TD (00:01.686)
Welcome back to the Fearless Podcast. In the world of agriculture, there are farmers who just want to grow food. And then there are farmers who are willing to fight a war to do it. My guest today is Bryson Linscomb, a military veteran turned first generation farmer who runs Triple Oaks Farm in Long Island, Virginia. But Bryson isn't just raising heritage pigs.

and selling raw milk. He is at the forefront of a modern battle for food sovereignty. After witnessing the fragility of our food system during the pandemic, Bryson decided to opt out of the industrial model entirely. Instead of a standard retail business, he launched a private membership association or PMA for short.

It's a legal structure that treats every transaction as a private contract between neighbors rather than a public sale subject to state regulation. The Commonwealth of Virginia didn't like that. What followed was a high stakes legal showdown. The Virginia Department of Health took Triple Oaks to court seeking to shut down its distribution of raw milk and meat. It was a classic

David versus Goliath story a small family farm standing on constitutional rights Against the unlimited resources of the state, but here's the twist the state back down Today we're going to talk about what it really takes to practice regenerative agriculture Why the government is so afraid of private food contracts and how one man's victory might just change the future

of how we eat Bryson, welcome to the show, man. How you doing?

Bryson Lipscomb (02:02.103)
I'm great TD. Thank you for having me. It's got the event that intro just got me pretty jazzed up because I said I haven't talked about this for a couple months and tried not to think about it too much, but I'm fired up now. Let's go

TD (02:15.16)
So I guess to get started, man, how did you, what was the, what was your clarion call? What was that moment that even made you got thinking about growing your own food?

Bryson Lipscomb (02:27.973)
Yeah, so 2021, you know, kind of pandemic, COVID-19 era, big meat packing houses were unable to keep their staff on board because all the restrictions and whatever, people not coming into work. So that created these ripple effects in the meat market for the consumer, for the final end consumer. And it showed up in just shortages.

Some places worse than others here, it was just for a week or two. But it was during that time, know, my wife and I worked full-time jobs. We had professional careers. We were just that everyday NPC. Didn't think about our food, didn't think about sustainability. You know, we would just go to the store and get food for the week. You know, a lot of meat. like to, you know, I'm a barbecue head. I like to smoke stuff. So I went in there that time and...

The meat was just pretty much non-existent, man. And it kind of was a punch in the gut to my wife, Mackenzie, and I. It made us realize how dependent we were on other people to feed ourselves. And so my wife proposed the idea that we get a couple piglets to raise for ourselves to put in the freezer. And so I just begun researching what it would take to raise. I didn't know any, I still don't know anything, but I said.

I really didn't know anything then, so I just started researching what it takes to raise a pig and then I came across, somehow I fell in the regenerative agriculture lane and was writing everything Joel Salatin said down and he's made many other disciples in the regenerative farming community and I was following their teachings as well. We went to a class at J &O Green Farm led by Jordan Green and who continues to be my mentor.

today and we started raising these pigs and it just kind of became really apparent that our community was looking for locally produced food, especially during those times. Unfortunately, we kind of missed that boom because we were just starting up, but during that time, because of those meat shortages and just I think everyone was scared. They were looking to stock their freezers. They were looking to prepare their families for

Bryson Lipscomb (04:49.43)
whatever might come, whatever might be next to come. But that's when we felt the pressure from the market and we just started to lean into it and pursue producing high quality protein for first and foremost ourselves, our family, and then subsequently our community. And we just kept leaning into it. And when you begin producing this product, these products on the farm and

and with the intention of selling DTC, you have to look into the regulations or you're told what the regulations are, what the rules are. You're told by others, oftentimes wrong, what you can and cannot do or what you should or should not do in ManTD from the beginning. I just wasn't happy with it. It didn't seem right to me, the amount of restrictions.

the amount of overreach that are both state and federal government was committing on our on small local food producers it was it just was i was mad it just made me mad and you know you know for meat red meat specifically we have to take our i say have to to do it their way to sell to the public i should say you're required to take those animals to a

USDA inspected and certified butcher to be able to sell that animal pound for pound piece by piece in a retail like setting. And those USDA butchers are few and far in between. They know that, which means they can set whatever price they want. Their quality of work can be less than what you might consider

the standard and it doesn't affect their bottom line because they've got people lined up at their door every week, all week trying to walk this very narrow line that the state and federal government has laid out for food producers such as ourselves. So the USDA butcher thing, was made, it was very clear to me in the beginning that this was not the best way to feed my community.

Bryson Lipscomb (07:12.709)
Plus it was my highest input cost as a pork producer was the butcher fees, even more so than the non-GMO feed cost to feed that animal from start to finish for eight months to a year. The butcher fees still were much more than that cost, still seems crazy to me. And then we spent so much time raising these animals and pouring ourselves into these animals.

and loving them and caring for them and honoring their lives every day and honoring the land. then when some employee screws up your cuts, screws up your very simple instructions on that meat, that meat that I'm trying to give to my customers, it really, again, was just infuriating. It would make me so mad.

Sometimes you wouldn't get parts back. They wouldn't cut something the right way. Sometimes you wouldn't even get your own animal back. Some of these places are disgusting. These USDA butcher shops are disgusting. People have this expectation in their mind that, it's government inspected. They've got our backs. That's just not the case. So that was really...

That 2021, the meat shortage was the catalyst to getting into farming. And then the butchering process was the of the catalyst to getting into the entering the private realm of commerce, that is the PMA.

TD (08:57.368)
You know, many people dream of farming, but few actually take the leap.

Going from the structure of the military to the chaos of a startup farm is a massive shift. What would you say is the steepest learning curve you faced in that first year? Was it the animals, the land, or the business side?

Bryson Lipscomb (09:30.435)
Probably the management of the animals, would say. Especially in the first year. You're not even a business that first year. lot of people, I found out, other entrepreneurs don't even count their first year because we're just working on getting the groundwork laid out and we didn't even really have much of a product to take to market at that point. So it was very just animal intensive.

