Ep. 328 This Lady Changed Midwestern Beer Culture and Now Want To Bring the Same Reform to Cancer and Nutrition in Iowa

Megan McKay is beer legend. She transformed the way breweries are able to sell to consumers and founded the coolest brewery in Iowa, Peace Tree. Today she is fighting to change the way Iowans interact with food at Mint ‘N More.
She joined us to discuss her time at Peace Tree, her relationship to travel sports and consumerism, food deserts in the Midwest, and the relationship between small towns and their food. We greatly enjoyed this episode and believe you will as well.
Check out this episode of the Prairie Farm Podcast to find out more!

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• Podcast Transcript

  Description text goMegan McKay (00:00.246)

  I'm Megan McKay, executive director of the Minton-Morrah Foundation, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. I'm Mark Kenyon. I'm Dr. Julie Meacham. I'm Steve Hanson. I'm Jill Bebout.

  Chad gravy. My name is Jeremy French. Laura Walter.

  Carol Hochspurrin, owner of Hoxie Native Seeds, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. This is Hal Herring, Backcountry Hunter's and Angler's Podcast.

  Skip Sly, Iowa Whitetail, Valerie-

  of state of Iowa.

  Kent Boucher (00:29.218)

  Dr. Matt Helmers, Iowa State University. My name is Kyle Lauburger with the Native Habitat Project. I'm Jud McCullum. I appeared out of the wilderness and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.

  Welcome to the Prairie Farm Podcast.

  When I was six, I had to do radio ads for my dad's insurance agency. really? So I'm well practiced.

  yeah!

  Yeah

  Megan McKay (00:51.318)

  My great grandparents. My great grandparents started it. My great grandparents had McKay Grocery on the north side of Main Street, kind of where Iowa Realty is right in that area. And then 1946, they purchased McKay, the insurance agency from Iowa State Savings Bank because banks and insurance agencies were regulated and had to separate.

  And it was about the time that large grocery stores were coming in. So the banker and my great grandpa kind of, you know, saw the writing on the wall and said, we need to get out of insurance and you probably need to get out of the grocery business. And so that's how he and my great grandma went over to the insurance business.

  One regulation that helped small communities probably keeping banking and insurance separate, but then not regulating ginormous industry, which I, people who listen to pod know that I hate regulation, but I understand the need for it. I just hate being told what to do because I'm a spoiled baby, I think.

  Except when it comes to bison getting grazing leases on public land. You love that regulation.

  I just don't know. I just feel for the people who live there. Cause if I live there, I wouldn't want to be told what to do. My, my sister, man, she roasted me. I mean, she wasn't trying to be mean. she was kind of joking. We were sitting around at holidays and she was like, you know, Nicholas, your life can basically be summed up and you don't want anybody to tell you what to do. And I was like, man, it is so brutal.

  Megan McKay (02:29.532)

  It's kind of human nature.

  Oh man. Hey, have you been to church before?

  Yeah

  Well, so me and I, I mean, we've known each other for a while. I am, I consider myself very privileged to run in some of the same circles as you. I think you're amazing for the audience and the listeners that don't know Megan's good friends with Jill Bebout, who's an incredible person, Beth Hoffman and her husband, John and their farm. They've got, they have amazing things going down south of Knoxville and you were known for

  I don't know if you would say this. I read it online. So I don't know if this is an exact quote. Must be true. Or being one of the, the, I don't think it was founding one of the something, something pillars of the Iowa, brewing culture. so right now you have a totally different position, but originally you would founded Pea Street.

  Megan McKay (03:29.196)

  Yeah, I was one of the founders of Peace Tree, ran that for 15 years and we were really active in the Iowa Brewers Guild and went through a lot of lobbying and legislative changes to kind of ease requirements and regulations so that we could have a strong brewing industry in Iowa and I found that really satisfying and I think we certainly weren't the first. There were great people at Millstream, at Raccoon River, Rock Bottom, those sorts of places. We just kind of came in that next wave that we were able to.

  You were just cooler.

  We were able to kind of learn from what they had done. And I think the environment was ripe to do some different things. And so I was fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. But we did put a lot of hard work in and we really kind of from the insurance industry, you know, that idea of if you lobby together and you come up with your common goals for the industry, that can make a huge difference. And so I really brought that mindset to the beer world, which was kind of happening anyway, but it.

  It was something we really dove into hard as a business.

  You're saying small brews weren't organized.

  Megan McKay (04:33.354)

  No, no. And I think that's, you know, artists, brewers, people who are kind of, you know, on the fringes doing different new things. don't necessarily love to organize. so farmers changing that mindset a little bit. Yeah, it's you've got to kind of do that to get what you need. And that's it's hard to pull people together. But if you come at it from the right, you know, good place, I think it can be done as we showed.

  The so I health and appeals right the health and appeals agency that covers the state for Making sure that the food and the things you drink are

  Yeah, why are they always over here? Every time I come here they're...

  We're in the basement of Spire in my kitchen. And you know what? The my wife is so particular because she was trained through Chipotle. That was one of her first jobs. And Chipotle is like to a T they're going to follow that stuff because they had a whole debacle about it like 10 years ago. And so she was trained up in Chipotle. And I mean, she is regimented about how she does that stuff. And I'm kind of like, don't want them telling me what to do. And until, you know, people start, people start like,

  I common theme here.

  Megan McKay (05:43.95)

  You

  Dying of botulism. they have, they have regulation that makes sure that we don't accidentally get people sick or worse. and you were saying that you were going against that regulate what regulation was there that it was good to have removed, like, you know what I mean?

