Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there folks, welcome to The Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the cowboy state. I am thrilled today to be able to introduce people who are not in Park County to this person who has come and literally, literally made his mark on the land here in Park County.
So we're going to talk to Zach, but first, I want to make sure that you all know about a really great podcast out there for business people in Wyoming. It's called the “Business From the Basement” podcast. It's by the Wyoming Business Alliance, and they want to help business people to succeed. So check out the “Business From the Basement” podcast for great resources, people, stories and and really, to get your feet under you when it comes to being a business person. So first though, before I send you on that direction, I want to introduce you to Zach buckle. Zach is a he's got Wyoming roots, literally, but he also came from an urban background, and he brought his passion for the land, his passion for growing things, and brought it to Cody several years ago, and he's just been a great part of the of the Green Movement here in Northwest Wyoming. Hello, Zach. How are you today?
Zach Buchel:
Hey, Wendy, how you doing?
Wendy Corr:
I'm great. I'm so glad to have you here. I tell you, folks, when I was at the Big Horn Radio Network, I introduced the listening audience at KODI radio to Zach through what was called, and still is called, Farm Table West. And Zach is the CEO and founder of Farm Table West, and he's got great ideas and great ways to really encourage the truly, getting back to, I'm going to do it again, our roots here in rural Wyoming. So Zach, how are you doing? What are you doing? You're taking a break from farming to talk to us.
Zach Buchel: Yeah, yeah. It's been, it's been an action packed couple weeks. We're building a new greenhouse as we speak. But Mondays are kind of a slow day, so I'm actually really excited to be sitting at my desk and not sweating right now. So thank you.
Wendy Corr:
It's been a little warm, hasn't it?
Zach Buchel:
It has.
Wendy Corr:
Zach, you've got such a great Wyoming story. As far as how you got here, as far as you as a person, as an adult, got you here to why me? Because you have connections to the Cody area, but you grew up in an urban area, so I just tell us about how you found your way to living back here in Northwest Wyoming.
Zach Buchel:
Sure. So yeah, I grew up in Woodstock, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago, and I ended up working in the city for a couple years. And while I was working in Chicago, I ended up visiting some urban vegetable farms on the south side of Chicago, because I was interested in gardening and growing food.
I got interested in that in college, so I wanted to visit some farms, and I ended up visiting some on the south side. And if you know anything about Chicago, the South side is where all the murders happen. It's really rough part of town.
And so what was really cool about those farms was they were bringing the community together in a way that the kids that were working there wouldn't have been, would have been dealing drugs or something else otherwise, because there's just no other jobs or opportunities in these neighborhoods. There's, they're basically what you call a food desert.
But it's not really just about food deserts. There's just no opportunity, so, and that's a whole long story, but was really cool is, they were literally growing vegetables on parking lots. So, like, there's a lot of abandoned parking lots in that area, so there's actually a decent amount of land for from the perspective of growing vegetables, at least.
And they were making compost from restaurant waste, and there's tons of that in Chicago. So they were literally growing vegetables, like carrots, spinach, all the stuff that I actually grow now in, basically the rough neighborhoods and the kids working there were really motivated, and you're also feeding the community.
So I got really motivated. That was really my core inspiration for diving down the vegetable farming path. And so I ended up, I knew I didn't want to live in Chicago forever, so I wanted to work in organic agriculture in some way. And I was actually looking for jobs in California, believe it or not, and wasn't finding anything.
But my family has property out in Cody and has for like 20, 30 years at this point now. And so there was a farm that my parents saw on a PBS documentary, Wyoming PBS, I forgot what the name of the show was, but it was like a Farm to Fork show about Shoshone river farm, which is literally two minutes away from my parents property here in Cody.
And they said he's looking for help, and you should call him. And I did. I called Scott and ended up working there that summer, and had an absolute blast. It was the best job I've ever had.
Wendy Corr:
It felt like you were doing what you were meant to do. You just clicked right there.
Zach Buchel:
On day one, I knew I was in the right place, and it was, it's hard, stressful, sweaty, but I loved it. Absolutely, fell in love with it, loved the people and everything, and so I worked there for that summer. And long story short, I ended up starting a business called Farm Table West, which technically is still the name of my farm.