Lots of learning curves, in raising pigs out in the woods and on pasture. And that was tough. You know, it's very hard. We still have hard days today. But I think every day, every week, it gets a little bit less stressful. You you still make mistakes and things still go wrong. You just have seen them a few times before so you know how to handle them a little bit better. that's a great point you bring up about the business too because

you you're not just learning you know and this is every venture into you know entrepreneurship and to run in your own businesses you have to learn how well I guess not everybody's producing their own product but you know for farming you have to learn how to farm and then also you have to learn how to run a business and I've never started a business before neither had my wife we had never done any of this so it's two things that you're learning quick fast and in a hurry and we were pushing

know, gas, no breaks there for the first three years, just as hard as we could go to see. And I talk about this a lot, know, just trying to see how big I could grow a business, farm, and how fast I could do it. And that is not, that is not the reason to do it. That's not the reason to do anything. So I learned.

But yeah.

TD (11:25.279)
We all learn. That's the beauty of farming. We strategically relocated 14 years ago and we wanted to live a more intentional life, grow our own food, provide our children with an environment to teach and to train them and to kind of in a very real, give them a hard life. So that we had the...

the stage on which we could kind of.

provide an arena where they could compete for lack of a better term and perform and have responsibilities and do the hard things and We we just had it today, know animals die our red bourbon tom that we've had for forever he was the guardian of the back food forest and I think he died of old age. He was he had to be like 10 and and I think I think he later and died and then some

Some scavengers got him is what I think happened But you know, so our little ones were very heartbroken about that, but you know, it's a lesson like, you know This is how the farm life works and you know animals die. He lived an awesome great life he just farged for whatever he needed back there and It just provides us with so many opportunities and opportunities to learn opportunities to teach

You know, the term regenerative has become a bit of a buzzword. If I walked onto Triple Oak's farm today, what would I see that physically distinguishes your operation from a conventional farm? You know, how are you using the pigs to actually heal the soil rather than just use the soil?

Bryson Lipscomb (13:08.385)
Mm.

Bryson Lipscomb (13:25.186)
I think about conventional hog farms all the time and I envy them sometimes because they're so efficient. A conventional hog farm would be typically hog barns, big warehouse type buildings on a huge slatted concrete floor raising thousands of pigs in the same square footage year after year. And it is terribly efficient. That's the name of the conventional meat production game is to get that animal from

point A to point B as quickly as possible and as efficiently as possible with as little labor inputs as possible. And regenerative agriculture is kind of the opposite of that. We still try to be efficient, it's one of the hardest ways probably to do it. It takes the most amount of labor to do it, the most amount of time to do it, and also land. takes a lot of land, which is...

you know, kind of a problem we're addressing now. But, so instead of raising pigs in the same footprint like an industrial, you know, pork producer would do, we are rotating pigs throughout the wooded areas and pastures on a 12-month yearly basis. And what that does is it allows them to forage and root and lay around and

and use one area, say one to two acres at a time, kind of exhaust the natural resources in that area, and then we will move them on. And what that does is it allows their manure, one, to decompose and be absorbed back into the top soil, feeding the whole microbiome, the whole entire ecology that is soil. And it allows those natural forages to...

to grow back and it also encourages their rooting, their aeration, their fertilization encourages the natural forages to come back too. So that's a really cool thing to see. Without spreading any seeds, these things are just growing up behind these pigs because those seeds have been laying dormant in the topsoil for who knows how long, waiting for the ideal conditions that pigs provide. They're also clearing out areas, so pigs are a great way for clearing out really thick.

Bryson Lipscomb (15:52.171)
thick areas of woods you might not want to get into. And so what that does is as they kind of clear, it allows us an easier opportunity to go in there with the equipment and start thinning out some of the canopy, some of the larger trees, excuse me, whatnot, so that we can allow more sunlight to penetrate the canopy, which also aids in those natural seeds to sprout, to germinate and sprout.

you know, more more forage for those pigs the next time we rotate back around. So we move pigs, you know, every, it really depends on a lot of different variables, but we move pigs every few weeks, typically one to three weeks. It depends on stocking density, size of paddock, it depends on the weather. If it's really wet, we'll typically have to move them more frequently.

Yeah, so right now they've got piglets, they're having piglets, so everything kind of, the movement cycle really slows down because of those piglets. Which is kind of nice, it's kind of reprieve, but you've got plenty of other things to do with, right now we've got, you know, 100-some piglets on the ground. So our plate is still full. But yeah, so that's what regenerative agriculture is in terms of raising pastured pork.

Also I should mention that you said that we raise heritage breed hogs, old line genetic pigs. grow typically a little slower. Well, they do grow slower than conventional, like a land-raised hog. They put on substantially more fat than a conventional pink hog, which is great. They also produce a much higher quality meat. And that's one, because of their genetics, and two, because of the

the environment that we raise them in. These pigs are, well for one, just the sunlight alone, the vitamin D production from the natural sun improves that meat dramatically. The nutrients that they get from the natural forages also improves that meat quality and then on top of that all the exercise. know, well-worked muscle is a tasty, nutrient-dense muscle. So a lot of times this pork...

Bryson Lipscomb (18:16.927)
Instead of a very pale pink pork, this pork tends to be a much more darker red, more robust looking, often comparable to beef looking, meat looking pork. So it's more labor intensive, time intensive inputs are dramatically higher than conventional pork. The product that you get at the end of the day is a completely different product than

uh... consumers can purchase at their you know average big-box store

TD (18:52.973)
That's the next question I want to get into, but before we go there, are you able to do this on your own land or are you leasing? Do you have to lease any land or how does that work out?

