Kent Boucher (0:00): man, HR's done at five.

Nicolas Lirio (0:02): Hole in the crotch of my pants, I'm the only one not covered by the table.

Kent Boucher (0:06): Never fossil. I told S Nicholas that success isn't measured by the how intact your underpants are. You ever see those memes where it's like, ladies don't worry, he's not gonna leave, he's been wearing the same underwear since 11th grade. We're in the same thing at Subway for ten years.

Nicolas Lirio (0:09): This on YouTube.

Nicolas Lirio (0:18): Better not be.

Nicolas Lirio (0:30): Well here's the deal, I'm sure you guys can relate to this. It's not like you don't have money to buy new underwear. That is true, but that's not the reason we always wear 'cause when you find something you like, that's what you like.

Kent Boucher (0:40): Yeah. No one wants to risk chafing. Nobody.

Nicolas Lirio (0:47): Everybody has six pairs in their drawer that they wear and another thirty pairs.

Kent Boucher (0:53): So the one ring that rules them all entered my house this weekend. Don't tell Sauron. But the one ring entered my house. It is the Amazon toy catalog. This like gear up for Christmas. I didn't look at it very closely, but I'm pretty sure there was a a section in the front of it where you can like list out what you want for your parents to see this is a paper Like remember so so I feel torn on it. Yeah, it's a paper copy. Because I JC Penny used to send out a Christmas toy catalog every year. Do you guys remember that? yeah. And I think Cabela's did too. Yeah, but theirs wasn't as good. Yeah, but I mean it I loved looking through those. the master catalogs. It was just exciting. Yeah. And I realized like that is training. For tomorrow's consumer. Yeah. Like it it's because when you're a kid, you have no power over getting anything in that magazine. Right? You got no money. And even if you did, you don't know how to order it, right? You gotta become a little salesperson. And and it's basically just brainwashing you at an early age to like, look at this, this is so much better than my other stuff. I want this stuff. That's real. And I I saw that it was in the stack of mail in years previously like, look kids, look what came in the mail. But once I started realizing the power of the one ring, I I was like very torn on it. And so I left it in the stack of mail from the weekend and I was like, What do I do about this thing? 'Cause they would like really love to look through it. It'd be fun thing for But I don't want to look at it. Yeah. And

Nicolas Lirio (2:47): It's always good the first time.

Kent Boucher (2:49): And my oldest daughter found it first. She saw it in the stack while I was like doing some dishes this morning. And I thought about hand it over. But I was like, this is my answer. She organically found it. Mm-hmm. I'll let look at it. And seconds prior to that. Like she had just come into the kitchen to tell me something. All four of my children were happily playing Legos together and and having a great time. Nobody was fighting. I everybody was just having a blast. And just like that, my son Jonas lost his three sisters to the one ring. And and he came up to me and he goes, I just realized something. I realized how Dumb, I used to be when I was younger. And he's like, we were playing perfectly fine. We were all happy and playing together. And just like that, Marg finds the cat toy catalog, and now I'm playing by myself. And and so we we I explained everything that I just said here. Yeah, I know it's brainwashing you to become a good consumer eventually. And we went on, the girls are sitting there looking at it. I was getting tired of them looking at it. And then but I was like I it was the the so it's a Monday while we're recording this. My wife works weekend nights and so she's sleeping while I'm watching the kids. And we we like homeschool our kids. So I was getting some school stuff ready for and Finishing up the dishes and stuff like that. You know, the usual just awesome. Mod model husband, model dad signaling. Model model father of the year. no, I was just getting some of those chores done so she wouldn't I wouldn't be in the doghouse as long when she woke up.

Nicolas Lirio (4:40): Yes I smell virtual

Kent Boucher (4:53): from not doing those chores over the weekend. That's the true that's like that's the opposite of a virtue cycle. What is that? Redemption. That is a what are you staring at my gut for a moment? get busted for a copyright infringement for saying of the one ring so many times. I don't know. But

Nicolas Lirio (5:16): I would love if Tolkien I would show that thing all over.

speaker-2 (5:18): I mean,

Kent Boucher (5:20): absolutely. Did sign it? But so we had our conversation, then all of sudden my daughter, my middle daughter, sorry, honey, if you listen to this, she erupts in rage or or or like or like like anguish, right? And runs upstairs and starts wailing where my wife is sleeping, right? And I like I'm like, hey, you know, come down here. And then she just wailed all the louder. And that's and that's and that's when I was not a model father at that point. And all of it traced back to her and my youngest fighting over who had the one ring. And it was the most golem response you'd ever seen. Yeah. And and it just

Nicolas Lirio (5:53): That doghouse sounds so uncomfortable.

Kent Boucher (6:17): It really was a very practical thing about how bad this stuff is for human nature. We're just not meant to we're not meant to operate in the to have somebody play on our tendency for discontentment or malcontentment.

Nicolas Lirio (6:35): Yeah, where y you're not made to get what you want. You're made to get what you work for. And like

Kent Boucher (6:40): Yeah, and you're made to have a we were made to have a level of contentment, right? Yeah. That's the story of the Garden of Eden. But somebody came along and said, You got all this, but what you don't got one of these. Yeah. And that thing was the one ring. And and so it it just was a very clear illustration of that.

Nicolas Lirio (6:57): That thing was the Amazon catalog.

Nicolas Lirio (7:07): We've got it we've got it on the list this holiday season. We're gonna be going through how much paper we use for No, no, for ads. We did that w a couple of years ago, I think actually. But for ad like mail marketing. you know what I mean? I'm I'm so curious 'cause I feel like more mail gets sent now than before the internet. Yeah. And it's all garbage. I mean, I bet it's literally

Kent Boucher (7:16): That's

Nicolas Lirio (7:32): Twenty to one for my wife and I on like letters we keep that are relevant. And it's usually just like the IRS screaming at us 'cause we haven't paid our bills for a few years.

