Sean Hannity Show - Forget the Big City … It’s the Country Life for Me
Aired: 2018-02-28
Duration: 20:58


=== Why We Left Google (14:33) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:04]  Come on girls.
[00:00:05]  Hi girls.
[00:00:07]  Caitlin and Brendan Foley keep a cow for warmth, a donkey, he's kind of a watchdog, a billy goat with a punk hairdo, and three dozen other goats on their farm, Hoofprint Cheese Company.
[00:00:20]  Happy goats, delicious cheese, wonderful life.
[00:00:23]  That's the goal anyway at the Hoofprint Cheese Company in upstate New York.
[00:00:27]  As far as we can tell, the goats are happy and we know the cheese is delicious.
[00:00:32]  But farming is lots of work, little sleep, and it's generally not so lucrative.
[00:00:37]  Still, it's a job like no other and for many, it's wonderful enough.
[00:00:42]  On this edition of On the Job from Express Employment Professionals, we'll meet a couple who's come back to the land to make a living doing what they love.
[00:00:51]  If you want to find your next job, or if you're a company hoping to grow your workforce, Express Employment Professionals is for you.
[00:00:59]  Find more information at expressprose.com.
[00:01:03]  Now, Karen Michelle brings us a story from New York's Hudson Valley about how a 10-year-old's love of goats blossomed into a way of life.
[00:01:15]  The Hudson Valley of New York State has a long history of farming.
[00:01:19]  In Dutchess County alone, less than 100 miles north of Manhattan, in 1890, there were at least 3,400 farms.
[00:01:26]  But 100 years later, the number had dwindled to just over 600.
[00:01:32]  There's hope.
[00:01:32]  The farm to table movement has spawned a resurgence in farming, small farming, and younger generations are choosing to stay, and newcomers are also tilling the soil, tapping the trees, and breeding livestock for meat and milk.
[00:01:47]  Both 31 years old, Brendan and Caitlin Foley are among the young folks opting to make a living, or at least most of one, milking goats and making cheese.
[00:01:56]  But it still takes real outside jobs to keep Hoofprint Cheese Company going.
[00:02:01]  Oh, Miss Bell that you are something.
[00:02:03]  You know that?
[00:02:04]  Caitlin Foley has always had a thing for goats, as her mother Diane Massarone knows well.
[00:02:10]  This one at about age eight decided she wanted a goat.
[00:02:15]  I guess most kids ask for a pony, but I really just wanted a goat.
[00:02:19]  I read about them and learned about them and how much of a personality they have.
[00:02:25]  And so I just really wanted a goat.
[00:02:27]  The family, mom, dad, Kate, and her two sisters, were already raising pigs and sheep.
[00:02:33]  That's in addition to her parents' other jobs.
[00:02:36]  He is a caretaker of the estate where they lived and kept the animals, and she at a local private school.
[00:02:42]  But Kate, evidently as straightforward then as she is now, insisted a goat.
[00:02:48]  Diane gave in.
[00:02:49]  Well, we knew nothing about goats and we said, sure, sure, sure.
[00:02:55]  And we just kept pushing her off and pushing her off.
[00:02:58]  And she just kept at it.
[00:02:59]  I want to go.
[00:03:01]  And she would look at pictures of goats.
[00:03:03]  And so finally, we decided when she turned 10 that we would surprise her with a baby goat.
[00:03:12]  So she, did you come home from school?
[00:03:15]  She came home from school and we told her to put her boots on.
[00:03:18]  We had to go to the grocery store.
[00:03:21]  And she couldn't understand why she had to put boots on to go to the grocery store, but we were going to a farm where she could pick out her baby goat.
[00:03:30]  And that was her surprise 10th year birthday present.
[00:03:35]  Which meant going into the farmer's living room where she had a play pen full of baby goats for Kate to choose from.
[00:03:42]  There are a whole lot of kinds of goats, depending on the kinds of counting, but most folks are familiar with two kinds of goats.
[00:03:49]  Alpine, the ones you usually see in fairy tales and movie musicals, and spaniel-eared Nubians, who even to this formerly non-goat person, really are adorable.
[00:04:01]  So she had the long floppy ears that I thought were very cute, and she had her coloration, her pattern was really cute.
