their food, you know, it's never tainted by, you know, their lettuce never has any recalls or their

never any problems with any of the food bought there, know, so nobody ever gets sick. It's, rather miraculous, you know, and I'm being funny. I'm being funny. Y'all. Okay. I have dry sense of humor. Okay. So, but, but, know,

Yanasa TV Charlie (24:17.892) Hahaha.

TD (24:23.083) Another important aspect of talking about this is, know, what is the path forward? And part of the path forward is know your farmer and then obviously defend your farmer. You know, this guy is being systematically dismantled. They're going to steal his land and do whatever with it. And it's going to, whatever they do, it's going be very lucrative for them. You know what I mean? Whether it's, whether it's what they sell it for or the monolithic mega corporation that they sell it

And a lot of people are going to make a lot of money. And meanwhile, this guy just wants to cut hay. He just wants to cut hay. it's...

Yanasa TV Charlie (25:05.146) I mean, there's there's still on his family's legacy at the age of 85. I mean, it's just for for growing hay. And the thing is, is he's growing hay, which means that he's selling that hay to somebody else that's grown something that is more valuable to the consumer as far as meat or whatever has to be fed throughout the winter. And I don't know how it is in Washington. There are some places in this country that have plenty of hay. And then there are some places that go through periods where it can

get expensive and that's part of the reason why you've had this massive herd reduction around the US from cattle is just not enough, not enough food. you can't, for example, you can't ship hay out of North Carolina because of red ants to certain states because they might take them with them. So it's the supply chain isn't as easy as people would think, but yet we managed to cows and all sorts of stuff in from other countries. But the,

I think most people at this point in time, especially when you start seeing people holding magnets to meat in the grocery store, I think most people at this point in time have realized that cheap is not necessarily better. They're willing to pay more for where their food comes from, but the accessibility still, in my perspective, isn't there. And it's because of...

regulations. mean, the state of New Hampshire right now, they don't have any state processing facilities in New Hampshire. So even as a local farmer, can't go, they have a bottleneck of sources that can't get their animals to market because they rely on USDA facilities and then custom facilities. So what they want to do is they want to pass a law that says you can sell meat processed at a custom facility in the state of New Hampshire.

But the federal government actually oversees the custom processors. So they can't pass that law without putting themselves in conflict with the federal government. And then there you've got a bigger can of worms. you know, things like the Prime Act, I don't even know what ever happened to that. It was a hot topic in 2019 and then kind of fizzled out. But those are real door openers for a lot of people. I think you would see it.

TD (27:20.484) Yep.

Yanasa TV Charlie (27:29.198) huge change in the dynamic of the market. I think that prices are so high right now, as you had more options in the market that it would probably ease pricing a little bit, but it also would keep pricing in a range that's profitable for the small farmers, which is going to keep them in business. It's like I was talking to somebody, we've been working on a bison documentary over the years, and what I like about it is it talks about the conservation

aspect, you know, the indigenous aspect, the national parks, but it also kind of follows the bison industry a little bit. And what you realize is that some of the big meat packers in the bison industry create a market that allow the smaller guys to actually be able to come in there and compete and people know what the meat tastes like because you have this market that's been created by the larger people. The difference between that industry

and maybe the cattle industry where you've got Tyson and the big guys and then you've got all the farmers is that they work more together. But their attitude is if my neighbor is selling bison meat and he's a competitor of mine, the more meat he sells, the better it is for me because it's creating a market for me. I think the more farmers that can sell direct to the consumer,

the better the market's gonna get for more farmers because the consumer's gonna get used to the idea of buying direct from a farm. And it doesn't look as pretty on the shelf because we don't cover it in chemicals. I picked an apple off of one of our trees and handed it to one of my kids and they were like, can you cut the skin off it? And I was like, why? And they're like, do you see what that thing looks like? I'm like, that's natural. That's what it's supposed to look like.

TD (29:00.9) Yeah.