Kent Boucher (7:41): Just shut up. Fun fact.

Nicolas Lirio (7:44): Can't go to jail for not paying your taxes. You go to jail for not filing. That's illegal. They can do all sorts of other stuff.

Kent Boucher (7:50): Wage garnishments. I was really worried that you were gonna say something like you were calculating the paper throughput of your household or something like that. It's more virtue signaling. No.

Nicolas Lirio (8:01): Yeah, yeah, I'm like weighing it on a scale and like

Kent Boucher (8:04): Fact we just gave up on toilet paper just to really cut down on our footprint. We're down over twenty three ounces from last year.

speaker-2 (8:10): You

Nicolas Lirio (8:10): To know something that's deeply upsetting. I used to bring these boxes into Riley to like use to ship out that we would get from Spire because it's like why not? They're free. Yeah, it's what was it like four bucks to pay for a box, Riley? Something like that. The problem is USBS and UPS and FedEx and all of them have like box size they want. So if your box size isn't what they want, they'll upcharge you eight dollars.

Kent Boucher (8:23): Yeah, two, three bucks.

Nicolas Lirio (8:36): So it's literally like we're losing money reusing these boxes. It was deeply upsetting. If you guys got we did for a couple of years and we put these little stickers on that was like, Hey, we're trying to reuse boxes, you know. But that's what that's why it says plastic cups on here. We're trying to save the environment.

Kent Boucher (8:50): Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (8:52): So all right, we should we should jump in. We're it it's late. We'll explain it.

Kent Boucher (8:56): Delirious.

speaker-2 (8:57): Calibrate, wake up, you got bad hands.

Nicolas Lirio (9:01): Coffee time Wednesdays with the Prairie Farm Podcast.

speaker-2 (9:08): you

Nicolas Lirio (9:14): I want to tell you a little story about my wife and I. Several years ago, we found out that our insurance company was literally spending millions of dollars lobbying against conservation in our state and our federal level. And when we found this out, we said, uh-uh. And we decided right then we are gonna get a new insurance company. And that brought us to McKay Insurance. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm pretty thorough when I make some of these decisions. And I looked for through a bunch of different agencies and they seemed great. But McKay Insurance stood out because of the people that I met there. They were wonderful. One of their agents actually went through the whole rigmarole to set us up with insurance that she and the agency didn't get a cut of. They just wanted to make sure that we were insured. Whether you're needing life insurance, health insurance, car, home, and auto, reach out to McKay Insurance. They will get you taken care of. If you are tired of your insurance company lobbying against you, go to McKayNsagency.com. Welcome back to the Prairie Farm Podcast, Coffee Time Wednesday. I'm your favorite host, Nicholas Lirio. The favorite co-host, we'll go Riley Rosendol.

Kent Boucher (10:23): We're going we're going on the line.

Nicolas Lirio (10:25): From co-house to the co-host, John McCollum. Whoa!

Kent Boucher (10:27): And the real host you wanna hear from.

Nicolas Lirio (10:31): Yeah. The the man who keeps us grounded, Kemp Boucher. The the color commentary, the one we are contractually obligated to make sure he stays on the podcast.

Kent Boucher (10:41): It's approaching my bedtime.

Nicolas Lirio (10:44): It's man, we used to do late podcasts. That like used to be a thing.

Kent Boucher (10:48): we still do we we still do about five a year, I'd say. Yeah, maybe not five, three. First

Nicolas Lirio (10:53): Christian Hunter, you are always doing at like eight o'clock.

Kent Boucher (10:56): Right. man

Nicolas Lirio (11:00): man. The yeah, we had that whole conversation about me falling asleep in a podcast. There was another one I remember, I wanna say this. I remember Kent's eyes moving to the back of his head on screen. We were via Zoom.

Kent Boucher (11:18): Well, I was having a seizure, but I didn't

Nicolas Lirio (11:20): We are via Zoom and we were talking to a gentleman. He was a great gentleman, but it was like a conversation Kent couldn't have cared less about and he was very tired and I had to carry us through. I just want you because a couple weeks ago you guys were like, Man, can't believe Nicholas would actually fall asleep on a podcast. It happens. Okay.

Kent Boucher (11:38): Yours was at like four PM

speaker-2 (11:41): You

Nicolas Lirio (11:42): Well like a guy who's like a peak expert in what he talks about

Kent Boucher (11:45): We recorded one that never aired this spring. That was at midnight. In my parents' basement. I was sleeping in that one for sure.

Nicolas Lirio (11:54): Yeah. Yeah.

Kent Boucher (11:58): Yeah, that was Well you should go through the you should go through the archives and find the two podcasts which my dad appears on.

Nicolas Lirio (12:01): Yeah, but that one was awesome. Yeah, I like Alan a lot.

Nicolas Lirio (12:10): yeah. Mr. Alan Boucher, I'm sure he'll be in another one as well. But today, speaking of late night sleeping, did you know that Europe every year, from a study in 2011, loses one million healthy life years? Every i it it will make sense in a minute, but every year Europe loses one million. We got a cat screaming at us now.

Kent Boucher (12:29): Wait, say that one more time?

Kent Boucher (12:39): I'm gonna shut window. Is that dog? Yeah. Such a wimpy little meow for such a big fat head. He's not he's not used to

Nicolas Lirio (12:42): That's dog.

speaker-2 (12:50): hahahahah

Kent Boucher (12:54): R Riley there Riley, there's a line we use around here. Anything related to the gut. You wanna know something pathetic about my gut? yeah. Riley said a wrench. So so no no no no, you gotta give the lead up. You gotta give the lead up. So we're working on the combine today. Kent's laying underneath it and

speaker-2 (12:59): You

Nicolas Lirio (13:00): You are not doing

Kent Boucher (13:24): He he says to me, Can you hand me a wrench? So I gently toss a wrench and it lands on the side of his gut. You know and it It caught It clock it it got caught there. So I can't Can you hit me there for you?