[00:04:10]  She had a belt in the middle that was white and brown on the head and the rump.
[00:04:16]  And she was the most friendly, the most outgoing.
[00:04:20]  She was one that would follow me around the living room.
[00:04:23]  And I just knew that that was the one that I wanted.
[00:04:27]  And so we brought her home.
[00:04:29]  And she was a Nubian goat, so I named her Newbie.
[00:04:32]  And we had her for her whole life living with us.
[00:04:37]  Or with her family, Kate's family, who had to build a barn for Newbie and learn about goats, how to milk and breed and birth and care for a growing herd.
[00:04:46]  And then Diane started making cheese.
[00:04:48]  And, well, there was lots to do, which she says was no big deal.
[00:04:52]  Well, my husband grew up on a dairy farm.
[00:04:59]  And I grew up at the Millbrook Hunt Club.
[00:05:04]  So we were used to animals.
[00:05:08]  And we both had a passion for animals, and that came through in our kids.
[00:05:14]  And it was just a normal way of life for us.
[00:05:18]  They clearly passed that love of caring for animals on to Kate.
[00:05:22]  She even worked at her high school zoo.
[00:05:24]  Yes, there was a zoo.
[00:05:26]  She went away to college to study biology.
[00:05:28]  And during her first year on a visit home, she started dating a young guy who'd worked on their farm, Brendan Foley.
[00:05:35]  That was about 10 years ago.
[00:05:37]  I was thrilled.
[00:05:39]  I loved Brendan right from the start.
[00:05:42]  And he was always part of the family anyway, so it was great.
[00:05:45]  Time passed.
[00:05:46]  Caitlin graduated and started working in zoos.
[00:05:49]  Brendan finished his degree in applied mathematics.
[00:05:53]  We picked up and we moved to New York City.
[00:05:56]  Kate had gotten a job at the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn, and I was in the process of getting a job in Manhattan at an actuarial consulting firm.
[00:06:05]  So we lived in Brooklyn for four or five years, four and a half years or so.
[00:06:11]  By then, they'd had enough of city life.
[00:06:13]  Just as the Hudson Valley had lured artists to its light and landscapes, that's how it was for the young couple.
[00:06:20]  We got to the point where we decided that we didn't want to do what we're doing for the rest of our lives.
[00:06:27]  And we're young enough to be able to make a change and we don't have kids.
[00:06:31]  And we still weren't married at this point.
[00:06:33]  But we had been together for quite a number of years.
[00:06:36]  And, you know, so we don't have those types of obligations and people that are relying on us in that sense that we can make a change.
[00:06:44]  So it wasn't very long afterwards we decided that, you know, what if we started a farm?
[00:06:52]  And what if we did something, you know, along the lines of what Diane was doing with goat cheese and goats and goat milk?
[00:07:00]  Because Kate knows goats.
[00:07:01]  You know, I like goats.
[00:07:03]  I took care of them, but I'm not an expert in it by any means.
[00:07:06]  Kate really is, that is 100% her domain.
[00:07:12]  How scary was that?
[00:07:14]  It was pretty scary.
[00:07:15]  We both had, you know, pretty good jobs that we were doing just fine down in the city.
[00:07:19]  And to leave that and make that change, it was a little bit scary, but we knew it was 100% what we wanted.
[00:07:28]  So that's what we did.
[00:07:30]  Well, this is only a little over two years ago that we made this decision.
[00:07:34]  And we had nothing.
[00:07:35]  You know, we didn't have any goats.
[00:07:37]  We had no machinery.
[00:07:38]  We had no equipment.
[00:07:39]  We didn't have a place to do it.
[00:07:41]  So we spent the next several months trying to figure out how to do this and how to start and how to make this transition.
[00:07:50]  The first thing we did was we moved back up here and we started acquiring animals.
[00:07:55]  But at first they had trouble finding goats, a goat.
[00:07:58]  And so Caitlin's parents called the farmer where she'd gotten a newbie.
[00:08:02]  She did have this one little doe that she had really liked and she had kept.
[00:08:06]  And she said that she would be willing to sell her to us.
[00:08:11]  And so my parents called me up and said, We found your first goat.
[00:08:16]  Let's go back and, you know, we're going to go get her.