  Yeah, we weren't going against necessarily safety and health regulations. That wasn't the issue. It was more around taxation, how we were taxed and where that tax money went. Making sure that we had ability to sell through channels that were appropriate to the size and type of brewery. For instance, there were two different licenses, a brew pub license and a regular manufacturing brewery license, which caused a lot of

  issues with how you could sell growlers at the time. So for instance, if when we first started, if you wanted to sell a growler of beer and you were a brew pub and you weren't sending your beer to the distributor, you had to send that full keg to the distributor, ship it back to your brewery, and then you could sell a growler a beer to go. I mean, that just didn't make sense. It added cost. It wasn't necessarily good for quality of beer. It limited customer choice.

  And so those were the kinds of things that we really tried to hammer on that were just kind of common sense that were just, you know, limiting what we could do for business. Um, the other one that, you know, the, that was right away when we started was lifting the limit. So you could buy beer in Iowa that was up to 15 % alcohol by volume, but we could not brew it legally. So we could only brew up to 6.25 % ABV, but yet.

  Megan McKay (07:23.308)

  you could go to the store and buy a beer from Minnesota or California that was at that higher ABV. So it put us again at a competitive advantage for the beers that were, you know, really coming alive at that time. Interesting Belgian beers, you know, we were kind of famous for blonde fatale, which was eight and a half percent. barrel aged beers, you know, would start getting up there on the ABVs. And, know, these weren't beers you were slamming like 10 of them. It wasn't, you know, we weren't trying to be unsafe, but they were just higher quality.

  more art that went into them that just kind of needed that higher ABV limit. So we wanted to change those kinds of regulations. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And then a lot of just distribution. How can you distribute?

  Distributing laws are wild and I think because of coca-cola and Pepsi they like set all these wild precedents and then you merge them with You merge that because it's the only monopolies federally allowed it's like written in federal law that you're allowed to have a distribution monopoly for soda and then they tried to merge those distribution laws with alcohol and

  Well, and you have a lot that was held over from prohibition, you know, and it's interesting because as much as we felt like the little guy, our distributors who to us were the giants felt like the little guy to the Anheuser-Busch and the Miller Coors. And so it was just this very weird power dynamic that they needed to keep us in check because basically we were the same as the AB Inbevs of the world, even though we were such a tiny fraction of their business. So it just made a really complicated thing that you'd

  You you're open a can of worms and you don't want to have unintended consequences. But yet how we operated, we being Iowa Brewers versus how these large conglomerate multinational corporations operate, we shouldn't have the same rules. So tough, tough stuff, but really cool, really fascinating.

  Kent Boucher (09:17.646)

  What I find interesting about the timeline when all that, and I'm on the outside looking in, you I'm not a part of that industry, but it seemed that it really, like you're saying for 15 years, the timeline when, and I kind of remember seeing this just as a passive observer, all these brewers. man. No comment. No, just as that brewery

  I'm a Christian.

  Kent Boucher (09:47.0)

  culture came around was kind of pre social media, which is interesting because I mean it was around but like how businesses, know, when a, when a cultural shift happens in the, in the markets, it's right there with social media feeding that trend. Whereas you guys were kind of, yeah, there might've been a little bit of that going on. Certainly Instagram wasn't what it is today. TikTok didn't exist. Snapchat probably didn't exist yet.

  came at the same time.

  Kent Boucher (10:17.218)

  So was basically Facebook. And at that time, Facebook was much more, know, what color do you feel like today? Which John Deere tractor are you?

  Yeah, the mood ring though. I spoke mood ring now. Yeah

  It was truly social media. It wasn't a marketing place. And so it makes me wonder if those social media tools had been around when this was kicking off, how much more it would have exploded. And who knows, maybe there would have been way more of these small breweries around and just how that would have driven the market, you know.

  Something I'm, I am really a man. I'm going to give myself a, and we're going to lose a lot of listeners if I say this wrong. Okay. People who change things and do things and start things are difficult humans often because it takes a difficult person to go against the grain and do it. So when, um, when you and I had connected a little bit back and forth and I was trying to have you on the podcast, I was like on the other podcast, I was like,

  really not expecting how gentle and kind of a human you are. was really expecting a very difficult person because not only were you one of the faces in this movement, you were running one of the coolest spots in Des Moines. You were and you were kind of playing and I don't, I don't like talking about, you know, the roles of gender, but you were kind of playing a dude's game and you were in a bunch of meetings with mostly guys, if not all guys and, and, and

  Nicolas Lirio (11:58.584)

  But so, so I started to talk to you and I realized your outlook on life is not what most of my entrepreneurial friends have. You're very, you're a lot more community oriented. And so I want to shift because we've talked a lot about communities, just suffocating and, and dying slowly. And the, like, I mean, here in Knoxville, we had a dominoes go up recently and people were celebrating.

  I am so there's like there's property taxes that are involved with that. But also a another entity is siphoning money out of our town in that way. Is it just a net negative? Not necessarily. But if you look around, what are the places being started? Then a lot of small towns, it's like the same old, you know, scooters, Casey's quick start, you know, it's the same entities go into these small towns. And so Peachtree, you close Peachtree down and

  22 24 really 24 and What led to that?

  24.

  Megan McKay (13:06.956)

  You know, I think it was just a lot of things. You know, you kind of intimated that I'm a kind, gentle person. I probably wasn't cut out for the beer business. wasn't hard enough and mean enough was a little bit of it. Maybe when I come to like dealing with distributors or, you know, being really hard with tactics as far as getting shelf space and those sorts of things. So I'll take, you know, some responsibility there. I think it's a big combination of things. You know, it's,

  We were looking at, even before COVID, I was kind of starting to think about ready to make a transition, look at getting investors, transitioning to a new ownership group that maybe could put some more resources in. We were very self-funded, small, didn't have deep pockets. so then COVID happened just as we were kind of doing that ramp up. And that just really took the wind out of the sails. I think we fought through it. We did everything we could.