Kent Boucher (13:53): I said, Well it's already there. It's sitting on your gun

Kent Boucher (14:00): But here's the thing. He hesitated because he he felt so awkward. Like, how do I tell this how do I tell this aged obese man that the wrench is already there? What what I struggled to tell him was w I had a half inch and a nine sixteenth. So I threw the nine sixteenths on his gut and then he said, Can you hand me a wrench? So I thought he meant the other. So I thought I handed him a half-inch wrench and he looks at it and he goes, No, the nine sixteen. Then I had to break it, then it was sitting on his gut. yeah, that's right. Yeah. Multiple attempts to

Nicolas Lirio (14:39): Dude, Riley was with the singers. Judd do you mind if we we share what Riley said this morning? We were talking about something that was stressful for Judd. Judd wasn't even in the room.

Kent Boucher (14:45): No, go for it, yeah.

Kent Boucher (14:52): Jeb was about a hundred miles away yet. I felt like I was safe.

Nicolas Lirio (14:58): Riley goes, yeah, that was stressful. Judd was pulling out his hair. Well his beard hair. Not a hair on the top of his head.

Kent Boucher (15:12): And the daughter my golem daughter noticed that last harvest season. She's Judd's favorite child of mine too. They have like a they have like a a special bond. And she like walks up to him. Judd took his hat off at the end of the day and she's like front's your hair. She's just looking at me. Didn't she say something about it being different colors? No.

Nicolas Lirio (15:20): Please.

Kent Boucher (15:41): Put your hat back on. You don't have any hair there. Put that back on.

Nicolas Lirio (15:48): The right to go without a hat. man. Yeah, we gotta get to this noise thing, but what you guys really is what we're doing this week because it is actually pretty interesting. We I'm gonna hand it over to Kent here in a second, but this morning I text everyone, Hey, we got a lot going on this week. We'll all come on at lunch with our list of things that we're supposed to get done this week and like individually.

Kent Boucher (15:58): We're delirious. So

Nicolas Lirio (16:18): And then we will compare notes and figure out how we can help each other out. And then we had like an hour meeting trying to do that. And we all kind of at the same time looked at the board and how much we had written on there and like in our hearts resolved I guess I should cancel all of my plans this week. So it is what, eight thirty at night and my goodness. Speaking of which, this chair in the way?

Kent Boucher (16:40): And Alex is working on a combine.

Kent Boucher (16:47): it's way more in the way now. No, no, no.

Nicolas Lirio (16:50): Okay. Cool. Sorry, we're trying to be better for the YouTubes, but Judd being a fourth fourth man today, we're squeezing in. Kent, what's Ray to Harvest? What are w what are you doing? What have you been doing?

Kent Boucher (17:02): We look at the board over there. What have we not been doing? Yeah, no kidding. everything's been log jammed to this week. Thankfully the weather's in our in our corner finally. So it makes it feel less stressful, I guess. we have all of our main grasses, little blue stem, big blue stem, Indian grass, to harvest this week. We have prairie drop seed. Just finished Virginia mountain mint, harvested that earlier than normal, but we tried a new method, which I think was overall successful. Virginia Wild Rye will go this week. we still have some things in Windrose that have been in Windrose for weeks. Yeah. but we haven't been able to get to because they've been floating. And so if we can get to some of that we will.

Nicolas Lirio (17:41): Virginia Wild Rye.

Kent Boucher (18:00): We also have Rough Blazing Star, which you guys are hand harvesting. We went to swath that today and Judd and I took a trip around the field and we're like, we're I think we're losing a lot here. Yeah and Judd hand harvested what was ripe on Friday and just in that short time, I don't know, another maybe not fifty percent of the field but forty percent of the field.

Nicolas Lirio (18:26): It's already even the stuff that doesn't look fully ripe. I I was out helping Judd and and I was like biting on the the bottom of the seeds, the least ripe seeds on the least ripe plant, and they were hard as can be. They were ready to go. So I mean it was like we were talking, we said, We better get all of it tomorrow. Yeah. You the rest of we we probably have a third of the field.

Kent Boucher (18:45): Yep, yep. So they're they're working on that. Judd swathed Hory Vervain already today. and I think that's pretty well everything that we're hoping to get to this week. We'll still have some species you know, maybe starting next week, swathing some some of the earliest asters, possibly next week. we'll have rough drop seed coming due here pretty quick. trying to think what else. I think that's pretty much it then for us. Yeah. I mean we've we've harvested over twenty species already this year, at this point. So we we you know we're we've we've been harvesting since early June.

Nicolas Lirio (19:30): Yeah. Well we will harvest. So just this year for us, this isn't always the case. We're a little bit not panic in a bad way, but we knew this was coming. We have a couple larger bids, like government bids, that we won and they're they have a specific timeline contractually due date. And so we've got like quick turnarounds on some of those. So we're kind of scrambling for that. And then after that we'll be kind of in our routine of cleaning and planting. Yeah. Well kind of November, December we'll go into a cleaning like Getting stuff planted before the ground freezes for Forbes. you know, I we have a list of things we're planning on planting and so we'll get

Kent Boucher (20:07): You know, it's deer season now and that's been kind of the joke for Judd and me today. I was having combine problems and Judd calls me, he's like, What's going on? I was like, Yeah, I just I'm going deer hunting. But Doug's line on bow hunting has just been ringing in my head since last fall. Aldo he said he said bow hunting is for for people who don't have enough to do.

Nicolas Lirio (20:28): Who has time to go bow hunting?