[00:08:19]  And it was sort of reminiscent of when I was 10 years old and we did the same thing.
[00:08:24]  But we went there and they had this very cute little doe named Velvet.
[00:08:29]  And we picked her up and brought her home and she started a hoof print off.
[00:08:35]  Hi girls.
[00:08:36]  Come on over.
[00:08:37]  Come on girls.
[00:08:37]  Come on girls.
[00:08:39]  Come here Velvet.
[00:08:40]  The logo is a goat's hoof.
[00:08:42]  No surprise there.
[00:08:43]  And there's a model.
[00:08:44]  Hi girls.
[00:08:45]  Happy goats, delicious cheese, wonderful life.
[00:08:48]  It kind of goes along with our goals for the company.
[00:08:53]  Oh, honey.
[00:08:54]  We had talked about not being organic.
[00:08:57]  That isn't of any particular interest to us.
[00:09:00]  But we do want to provide a good living environment for the goats.
[00:09:06]  We want to make sure that they're healthy and what they're doing because we think that that passes through in the milk.
[00:09:12]  And we think it's the most humane thing to do.
[00:09:15]  So the happy goats is right in line with what we're trying to do.
[00:09:19]  Delicious cheese, we hope is what emanates from that from happy goats.
[00:09:23]  And the last line, wonderful life, is we hope that this is the rest of our life.
[00:09:32]  But this is what we really want to do.
[00:09:34]  This isn't about making the most money you can make in life.
[00:09:38]  This is about rather doing something that you want to do that you like doing that you feel good about doing.
[00:09:43]  So providing a living that you can live off of sustainably and at the same time provide great food for the community.
[00:09:54]  We're going to take a short break and when we come back, well, Brendan sounds calm talking about that good life.
[00:10:00]  Getting there is a bit of a stretch.
[00:10:02]  They, like many of the new generation of young farmers, also work off the farm, as we'll hear when a group of them get together for a meal.
[00:10:11]  You're listening to independent producer Karen Michell with a story we call, Forget the Big City, It's the Country Life for Me.
[00:10:19]  On the job is brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
[00:10:26]  One company is on a mission to put a million people to work each year.
[00:10:30]  Sounds like a big number, doesn't it?
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[00:10:50]  Let us help.
[00:10:51]  We'll open doors for you.
[00:10:53]  Go to expresspros.com to find a location near you.
[00:10:56]  Now back to Karen Michelle and the young farmers of the Hudson Valley of New York State.
[00:11:00]  Sukoup Farms is the site of this month's gathering of a group of young farmers.
[00:11:06]  So we're, okay, let's see if I got it right.
[00:11:07]  Harlem Valley Farm and Food Alliance, right?
[00:11:12]  Okay, this is, I guess we're already a year old.
[00:11:15]  Right?
[00:11:18]  We had our first event in September.
[00:11:21]  It was our first farm day.
[00:11:23]  People went around and toured each of our farms in a single day.
[00:11:27]  Jennifer Soukoup is one of 10 members of the group, all seated around an impromptu table in the Maple Farm shop and production space, eating dishes sourced from their farms.
[00:11:38]  Pig was the main dish and flavored with Sukoup's maple syrup.
[00:11:41]  Jennifer had gone to college to become a chef.
[00:11:44]  Hoofprint cheeses, Kate, and Brendan Foley were among the eager eaters.
[00:11:49]  One of the things that you probably noticed just going around the room, we're all in our 20s.
[00:11:56]  30s and 30s, and essentially 40 caps us out.
[00:12:00]  So I feel like we're really the next generation of farming in this area.
[00:12:06]  And we're all trying to band together in order to provide some support for one another.
[00:12:11]  And really, all of our goals here, we all want to have farm-to-table production, so direct sales to consumers.
[00:12:22]  So all of us have there's something less tangible that appeals to the group too.
[00:12:26]  My name is Josh Viertel, and I feel like one of the really special things about this group having to come together and create some of the connections that I think our grandparents probably already had.
[00:12:37]  So when we need a bunch of round bales of hay because we're running short for cattle, or advice about what style of trailer to get, or an issue with someone in town hall.
[00:12:50]  You know, when you lose rural communities and you lose farms, you're not just losing those farm businesses, you're losing a sort of way of life where you think to lean on each other.