Bryson Lipscomb (19:04.861)
So we only own just over 23 acres, is not much at all. And that's a really good question. I love talking about this because as of right now, we don't technically lease anything. We don't pay for any land. That's probably getting ready to change just because of scale. But we work with one, two, three.

four of our neighbors right now, four other neighbors, four other landowners, not including ourselves, to run pigs across. And that's all just handshake deals. They see the way that we raise pigs. They know us. They know that our intentions are good. And a lot of people have, you know, it could be anywhere from 10 to 25 acres that these people own and they don't really, they're not doing anything with the land and us coming in with the...

with the pigs as a way to manage that property respectfully and with little to no big footprint or impact, I should say, on that land. And kind of the promise that we give these, our surrounding landowners, our neighbors, the promise that we give them is we will leave the area more beautiful than when we found it.

from just above ground area beautification to the top soil itself will be improving. So that's my goal. That's what I always keep in mind is just make this place look nice. know, try to, I want my neighbors to know, I appreciate what they're doing for us. They're giving us, allowing us a huge opportunity to run our small business by letting us use their land, land that we can't afford to buy.

And so, yeah, we try to keep that relationship as mutual as possible. But that's the really cool thing, man. We're certainly blessed to have great neighbors. But I think it should be an inspiration for others that, like, you know, these opportunities are out there. You know, people have offered land to us many times, you know, as more members come to the farm, they're like, hey, I got 60 acres here, I got 100 acres here, you know, so land is there.

Bryson Lipscomb (21:27.709)
and it can be affordable to you. I don't necessarily want to own any land, large amounts of land, if I'm in that position one day, cool, but for right now, I think in the first 10 years, you can get land, you can lease land. that's, so it's, like I said, we own just over 23 acres and we probably operate.

on a yearly basis probably around 60 acres right now.

TD (21:58.595)
Wow, that's great. mean, and that's, that's the community coming together and just like your PMA is a parallel solution, you know, communities working together and neighbors, loving each other and working together. It's just parallel solutions. It's like everything we talk about on here. you were just alluding to, you know, kind of like the hidden cost of cheap meat. when somebody buys a.

Bryson Lipscomb (22:02.78)
Thank

TD (22:28.431)
Um, some pork from you, um, versus say like $3 chop at Walmart. Uh, what are they actually paying for? Walk us through the nutritional and ethical difference.

Bryson Lipscomb (22:45.905)
Well, $3 would probably be on the high end. Man, I see $1.98 boneless pork chops for sale at Sam's Club or at the US food store. That should make you question everything right there. It's like, can they sell this to me for like nothing? Like pennies on the dollar. Like what did it take or not take to produce this meat, man? Like it blows my mind how cheap it is.

But yeah, so what they're getting, I forget what university did this study, man, but pastured pork has twice the cell density per gram of meat that conventionally raised pork does. So your nutritional value is close to double. So you're bang for your buck, you you're paying a lot more for this pork, for what you're actually getting, what you're consuming.

is incredibly higher than what you would get from a conventionally raised hog. Plus you're supporting a sustainable farming practice, a regenerative farming practice, something that is going to benefit this land, this earth for centuries to come. You're supporting an educational process for your surrounding communities as people look to us.

to learn from us you know what i mean to continue that regenerative agriculture endeavors and that's what i mean it's amazing to think about joe sallaton and how many how many people he has encouraged to start this type of farming across the country across the world tens of thousands you know what i mean and then like

And then there's some bigger ones like Jordan Green I mentioned earlier was, you know, he was an intern for Joel in his younger days. And then he went on to create his, one of the largest pasture pork farms in Virginia. And then one of his main things is teaching others how to raise pasture pork. So it's like, it just continues down the line, man. And that's so cool. Like that's how we, that's how we make change hopefully. So like what one man did, Joel did.

Bryson Lipscomb (25:03.195)
has impacted so many lives, so many families across the country. So yeah, that's what you're supporting when you buy from a local farmer like us. It's not just some big commercial business. You're supporting a family.

TD (25:21.945)
Yeah. And two points I want to make off of what you were saying. You know, you're talking about like how infinitesimally small these major meat brokers packing houses, this monolithic mega international corporations can provide this food for us. This is a banker's war and the war on food is a banker's war. If you read tragedy and hope written by

Carol Quigley, you know, you'll understand why and how we outsourced everything to China. And then you'll understand why China owns 95 % of the pig, the pork production in America. Tell me how that works. then, you know, secondarily, when it comes to ecosystems and money, they've done many studies on this. you spend dollars locally.

Bryson Lipscomb (26:08.804)
Yeah, I

TD (26:21.745)
They will recycle within that community community a minimum of seven times So for every dollar you spend locally your local economy realizes seven dollars of value Versus the 199 you spend at Walmart that gets redistributed to China And so you can see how this wealth distribution Process is done and how it's taking place and then you can learn

why, how they can subsidize these monolithic mega corporations to provide you with incredibly deficient food product for a reduced it's one it's to hide hyperinflation. You know, they need, they print all this money. They do all this quantitative easing. Just this month, they started quantitative easing again, and they create all this hyperinflation, but then they hide it through these monolithic mega food

corporations by reducing the cost. And the one of the only ways to reduce the cost, not just through subsidies is through quality. And so that's why,

growing food locally costs more just because it costs what it costs. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't cost less. It's just, if you're friends with the monolithic banking cartel and these monolithic transnational food corporations, you know, you get to be subsidized and the bureaucracy and the technocracy puts all the barriers of entry into place and puts all these U S duh regulations in force to prevent you from feeding your fam.

and to prevent you and me from like providing a high quality product at a reasonable cost where your neighbor can actually afford it.