Kent Boucher (20:36): And that is that is becoming very true for me. And and and Judd too, because he's here right with me through through the thick of of harvest season during deer season. And it it is interesting how I'm gonna try and work that in this year. But pressure's off 'cause I'm gonna keep bragging on my kids. They aren't just little golems all the time. my oldest just tagged his first deer two weeks ago tomorrow.

Nicolas Lirio (21:04): Stud.

Kent Boucher (21:04): Yep, shot shot of dough. And that takes an unbelievable amount of pressure off me 'cause that is that is my family's red meat every year. Is is dear. And

Nicolas Lirio (21:14): Do you normally get tag two?

Kent Boucher (21:17): Yeah, the last several years I have. I think I think.

Nicolas Lirio (21:19): How much of the do you got through all two two deep? Wow. Okay.

Kent Boucher (21:22): yeah, we're almost out of deer. Yep, yep. So it was it took a lot of pressure off that he he did that and that I knew it would because of how busy this was gonna be. So so you know, it takes s take some of that that feeling of when I'm in the combine or in the tractor harvesting, like

Nicolas Lirio (21:44): Last year when Kent was done harvesting, he went, I'm gonna go deer hunting tomorrow. And he would come rolling in like a boulder at ten thirty in the morning after his deer hunting because he like all that all all of that adrenal fatigue like flushing out of your body from the previous three or four weeks of no sleep and and all the stress and the combine issues and and you were just like a new man, like just coming in smiling, like

Kent Boucher (22:09): Yeah. and honestly I had my best deer season ever last year, you know, and I think that was a little gift from God to to lift my spirits after the trying, you know, season without Carol. So

Nicolas Lirio (22:23): the the immediate trauma. yeah. I the things that we're trying to work through now, just as a company, is dad used to just harvest, but it was just just his family. It was just him. He had to support. So he would harvest and then he would clean and and cash flow is less complicated for him. Now we're we're thinking like Okay, the faster we can turn seed around and get on it, the better. But it is complicated, is a very complicated process because we have dozens, several dozens of species that we are personally handling, and then having to triage which are most important for what bids. Or hey, actually we should clean that one because we can turn around and sell it right away. Versus hey, we don't need to clean that one yet because we're not gonna sell any till next spring. Or hey, we don't wanna do that one because we don't wanna clean that one before this other one because of the way that our seed cleaning setup. So it is it's complicated. Like I'm annoyed by it, but it is important how much time we spend in meetings trying to figure out how we're gonna spend our time. Like it it sounds stupid, but we spend a lot of time doing that, just trying to think it through and There's a lot of moving parts.

Kent Boucher (23:44): Well I I the whiteboard thing, I've been wanting to do that for a while. It just helps helps me organize because there's so many options for what you could do. And like today we talked through some of the nuance of that. where we're like, Okay, so you're gonna go do Purple Prairie Clover right now. It's like, Well, I mean most of it's been lost to the weather. probably shouldn't prioritize it over a f something for sure. And You know, like little nuanced decisions like that. It just helps you instead of just having a to do list, I need to get all these species done, it's like when do I want to get done?

Nicolas Lirio (24:19): Or even like wagons. Like not all wagons can be used for every species and some overlap with different driving wagons. Yeah, so

Kent Boucher (24:25): Drying wagons, you're not and you left out another variable I didn't think about, which was you said no matter how well you blow out a combine, you're still gonna plant seed in the next field you go to.

Nicolas Lirio (24:37): Absolutely. Yeah. It's way better to go from little blue stem to a big blue stem field. In fact, you want big blue stem to be the last thing that you touch that year. And then hopefully any bit of the little seed that's stuck in the combine after you clean it out, blow it out, of course, there's still gonna be a little bit of seed. Yeah. Hopefully it rots and dies over the you know the next year because otherwise you're Yeah, the the big actually big blue stem spreading on a prairie farm is an issue. You get

Kent Boucher (24:56): Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (25:03): You got soybeans on something for eight years and you'll have a little bit of big muscle.

Kent Boucher (25:07): I almost wonder if it'd be worth it to run around at the after you're done with your main fields of big blue stem and everywhere else, you know. big blue stem is showing up, you just go and and and take the tops off of it with the course then you're gonna be blowing more of it out on the ground too.

Nicolas Lirio (25:26): So re really what you should do is we should eradicate it off this farm, go rent a farm five miles down the road and just have a big you know a 50-acre big blue stem field there. That's what we should do. But you gotta you gotta turn your big blue stem field over every 10 years. So yeah, anyway, but we got a lot going on. We're excited, we're happy, we really enjoy hanging out with each other. We are going to yell at each other before the end of the week. It'll be good. Everyone will be happy. But if you get a slower response from Judd or I It's because we're tired. And if you're getting a response at nine o'clock at night, it's because we worked outside all day and then we went. So just trust us that I promise we'll get back with you. but we tend to get less calls when people are in their combines. So that's helpful for us. All right.

Kent Boucher (26:13): Yeah, we won't be alone out out on the horizon this this week. Everyone's gonna be going around the clock.

Nicolas Lirio (26:21): we had a fantastic question on the forum about how to get rid of willow trees growing up in a in a prairie, which is really interesting because that means it's like a wetter area. Yeah. and Luke Clark coming in swinging hard talked about going in and either mowing or treating. and then I would also recommend if I mean goats, I think we asked Adam Ladvina on this show, like twenty ac what would it cost to do twenty acres? And he was like fifteen hundred bucks or something. I like two yeah it's it was like way cheaper than I thought it was

Kent Boucher (26:58): Maybe it two thousand. But there's been some inflation since then, so it's

Nicolas Lirio (27:04): Being like it's not gonna be like a twelve thousand dollar investment, you know, it's just yeah. And then sorry.

Kent Boucher (27:11): I was gonna say I will say if you're gonna mow off willows, make sure they're not too woody or you're just gonna make pungey sticks which are not gonna be friendly to whatever the follow up.