  But I was tired personally. You can only put so much energy and time and money into something and feel like you're beating your head against the wall. There were new players in the market that had a lot more arrows in their quiver, if you will. The way distribution was going really was tough to get a foothold within that distributorship.

  Was it

  You know, if you think about to expand on that, guess the our distributors, we were less than 1 % of their business. OK, and they're 80 % 85 % of my business. And so how do I show them that I'm adding value to their business in a way that they want to meaningfully invest in my brands and they want to put Peachtree Red Rambler on the shelf over Coors Banquet?

  Megan McKay (15:04.43)

  Not going to happen, right? Like I just, I don't have the wherewithal to do the incentives. I don't have the national ad campaigns. I don't have, you know, all that, that goes behind it to push that beer out to the consumer. And then also, you know, how do I create consumer pull? Cause that's half of it too, right? You've got both sides. Even if I push the beer out to the shelf, if it's not getting that

  and how do I convince guys like you to spend $12.99 on a six pack versus $6.99 or whatever it was for a domestic beer or even the pseudo craft beers that were coming out from Anheuser-Busch, Coors that are not craft. They're just branded craft, but yet they're large conglomerate multinational companies.

  Yeah, they're just branded.

  Nicolas Lirio (16:00.814)

  12 million bucks in marketing for a quarter to make sure that they get $20 million in sales and get it in people's mouths.

  And so I just think at a certain point you kind of go, you know, I just don't really see a path forward here and I'm not as passionate about this as I used to be. And so do you just kind of have to at some point cut your losses and move on? And that doesn't feel like a very proud moment, but I think it frees me up to do other things.

  To your credit I have been around people who are entrepreneurs and They hit you can tell they've hit that point where they're they are beating their head against the wall, but they just keep doing it yeah, and that that key part you said there you didn't have as much passion for it as you once did and Those people are some of the most miserable people because

  They really are. It's hard to be a good partner. It's hard to be a good parent. It's hard to be, you know, I wasn't engaged in my community in the way that I wanted to be because I was like just scraping.

  Yeah, every day is an uphill battle and you don't even love what you're doing, you know, while you're doing it anymore.

  Megan McKay (17:05.806)

  And beer culture was great. I loved it. But I was also ready to not be in that anymore. You there is that kind of, I think it developed more over the past seven or eight years, you more of that bro culture. It just kind of moved away from like that community feeling where we were doing something different and unique into something that was more kind of money focused and profit driven. And it just kind of became like beer everywhere else.

  Um, so, you know, those were all kinds of factors to it. And just from a health standpoint, I mean, you know, I'm over 50. It's time to maybe not drink as much beer and work on other parts of my life.

  I had my first non-alcoholic beer the Did you like it? No. I think the drinks my wife makes here taste better than those for sure.

  shameless plug for Spire.

  I get a real mug.

  Nicolas Lirio (18:06.606)

  Yeah, but to be fair, not a bit I like some I like hoppy IPA's I like an occasional like interesting drink but also I don't know if I've ever told the story used to be a bartender at Olive Garden and which is like hardly a bartender right but I was really bad at it I didn't grow up drinking I didn't grow up around anybody who drank my dad had one Bush

  No, Budweiser every day when five o'clock Jack pulled into the farm, five o'clock Jack would hand him a Budweiser. I'd have a drink Budweiser and that was it. That's what I grew up with was alcohol. So I didn't know anything about it and I would serve these drinks. And what's the last thing you put in the drink? The alcohol. Why? Because it's the most expensive thing and you if you mess something up, you want to do you want to mitigate your risk and man.

  for not the alcohol. Man, did Nick mitigate the risk?

  I, I for most. Here's where it would, it would get tricky is when the man I didn't, I don't feel anything. Give me another one. What do you do? The first one's an honest mistake. The second one. Do you just add one, make it how you're supposed to do? Do you add their second one that they bought earlier? Do you there? They didn't, but they now, they now think something tastes a certain way. So now do you make it? And now they just drink two $8 smoothies. I don't know. It was tough.

  profitable olive garden.

  Kent Boucher (19:20.664)

  do that.

  Nicolas Lirio (19:29.634)

  But it's the the alcohol game at in our household is not strong. We do.

  OWI's went way down in that part of California for a couple years.

  And then my wife and I, do Mike's hard lemonade with vanilla ice cream. That's about the extent, interesting. They're so good. So good. man. Yeah. And you only need like half of one to make a, like a full ice cream shake. So you could have two shakes in it. I mean, who's to say if we're, we're looking at alcohol content and not calories, you know, but okay. So we get to hang out, quarterly.

  Hopefully once a month, but usually just quarterly on a, in a business group. you know, it's like a, it's a local thing and me and I are both there and I love her thoughts, but when you shifted from peace tree to diving in on Knoxville, like one city,

  I'm curious what your thoughts are on the stigma of buying local, shopping local, those kinds of those kinds of that. I have lots of thoughts, but I think yours would be better. You've been thinking about it.

  Megan McKay (20:46.73)

  Yeah, and I don't know if I have a good answer. You know, I think sometimes people just don't know it's an awareness issue. We're busy. I mean, I look at just my life as a typical parent of a sports kid. I work full time. I'm, you know, trying to keep my family going, do laundry, do all of those things. And so we just go for what's easy.