TD (29:19.159) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (29:22.191) The skin on the apples on the store, they're not really that color.

TD (29:25.487) Yeah. Yeah. No, you're exactly, you know, and we have about 400 fruit trees and all different kinds of, uh, heirloom varieties, you know, and they're not pretty. mean, they're, they're absolutely delicious. Um, but

It, it, one, comes down to education, you know, when we start obviously with our children, right? And that's a great illustration of like, this is what a real apple looks like. You know, that hasn't been sprayed 40 times, you know, and if I'm growing it in the tree in my backyard, I mean, you don't get more.

Decentralized in that right and it and it's the same thing. It's the same thing with the cows. It's the same thing with The microprocessors if you allow a microprocessor We had one that just opened it took them four years To get their permit cleared they had they had the property built a beautiful brand new building Signage and that sign was up for four years, know, and they finally got their permit and now they're off to the races,

know, and they're doing very well, but they, they, they had to survive, you know, they had to survive that process and most people can't survive the process.

Yanasa TV Charlie (30:42.648) Yeah, there were a lot of grants actually under the last administration to expanding meat processors. But if you looked at the actual amount of funding that was going out there versus what I think is actually needed for those microprocessors to expand. And the thing I've never understood is you've got all these

technicalities and specs and safety things that a microprocessor needs to meet to be, you know, approved when they're not creating nearly the environment that some processor processing 3000 animals a day is creating. mean, the cleanliness is very different. You don't have to have some of these multimillion dollar systems in place. So the money that was going into it was really pocket change for the problem.

that it was more, to me it was more of an optics thing than it was a solution. But what would actually be a better solution would be a deregulation to a certain extent on the microprocessors that it, cause you can do it with keeping the food system safe and clean, but more affordable and lower the bars of entry, know, bars of entry so that we could have more of them, you know.

and then we don't have to drive animals two hours to get them somewhere to be processed and stress them out. And I mean, it's kind of a ridiculous system, you know, it is, I guess the way it is.

TD (32:25.849) So what would you recommend regarding?

the Washington hay farmer, if we're putting out this information as far as resources or maybe like a call to action of what people can do, obviously for one, share this video. Certainly if you're in that region, share this video with your friends and family. But are there any types of any type of engagement that we can participate in to maybe help him get some traction, maybe just from an awareness standpoint?

Yanasa TV Charlie (32:59.118) I think the best thing we can do for him is tell his story because, like I said, I don't think he's necessarily got the resources or the connectivity with the rest of the world to tell it for himself. He had a few moments on the news and that was about it. So getting his story out there, contacting

people in Washington, if you live in Washington, contacting your state legislators and saying, look, this isn't okay. We should at least have a mediation process in there somewhere to help these elderly farmers figure out the system and not just throw them underneath the bus and take their land. Because that's, mean, essentially what's happening is they've they've raised the fines to the point.

And you can't tell me that they don't know that there's any other way to enforce their policies other than raising the fines to the point where they're going to confiscate somebody's land. I mean, they're smarter than that. I often question, though, with any of these agencies where their constitutional power comes in to take somebody's property like that. They've passed more laws and rules creating more criminals in the United States than Congress has. And who ever enacted the power to give it to them in the first place?

is, you know, a big question I've had even, you know, with the federal agencies, which have been being downsized, which I think is a good thing. But then when you when you're dealing with these state agencies, it's the same thing. They have been given the ability to write their own rules, create their own fines. And in this case, they actually do have the right to raise the fines to be whatever they want it to be. There's

there's no guidelines there, they can do whatever they want. So they've done that, laws on their side, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that law is equitable or right. And if we end up in a situation where these agencies are allowed to just get away with that, that's what leads you to tyranny, governments that are taking advantage of the citizens. But there's nothing, when you look at this case, there's nothing that is

Yanasa TV Charlie (35:21.966) fair about this regulation on this elderly farmer. So getting his story out there and drawing attention to it, it will ultimately, I believe it could have an impact on the outcome. And we've seen that, you know, in the state of Oregon, when they came out with regulations against the small dairy farmers, people spoke out about it. The state went back and changed, you know, the regulation.