Nicolas Lirio (27:19): That's true. Friends, the prairie's getting tall. It's getting time. The birds are a whistling and a chirping. And that means it is almost hunting season. So if you enjoy walking through the tall grass, pulling ticks off of yourself, and hanging out with your dogs, we highly recommend going to birdhuntersupply.com. Now I understand if you want to be out on the landscape, you don't necessarily want to just hang out on a website, but Dr. Russ Benedict was correct when he said the prairie was actually a very adverse place, and we need to be prepared. So prepare yourself for your hunting season, your trail walking season, and your bird dog hunting season at birdhuntersupply.com. They've got everything you need for yourself on the bird hunting and everything you need for your bird dog. We highly recommend the assortment of equipment that they provide on there is extensive and far above my head, but they have exactly what you need. Not only will they take care of you in that, but they actually help take care of the land as well. When I was talking to the owners, they said, we actually donate a certain amount of money to conservation every single year. And I asked them, do you have a donation button at the end where people can donate when they check out, which is really common? And he said, No, we actually donate from our profits. So they literally take their earned profits and donate that to conservation efforts because they care. They want to see the landscape have habitat and stay healthy for future generations. Highly, highly recommend. BirdhunterSupply dot com. Yeah. We have a corner that the DOT takes care of, like a ditch on our farm, and they come in really strong every year and they just mow them off. And I don't even know what you could do down there, you know, in that wetter area. But sometimes let just letting nature be nature is best. I feel like there was something else. one other thing. Someone emailed in and they were like, Hey, those ambient prairie things that you have that are not AI, Judd did those, are incredible. and this is actually what gave me the idea for this. He said, I play them on I maybe he said I play them on my TV every night. I believe the gentleman's name was Ben. Thanks for giving us a shout out over email, Ben. and he he loves the sound. And it got me thinking, you know what? I love the sound. Like I'll put them on in my car and just listen to the buzzing and stuff like that. and I was like, I wonder like how the sound, you know, affects us. And

Nicolas Lirio (29:43): So I went and I got a looked up a bunch of

Kent Boucher (29:47): I love the sound of a diesel engine on on a gleaner just running without without a hiccup without starving us. I think I can hear it out in the distance. But just fired up. Yep. Yeah, he just turned on the threshold for Yep.

Nicolas Lirio (29:57): Fuel. Does it sound okay?

Nicolas Lirio (30:04): He's going. praise the Lord. While you're listening to us, we are carrying stress in our hearts about this clear. so first we're gonna go through the bad studies on noise pollution. Then we're gonna go through the good studies on nature sounds. Riley's currently asleep. As we think. All right, part one. The bad. And we'll finish on the good. World Health Organization, 2011, estimated that.

Kent Boucher (30:25): I just want him.

Nicolas Lirio (30:36): At least one million healthy life years are lost every year to traffic noise in Western Europe. Why is that? Mostly through loss of sleep, because your sleep isn't as good. And so the end the end portion of your life, you would live not as long, or they wouldn't be as healthy of years because of the chronic not sleeping good enough. in you know, you're talking hundreds of thousands of people that sleep right next to a busy road, you know, in each country, let alone across the whole area. all of Europe and they break down to nine hundred thousand of sleep dis disturbance and sixty thousand to heart disease and forty five thousand to kids' cognitive impairment and twenty two thousand to tinnitus. Kinda interesting. so

Kent Boucher (31:30): Do you guys have tinnitus? yeah. Yeah. like right now I hear ringing.

Nicolas Lirio (31:35): Really? You have tinnitus?

Kent Boucher (31:37): yeah. Always. Every day of my life. Not a minute of my life I don't know.

Nicolas Lirio (31:42): Interesting. My wife has a little bit, but it comes in and out. And I guess it's just the precursor of hearing loss and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no fix or anything.

Kent Boucher (31:51): It's your brain trying to fill in a the signal that it doesn't think is there. It's actually the absence of something. No, it's earlier in the meeting when you guys were talking, it must have been just quiet enough in here. Like it hit me really hard. And like yeah. Yeah, I always have it. Do you have it right now, Riley? Yeah. Yeah. the your your noise pollution, a rabbit hole I'm sure some of the comments will be about too is data center noise pollution.

Nicolas Lirio (31:55): understand.

Kent Boucher (32:20): That's been a hot topic. I don't know if that's on your list or not. yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (32:24): Well, so it it's brought up a little bit, but the way that they measure decibels is kind of interesting. It's the average decibel over a twenty-four hour period or a one cycle day. And so you can have pretty loud peaks without like you could have a semi go by your house once every once in a while, and it's not it's the average decibel. That's why it's people who have like a lot of heavy pardon me, traffic or are near a railway. So the average you want to stay below fifty-three decibels. and at night you want to stay between forty or below forty-five decibels. but most people are staying above fifty-five for most of their day, even just with the radio on in their car. They're just because that'll be way higher than fifty-five. So it takes your twenty-four hour average over that. And also, did you know that sitting in the back of an airplane, you're like one decibel below what's considered OSHA unsafe? really?

Kent Boucher (33:18): Like eighty it's like eighty some decibels. Yeah. And you know and you know it was above that, but when they had to get it tested, they just had a sk a can of spray foam that they just had No

Nicolas Lirio (33:22): And

Nicolas Lirio (33:29): No bone is above board every time, all the time.

Kent Boucher (33:36): We don't want to cease and desist from them.

Nicolas Lirio (33:39): another big one is wind turbines. You live near wind turbines, you will stay above forty five on average. Yeah. I

Kent Boucher (33:47): I can believe that. I hunted near a a wind turbine once down in Missouri and it was all you could hear the entire time. You're out in the middle of I mean, middle of nowhere. And all you could just hear is that that whooshing from that that turbine.