  And that is whatever is at Fairway or Walmart. I think sometimes people overlook local, there's this idea that it's not good enough. And I think it depends on the community where it comes from. In Knoxville, unfortunately, we have a little chip on our shoulder where we're not good enough. And that's been around for a really long time, like forever, as far as I know.

  where there are some communities that I think overcome that. And there's a little more sense of like pride of, this came from where I'm from. So it's great. And I don't know how to turn the tide on that. You know, I think with Peace Tree, we did that a little bit from the standpoint of, we won world beer cup. We won GABF medals. you know, we're well decorated outside of our community. And so when you have outsiders say, Hey, this is good. Your local population kind of does that. Now, if you're a bread baker,

  or you're making honey, or you have a little coffee shop, or any of those things that don't have that outside recognition or bona fides, if you will. Yeah, it kind of makes it hard for people to grab onto that. So some of it is, like I said, it's just convenience and disrupting that idea of, hey, I need to work a little harder to look local. Some of it is,

  You mean like major brand awareness?

  Megan McKay (22:36.23)

  We've gone through periods in our community where we don't have a lot of local offerings, where we haven't had a lot of retail, we haven't had a lot of for choices for people, and they get out of the habit, and so then bringing them back to that is tough.

  I say that to Danielle a lot when we have like a bad month at Spire. I tell her Spire is a building made of bricks and we are a brick on the outside asking, may we have a spot here? Because we're not, I mean, we're part of the community, but we're not part of the culture of Knoxville. Right? If you made a mural of Knoxville, I wouldn't put Spire on there yet. You know, and we, I frankly, I don't think we've earned our spot. think like coffee connection, incredible place on the square.

  I think they've earned their spot. believe McKay insurance has earned their spot. I believe a lot of establishments, different people that have gotten like keys to the city, they'd all go on this mural and that, but that first three to five year period where you're trying to earn your spot in the mural, very, that is the hardest part of business. That's why the 95 % or whatever go out in the first year to five. Well, I think it's higher at five years. I think

  I it's 85.

  Kent Boucher (23:45.468)

  sure. First year's Yeah.

  Yeah. Yeah. So I just think it's, yeah, I think there's a lot of factors to it, but I think the biggest one is just awareness and stopping ourselves and saying, what are my other options? Yeah. Because we don't. I don't sometimes, you know, I mean, I think I'm a pretty, I try to be a careful consumer.

  But sometimes I'm not, you know, it's just you're in a hurry and you're busy.

  Yeah, I don't think I don't actually think it makes sense to shift all of our shopping from Walmart and Fairway and Hy-Vee.

  No, we need those things. mean, there are things we can't get here for now. I'm hoping that we can kind of change that. I think one of the things, shameless information I wanted to get into this conversation today is like, when you look at food in Iowa, I think it's like 90 % of it comes from outside of the state of Iowa. We can grow things here. We can make things here.

  Kent Boucher (24:57.038)

  fertile soil on the plant.

  But we don't because the market's not there for it. we do need those mechanisms to get it to the consumer. But now we need to kind of come back around to like, how can we then bridge that gap from the producer to the retailer so it's easier for the consumer?

  you how do you make it palatable to the consumer that they will pay more if if they get healthier food from a local producer it's gonna cost more because there's no major central distribution that is in my opinion beating prices down on both sides right so how do you how do you communicate that

  think that's a hard one, right? It is. mean, people only have so much in their budget, in their wallet to spend on food. But the other thing I've read a lot about in this last year and a half that I've been kind of working on Minton Moore is the percentage of money we spend on food today is drastically smaller than what we spent on food in the 1950s or 60s. I mean, drastically, like I think 70%.

  less on food than we did. And I'll have to fact check my number, but it's, something around that. Like it's crazy how little we spend on food. And so we've traded quality and good nutrient value for cheap, quick calories. We're paying for it. We're paying for it in higher obesity rates, which cause a lot of health problems. We're paying for it with higher rates of diabetes, high cholesterol.

  Megan McKay (26:35.256)

  cardiovascular disease, dementia. And so you can pay now or you can pay later. And so I that's one of my, you I think that's the big one, but man, it's hard for all of us to think about today and think about long-term and like reconcile those, right? That's really hard. So I get that. But the other thing I would say is how we eat. I just finished the Blue Zones documentary last night on Netflix. Brian and I.

  I think I heard

  Kent Boucher (27:05.038)

  I haven't watched it, but you've told me about it.

  Megan McKay (27:10.53)

  book. There's like a three episode, I think it was just three episodes, Blue Zones.

  Is it, does it follow along the, is it pretty similar or is it?

  haven't read the book actually, I don't think. But it talked about these different areas and then kind of these things you can do to have healthier longevity, not just longevity, but good life in that longer life. And I think the one, it was fun to watch Brian watch it, because he hasn't really dug into this like I have, and it was the three sisters, beans, corn, and squash. you know how that...

  can provide the full protein content. It's very healthy, but it's really cheap. It's cheap to grow, it's cheap to buy, it's cheap to eat. And so I think we've been sold this bill of goods that you have to eat expensive proteins, you have to have milk and dairy, you have to have all this stuff that costs a lot of money to get your full health benefit. And really, if we made some different choices about what we eat, it would be less expensive, it would still be really nutritious.

  and it's things we can probably grow right here. Which also is a huge cultural change, I get that. It's not like, hey, let's all just eat beans, squash, and corn.

  Nicolas Lirio (28:19.085)

  So what would

  Nicolas Lirio (28:25.688)

  They have to make people's way into their budget and routine.