But at the time, I started the business trying to resell other farms’ produce like his, because I found that he was doing five farmers markets a week and having a really hard time selling things. So I tried to set up this business where all of the vegetables were sold online, and so you don't have to be, you know, physically at a farmers market to sell them, and it didn't really take off.
I still actually use the website for some things, for my own farm, but it didn't take off. And I eventually started vegetable farming myself, because in 2020 the COVID thing happened, and I was still reselling vegetables at that point, and people were going crazy. They wanted - my phone was ringing off the hook that couple months, where people were really in fear. So that motivated me to actually take the plunge and really get into farming.
Because there's a lot more chance of making an income that way, believe it or not, because reselling, you just need to be selling big volumes to big amounts of people and stuff to make that work. So that didn't work, but the farming.
Wendy Corr:
It's just so interesting that you said you can make more money farming than being a wholesale - you're basically a distributor, at least in Wyoming.
Zach Buchel:
Okay, you know, Wyoming, we're pretty small population based, so it's a little trickier to do the reselling thing, and the margins are just really small with reselling things, maybe 30% if you're lucky. So it's just a challenging business, but when you grow it yourself, you're keeping a lot more of it.
And it's definitely still phenomenally difficult. I'm five years into farming now, and it's still pretty hard to make a living, but we're just at the point where it's starting to really make sense. And so, yeah, I started farming in 2020, and now five years later, where we have four greenhouses, we're building our fifth high tunnel, and have an employee, and that's the whole business is growing.
We ended up reaching $86,000 in sales last year in just vegetables. And our growing space is only a third of an acre, so it's very small. So there's a lot of greenhouse production we harvest through the winter, and it's starting to work really well.
And this year, I'm thinking we're going to break 100 and maybe a little more, and slowly over time, we're going to keep growing the business. And I love it. I absolutely love doing it, but it has its own challenges, but it's really fun.
Wendy Corr:
Zach, tell me about your business model then - so you farm and then you sell. Do you go to the farmers markets like you did when you were working with Scott Richard?
Zach Buchel:
So the farm is all no-till style, which means we're not really tilling the ground every year. We tilled it once at the beginning, and now we just do what's called broad forking to aerate the ground, and we add amendments before every planting. And that's kind of a learning curve, for sure, but we get two to three crops a year on every plot of ground on the farm.
So three crops in a greenhouse, two crops outside. So that means, like right now, we are done planting all of our spring crops, and then around July, August, we're going to be flipping all those same beds that we planted and replanting to another crop. So that's what I mean by two crops.
And with the greenhouse, it's a longer growing season, basically. So we do the same thing, but three times, and that's how you can grow that amount of food in our short four month growing season, which Wyoming is, on average, the shortest growing season in America. I'm sure I mean, state statewide, it's the shortest.
Wendy Corr:
Say that again, Wyoming has the shortest growing season in America. How does that work?
Zach Buchel:
So, on average, the state, the whole state, is 120 frost free days. So that's only four months. And. But there's other states that, like Northern Alaska, I'm sure, is shorter, but on average, there's actually a lot of warmer parts of Alaska that are a longer growing season.
So what I mean by that is that statewide average, if you go to the old Farmers Almanac, you and you look up all the states, Wyoming is the shortest. You know, splitting here is between Montana and like North Dakota, those cities are very short also, but it's a short season, bottom line, and we have a very cold winter, so it's tricky.
It's pretty hard to grow and harvest through the winter here, but we've been able to do it by using some winter growing techniques and protecting the crops in the winter, and we still do harvest through January, February, March, and it's starting to work really well. Definitely a learning curve on the winter thing, but it's starting to work.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely. Tell me about your customers. How do your customers find you? Is it just through the farmers markets? Or do you sell direct?
Zach Buchel:
Yeah, so we do a couple different things for the markets. We have a small veggie box program right now. We sell 40 veggie box shares, which is like a subscription that you buy in advance, and then you get six to 12 weeks of vegetables throughout the summer. And each week you'll get like nine different vegetables or something. And then that's growing really nicely.