Bryson Lipscomb (28:16.802)
Yeah, that's one of the reasons we wanted to move into the private sector was the USDA. The USDA is a great term. The USDA is one of the main reasons that these products are so expensive. Like I said, butcher fees, USDA butcher fees, were my largest input cost. They were actually 65 % more than what it would cost to finish that animal on feet.

which is criminal, was averaging at one time at one place, I was averaging for basic cuts out of a pig, $450 per animal. Dude, that's insane. That's insane. And people want to, they're like, why are your pork chops cost so much compared to what I can get at Foodline? I'm like, cause I don't own, I don't have a monopoly on the pork industry like Smithfield does owned by China.

you know i don't own the u.s.d. a processing facility out you know what i mean like we're we're out here just figure it out trying to make it work as tiny no-name producers and but that's and that's so intentional you know they don't want it to be easy they don't want it to be affordable they don't want more families out here starting farms essentially making more food printing assets printing currency

because that's what it is man. Food is currency and it is the government's agenda to control the food top to bottom because if you control the food you can control the people 100 percent. You know a good example was like during COVID the toilet paper ran dry and look how people acted. Can you imagine when the food runs out? And then you've got hopefully if that ever happens or when that happens you know you've got

100, don't know what the number would be, 100, 200,000 small, there should be a small farm in every single micro community producing enough food to feed that community. And if you could do that, well then who cares what the government does, you know what I mean? And so that's what the government doesn't want. So they try to make it an almost impossible endeavor to become a farmer, become a food producer, period.

TD (30:23.759)
Exactly.

TD (30:37.487)
They just announced.

This week or last week, the largest beef processor in Nebraska that processes 5,000 head a day. I'm pretty sure it's 5,000 head a day. They're closing that processing plant and people can't even understand the impact of what that's going to do to beef and beef pricing. And then all of this like tariff shenanigans with Brazil and

this stuff, but, this is all part of the food game and, this is what makes.

Bryson Lipscomb (31:10.808)
You're the

TD (31:20.271)
small family owned decentralized businesses like what Bryson is doing makes them so much more important and so much more sustainable is because our supply lines continue to be manipulated. Whether it's something unseen in the air that supposedly pops out of nowhere or whatever, or the next one, whatever and whenever and all that stuff or whatever, or whether it's just some monolithic

like mega mega corporations saying, we're going to close down this massive plant that employs like 7,000 people locally and processes 5,000 cows. And we're just going to not do that anymore. And they're not doing it anymore because it's not profitable. They're doing it on purpose. So, let's talk about the private membership association or, you know, short PMA for short, for, listeners who've never heard this, can you explain in simple terms how a

Bryson Lipscomb (32:13.815)
Yeah.

TD (32:20.101)
PMA differs from a standard retail business.

Bryson Lipscomb (32:24.395)
Yeah, so the main difference is we operate in the private realm or private domain of commerce. We are not selling to the public. And that is the main difference. When we first started, you're going to farmers markets, you're selling USDA meat, all this stuff is because you're selling to the public. And when you establish yourself as a private membership association,

You are now, you we send letters of intent out to the state, to these governing agencies, these bureaucracies, letting them know what you are and who you are. And then inside the PMA, everything, all of our products are offered to our members under a private contract. So a PMA is a first amendment, well, first, fifth, and 14th protected constitutional right.

The first being, mostly, you have the right to free speech, course, everyone talks about that, but you also have the right to freely assemble and you have the right to privately associate. That's what a PMA is protected by, is the First Amendment. I'm not just making this up, there's dozens of federal Supreme Court cases that have, one, acknowledged and upheld PMA rights in the past.

They're very PMAs are very common. You just might not know about them. They're not common in the farming community. They're growing. It's a growing thing because we're learning about it. Unfortunately, they don't teach you these things in public school, which is very intentional. But farmers are catching on and learning our rights. But PMAs are common in like the private medical industry. Midwifery is a lot of them are PMAs. Let's see, like the NAACP is a PMA.

Moose Lodge, PMA. A lot of your country clubs are PMAs. So it's just a private contract that if UTD wanted, if you wanted pastured pork or some of the incredible bacon that we offer here on the farm, you would sign the Private Membership Association membership form. You would pay us, ours is a $5 one time lifetime membership fee.

Bryson Lipscomb (34:52.822)
because I'm not here to make money off your... Alright, side note here. Some people have reoccurring fees, membership dues, whatever. I see this as your God-given, constitutionally protected right to feed yourself and your family however you see fit. This is your God-given right. Who am I to make money off you exercising your God-given right? So I used to have it as a dollar. My membership fees used to be a dollar. But our legal counsel...

encouraged me to change it to five dollars because apparently in the past judges have deemed one dollar membership as a two minuscule of an amount so I changed it to five dollars and usually I'll give you I'll give you five dollars off or throw in something extra because I you know I don't want to make money off that but you would sign that contract you would you would pay your membership fees of the contract it doesn't it's not committing you to anything you know some people and I get it

I have to have the conversation with a few people every now and then, just reassuring them that, this is not binding you to anything. This is not any type of subscription type thing. This is just you joining our private association, recognizing yourself as a private entity, as it is your right as an American. And then once you're in the PMA, you have access to all the incredibly healthy.

nutrient-dense products that we offer. that is the difference. The difference is we're in the private sector and not the public. And government agencies, bureaucracies often have jurisdiction over the public realm of commerce and not the private realm of commerce. So we operate in the private realm of commerce. They don't like that, as you mentioned. They don't like it. And I should say, man,

I have to say, if you want to start a PMA, don't think like, this is my constitutional right. We're protected. No one's going to mess with us. Don't be so naive. The G-boys never like it when you start exercising your rights. So they're going to shake a stick at you. And that's what happened to us. We were challenged, essentially.

TD (37:13.092)
Yeah, you know.

Bastiat writes about life, liberty and property and how they would have to pre-exist laws. And it's very fascinating to think about it. And when you think about the first amendment, you know, the, your liberty of speech, and when you compare that with your liberty to operate in the private realm, you would have a very difficult time speaking publicly.

if you starve to death. So there's a lot of correlation there. That's very interesting. But...

You recently went through a significant legal battle where, the Virginia. Department of health sought an injunction against you, basically essentially to shut down your raw milk distribution. Take us into that moment when you received the summons. you, did you ever feel like throwing in the towel or what was that?