  And beans are weird, like people think beans are weird. know, it's kind of a, it's not a normal thing that we use as a staple in our.

  It didn't grow up poor enough apparently.

  Yeah

  But in most parts of the world, especially the parts that are like really healthy, beans are a huge staple.

  Nicolas Lirio (28:44.396)

  Man, I'm a big Beans fan. Don't say it like that.

  Bye.

  Well an interesting thing within that too is just every now and then, this goes for myself, I can stand to lose a few LBs. When you get that zoomed out look of just our society right now, you can just see the...

  Kent Boucher (29:20.802)

  I don't know what the desperate need for health, you know? There was a, and I think we're next to get on the outline to talk about youth sports and our societal worship of that. I don't know if you guys saw this last week, this huge fight that happened at a junior high basketball game, I think it was in Kentucky, like some dad.

  important things in life.

  Right, yeah. And they had to end the game because they had a live feed of the game, of a junior high game, which is also wild to me. Whatever just happened to grandma watching, you know, but a guy storms out on the court, some other dad tackles him to the ground, another guy gets tased. And, you know, it's just complete bedlam out there on the court. Right. And have we really gotten to this point? But then I also noticed

  you

  Kent Boucher (30:20.354)

  man, every one of those guys is fat. And it's like, this is just a picture of where we are right now. So unhealthy mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Yeah, so angry and wound up. And literally guys are hard, they're having a hard time staying on their feet, jumping into action, because they're so front heavy from their gut that it's like, this is not good America. And it wasn't like three people, know, it's like,

  10, 15 people out there. And it was just this awakening for me, like, man, we have got to do better. And then you see the other side of it, where because we're so good at, just like it's happened with food, talking with my grandfather, he's 89, I asked him, what did you guys, for produce, what did you eat when you were a kid? And he's like, well, during the winter, you couldn't get fruit. You might have something you canned yourself.

  But once you ran out of that, you know, there might be a few things at the grocery store that you could get in a can or something, but you couldn't just let go and, you know, look at all the apples in the apple, you know, bushel basket there, those weren't around. And whereas now we can have, you know, quote unquote, fresh fruit year round at pretty much any supermarket. So we've gotten used to just getting what we want when we want it and.

  These relatively new, it's been around for a few years now, of course, but the, what are the GLP-1s? Which I think is now in pill form, used to just be injectable, right?

  the like Ozempic. Yeah.

  Kent Boucher (32:01.994)

  They're not they're not the only brand though now And I think I heard the other day I could be wrong on this so I should be fact-checked, but I believe it's one in four adults in America are using GLP ones what and and it so I'm happy that people are able to get the weight off of course, you know and I feel better than that regard, but it's

  That's still not the healthy way to do it, you know?

  think what we miss in a lot of our conversations around everything is like, what's the root cause? Caused us to become healthier as a nation. What caused us to have a lot of these health issues? And can we go back and work on that instead of just putting a bandaid on the face all the time? But our, you know, our economy is not set up that way. Our health care system is not set up that way. We're here to treat people when they're

  Yeah. What exactly.

  Kent Boucher (32:59.438)

  You know, I want fresh fruit right now. I'm gonna go get it. I want to lose weight right now

  why strawberries just don't taste as good as they used to. Well because you've got it. Yeah and they're like.

  They're like a bright red. They're not a deep red and they're basically made the same way you would make a marketing thing on Canva for, for Facebook. You know what I mean? That's just like, it's crazy. Set one in seven, one in seven have used or are currently using according to a quick Google search. So that's still, that shocked me. That like is I'm going to start yelling at people about this now. It's not, it's not to shame people using those imp, but just like if you zoom out as a culture, we're like,

  unwilling to do the hard thing to get the result. And there's very little satisfaction in life, not doing the hard thing. There just isn't. But can we go back to the sports thing? Sure. we don't, don't have to, not here to talk about your son, but he is super good at volleyball. They have won like state championship or I think national champion. Oh, unbelievable.

  They won Nationals

  Kent Boucher (34:05.976)

  Is this high school level?

  Yeah, so he plays on an 18-year club team. don't have high school men's volleyball in Iowa. Some states they do, so we have to travel and...

  So you're doing the traveling thing and if I knew everything else about you except for this, I would put you in the bucket of someone who would not do the youth sports thing. And you do. I do. And I know that you think about it a lot. I'm curious yourself.

  You know, we try to be thoughtful about it. I love sports. I love to watch sports. I'm probably other than Brian watching baseball. I watch the most sports in our house. You know, I love to watch a football game. I think sports are great. I think it teaches kids like how to be coached, how to work on a team. I love, know, for urban particularly, he's kind of was a more reserved shy kid. And so

  going to a club team that wasn't around his friends other than Brody DeYoung, who's also from Knoxville. You know, he had to interact with a bunch of new kids and then he had an opportunity to go to a high performance camp last year. And all of a sudden it was a whole nother group of kids from all over the Midwest. And just to watch that confidence being built through the process of like skill mastery, competitiveness, learning about setting goals and then like getting after them and seeing success. It's been absolutely fantastic.

  Megan McKay (35:24.94)

  My problem is sometimes that we place so much importance on that, especially at a really young age. And I see maybe this is not going to be a popular opinion, but I see parents living through their kids in that way, you know, trying to kind of recreate the glory days, if you will, which, you know, maybe I'm doing that with volleyball. It's the only really sport I played, you know, and now my kids playing and it's pretty exciting. I know the rules kind of they've changed a lot in 30 years.