And they're actually doing that right now with their farm stands earlier this year. That was a big deal that they were they were changing how they would regulate or define what a farm stand was, which would have cut off a lot of income for a lot of the family farms and pretty much put them out of business because it's really hard to make a, you know, a profit farming. Having some of those extra resources are what make them profitable. I mean,

We have online stores and social media. Everybody has to do something different to make it work. It doesn't just work on its own.

TD (36:29.303) Yeah, that's why the lobby groups come up with this punitive bureaucracy. So you have to be at a certain socio-economical level and have the resource, you know, it's a pay to play scheme that they're creating and they just make the barriers of entry so high. And we're talking about food. Like we're talking about a basic necessity. You need.

food more than you need shelter. Um, you know, you, you could survive in the woods or whatever, but if you don't have food and water, you're not going to make it. You know, we're talking about this basic necessity and why I am always so moved by these stories is who is next.

Okay. Now it's the 85 year old hay farmer. The next it could be you. It could be your neighbor and like, who's going to say something, you know, this guy doesn't have any family. So who's going to stand up for him? Who's going to say something? And that's why I think it's really important to, I'll put the links, to Charlie's article. thought it was great. I'll put the links to Charlie's article down below and just share the video, push it out maybe to other social influences.

And obviously if you're in that, geographical location, you can reach out to your state legislatures and just basically, I think the importance of that is, like, look, we know what's going on. We know what you're doing. Like, you know, reconsider.

Yanasa TV Charlie (38:08.867) Well, and I think you made a good point there too. And I mentioned this a few times to people as well, but these rules and regulations that are put out there have become so complex that it's really just another way for the corporate entities that have their attorneys and the people who can navigate this stuff against, you know, the employees of agencies who have gone through training after training after training.

An 85 year old farmer, even me, if I was having to try and figure out those water rights, I don't stand a chance at the system. I mean, it's just that complex that they're going to wipe those water rights out from underneath a lot of people. And water out west right now is worth more than gold or oil. I mean, if you look at the size of the contracts that they're selling water rights for, it's...

absolutely insane. So these corporations and people who have the wherewithal to come in and navigate the system are the ones who are ending up with all that. Whereas the guy who's been doing it since the 1950s on the same piece of land, he's just out of luck. And that's a problem with a lot of what we see going on across the United States.

TD (39:33.731) Right. You know, they'll do it once and it works and they'll do it again. And if nobody says anything and nobody stands up, they'll just, you know, they'll push it. They'll take another inch and another inch and another inch and you'll turn around. Like many of us have and what happened to my country? Like what happened to our food? What happened to our water? Like what happened to the sky? Like what's going on? Like.

The world has been hijacked and that's what that is what's going on. And that's why this topic's important. And, you know, I do want to reiterate, you know, share this video. and this way, if we can at least. If people at least understand the story and understand what's going on, that will be the next step in trying to get this corrected, remediated or rectified.

Yanasa TV Charlie (40:29.197) Yeah. And that's, I think that's all we can do, but it's been a powerful tool in the past to at least, you know, get them to come to the table and figure out a different way of solving what they feel is a problem, you know?

TD (40:46.115) Yeah, we we've seen several victories in the last couple of years. know, Amos Miller is a great example of people just creating awareness and just the, the pressure, the outside pressure to right the wrong. And so we're watching it and it does work. And so hopefully we can generate enough, steam to help shift the table for,

an 85 year old, you know, my dad, if my dad was alive, he'd be 85. You know.