Bryson Lipscomb (38:17.94)
Did I feel like quitting? Yeah, of course, man. The easiest decision and what they expect you to do, the easiest thing you can do is comply. And that is what they expect you to do when they start sending you these big threatening letters from the government. That's what most people do, man, especially in this farming community. Unfortunately, farmers just don't want to be bothered. They just want to do whatever it'll take to get you off their back so they can continue to live their life in peace.

So yeah, man, what did it feel like? Well, it started about 12 months ago when we got a cease and desist from our local health department accusing us of unlawfully selling raw milk, which was not the case. Well, they were accusing us of selling unpasteurized milk to the public, which was not the case. We knew that. We knew our right. So we took it as a... Now that probably rocks me more than anything because it was my first experience receiving this.

cease and desist like that is scary man like this is real yeah like and this is coming from like a governmental body you know and it was like so it really kind of it that ruffled our feathers i got on the phone with several people and i'm i'm incredibly blessed that the lord has put these people in my life to guide me and mentor me through this but seven months after that cease and desist i had a you know a local county

TD (39:20.749)
This is real now.

Bryson Lipscomb (39:46.418)
deputy show up on my farm serving me this fat stack of papers summoning my family to court. dude, I try not to, like, my flesh just wants to get angry and violent. You know, that's kinda, that's my default. yeah, and it's there for a reason, I understand.

TD (40:10.499)
We're hardwired for that. Yep.

Bryson Lipscomb (40:15.827)
But it's like, who are you to summons me? But that's in that moment.

Yeah, it's scary, man. You start reading that stuff, they're threatening you with fines, with jail time, if you don't comply and this and that. And if you don't know, if you don't know what you're doing is right and constitutionally protected, then you probably would just lay down and do whatever they told you to do. we, we felt confident in what we were doing. We feel like this is where the Lord has led us for a reason.

And so we decided to, we were going to take it on. And we also knew that what they were doing was highly unconstitutional. And it was actually baffling that they were choosing to do this because, you know, they're at risk to lose a lot more than I am because of their actions at this point. You know, they're at risk for losing their job, for losing their entire net worth if we decide to...

pursue them for their actions but that's a later conversation.

TD (41:27.791)
So the state dropped the lawsuit, which many people are calling it like landmark win for food freedom. Why do you think they backed down? Was it the legal argument of the PMA or was it the 40,000 plus people rallying behind you?

Bryson Lipscomb (41:33.427)
Anyway.

Bryson Lipscomb (41:52.018)
Yeah, it just makes me so warm and fuzzy on the inside thinking about that. So we, because it was so unconstitutional, we really thought that the judge was going to drop this before the pretrial hearing just administratively. So we thought this quietly for, it was like two months, you know, we were filing

TD (41:54.767)
Thank

TD (41:59.641)
Good.

Bryson Lipscomb (42:20.834)
man, I've forgotten all the mumbo jumbo thankfully. The filings for dismissal and we were filing arguments, several of them. And they were accumulating quickly. And I think because the state, the attorney general's office, because we were fighting this what's called pro se, meaning without an attorney.

that they were just gonna steamroll us in paperwork. And man, they tried. These guys are dogs, man. They were sending me stuff like, like right off the bat. They were sending me document preservation notices. Like from the jump, we haven't even been to the hearing yet. And they're filing document preservation notice saying, don't you even delete a single text from the last three years. You better not even forget a conversation you had with these people from the last three years. Emails, everything. Like we're gonna dig through your entire life.

over the last three years. Like, you don't normally do that from the jump. Man, these people... here we go, TD.

And from the jump, they were summonsing meta. They were Facebook. They were going to go through every single direct message I had, which is scary to think about. Because you don't think about things that you say the same until you think about them being read out loud in court. And that's personal. It's intimate.

and just not right. So they were hitting us with all these things, but we were just giving it right back to them. Like, look, this is unconstitutional. Here's all the Supreme Court cases. So we had a firm defense and we had like several more lined up that we were just holding on to if this thing was going to continue forward. But once we realized like the judge wasn't going to dismiss this administratively, that's when we decided to go public with the information.

Bryson Lipscomb (44:29.214)
Of course our members knew at the time and they were all kind of geared up just waiting for the word. And I was chomping at the bit, man, to release this information to the world because I had an idea, a hope, a prayer that people were going to get excited about this case and come out in our defense. And so once my counsel kind of unshackled me and said, okay,

you got the green light, which it was super hard to keep my mouth shut because I'm not good at that. But once they let me go, boy, and we started releasing this information, man, it got hot really quick. It blew up all over the state, all over the surrounding states. And then Joel Salatin got involved because we have several, we do business with Polyface.

We produce piglets for their farm and we have several mutual friends and so he was getting calls on my behalf and so he called me one morning just to get the story straight from me and he wrote about it and that's when it really went national and people from all over the country were reaching out and we were planning to, I'll say, assemble

at the county courthouse to just show support, not just for Triple Oaks Farm, not just for my family and our farm, but for everyone doing this. You know, the powers that shouldn't be, as Billy says, need to see that the people are not going to stand with having their food rights, their food sovereignty taken away from them or trampled on or degraded.

We don't want our constitutional rights degraded. And that's exactly what was happening to my family and to my farm. so, thousands of people, thousands of people were coming. It was like, I think September 22nd was the date. It was going to be a sight to be seen. And on top of that, all of my local and state politicians were fully aware of what was going on.

Bryson Lipscomb (46:58.052)
We had their support. They were having conversations with the AG's office. They were having conversations with the commissioner of the health department, Karen Shelton, who was the plaintiff in the case. So there was a lot of pressure, both from the inside and from just pure public outrage on the outside. So I do think we had a very firm, solid legal argument. I should say lawful argument.

but we also had an incredible amount, humbling amount of support from the community across this entire country. People were flying in, we're in Virginia, right? People were flying in from Idaho, taking RVs from Wisconsin. I mean, coming from all over the place. And I'm not making that up because unfortunately when it got dropped, people, not everyone got the word and someone legit did fly in from Idaho and they realized that it,

the case had been dropped at the courthouse and so they came out to the farm to us and that was cool but yeah dude that's awesome like that's what we need in this country is people because the government will respond to public outrage 100 percent

TD (48:11.885)
Yeah. Rights unexercised are mere suggestions.