  But yeah, I think there can be really great, healthy, awesome things around it. I appreciate the other parents that I've met through it and we've formed good friendships and that's been awesome and we get to travel. We're in Chicago for a few days. We're going to Kansas City this weekend.

  Well, even from a small town community standpoint, I look back at if you were to say, Kent, what were the most incredible community moments that you remember from growing up? Man, they were they were, you know, the were undefeated. And I was just a kid, you know, it's our varsity team. You know, I'm a, you know, 12 year old. Our team is undefeated and our our tribal is undefeated. And there's literally thousands of people in a.

  looking up to them and there's a sense of.

  Kent Boucher (36:44.856)

  town of 600 people that are come together for this game or you know the playoff basketball game or something there there is a real rallying of community around sports

  is and I think my concern with that, because that what you're describing is amazing and awesome. And like the whole community like comes around that. I felt that we had a really good volleyball team when I was in high school. We went to state, know, my whole class.

  You can the roar when you're in the parking lot, like coming in, if you're like late to the game, you can literally hear the roar.

  feel it. But what we have now is then these kids are peeling off to these club teams, you know, for different things. And so all of sudden now you've got kids in your own community competing against each other or, you know, looking out for their own personal kind of glory, if you will. And we've lost a little bit of that, like everybody for our team. Does it give good opportunities? Yes.

  Does it leave some kids behind whose parents can't afford the club fees or the travel or those, like that makes me really sad. Because I think those intramural sports or the school sports was really where a lot of kids got lifted up and I'm sad for that.

  Kent Boucher (37:57.304)

  if so.

  Nicolas Lirio (38:01.934)

  I think it will continue to be exacerbated. The problem if we don't because the these kids who athleticism wise should have no problem starting. The problem is they start basketball in seventh grade instead of second grade. And so now they're behind and if they give it three years, they'll be caught up in but like what what 13 year old has the self-efficacy and self-esteem to be the worst person on the team for two or three years. Yeah, you know, and so now a kid who

  might've gotten a scholarship or might've pursued something more or might've had direct positive interaction with a coach. They don't get it. And, and we've traded it for higher competitiveness and yeah, is the quality of play higher? Yes. Is, is that helping your kid some maybe, and, and I had a conversation with a couple of ladies and it was obvious we were not on the same page and their big argument was, but then our kids can't keep up.

  And that was like the pin

  It's hard as a parent, you know, because you do feel that pressure to make sure your kid has the opportunities so they can stay on path with their peers. If you don't, then you're behind. And I think it puts parents in a pickle.

  Do you think that's more of a vicarious thing? They're like...

  Kent Boucher (39:21.4)

  Well, think about it. Your kids are making friends with their teammates. Yeah. And if your best buds with three of the kids on the basketball team that are going to go and do, you know, tournaments every weekend, nine months out of the year, and you're like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Well, you're there's a growing gap between your kid and their friends.

  Yeah, the skill gap, know, just the amount of touches, the different coaching.

  And those three that go and do all the tournaments they're becoming better buds well But I do agree with you that yeah, I think so much of it is You know a lot of parents. That's it's a performance check for them. You know

  yours is left out.

  Nicolas Lirio (40:03.382)

  And why would we have higher quality food when we could spend that money on going to St. Louis?

  You know?

  Well, not only spend the money, but my gosh, who has time to stay home and cook if you're at a baseball game five nights a week, you know, or you're eating at the concession stand or it's hard.

  Yeah, what do you think of family who's got

  Two high school kids, let's say they do something like baseball and softball, two very game heavy sports. And I mean, how much money between tournament fees, travel, hotels, food, and entertainment in between, I what do you think those families that have two kids like that are spending a month on sports, would you guess?

  Megan McKay (40:37.911)

  You're

  Megan McKay (40:57.696)

  I mean, I would guess if you're on a good travel team for baseball, you're spending at least a thousand bucks to be on the team. then, you know, depending if you're going to places where you need to spend the night or not, you're spending between two to three hundred to five or six hundred a weekend.

  Besides our superintendent here, she has to...

  That's per kid or is that would that be probably for two kids?

  I mean, probably per kid because if you've got, know, dad's going to baseball and they're in separate communities and you're driving and yeah, it is like you don't have that family cohesiveness. You don't have shared meals around a table. You know, it's a lot of things. And it's, I don't know, I'm not here to say whether that's better. There's some awesome times.

  And then mom's gotta go to one and dad's gotta to

  Kent Boucher (41:31.96)

  That's hard on the family too.

  Megan McKay (41:48.142)

  traveling with your kid. know, like Urban and I just took the train to Chicago. We spent the whole weekend together. You know, he obviously was with his team and that sort of thing, but we went on a college visit. you know, had some great conversations. I saw him, you know, I've seen him, his thought process and those. So it's like, do I get that at home? Do I get to spend two days with my kid at

  That's fine.

  Kent Boucher (42:10.415)

  No. Yeah, because then you're caught up in just...

  He's with his girlfriend, he's at school, he's with his buddies, he's whatever. That's a good point. So there is that, if you can hold onto those things, and I really cherish that time, especially now that he's a senior, it's amazing. But if you've got three different kids going in different directions and parents are split and the kids are all over, I think that makes it really hard.

  I, the, the, you know, the first person who brought this to my attention as like even being on a radar is, was it Hofer? It was either Hofer or chase burns. One of them, we asked them, we asked them who can, who can never buy land. You look, you look at their lifestyle and they'll never be able to buy land. And one of them said a truck payment and the other one said people with kids, the traveling. Yeah.