Yanasa TV Charlie (41:23.169) Yeah, well that's the thing is I mean there is no way that he could come up with the money or I think there has to be a certain level of them understanding the system for an agency to come in like that and just try and take everything that he's had since the 1950s.

sitting there on that land. mean, there's just, there's no way he's going to understand everything that's going on or make sense of it. And I'm not saying that because of his age or I'm just saying like he's a different generation as far as, you know, the complexity of business dealings and for him to step in at 85 and relearn all that, it's an unreasonable expectation.

TD (42:16.591) many farmers at 70 said, you know what? I'm tapping out. You know, my land is worth millions of dollars. I'm going to liquidate and I'm going to move into a little retirement community and I'm going to drown worms and whatever, you know, and all that cool stuff. I'm going to buy me a bass boat and all that stuff. And here is just this guy is a national treasure. He's a national hero. He's a hay farmer. He's 85 and he gets up every

day and he puts his overalls on, he just wants to go out cut and stack hay. I mean, that, that should be applauded, right? He's not looking for public assistance. He's not looking for, somebody to double his social security or anything. Here's a guy, 85 wants to work, has the ability to work, has the farm that was gifted to him from his ancestors. Right. And he just wants to keep doing what he has always done.

And they're just going to try to cancel them.

Yanasa TV Charlie (43:20.363) Yeah, pretty much. But when you put it that way, I mean, it is a legendary American that's just getting destroyed by the system that they helped create. And it's a really sad thing. And like I said, the fines are unreasonable. If you think about it in the big scheme of things.

Watering hay on 69 acres for a few weeks during the summertime I Mean those are some of the most expensive water rights have ever heard of hundred thousand dollars I mean, it's not a whole lot of water that they're they're talking about and and

TD (43:56.771) Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (44:04.345) I know that I'll, I always get the comments from a lot of people who are, you know, very emotional about, you know, the water situations out west and protecting our water resources. And I don't disagree with protecting our water resources. What I disagree with is stuff like this and the way that the system has been.

turned and abused to basically put these smaller farms out of business. that's, you know, when you look at Washington, you look at what happened in Whatcom County at the beginning of the year when they sued 30,000 people to prove their water rights to the state. mean, how many of those farmers were elderly farmers? And we know a lot of them were because we know what the average age is of a farmer in the United States. How many of them do you think

would have been able to go back and go through the system and figure out all that information, information that's probably been in their family for generations. it's an, just that right there, I would think is a civil rights case that the USDA could investigate because it's targeting, whether intentional or not, it's targeting the elderly population, that older age. And we're about to go through a period of time in America where a lot of those older farmers

are retiring. Their kids haven't been given the promises to go back and work the land that they were once given. So they're not necessarily, you know, heading to the fields anytime soon. They'd rather cash out and do something else. And so, you know, the future of this country is going to be very different in 10 years when we start to see the outcome of what is going to be one of the largest wealth transfers in history.

when it comes to land.

TD (46:02.893) And whenever you dig into these water issues, you know, cause people want to cry about the water and us being actively participating in this scenario that's going on here, there are incredibly cost effective solutions, right? there were two solutions brought, you know, we had big board meetings that we attended and we do have local legislators in our corner. but

to water the green yards in Dallas, you know, and to fill all their vanishing swimming pools and all that stuff, you know, we could put a desalinator plant in Galveston at the shore and pump far more water.

to Dallas, right for pennies. And then that desalinator can be scaled to continue to supply more water to these AI, whatever, you know, and then there's also local catchment there in Dallas where they can redirect this water and they can, they can have a low cost solution. That's

much more, either exclusive to them where if it's water catchment in Dallas or whether it's a desalination plant and we just build a pipeline, but there are cost-effective solutions that do not involve stealing private property, right? And spending that that's what's amazing when you dig into these topics is like there, there are absolutely solutions. are low cost solutions that can be this desalinization plant can be monetized.

They can charge for all this. It can be lucrative. You know, they don't have to steal 2,000 acres to do this

Yanasa TV Charlie (47:50.586) But if they don't steal it, then they won't get all that multi-million dollar waterfront property. that's the, I mean, there's, can we do it more cost effectively? Yes, but can we make more money in the long run, you know, by taking other people's land? You could always make more money by taking people's land. That's why they do it.