And then our main sales outlet is farmers markets. We start to selling to we sell in Cody most of the year, and in the height of summer, we sell in Billings. We started doing that this last summer, and so July through early October, we're selling in Billings just because we needed a bigger market to sell to, and now it's working really, really well.
So we sell there once a week, on Saturdays, and then we also sell to a couple restaurants in Cody City's table trailhead, Blanca Tatanka, Zapatas, I hope I'm not forgetting any but yeah, we sell to those restaurants in Cody. And we also do still sell online on the website, and that still exists.
It's not really like huge but this summer, I'm going to promote it a lot, because we are going to be in Billings for the most part of the summer, so anybody that really likes our stuff can still order on the website and pick up at Legacy butcher and burger in town for free, which is a burger place in town that sells local beef. So we have a pickup spot there, so you can order on our website, pick up for free, and they just grab it out of a fridge there, and you can still get our stuff that way.
And that's a brand new thing we're starting now, so I think that's everything. I hope I'm not forgetting anything. Oh yeah. We also said to a food hub in Casper called Fresh Foods Wyoming as well.
Wendy Corr:
Wow. So you have all of these partners that are helping to get locally grown food to basically the masses, and you're going into southern Montana as well as Central Wyoming. What are your main crops? What are the things that you're growing that do really well here in Wyoming for this short and growing season?
Zach Buchel:
Sure. So one of the things that I've found that works the best for my business is growing crops that work really well in this climate. So we don't grow - actually, we do grow a lot of tomatoes and stuff like that, but it's a very specialized way to grow them. We grow them in greenhouses. We feed them fish fertilizer once a week, and we string them up trellises to get to the point where they're 15-20 feet long by the end of the season.
So it's challenge. It's you have to have a fancy greenhouse to do that. But most of what we actually use to run our business is crops like carrots. Carrots is actually our number one profit center, believe it or not. So we grow couple 1000 pounds of carrots a year, and these are really, like, high quality, sweet, delicious carrots, and we sell most of them actually through the winter. That's like a huge crop for us in the winter.
And so we grow lots of cold, hardy crops, even through the summer, because our our nighttime temperatures are still very cold here. They're like, you know, for high 40s and 50s. So it's still hard to grow like basil and peppers outside. So we still grow lots of things, like radishes, carrots, spinach, lettuce, herbs like cilantro and dill.
We are experimenting with potatoes this year, just because and snap peas are actually very, very good crop to grow up, this variety that grows six feet tall, and so you pick it on a trellis, and yeah, we got like, 60 pounds of peas on one bed, and our beds are 50 feet long, so that was actually a really good yield. And we're constantly experimenting.
The answer to that is we're constantly trying new crops. Like I'd say I want to try two or three new crops a year, because sometimes they work really well in our business. And like, snap peas was one example. That actually works way better than any information I found from other farms.
And what this kind of farming is still pretty new. There's, there's a lot of guys doing it on the east coast and in Europe. And by this, I mean the small scale market farming.
Wendy Corr:
Okay, yeah, I was going to ask, when you say this kind of farming - and so what's the difference between your kind of farming and and say, what Scott Richard’s doing just down the road at Shoshone Farms?
Zach Buchel:
Well, I would say Scott's actually, he's still doing small scale market farming for the most part. But what I was talking about is, like big truck farms where you're planting a couple acres of potatoes or something, and because there's actually some of those in Wyoming as well, and throughout, throughout the country.
But like, small scale, what I mean like, less than three acres, you know, you're growing on really small amount of land, not like 10-20 acres or something. There's a lot of farms like that on the East Coast and whatnot. But so, yeah, what I mean is the small scale agriculture is still kind of like cutting edge, like it's still fairly new, so there's not a lot of knowledge base out there yet.
And so sometimes, when you're trying new things, you just have to try it and figure it out and in sometimes you get lucky, like, I couldn't find any information on how much yields people were getting on snap peas on those other farms, just because there's not that many farms doing it, basically.
So I figured out that we got 60 pounds last year, which is a really, it's good enough to run the business like, really well. And those kinds of experiments we constantly run, just because sometimes you find a really good one that it's like, okay, that works really well. We'll do it again two or three times next year.