Bryson Lipscomb (48:17.134)
Yeah, yeah, and that's all we're doing, is exercising our rights. We're out here campaigning for change. I don't need change. Someone accused me one time of trying to make the world a better place. I'm not trying to make the world a better place. I'm just exercising the rights that we've already been given, that are supposedly God-given rights, constitutionally protected. I'm just exercising them. I'm not trying to change anything. I don't need to change anything. It's already...

it's already written down.

TD (48:48.207)
You've mentioned something that I've discovered in the past 14 years, that farming is a spiritual discipline for you. How does your faith influence the way you treat your animals and the way you handle the stress of entrepreneurship and maybe even governmental interactions?

Bryson Lipscomb (49:15.565)
Yeah, man, thanks for bringing that up. Because when we first started, I was not a believer. And like I said, I was pushing and pushing and pushing just for my own personal egotistical reasons. I do believe, I know that God put me in this position now and gave me this farm to put me into that spot to ultimately to lay it all down to Him.

TD (49:21.031)
out

Bryson Lipscomb (49:44.993)
And that's what happened, man. I just got overstressed, overworked, full of anxiety. Just, I didn't know.

I didn't know what to do, how to operate, worried all the time, just losing sleep over it. And that's because I was doing it for all the wrong reasons, man. I was doing it for myself. Very Babylonian of me.

And then so ultimately, actually about 12 months now, I decided to.

to repent and pick up my cross and follow Jesus as closely as I could and serve God instead of serving myself. that's been the greatest thing to ever happen to me, hands down. When you start actually reading the Bible with intent, with intent to learn, everything starts to change, One of the first things that...

I realized was like, I got nothing to do with this. I shouldn't be so worried about this because I got nothing to do with this. And this is not for me, this is supposed to be for God. This is supposed to be, you know, God has given me this farm and these platforms to be a disciple, to further the kingdom of Himself and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. So yeah, one thing that like really, as far as

Bryson Lipscomb (51:19.66)
raising animals the way that I see fit is, know, God gets us in Genesis, he talks about giving man dominion over animals and that means to basically to respectfully manage animals and doing it the conventional way, if you will, just did not feel respectful to me, you know, taking animals to some big

government approved butcher because they say I have to and then they disrespect that animal and that and it was happening time and time and time time again you know dishonoring that animal dishonoring that carcass and that meat I was like it really felt hypocritical of me to continue to do that because it was on my heart man that's the Holy Spirit talking to you is like this is not this is not the way that

this is supposed to be this is not the way farming this is not dominion man so I really needed I really needed that because I lean on that heavily and then as far as as far as worrying goes well it's pretty specific about what you should do when you start to worry you Jesus talks about that and is it like Matthew 6 I think

and the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, it tells you what you can do with your worry. And sometimes I have to read that more often than I might care to admit. But there's plenty of stories in there, And of course, we were called to respect our local governing authority. And that's where people get this kind of twisted, is they think I'm somehow pushing back against the government.

TD (52:56.441)
Yeah.

Bryson Lipscomb (53:17.965)
They think I'm not obeying local governing authority. And they're just uneducated. And I totally understand it. I didn't know anything about this a few years ago. But the ultimate law of the land, the ultimate governing authority is the United States Constitution, which is given to us by God. That is the

TD (53:35.684)
Yeah.

You're making them operate in their jurisdiction. know, when they operate outside of their jurisdiction, they become de facto and you know, that must, tyranny must be resisted, you know, in order to have law in order. And, you know, it's, it's interesting. You were talking about, you know, these stressful interactions with government and different things, and even just farming in general, you know, we went from a Longhorn herd, a beautiful, I mean,

loved our cows and, and we embraced the Longhorn, our first cow mentor, raised Longhorns and we learned so much from him and we decided to start, you know, raising beef. So we, we flipped the whole thing over. We sold, we found a great place for our herd. We sold them off for literally nothing. And we started from scratch, you know, and so we're doing a Hereford Angus cross.

And, you know, you'd read all the stuff and you do all the stuff and you have all the fencing and, you know, and we had lost cows to predators before I lost a bull calf to a mountain lion and okay. So you needed, you need a Ginny, you know, to, to protect your herd. So I got the Ginny and all that stuff. And,

We had, we had a couple of new calves born and I'm checking on them, you know, and then one of them disappears, you know, and.

TD (55:13.549)
And you're just like, dude, I did everything right. Like all the foods here, all the waters here, the fence is good. I just paid to have all the fence redone. The Jenny's here. Right. And, you know, I checked like.

four or five times and I'm like, where is this calf? And I rode, I mean, it's only 25 acres. I rode the whole thing and I'm like, something, something got this calf. Like this is insane. can't, I don't see any where I don't see any signs. defenses look good.

TD (55:54.543)
and yesterday.

Yesterday went out there.

And there, there it was. And, I hadn't seen it like a month, you know? And, it's, I'm not an emotional guy, but it's kind of emotional because...

You're trying to do all these things, you know, and you're just trying to do right by the animal. You're trying to be right, right by your family. trying to be right by God and you're, and that's the really awesome thing about farming. Cause you know, essentially the government's against you. The banks are against you. the Babylonian system is against you quite literally, quite literally. the Prince and the power of the air and the power infrastructure.

Bryson Lipscomb (56:43.252)
Okay.