TD (47:55.585) Exactly. Follow the money.

TD (48:11.445) Yeah. So for folks that aren't familiar with you, maybe just tell us a little bit about your NASA and what you're doing and, and your website and the projects you're working on so people can learn a little bit about what you and your wife are doing.

Yanasa TV Charlie (48:30.615) Yeah, UNASA TV is our YouTube channel and we have a kind of a print version on Substack and we also have a website that updates a little later than Substack. But what I do on my podcast is I follow a lot of these stories across the United States and I talk about them every week just to draw awareness to the challenges that our agricultural communities are facing.

and not just across the United States, but I've talked about stories up in Canada and, elsewhere. But so that's kind of the gist of where my podcast has gone over the years. My wife and I also operate a nonprofit called meet my neighbor productions. And we air a lot of that stuff on our YouTube channel as well. Meet my neighbors. Goal has been to go out and use storytelling to educate.

people about farmers, about where our food comes from. And we kind of started that off with a farm series, which we hope to get back to at some point. And then we have spent the last several years working on this bison documentary, which is much bigger than anybody thought it was going to be. It's just part one of three or fours over an hour. But the point of that is to help educate people of why ruminants

are so important. when you look at our ecology, when you look at the environment, we're constantly being told that these animals are bad, but yet our entire North American ecology was built off of a rumen bovine species. we, you know, the goal of that storytelling and those documentaries is to help promote, just to help people understand and be educated because I feel like

the narrative shifted very negatively towards farming and agriculture over the years. And you can see why it's not necessarily because what they're doing is bad, but they're in the way. so that's what Meet My Neighbor does. that's pretty much been our focus for the last several years is just keeping up with the podcast and the news and working on that storytelling. When it comes to social media, we also have a farm.

TD (50:37.924) Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (50:55.811) We raise animals, we sell meat, we do all the things, but our passion has been to help people understand kind of the truth about agriculture. And it's not necessarily bad mouthing big ag either because there's billions of people in the world, we've got to feed them all. But there is a certain point to which you have to look at it and realize that

you know, over the years, our ability to choose where our food comes from and then choose what goes into it. I we're finding more more and more about what is in our foods that we shouldn't eat. And so helping people understand the importance of diversifying our food supply again is an important part of that narrative as well.

TD (51:50.499) Yeah, it's about, it's about food choice. And if you want to eat big ag, anything, you should have the right to do it. You should have the access to it. But if you want to eat locally sourced, locally raised, regenerative or.

You know, whatever you should have the ability to do that and your neighbor should have the ability to provide it for you if they so choose to do that. I mean, that's part of the Liberty and that's part of freedom and that all requires choice and ability. And, that's why I love what you're doing. You're educating people, you know, I think everybody's woken up to the fact that.

I don't know if there's any value in a higher education. you know, they're, they're, Tucker Carlson was talking to Charlie Kirk.

And he said, you know, what, what are we going to do about these institutes of higher learning? And Charlie said they're unredeemable. You know what I mean? And and I believe that, that just because our institutes of higher learning are unredeemable doesn't mean we stopped learning and stop growing. And, you know, the way forward to, to change things is you have to first understand the problem. If you don't understand the problem, you aren't ever going to know how to fix it. And if.

we have resources like people like yourself that are educating people and saying, look, here's why it's important. You know, you just thought, you know, you do your nine to five in your concrete jungle and you go to Walmart and you buy your hamburger, you know, and you cut the plastic packaging and you throw it in your Teflon coated pan and whatever. And you, have every right to do all that. Like that. That's cool. But look, man, there may come a day when that rubber tube out

TD (53:41.183) Walmart, it might be a meat like substance or something like that. We, you know, don't, don't assume.

Yanasa TV Charlie (53:48.173) think it already is a meat-like sumpstice. I don't know if it's real.