But then we also have failures, like, what's an example of a failure I have had? I know I can do better at this eventually, but bell peppers I have not mastered. I know Scott's actually really good at them. He can grow them well.
So there's a lot of learning and trial and denial involved with all this stuff, where you're trying stuff and then it doesn't work, and then when you find something that works, you got to write it down and exactly how you did it so you could do it again next year.
And yeah, my hope is that in, you know, 5-10 years, that that knowledge is much more widely accessible. Like yields that people are getting are much more widely accessible because it makes it easier for other farms to make money, to to actually build their business, and ultimately just feed more people.
Wendy Corr:
I've got two questions for you, and the first one is, why is this important for us as just consumers? Why is it important that we buy our food locally grown, versus going to Walmart or Albertsons and picking up our produce there? What's the benefit here to doing this?
Zach Buchel:
Sure, so that's a tough one to answer in like five minutes, but I'll do my best. So in my opinion, I find that I feel like a different person when I'm eating this food on a regular basis. And I think it's - there's really not a lot of science behind it yet, like the difference between the carrots that I grow and the carrots at the store, but there is a life force in this food that I don't get from the stuff at the store, because it's fresh.
Freshness, to me, is the biggest selling point to all of this. And there's actually some - I don't want to get too nerdy here, but there's this thing called Kirlian photography. If you Google that, there's this thing called Kirlian photography that takes photos of vegetables, and you could tell how much life force is in organic strawberry versus one at the store.
I don't know what that means, to be honest, but I just intuitively, it tells me that there's something to this. And when I have experimented with vegetable juicing, so like juicing my own produce that's fresh, and there is, there is a life force in that juice that I can't explain. It's like electricity running through you.
So there's, I think there's a big advantage to that in terms of health for people and bringing health to America, which I think is pretty important. You know, America is not the, not the healthiest country in the world. And also, there's a lot of value in building self-sufficient communities. Yeah, I'm really big on having the ability to have a food sourced locally, compared to just relying on the store.
Like, for example, back in 2020 when that whole food scare was going on with COVID, there was food shortages all over the place, and in Wyoming, it's really easy to have a food shortage, even in normal times, just because you got to drive a truck through the Wind River Mountains, and a lot of times they just can't make it on time.
Is it really a big deal all the time? No, but it could be. So I like the idea of building self sufficient communities, not just because I want to like break off from the California agriculture. It's more about like that back to that Chicago thing, where it brings people together. Just the act of producing food together, it brings community together.
I've been involved with the farmers market in Cody for years now. I mean, what? Eight years, and I've met almost all of my friends and relationships through this market, and people coming to my house, helping me with stuff. You know, just by the act of agriculture, you're going to get other people involved. And I think that's really valuable in terms of building a vibrant community.
And I think you can have that experience on a much smaller scale than just what I'm doing too. You could do it in your backyard if you lived in New York or something, you know. So there's a huge value to that in today's day and age. I think where a lot of people are just on their computers all day and looking at their phones, just the act of growing food in any context is going to be really beneficial for community building and stuff.
So that's my short answer. There's a lot more there.
Wendy Corr:
But that actually takes me to my second question, which is, you are passionate about sharing what you know and how, what, tell tell us about what you're working on now, to share that knowledge and to spread the joy of gardening, and really bring us back to where we all began.
We've gotten so far away from the dirt ourselves. Everything's all sanitized, and we get it from the store and it's in pretty packages, whereas you want us all to be able to experience that life force, that good, solid nutrients that come from these local the locally grown foods. Tell us what you're doing, about teaching others how to do what it is you're doing?
Zach Buchel:
Yeah, yeah. So last year, I started a YouTube channel, and I started really posting a lot of gardening education content on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, all that stuff, because I, I've always thought about this as I've been selling veggie boxes and stuff or selling at the farmers market.
You know, a lot of times people do complain about the price, and I understand it, and I always think to myself, like, man, if you guys knew how to plant, you think the broccolini is expensive? Well, it's only expensive because of the amount that you get per plant. And running a business, you have to price things certain ways just to run the business, because otherwise you'd sell out in 10 seconds, and then I would, you know, not make any money.