TD (56:48.785)
structure is against you and and it sounds trite to say that they don't want you to grow a cow But they don't want you to grow a cow, right? and so you do all this stuff and you flip everything on its head and you invest tens of thousands of dollars and you try to make

Bryson Lipscomb (56:58.667)
Thank

TD (57:10.575)
plans, like, okay, so if we need this and we need that and you add all these things and then first crack out of the box, you take a hit again. And it's just so devastating. that, but God always provides and he will, God knew

God knew psychologically that that was so devastating to me and to anybody else it would seem very minuscule or whatever, but just the encouragement of that, you know,

Took me from like a massive kick in the stones to like Yeah, dude, i'm back on top. We're doing this, you know, and it's as simple as a little calf but you know god provides and his timing and he might Make the calf disappear for a month, you know, and you're just like I mean, I looked everywhere for this thing. I felt like the shepherd looking for the lost sheep. You know what I mean? And and then to just

Bryson Lipscomb (58:09.535)
Yeah.

Bryson Lipscomb (58:18.645)
Yeah.

TD (58:21.187)
Just I drove back over there and I'm counting them and we have two baldies and I'm like, yeah, there's, there's the one man. don't, and I'm, and I'm walking through the rest of the herd and I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. Who are, what are you doing? Like, you're both there. Well, you know, and it just, I can't explain the joy of all that, but it really goes into this faith and farming and what we're talking about. Like,

You really do. You know, as, as much joy as that.

opportunity brings, know, there, there is going to be these hard times like, you know, when, when you have to harvest an animal, you know, and, and we're in on the process, man, like we're participating, we're part of it. I'm not, I'm not picking this thing up in cellophane and styrofoam, you know, and that, and that's so important because it, makes the work worth it.

Bryson Lipscomb (59:12.297)
Thank

Bryson Lipscomb (59:21.137)
Yeah, yeah, man. Isn't that cool? That's the that's the greatest analogy is like we are just sheep, the dumbest animal out here in the wilderness lost. And we are nothing on our own. And we are the one you know, we could be the one in a million sheep's lost. And our shepherd would still come after us, man. Isn't that amazing? Like, dude, and

It's so, makes me, it makes me so emotional to think about it. It's cause like I was, I was that, I was that stupid sheep out there just beating around the bush, trying to do my own thing, you know, trying to figure out who I am. My whole life, man, I've been trying to figure out like who I am, what identity I want. I thought I was like a football player. And then I went in the army. I was like, okay, maybe, you know, soldiers what I am. And then like, and then the next thing, you know, it was like farmer. was like, oh, that's, that's my identity. And then like,

TD (59:55.907)
Yeah.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:00:17.479)
You know, you keep getting reminded that like, this is not who you are. You know, this might be what you do for right now, but this is not who you are. This is not your identity. This is not why you're on this earth. And it wasn't until I got saved, man, that I realized that like, this is my identity. this is how I like it changes everything, man. It was like, it's incredible that that

TD (01:00:35.77)
now I get it.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:00:47.005)
that God can care about every single one of us. And He's going to make us walk through those tough times. And He's not going to answer your prayers the way that you want Him to answer your prayers all the time, because He probably put you in that position to teach you something, to put some pressure on you. It might be just to test you. I am so far from... I shouldn't be teaching anybody, but I can just talk about my personal experiences,

And I'm trying to kill my old self, die to that flesh every single day. And that's what I'm realizing, like that is the walk, man. And every single day I'm just trying to crush that old man who I was. But that's a reason to live. That gives you purpose every single day. And the cool thing about it, man, dude, I grew up in church. I grew up with the Bible in my hand all the time, but I never read it.

TD (01:01:26.083)
Yeah.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:01:45.769)
If you're trying to figure out how to live your life, open the book to Matthew and read the Sermon on the Mount. It takes 15 minutes. You can read it start to finish. That is the blueprint of how to live our lives right there. And like when I first read that, bro, I was like, I walked out to my wife. I was like, I've been doing a lot of things wrong. I was like, we got some changes to make. And now like that, that

guides my decision making process day to day, hopefully guides my decision making process every day. And that's so cool man. And then like, and then you, like I'm so proud of this farm and this business that my wife and I have created and built. But God could take it away tomorrow. And you know what? It doesn't matter in the end. It does not matter in the end. I think about the sparrow all the time. I'm trying to be like the sparrow man, just flying around.

You're not worried about nothing. You know what I mean? Because Jesus talks about the sparrow, he's not worried about tomorrow. His daily bread is provided for him every single day, and that's all he knows. Be like the sparrow, man. Don't worry about the stuff.

TD (01:02:57.535)
Amen. So, so, as a transition from that, what, what's the next step for Triple Oak Farm?

Bryson Lipscomb (01:03:08.712)
This year has been highly transformational for many reasons. The biggest one because of my faith, which changed my mindset on a lot of our business agendas. What I wanted to do first was scale down some things, gain some of my sanity back, lower the stress. I heard one of my great friends and mentors, his name is Ty Walker,

He runs this beautiful trout farm in Virginia called Smoke In Chimneys. And Ty said something to me. He said, man, if your business is crazy successful, but your relationship with Christ and your family and your wife are suffering, he said, then I have nothing. And I was like, you're talking about me? was like, yeah, that's right, bro.

TD (01:04:00.449)
Thank

Bryson Lipscomb (01:04:07.835)
That's what it was. So I was trying to to chill the business out a little bit so I could focus that time and energy on what needed to needed the focus and the time and the energy. And so we kind of shifted some things around this year instead of being like, you know, big time pork producers and selling all the, you know, pork that comes from all the piglets that we produce. We shifted to just wanting to sell piglets because,

Producing a lot of pork is really capital intensive, especially for a young, know, less than five-year-old business. mean, you my feed bill was just hammering me and that was adding to the pressure. So I was like, what if we just try to sell these piglets instead of keeping them all and feeding them all? And so we we prayed about it and prayed about it. And I still pray about it today. But God, you know, put us in contact with Polyface Farm.

He put me in touch with Daniel Salatin and now Polyface buys all of our piglets, And that's such a blessing. It takes such a burden off when you know that all these animals are already sold and it's given us an opportunity to grow and to be in a piglet producer more so than a pork producer. We'll always have pork as a byproduct of that system.