Nicolas Lirio (34:03): That I I know that story of a friend that you have that a wind turbine went up near their house and now they can't sell it so they're stuck there. They can't move. Yeah. 'Cause they can't afford two mortgages.

Kent Boucher (34:13): Yeah, they planted it right at the legal minimum distance from a occupied building.

Nicolas Lirio (34:21): Man.

Kent Boucher (34:22): And they held the hearing to like oppose it, during covid when nobody was allowed to go to the hearing. that's dirty pool.

Nicolas Lirio (34:32): I I would sue. I d I don't even believe in suing and I think I would sue. I th like to just be stuck somewhere because that's tough. I don't know who it is because those things yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the landowner. Because I was gonna say those things are net negative economically.

Kent Boucher (34:41): At least someone's making money.

Kent Boucher (34:46): The landowner, that's who.

Kent Boucher (34:53): Well they're starting to chip up for concrete now.

Nicolas Lirio (34:56): good. Good. We're reducing and reusing. That's good.

Kent Boucher (35:01): By the way, I am pro alternative energy, but yeah, wind turbines leave leave some some to be desired.

Nicolas Lirio (35:08): The in twenty eighteen the WHO updated the the World Health Organization updated their recommendation on noise levels to talk about there's strong evidence of heart and metabolic effects. if you raise the average decibel for long periods of time. Anyway, enough of that. Let's talk about part two, the good. man, even just thinking about this, like Puts me in a better mood. Okay. Meta analysis done by Rachel Bucks Buxton of Carleton University, working with the National Park Service and pooled 18 different studies. So a meta-analysis is basically you know a doctor or PhD looking at other PhD reports and putting a bunch of them together to create kind of their own report. I only not to like talk down to you guys, I didn't know what that was till I read this. that natural sound lowered stress and improved. Improved blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol levels, and perceived pain measurably consistently. So basically every time, it wasn't just occasionally. You know, sometimes they'll do studies and there'll like some outliers. So the average of the their study average will seem relevant, but it's actually like it affected nobody except for, you know. Anyway, that is not what's going on here.

Kent Boucher (36:27): So that was go through that again.

Nicolas Lirio (36:31): Nat nature sounds do this for people. They lower stress, improve blood pressure, they improve heart rate, they improve cortisol levels, and perceived pain. So they or they improve perceived pain, whatever.

Kent Boucher (36:44): Lower perceived pain. I need so much nature sounds.

Nicolas Lirio (36:53): group hearing na groups hearing natural sounds in two different studies showed a hundred and eighty-four improvement in health and mood outcomes and a twenty-eight percent drop in stress and annoyance. water sounds did the most overall for for physical health and mood. And then the second

Kent Boucher (37:16): I believe that wholeheartedly. I I had the best night of sleep in my life in I think it was June or July of twenty seventeen. I was I was with my in laws. We had rented this big house on a beach on Lake Champlain in Vermont. And and we slept with the windows open and you could just hear the wind blowing the waves in on the beach.

Nicolas Lirio (37:39): Sounds wonderful.

Kent Boucher (37:47): All night long, I have not slept that good since then.

Nicolas Lirio (37:51): You could have a water app.

Kent Boucher (37:52): The brain knows it's not right.

Nicolas Lirio (37:58): Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. It might have been the salt in the air.

Nicolas Lirio (38:06): We don't have to get champagne at the store. the second most, anybody want to guess what natural sounds did the second best?

Kent Boucher (38:17): not gray tree frogs. Winter wind.

Nicolas Lirio (38:20): I like gray tree frogs. Winter wind, okay.

Kent Boucher (38:24): Like like where it's whistling, you know? Yeah, yeah. I think like sound of like wind through like grass and trees and stuff like that. Like that rustling kind of wait, wait, wait, wait. Fire popping. Like like a

Nicolas Lirio (38:31): Those are good?

Nicolas Lirio (38:36): It makes me I think of Mount Rainier just hanging out. man, that sounds so great. No, I'll give you one more hint Disney movies.

Kent Boucher (38:47): I don't know. ad hoc musical numbers.

speaker-2 (38:49): Just,

Nicolas Lirio (38:56): No, birds. Hearing birds. the evolutionary

Kent Boucher (38:59): Well Birds always wake me up. Like think of think you know what I mean? They're a crows. Damn starlings. It's crows.

Nicolas Lirio (39:07): Yeah, but like beautifully.

speaker-3 (39:11): Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (39:13): I don't know. I don't I don't hear that many crows. But I do enjoy a good birds in the trees. You know what I mean? You're going on a walk and

Kent Boucher (39:19): That does not make me sleep well. Is this for sleeping? No, it is overall. If I'm awake, yeah, I love hearing birds. Well I but not it does not help me sleep, never. Always wake Birds are chirping, you don't need to be sleeping anyway. Unless you're unless unless you're turkey hunting. Unless you're turkey hunting.

Nicolas Lirio (39:23): All hell.

Nicolas Lirio (39:32): Yeah. I d I mean I I

Nicolas Lirio (39:38): What are you like a bad dad or something? He's sleeping when the birds are going? My goodness.

Nicolas Lirio (39:50): nature sounds during other

Kent Boucher (39:55): One ring brings it out of you. Go ahead. What about nature sounds?

Nicolas Lirio (39:58): They they nature sounds with noises like traffic or other like decibels that would be technically harmful to you are are still like they start counteracting the other more stressful noises like traffic. in twenty ten Swedish study, this is only forty people. No, no, eighty people were studied, but forty people stressed by math tests recovered faster on skin conductance with fountain and bird sounds than with noise. And the heart rate variability showed no clear difference on that one. 2017, brain scans at Sussex. natural sounds pointed attention outward while artificial sounds turned attention inward, like to themselves. I also thought that was really interesting because think of how many more people go to counseling that now live in concrete jungles. It is like you

Kent Boucher (40:54): Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (40:57): It is like everybody goes to council, you know what mean? And so it's like all these traffic noises making you think more about yourself and introspection and like like AJ R or Twenty One Pilots bands built off of introspection. I just think that's interesting. Who knows? Maybe there's no connection. You know?