But if you grew that broccolini at home, it would cost you pennies, you know. So the if you actually know how to produce, like a farm does, you can really grow a huge amount of this kind of food for very cheap. So one of my big motivations over the past year has been to share farming-style gardening, to people in really densely populated areas that don't have a lot of land, but really want to grow a lot of this kind of food.
Because, I mean, $86,000 of food grown on a third of an acre. I posted a lot of videos and stuff on that on my channels, and I got a lot of flack, like people just think I'm lying and making that up, and a lot of negativity.
I've made a YouTube video explaining exactly what I mean by that, and breaking all the costs down and stuff, but most people think that's insane just because of the numbers - it's like $240,000 a year per acre, which compared to bigger scale farming is pretty high. Like, really, really high. There's a lot of costs involved with farming like mine, like you have to spend, you know, we have over $100,000 in infrastructure on our farm. So that's not really practical for most people.
But if you take the same concept and move it down to 1000 square feet, which a lot of people have that in their backyard, you don't have to spend nearly as much. I mean, you, you could probably spend, oh, a couple hundred to set up a no-dig garden and maintain it for like $160 a year. And easily, and I mean, easily produce $1,000 of your own food a year.
And I'm not talking about just salad stuff. I mean, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, green beans, all that stuff that we sell in our veggie box. You could grow easily in your backyard. You and you could do a lot of it. You just have to do things intensively, like grow six foot tall snap peas instead of three foot tall.
Those little details are what I'm looking to teach people, because I have to pay attention to that with my business. Like, there's a very specific type of cabbage that we grow that we can get 180 heads of cabbage on 150 foot bed, and if you take that same cabbage in your backyard, you could easily grow 12 heads of cabbage in like five square feet.
So those are the kinds of details I really am passionate about sharing with people, and also the concept of getting two crops a year, because I think most people, when they're gardening, they're only growing in the spring, and they just don't think about fall gardening. But fall is where we grow close to half our revenue comes from fall, because it's actually probably more than that, if you factor in winter and stuff.
So we plant a second crop, at least, on every single bed to mature into October, November and December, January, February, and our greenhouses, and we just continuously harvest all 12 months of the year. And if you do that in your backyard in New York or something, you could probably do it without a greenhouse, because it's a lot warmer.
So I'm really passionate about that, because I think that could actually, like, make, really change the world. It could start up a whole bunch more of those kinds of, like, really micro farms in places like Chicago and New York. And it could really just impact anybody that has a quarter acre of land, you know, you could grow a ton of stuff.
So I've, I'm really excited about a program that I'm launching soon in July, where we're going to be working with a small group of people all over the country and teaching them these techniques to grow way more than enough for their family and then also be able to sell a little bit at the farmers market or something.
And when you know, like, the techniques that I'm talking about, it's really not hard, and you could do it while still having a full time job and stuff like that. Because that's another barrier I see with people, is there's just not enough time in the day.
You know, if you've got a full time job and two kids, you're not going to be growing like I am. There's just no way, you know, you got to be able to have something where you're like, 1520 minutes a week or something. And there's a way to do that.
Wendy Corr:
So is this an online course? Then, if you're doing this, so what do we need to know in order to follow what you're doing? Because this sounds fascinating, I'm getting excited about it, sure, because I've got a full time job and more, but I would love to grow my own food. I am such a veggie-holic, and so I would love to know what it is that you're doing.
Zach Buchel:
Sure, sure. So starting July 7, we're launching what I'm calling Backyard Farming 101, and we're looking to work with a group of 10 people. We've already started getting some people involved, and we're going to teach them how to grow over $1,000 of food a year.
And specifically, this year, we're going to be teaching a fall gardening focus, because we're starting in July, so you can't really, it's too late to start things like tomatoes, onions, that kind of stuff. But I want to teach people in climates that are a lot warmer than here or Wyoming, how to grow a really abundant fall garden.
So we're going to be teaching people through eight weeks of live zoom sessions just like this, how to do everything you need to know, from seed starting, garden setup, harvesting, storage, and eventually we're going to have a permanent version of that that people are going to have access to. That's just a video course that you have lifetime access to.