[00:13:02]  And that's a really important thing.
[00:13:03]  And I think for us, a thing that called this group into creation was maybe trying to create that or in some way formalize it, make sure that we have that in a time and a place where that doesn't necessarily always exist.
[00:13:19]  But things have changed.
[00:13:20]  Where there were once hundreds of dairy farms in Dutchess County, now there are about a dozen.
[00:13:26]  In the past, dairy farms sold their milk to bigger companies who do the processing and selling.
[00:13:31]  Quite a different business model.
[00:13:33]  Some farms changed completely.
[00:13:35]  Jennifer Sukuk.
[00:13:36]  My father-in-law used to have it as just a dairy farm and then he had some beef cattle and he never sold any of that directly.
[00:13:44]  He made maple syrup, but it was only he, you know, gave some to his family and friends.
[00:13:48]  So when I took over, I really started shifting it from just that wholesale to retail and it's been really slow.
[00:13:57]  I mean, it's been five years, but it seems like it's so slow changing.
[00:14:03]  And then, yeah, yeah, even like with the pumpkins in the fall and stuff, we've gone from just putting it on a cart outside to pick your own in the pumpkin patch to then turn into, well, we'll take a hay ride up there, which is now turning into our whole fall.
[00:14:16]  Some of these young farmers, like Jennifer and her husband, took over the family farm.
[00:14:21]  Others started their own.
[00:14:22]  Most of them went off to college to become something else.
[00:14:25]  A physical therapist, a biologist, a mathematician, a chef, diesel mechanic designer, but they were called back to farming.

=== Benefits Beyond Milk (05:37) ===

[00:14:33]  Not that most of them can make a go of it without at least someone in the family keeping an outside job.
[00:14:39]  Andrew Richards' father-in-law had an apple orchard.
[00:14:42]  He wanted to start a distillery and asked Urbanite Andrew if he wanted to do it.
[00:14:46]  He said, sure, he could read books to figure out how, but it took his wife to make it possible.
[00:14:52]  Without her job, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.
[00:14:57]  Yeah.
[00:14:58]  Healthcare, the whole thing.
[00:15:02]  I do take care of our son.
[00:15:04]  I'll take credit for that.
[00:15:06]  There were lots of nods around the table.
[00:15:08]  Most of these farmers and distillers have kids.
[00:15:12]  Brendan and Kate Foley are the exception.
[00:15:14]  I think the goat kids are going to be our kids.
[00:15:17]  They both have outside jobs.
[00:15:19]  Kate works for a farm animal vet nearby.
[00:15:21]  So I'm there Monday through Thursday.
[00:15:24]  I'm usually there at 7:15 and I leave there about 4:30.
[00:15:30]  And of course, you know, chores are done on the farm before and after that.
[00:15:33]  Kate's job is technically part-time, so no benefits.
[00:15:36]  That's where Brendan's job is key.
[00:15:39]  Hi, Tom.
[00:15:39]  It's Brendan.
[00:15:40]  How are you?
[00:15:41]  Brendan works for a pension and health actuarial consulting firm.
[00:15:45]  Much of his work involves being on the phone with his clients.
[00:15:48]  So I guess, you know, the first thing is I had sent you over.
[00:15:51]  About half of the week, Brendan can stay home, at the farm, that is, wearing his usual t-shirt, muck boots, and a bandana on his head.
[00:15:59]  But on other days, he puts on a dress shirt and takes a commuter train into Manhattan.
[00:16:05]  When he and Caitlin decided to move 90 miles away and start a farm, he'd already been working for the company for a few years.
[00:16:12]  His boss was amenable to the arrangement.
[00:16:14]  And for now, Brendan says the four-hour commute is worth it for the health care and retirement benefits.
[00:16:21]  Well, there's certainly a very long-term goal of having this be our life, this being the cheese and the goats.
[00:16:28]  That's long-term.
[00:16:29]  But in the foreseeable future, the reason for having the outside job, the reason that at this point it is a necessity, is because all of those things that we take for granted in life, such as health benefits and like the ability to retire, is very hard to do with a farm.
[00:16:45]  The cost of entry into this business is very high and the margins are not particularly high.