Kent Boucher (41:13): it is, they just don't have cattle that get out to yell at all the time. Yeah. They don't have that. Need a little bit need a little bit more strife to have that outlet. Everybody needs livestock to to yell at when it's gets on the wrong side of the fence. Yeah. Farmer Fran on every

Nicolas Lirio (41:32): And then also swear to all of their friends that livestock are the best thing ever.

Kent Boucher (41:37): Yeah, so I'll I'll be calvin this next year.

speaker-2 (41:38): You

Nicolas Lirio (41:43): All right, in twenty twenty two, two hundred and ninety-five people heard six minutes of either bird songs or traffic, and there was a meaningful difference in their anxiety levels, their paranoia, and depressive states. Which is interesting. but sleep. Boys and this is part three. Boys Estate 2015.

Kent Boucher (42:00): Riley is struggling over the he's a I just had to lean back. That's all that's all

Nicolas Lirio (42:09): Put a line of speakers playing traffic noise in a roadless Idaho forest, about thirty-one percent of migrating songbirds avoided the area. Isn't that interesting? So traffic is biologically, you know? It's not just whatever we've come to understand traffic to be. It is like all all creatures.

speaker-2 (42:21): Bad.

Kent Boucher (42:30): Okay, I'm I'm all for science and I'm glad we got that down on paper. But couldn't have that just been a let's don't and say we did? Like, why go to all that trouble to haul a bunch of speakers and audio crap out into the wilderness and play traffic noises for birds? That's just

Nicolas Lirio (42:48): So that the BHA has something to point to, I say this positively, when they say, Hey, this road will heavily affect the wildlife you're trying to protect here.

Kent Boucher (42:56): Yeah, th I mean yeah, the people That is a useful outcome. The the people who I will concede the the people who are proposing the the how would you say it? The removal of the roadless rule. Mm-hmm. they they love being technically right and practically wrong, so data speaks to them. Well let's just let we could take that person out into the wilderness and then let them get all calm and placated and let get settled in and then have somebody Rip up on a dirt bike right next to him at like six thousand RPM. Just just blow the heads off that thing right behind. You know? Very relaxing. Yeah, that's why we need the roadless rule to stay.

Nicolas Lirio (43:37): I wish I wish Deer had an evolved enough brain to understand that traffic was something they should avoid. That'd be

Kent Boucher (43:44): I don't I don't think it's the sound. I think like the way their their eyes work, they just there's nothing there. It just whites out and they don't have any concept of blindness or not being able to see it. Just gonna stand here and wait till my senses return and Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (44:01): Listen to this. This is my my last thing I've got for it. This is a crazy quote from that Boise State research study. Noise alone degrades habitat that is otherwise good, and seeing a species there doesn't mean it isn't being hurt by the noise. yeah, which is interesting. So highways are about 70 decibels at 50 feet, 60 to 80 decibels, Or with a typical range of sixty to eighty decibels, if they are higher, like more traveled. Grain dryers, seventy-five to a hundred decibels, wind turbines are thirty-five to sixty decibels at three hundred meters, and livestock ventilation fans are seventy to a hundred decibels within on the same acre, according to the University of Wisconsin.

Kent Boucher (44:59): Think of that for the livestock.

Nicolas Lirio (45:01): Yeah. Yeah, how stressed they are all the time. Interesting.

Kent Boucher (45:05): You have to live in that. And they probably if it's a big enough shed, they probably have multiple fans.

Nicolas Lirio (45:11): Yeah. But you n birds also

Kent Boucher (45:13): You ever turn on like a big grain dryer dryer before? Which is sounds like is a similar noise level. when you turn it on, you tell yourself, this is gonna make me jump out of my skin when I push this button. I'm not gonna jump out of my skin this time. I know it's coming. I know it's gonna be loud, but I know it's coming. Doesn't work. Like your flight or flight your flight or fight response is triggered instantly. It's so loud. I mean Interesting. It is cr it like rattles your brain.

Nicolas Lirio (45:45): You I cover my ears when I flush the toilet. I don't like the I don't like the

Kent Boucher (45:49): Just don't tell people. Think what's growing in your ears. I don't know what's worse, that or the shoehorn.

speaker-3 (45:51): I the noise.

Nicolas Lirio (46:00): The shoe horn's a beautiful thing. I brought it on vacation when I went for a couple of weeks. Use it every day.

Kent Boucher (46:01): The sh it's not. don't tell us this Don't tell us this. In front of your family?

Nicolas Lirio (46:10): In front of I bragged. I like waved it around. They said, We wish we had the success you had in your life. Go and do well, my son. Just like that.

Kent Boucher (46:12): What did your family say?

Kent Boucher (46:19): Don't get him going on the shoe horn. He does not believe that. I don't believe it for a second. So what so let's let's let's wrap this one up here.

Nicolas Lirio (46:36): think so and I think get get not only do the bad sounds can they hurt us. So I I see all quote unquote bad things like Genevieve told us about microplastics. Yeah you know we're gonna avoid all of it. Don't try. Don't stress yourself out doing it. Just pull the biggest levers which for plastics was eating off of plastic things and I believe synthetic clothes. Those were like her two big ones. She's like if you can avoid that ninety percent of the time you'll be pretty good off. But so I think for the noises it's similar to that. And then so there's one, stay away from those as much as you can when you're thinking about it. And two, get into nature that is not near a road. Like go hike somewhere.