  Thanks

  And he's very involved in his, kid's lifestyle. And I think that, you know, they're, they're a part of sports team and stuff, but he was like, yeah, traveling sport, you're not buying land.

  Kent Boucher (43:11.542)

  You know, it's interesting about that as one of his kids just started playing football this year and His head coach was a kid that I coached. Yeah

  Wow, wowza. So the I mean, there's no right answer on the sports thing. There's like.

  It comes down to every family's own decision and their kid, is their kid really into it? I, Urban, didn't play volleyball one year and I was like, okay, I think we're done. And then the next year, all of a sudden he's like, hey mom, I'm going to tryouts. I'm signing up. Great. I'm here to come along beside you, but it's gotta be the kids driving it.

  What do you think about, and this is just me being like a curmudgeon, about kids having kind of a hard wall, either when they're 18, 19, or when they're 22, 23, depending on their lifestyle, finding out that it isn't like other, other people aren't going to take care of them in the way they were in their, in their life isn't fully about them. Like does sport, I feel like sports would make that process harder.

  When we go, Hey, we're going to drop everything. We're going to make sure we drive you to practice. We're going to do this for you. We're going to do this for you. And then they're 23 and they're like, you got it figured out.

  Megan McKay (44:28.83)

  I don't know. You know, I've got a kid who drives himself to practice twice a week in Des Moines, you know, an hour each way, plus two hours of practice time and, you know, organizes that and makes the schedule. I've watched him reach out to, I think, 100 colleges and, you know, go through that process because he wants to play in college. And I've seen him kind of have the mental breakdown of like, this is too much for me to deal with and scheduling. then

  You know, the next day I come back to it and have sheets paper all over the table and organize. And so I think in some way, yes, we can coddle our kids through that, or it can be a great way to like teach them how to manage this tough stuff that's coming because I'm looking at him going, what? I've got 20 things coming at me today. But for him, that's a new experience to have three different places he's supposed to go visit and talk to. And it's like overwhelming to figure that travel out, but to watch him like mentally.

  Yeah.

  Megan McKay (45:29.1)

  dig back in and have the wherewithal to do it was like, yeah, this is exactly what life, these are the life lessons that I was hoping he would start to learn. So we've had, I'm not saying I'm doing it better than anybody else. I've got a pretty.

  inviting you the podcast because I think you're doing a better than a lot of people.

  You know, and urban, he's an only child. His dad and I have always, you know, treated him kind of like an adult. We've had really good conversations with him through the years. And, um, but I feel like that's our job as parents, right? Is to like put them in those situations where it's a little tough and then let them kind of crawl through it, but alongside them. So I think there's ways to do that. I think the other way to do it as, you know, you're the parent reaching out to college coaches. You're the parent.

  scaffolded parent.

  Megan McKay (46:19.114)

  making sure they manage everything. You know, you're the parent taking them on spring break and telling them where they're going to go and what they're going to do versus saying, Hey, I'm happy to go on a spring break trip with you, but you need to figure out the activities you want to do and go Google them and figure it out and find out. And that's a great learning opportunity. So there's just different ways to do it.

  remember growing up playing like club soccer, like little clubs, little kid soccer. Basically my mom always brought my shirt and my shoes. Right. Yeah. Then I was in sixth grade and I started playing soccer and basketball at like the school level, which our school of 42 kids between K and eight put out a soccer team of 11 kids. Isn't that incredible? two. Sometimes some of those form kids are real athletic. You would be shocked now with.

  guys once again crushed

  Kent Boucher (47:09.014)

  Yeah, but when they're six and they have to play goalie, that's what I'm more...

  That's true. The we put out 11 for guys and 11 for girls. Incredible. But the and I remember my mom because I just always forgot everything and she sat me down and she was like, look, I'm not going to figure out where your Jersey is every morning. I'm not going to figure out where your cleats are. Like we're past that. You're 12. You. The water bomb really?

  Ours is the water bottle.

  I can't seem to hold on to a water bottle, remember a water bottle. It makes me crazy. And then I just go, you know what? It is what it is. I mean, he's figuring out the rest of it, so. I don't know. You just have to kind of give and take, but yeah, that's the one that like instantly I can feel the heat just rise to my head. Where is your water bottle?

  You have a budget line item for just you watch.

  Megan McKay (48:02.372)

  I've bought one every tournament I feel like so

  Well, that's I I can't do water bottles either I can't keep track of them I can't

  But he's great in so many other ways. I will tell you, okay, so here's my parenting hack for senior. You know the book EOS, I think I gave it you and you read it. And it has like the vision traction organizer and you set your big goal and you set your values and then your 10 year plan, your three year plan and you break it all down. I made that, I converted it into the life master plan for my son. And because he was, you know, feeling overwhelmed about stuff and

  Megan McKay (48:42.732)

  I set the framework and I said, here's the deal. This is your life. You're going to be 18 this year. You're going off into big things. You need to figure out what your values are. You need to figure out where you want to be. And then what do you need to do in three years to get there? What do you need to do this year to get there? You know, if you tell me you want to be an Olympic volleyball player, what do you need to do this year to do that? And then break that into this quarter. And then, you know, activities? Super well. Like

  Receive it.

  You could see the relief on his face of like, my mom's not telling me what to do. I'm choosing what I want to do. And I have this giant, huge life in front of me that feels scary. And now all of a sudden it's like, I need to go to the gym every week and work on my vertical. And here's the exercises I'm doing to do that. You know, it was like, or I want to go to college to play volleyball. need to email 10 coaches every week or whatever. it, was transformative. And then I asked him at Christmas, I'm like, Hey, you know, new year's coming. You need to kind of.

  redo that for the quarter. yeah, mom already did it. You know? Yeah. And like I said, not every kid's going to do that, but I think for all of us, if we have goals, our agenda, as you will, and we break it down into like little pieces and really manageable things, life is a lot less overwhelming. We have direction, we have purpose, and it just super helps. So.