[00:16:50]  If you have an outside job, you can help fund this operation and you could also continue paying for those things that, you know, those what-ifs.
[00:16:57]  You know, what if something happens?
[00:16:59]  What if I, you know, fall down and break my leg and I can't do any of this?
[00:17:02]  I still have disability benefits.
[00:17:03]  I still have, you know, I still have a job that I can go to.
[00:17:08]  So to the extent that we can keep at least one off-the-farm job for the time being is imperative.
[00:17:14]  It's essential.
[00:17:15]  Long term, we hope that eventually the business turns to a point where it's profitable enough that we can start paying ourselves a reasonable salary with health benefits and with retirement allowances or benefits and IRA or a 401k.
[00:17:33]  That's the goal.
[00:17:34]  It's just in the next few years, it's difficult.
[00:17:39]  So essentially, he's there working nearly all the time.
[00:17:44]  Brendan had gotten up at 3.30 in the morning to check on a batch of cheese.
[00:17:49]  It wasn't ready, so he came back at 5.
[00:17:51]  The couple had to do chores then anyway.
[00:17:54]  And today, between calls to clients from the room that holds medicines and cleaning supplies and a whiteboard that keeps track of the pregnant dose.
[00:18:03]  We've got Chloe, Belle, Lilac, Shobani, Cheyenne.
[00:18:08]  Brendan makes cheese in a room nearby in a big stainless steel vat with dials and charts that look like something out of an old black and white movie featuring a mad scientist.
[00:18:20]  I just turned the heat off at 139 degrees in a super.
[00:18:25]  Today, Brendan's making a cow's milk cheese for a local dairy farm.
[00:18:28]  I know with 100% confidence that this is.
[00:18:31]  She's their only client, but Hoofprint hopes to make making cheese for others 20% of their business.
[00:18:37]  Now they sell raw goat's milk, goat yogurt, and four of their own cheeses, all sold out for the year, except for a few precious vacuum packs.
[00:18:46]  You like it?
[00:18:47]  I love it.
[00:18:48]  Thank you, Mom.
[00:18:49]  It's a pale yellow, hard cheese that hits your taste buds immediately, but like a fine wine, has a long finish.
[00:18:56]  This is a beautiful cheese.
[00:18:58]  And at $30 a pound, it's not cheap.
[00:19:01]  We're not trying to be some exclusive cheese manufacturer here.
[00:19:08]  But I think that part of what we're doing here is not just making cheese.
[00:19:12]  Part of what we're doing is providing a farm experience.
[00:19:16]  And those are things that you don't get off of a store shelf.
[00:19:18]  Those are things that have value to people.
[00:19:21]  Perhaps no one more than Diane, Caitlin's mother.
[00:19:24]  I hated them living in the city.
[00:19:27]  I worried every day and I knew they weren't happy.
[00:19:33]  And I was just thrilled.
[00:19:37]  When you decide on a job and you want to make a certain amount of money, you want to make that money because you want to have a certain lifestyle.
[00:19:49]  But the way they were going, they weren't living the lifestyle they wanted.
[00:19:54]  So they, this way, they're living the lifestyle they wanted, and that's priceless.
[00:20:00]  Though Brendan acknowledges there's a social downside.
[00:20:04]  Always smelling like barn.
[00:20:06]  It's not necessarily like a cow.
[00:20:08]  It's not like, it's just barn.

=== The Country Life Trade-offs (00:47) ===

[00:20:10]  Brendan Foley.
[00:20:12]  He and his wife Caitlin run Hoofprint Cheese Company in Millbrook, New York.
[00:20:16]  That was independent producer Karen Michelle presenting Forget the Big City.
[00:20:21]  It's the country life for me.
[00:20:23]  And that's all for this edition of On the Job from Express Employment Professionals.
[00:20:28]  Find out more at expressprose.com and you can listen to every podcast this season at expressprose.com slash podcast.
[00:20:36]  This podcast is produced by your host, Steve Mencher, for Mensch Media, iHeartRadio, and Red Seat Ventures.
[00:20:44]  You can subscribe on iHeartRadio and iTunes, where we hope you leave a nice review.
[00:20:49]  That helps other folks find us.
[00:20:51]  And of course, you can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:20:55]  See you next time on the job.