TD (53:52.643) Don't assume, you know, don't assume, you can't, we can't assume that it's all going to be there. we experienced something in 2020 where it wasn't there anymore. Right? So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to keep wishing and hoping and, know, maybe the right guys will get elected next time or whatever, or are we going to educate people, inform people? Are we going to participate, participate in the process? You know, and we, we have cows because we don't assume that we're always going to be able to go to the grocery store.

and buy meat tubes, you know, and that's why we do it. And, you know, and we like to offer our beef to our local neighbors because that's one way to love your neighbor, right? Is say, Hey, look, we, have some very healthy meat here and we want to make it available to you. We're not.

We are not silver spoon. We're not extravagantly rich. If I was, I'd give it to you. I'm willing to sell it to you or maybe we can barter or something like that. Right. And it's just, it's, is what community is, you know, that is community. That's how town started. Like this is, and it's, just a returning to the simple, to a much more simple way of life.

But the issues that we are talking about is when government interjects themselves for under the guise of safety, you know, and we're protecting the water and we're protecting the children. But meanwhile, the 85 year old hay farmer that wants to get up and put his coveralls on and is not looking for a check or handout. He just wants to go cut hay, right? Leave him alone.

Yanasa TV Charlie (55:34.583) Yeah. Well, I think that as a society in general, we have gotten way too far down the road of feeling protected by the government. there's a difference between the government protecting our liberties with defense and the government protecting us from ourselves, pretty much. mean, if we can't protect ourselves, I don't know how we expect somebody else to do it because they're cut from the same cloth.

But when it comes to our food supply, that's the narrative. I mean, that they're doing it to protect us. But I think anybody, personal opinion, I think if you want to buy a cow off of somebody and that cow is slaughtered on their property, I mean, that's a personal, you should have,

The government should have enough respect for your decision making to let you make that choice yourself. And I think a lot, the more we go down towards the path of public health care and all these things, they're gonna try and mitigate that risk and mitigate that risk and mitigate that risk so that the service providers can make more money and there's less risk. But when you look at our food supply today, the risk is still there. They haven't taken it, mean, kids were getting poisoned from too much lead in applesauce.

TD (56:54.776) Yeah.

Yanasa TV Charlie (56:59.916) just a year or so ago. mean, there's probably more risk in that consolidated system than there is in the way that people have been doing it for hundreds of years. And really, you didn't hear a whole lot of reasons for the stuff going in the wrong direction until it became a big corporation thing and it had more to do with money and control.

TD (57:00.057) Yep.

Yanasa TV Charlie (57:27.842) than anything else. It was a day when our government sent everybody west and told them to build something out of whatever they could find. And now it's, if you want to put a deck on the back of your house, we've got to go through this entire permitting process. You know, we don't want that wood to sink an inch.

TD (57:43.428) Yeah.

Well, very well said. think this has been a.

I really appreciate you coming on. I appreciate everything you're doing. I'm going to link Charlie's article down below. In that, I think he has the interview from the newscast where with the farmer, let's just spread the word. Let's share the video and see if we can create some type of social media traction shared across all your platforms and let's create some kind of traction so that maybe we can

get them to let the hay farmer farm hay. That's where we're at, you know, that's where we're at in America. Like, let the 85 year old guy that wants to get up and go to work every day, let him go to work on his land that he inherited from his family, you know, let him just get up and go to work.

Yanasa TV Charlie (58:38.998) Yeah. Let him do what he's done for decades.

TD (58:43.831) Yeah. Yeah. It's Charlie, man. Thanks a lot for investing the time here. Y'all. This is a value for value proposition. If you, if you like the content and information that we're putting out, please go on over to the texasboys.com. We love and appreciate all your support and any, closing words, Charlie.

Yanasa TV Charlie (59:04.344) No, I think we've covered a lot of things.

TD (59:07.851) All right. Well, yeah, you can check Charlie's links down below and we'll see you all in the next show.