But yeah, so we got rid of like, we had like 230 laying chickens. We got rid of them and basically subcontracted that out. You know, we used to like, I think we sold like close to 30 cows one year just buying and reselling from other local beef producers. We really don't do much of that anymore. And just, you know, we raise maybe a thousand meat birds a year, maybe, which is, it may seem like a lot to some, in that world, know, a thousand birds is nothing.

And that's basically just from our family for the most part. So we really just. Yes, sir. Yep.

TD (01:06:06.351)
So you, are you doing this full time? Is this your full time gig? Wow. How, from star, how soon did you go full time? Or was it like COVID just kind of forced you into doing it full time?

Bryson Lipscomb (01:06:20.615)
I can't remember exactly when. I think probably 20 sometime, I think the spring of 2023. We went full time and and I was I was incredibly blessed. You know I was working a couple different jobs over the first couple years that are really close to home with with good solid men. Other entrepreneurs who knew what we were after.

and were supporting that, giving me the time to pursue that. And the raw milk business, we partnered with the dairy. was one of the main reasons we were able to take, just to fully support ourselves was off of milk. Because it's a business I can run and manage without much input because I'm not the producer. am just, you know, we're...

handling all things customer experience, know, packaging, logistics, acquisition, all that, and that's not very capital intensive and not very time intensive. So it gave us a product to make money on that didn't require much of a learning experience like we were talking about earlier. So now we're just getting to the point where the pigs are kind of becoming an actual like a formidable enterprise.

as well. So yeah, we're blessed to do it. I would go back to work for somebody if I had to, but I think I might break myself in half before I see you.

TD (01:08:00.623)
So where can people find you either to join the PMA if they're local or to support your work if they're at distance?

Bryson Lipscomb (01:08:10.853)
Yeah. So TripleOaksFarmPMA.com is our website. We're on basically all the major social media platforms just as TripleOaksFarm, maybe TripleOaksFarmPMA, can find us. can, everything we do basically ordering signups, memberships, all that stuff is online. We try to make it as easy and convenient for people as possible because it is such a different thing.

you need to make that as streamlined and easy for the end consumer as possible. we hopefully are easy to find. And we do, if someone wants to support the family and the farm, we do ship nationally. We'll ship you anything that we offer to our members, we will ship to include milk. Our biggest item, if you want to try something, is our bacon. Man, we make some solid. I gotta throw a plug in for our bacon.

We do everything here on the farm, know, which is one of the first things I wanted to do as a PMA was like, I can make my own bacon. You know, I don't have to use any of these chemical preservatives or curing salts or anything like that. We can just do it the old school traditional way. So that's what we do. We built an old school smoke house right here on the farm where we can smoke these bellies with wood that we cut that the pigs were just living under not too long ago. So it's like really full circle.

And we get to make a really just a beautiful product. Bacon is something we're definitely passionate about and people love and we ship California, Arizona all over every week. So it's cool.

TD (01:09:48.953)
I've been experimenting with a tree fodder, know, tree hay. And one of the best trees I've found is the mulberry tree. And so I've been messing with like dwarf varieties and more like bush varieties and propagating them and all that kind of cool stuff. What I would want to do is like usually every guest of the Fearless Podcast gets a gift. So...

Bryson Lipscomb (01:09:57.924)
Is it?

TD (01:10:15.047)
I want to send you some, I'll pick you out some mulberry variety and you know, you'll have to root them out. You know, they'll just come as cuttings, but you'll have to root them out, but you could probably plant them next year because I'm trying to integrate them into my pastures as more of a, you know, standing fodder. And so I've been, I got about 15 or 16 different varieties, but I want to send you out some cuttings and maybe you could start experimenting with

Bryson Lipscomb (01:10:36.641)
and

TD (01:10:44.901)
that because that'd be cool.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:10:46.276)
Yeah, I've been planting fodder fruit fodder, but that's for myself. Over the past couple of years, I've been establishing orchards and blackberries as a. It's weird like you should. I should focus, but like I've been chasing this blackberry dream for three years now and like I keep planting more and more blackberries. I've got probably 200 plants right now and I and I got, you know. Yeah, thornless yeah.

TD (01:10:50.231)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TD (01:11:02.221)
What kind of blackberries are you growing?

TD (01:11:08.949)
Or unless, or yeah, are they Primark or that that I grow basically Primark. It's a front of it. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:11:16.004)
Triple Crown. Yeah, yeah, so I just keep going and like one day we're going to have like a better than organic you pick Blackberry farm. It's just another enterprise.

TD (01:11:27.949)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I went a little crazy. Went a little crazy with the fruit trees. have a lot.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:11:34.562)
Yeah, good good. wish I would have went crazy like you know several years ago, but I'm getting there now.

TD (01:11:38.639)
Yeah. Well, I'm going to this afternoon, I'll pick you some and, and, I'll ship them out to you. That'd cool to see.

Bryson Lipscomb (01:11:46.5)
I'll trade you some bacon for them.

TD (01:11:48.789)
dude, let's go. That's great. That's a great barter. That's how we do this parallel. That's how it works, y'all. Bryce, Amanda's been great to just hear your story and what the Lord has helped you accomplish and to hear your testimony. I hope it's encouraging to everyone. Share this with others and maybe even people that are considering, you know, this way of life and considering the prompting that they've been getting for maybe the

Bryson Lipscomb (01:11:52.397)
Yeah. Yep, that's right.

TD (01:12:18.683)
last five or six years of like, you know, maybe doing something a little bit different, living life differently, more intentionally. And then let's work on these relationships so that we can build these parallel communities and these parallel solutions so that we can work outside of this monolithic system that doesn't really like us very much. Bryson, it's been great, man. Any, any parting words?

Bryson Lipscomb (01:12:49.249)
And thank you again for having me on this. It's been fun to talk about this and bring this up again. It reminds me of some really important things. But no, just don't take any inspiration from me, man. Take all your inspiration from Christ and follow Him.

TD (01:13:04.959)
Amen. That's a great way to close it. All right, y'all. We'll see you on the next one.