Kent Boucher (47:18): Or play my YouTube videos that I made. Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (47:21): Yeah, that's true. That should be the one great takeaway is go watch Judd's YouTube. They really are wonderful. I'm I'm not joking about that. I th what do we call them? Ambient

Kent Boucher (47:29): Ambients, yeah. Ambient party. I will tell you the four of hit the channel pretty fast and furious. And I recorded a couple more, but the problem is the sound of the tree crickets and the late season the grasshoppers, locusts, some folks would call is just sort of a just sort of a loud drone and it's not pleasing to the ear.

Nicolas Lirio (47:54): I kind of I like that late in the evening for a short period of time. Just 'cause I I think fondly of the summer when I was a k summers when I was a kid and I'd run around on this prairie farm and it would be so loud, you know.

Kent Boucher (48:06): now I'm gonna share a secret with you. Yeah. Because I started doing these ambiance videos a long time ago for my own personal use. I went out and just pointed the camera at scenes around the farm because it was nice and green and he's not dozing off, is he? And and then I'd play him in the middle of winter. Just to just to warm my heart up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was that was good. Save that for January. Yeah, January. Okay, let's do this as we wind this one down. Four noises. Ocean waves. Ru rushing like like rushing water. Like babbling brook. like a waterfall cabin. Yeah, or or waterfall or some kind of like you know, f fast enough moving water. f popping, cracking fire, and I guess since we talked about so much birds.

Nicolas Lirio (49:05): So, I'd take the Burbling Creek.

Kent Boucher (49:08): No, that's no that's your number one. That's your what's your number two?

Nicolas Lirio (49:12): Probably the ocean waves. And then probably the birds. I mean they're they're high. I fire maybe just the fire because of everything that goes with the fire. Yeah. But like in terms of I'm just going noise, I would maybe pick the birds.

Kent Boucher (49:15): And then fire light.

Kent Boucher (49:26): Nice. Riley? Yeah, I'm I'm partial to water. I'd probably do water. Which one? Waves or the creek? The creek, yeah. like a creek kind of sound. I'd do the water with a creek kind of sound. fire, probably birds, and then ocean last, just 'cause I've never lived by the ocean. So it's yeah. I guess it's relaxing in a way, but foreign. Yeah. Jud. I think the ocean's number one 'cause I never get it. I spent a lot of time sleeping on a beach. Yeah. I suppose. no, I just got back from Canada not that long ago. So I had the the running water, the birds and the fire. Like I had, you know, three of the four at all times up there. It's kind of by design. So Yeah. See, I I picture myself in like a circumstance with each of these, right?

Nicolas Lirio (49:58): Like a man desperate for a hug.

Kent Boucher (50:23): so my number one is the rushing water. I that I've I've done enough camping, like Jud's saying where, you know, backpacking trips and stuff as a kid or I was on an elk hunt couple falls ago. We our base camp was actually both of our camps are right next to rushing water. And our well our base camp and our spike camp. that was awesome. Like just hearing that as you're going to sleep. So that'd be my number one. Then I like for the waves, I I if I could like be s that'd probably be my number two if I was staying in like a I don't know, s it'd be like the northern east coast. If I was staying like in Maine or something, like right on a rocky coast in the air those crashing rocks have the winds or the windows open or something, that'd be that'd be my number two. Yeah. Cracking, popping fire. I'm cold, I'm wet from like hunting all day and I'm on and I'm camping. And if I can ha hear that warm fire cracking or popping, or if it's freezing cold outside, I just got a wood stove insert put in my house and I used it already this weekend. we're supposed to break it in a little bit before you like really get ripping on the thing. And that that is enjoyable. So that'd be my number three in the bird.

Nicolas Lirio (51:45): I'm gonna listen I'm gonna listen to you guys.

Kent Boucher (51:47): Yeah. they're gonna want to come over to my house just to be around my wood stove. The house? I mean, it just like it's magic. My again, my son Jonas, he literally he's been so excited about having this thing going that when we got it going this weekend, he grabbed a pillow. It was in the middle of the day, laid the pillow down right in front of the stove and just laid his head on it and just stared at the flames through the glass. There's just something about it, but yeah, that's how I'd rank it.

Nicolas Lirio (51:55): Your giant wooden

Nicolas Lirio (52:17): Well, we gotta give a good giant shout out to Doug Duran for inventing sharing the land because there is no ironweed in existence right now on shelves. On the market we have looked. I do think a couple companies have a little bit, but they you know, they want to save for themselves. So we used our sharing the land day, which for anyone doesn't know is a group of guys who come and they help us on our farm. And or girl yeah, or girls that definitely had girls out before. in exchange for a Day of hunting. So work for hunting. No pay. Just work for hunting. And

Kent Boucher (52:51): Not necessarily just hunting but access. Yeah. People are getting hunting on our spot, fishing, foraging, camping.

Nicolas Lirio (52:58): Yeah. And so if you're a landowner, it's an unbelievable program.

Kent Boucher (53:04): The all the paperwork's taken care of, like the structure's all laid out for ya, everybody's protected from both ends. It's it's a really good thing to check out.

Nicolas Lirio (53:12): The kind of people that are willing to do a bunch of work for no pay just to be outside and like are the kind of people you want to be in community with. but we picked a bunch of ironweed. We picked a bunch of ironweed. Jace who Elliot who's on sharing the land with us and myself, we're not there. So we're doing our penance later this week and he and I will go out by ourselves and and pick some ironweed. But otherwise, yeah, it was from what I could tell, an awesome day.

Kent Boucher (53:40): Yeah, was. It was it was really good. Made me very thankful for sharing the land. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (53:45): Not sponsor, actually, if anything, other way around, we sponsor sharing the land because we believe in it. I think it's a cool thing. So if you're looking for it, sharing the land.com. Otherwise, we will talk to you again soon.