And there's also going to be a group of an online Facebook community where all of the members who are going through this course are going to be able to share their experiences, which is going to be so it's probably going to eventually be more valuable than the information itself, because I've found that the best results come from me tracking my results year after year and tweaking them in my specific climate.
I mean, I get different results than Scott does two minutes away, just because of my micro climate. So the more that people share that information, it's going to change the way agriculture works, because there's going to be like, all that stuff that I look for to find out how much yield I need to make my one bed of snap peas profitable.
If more people share that information, even on a garden scale, it's going to make it easier for growers all over the place, in lots of different contexts. So there's going to be a Facebook community specifically for people in this group as well. And I'm really excited about it.
We're going to be also eventually adding some information on how to grow in greenhouses and winter growing too, because I'm super passionate about that and the potential for year round. Local food is is something that I want to share with the world. Because I think if we could do it in Wyoming, where we get negative 20 Fahrenheit consistently every winter, sometimes negative 30, it should be a lot easier to do in places like Alabama and Florida, stuff like that.
So, so yeah, if anybody is interested in working with me in that capacity, you can find all the information for that on my Instagram or Facebook page, which is Farm Table West. And we're also going to be posting some stuff on our YouTube channel as well. And you can reach out to me there, and I'd love to, I'd love to chat and work with you if you are interested.
Wendy Corr:
Zach, this has been such a great conversation. I have to ask, because you grew up in Chicago, what do your parents think? What do your parents think about you completely turning your back on the city and saying, no, no, I'm going to capitalize on this seed that you planted upon again out here in Wyoming. What are their thoughts about what you're doing?
Zach Buchel:
Well, they're pretty happy about it, I think. They are letting me grow on their land, so that's a big plus. And I think that, you know, they like having fresh vegetables all the time. I bring in, you know, fresh asparagus, onions, we eat from the farm. So that's pretty nice.
My parents are kind of foodies, so my dad really likes to cook, and my mom does too, so they really appreciate the high quality stuff. And ultimately, the land that we're growing on is just old horse pasture. So it was just grass land that was just sitting there, not even getting irrigated or anything.
So it's nice to have something happening on the land, because we have a pretty big property. It's a 14 acre property, and we're only using the one parcel that's three acres, and so we're going to slowly build the farm into that over time. So they're pretty happy, I think at least.
Wendy Corr:
That is just fantastic. So you've given us your contact information on there if we want to. If there's anybody that's listening, that's local, that wants to maybe get one of your veggie boxes, they can find that information there as well.
Zach Buchel:
Uh, yeah, we actually are sold out right now.
Wendy Corr:
Awesome. Good for you.
Zach Buchel:
Yeah, we actually cap it at 40, because it's hard to grow more than that right now at the scale we're at. But you can also order our vegetables. If you are locally, you can order our vegetables at FarmTablewest.com and pick them up at Legacy Butcher.
We're going to start doing a lot more promotion of that soon, so if you are able to do that, that's a great option. We are still selling at the farmers market in Cody on Saturdays for the next three weeks or so, and then we'll be in Billings and then back in October. So we sell in Cody all winter as well.
Wendy Corr:
That's so great. Zach, thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your passion for gardening and agriculture and really bringing this foundation of who we are as humans, bringing this foundation up to a modern age. And so we're grateful for all the research that you have done in order for us to learn from your knowledge and eat the very yummy vegetables.
Zach Buchel:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's fun to talk about this.
Wendy Corr:
It's fun for us to hear about it, and it's inspiring, if you ask me, because I'm inspired. So Zach, thank you so much for today. And folks, thank you for tuning into the Roundup. We are so blessed to live in this state where we've got the most interesting people with such a diverse range of interests and professions and expertise, and I'm so thrilled to be able to bring these stories to you every week on the Roundup.
Remember, if you have missed any of our many, many conversations that we've had, go back to our archives. Just listen to them while you're out gardening. That's a great place to listen to older episodes of The roundup. And if you have someone that you know of that should be featured on our podcast, let me know, and I'm glad to get more of these Wyoming voices out for the rest of us to hear. Thank you, Zach, thank you, folks. Have a fantastic week.