  A plug for EOS. EOS is like the overall framework track.

  Kent Boucher (50:07.918)

  What does that stand for?

  entrepreneurial operating system. I'm like the big cult member of that. I love it. It runs my life. It runs my business. I love it.

  It relies on one heavy belief system that I think is good for people that are starting a business, whether it's a little prairie business or a goat operation, or you're wanting to start a coffee shop, whatever it is. I believe that if I do the things, if I do the, if I do these inputs, these out, uh, good outputs will.

  Yeah, you measure your activities. Excuse me. Yeah. Measure activities versus outcomes because, you know, you can look at your PNL every quarter and go, I'm not making it. Or you can look at did I make 10 customer calls this week? That's going to be what drives my top line.

  Yeah.

  Nicolas Lirio (50:50.776)

  So actually, Ken, you've heard me use this language when I talk about like, okay, guys, it's not about the...

  What you talking about? just put a dart board up in the office.

  I don't know guys. have a, no, with like the reels that we're doing, it's like, Hey, it's not about the quality right now. It's about figuring out, getting the output or getting the inputs in at a high enough rate. And then you can tweak your, your, your outputs from there. But the, really like it. I did not think about it as like a life system. I don't think I could hand. I, I need some structure in my life, but

  Facebook ads if I hit 10.

  Kent Boucher (51:28.526)

  us.

  entrepreneurs need to be able to also say, Hey, I'm coming in at 10 today. Cause I worked till.

  Yeah, no, and I don't think it gives me like I don't feel like it's onerous structure in the way of like I have to at 8 a.m. I'm doing this and 10 a.m. I'm doing this. It's just like hey am I on track with where I need to be? Did I work out three times this week? Did I read, you know, it's halfway through the quarter. Have I read one of the two coaching books I wanted to read? And then you just kind of go, okay, I need to readjust a little. I like it personally and

  Yeah, my

  I've been using it for mint and more again too, which is great.

  Nicolas Lirio (52:04.94)

  My pastor uses it a lot. That's like how he, because you know, when you're pastoring, there's kind of two parts. You're like a spiritual leader, but also you are an organization leader. Some people are really great spiritual leaders, like sit across from you and they'll connect with you and be able to guide you and mentor you. And then they suck at the organization and that, you know, and so, and then they blame God for why, you know, their church is struggling. And so,

  It's like structure allows you that kind of back end structure allows you to be more unstructured. Yeah. In a lot of other ways. Yes. It frees you up for more interesting things.

  I really want to start like a cult following here in town where we just meet up and hang out and chat about it with the. I just. Yeah, you would do great. All right, we got to move on to. Yes, we got it. We got to chat about food because food is a big deal and you're doing a thing about it. I am. And feel free to shamelessly plug. But the reason I have brought megan in for anyone listening is because this is very.

  I you I'm all in. I will be the cult leader.

  Nicolas Lirio (53:12.278)

  replicatable in your community and could be something that you do or other people start now. She has a lot of experience leading things and doing it. She's probably going to do it better than the rest of us would first starting out. but that's why I wanted to pick your brain on it and share your, share your kind of goals first. And then I want to cause you

  Fixed begins Mike a little bit. It's spun around there. Yeah

  First, share your end goals where you want to get and then how you're incrementally getting there. I think it's brilliant. I really love how you're doing it.

  Yeah, kind of to, you know, put the giant pie in the sky idea. Basically, McColl, Sesker, tapped me to start this organization and figure out how we wanted to structure it and what we wanted to do. And after picking her brain for three or four months, it really came down to this idea of how do we reduce the incidence of cancer and chronic disease through healthy eating, which stems from healthy soil. Right. And so that's a really big, broad

  And so I just started digging in like how could we start figuring that out in our own community? And I think there is a million ways you could go about it I'm always a person who I like to have a lot of kind of Big picture things percolating that are gonna take a long time But I think to get people on board with you. You also need to show progress and action right away and so You know some things that we've done in the past year were basically just start a newsletter start a social media campaign around

  Megan McKay (54:44.32)

  awareness for healthy food, healthy eating, gardening. I think your best eaters are people who really appreciate where food comes from. And so those are people who actually have their hands in the soil.

  depends on how you define best. mean, some of them do not care about where it comes from.

  Well, but I mean, if you're truly like, if you're growing a carrot, you're more excited about that carrot than if you just went and bought it at the grocery store and you'll cook it better. You'll appreciate the person who did grow the carrot if you didn't grow it yourself or you'll ask more questions about it because they're just more in tune. we bought a lot there on 7th and Montgomery behind the old funeral home. And that'll be our community garden this spring.

  annual cooking

  Leave it on your plate.

  Megan McKay (55:28.402)

  and just a way to give access for people to grow food. People who maybe aren't growing food there, they can come and learn and we'll give them support to grow food at their house and provide education and that sort of thing. We hired Kelsey Willardson. She'll be our community health outreach person. So we're getting ready to do a baseline survey to figure out where we are as a community health-wise and then start putting together tactics of how we can improve those numbers.

  She's also going to be doing like health and education classes. So we have a sourdough class coming up. She's going to do some on like teas, different cooking classes, just, you know, how do you cook with beans and squash and corn? You know, just simple things that we can do. And then Sasha Duffy will be running the community garden and we'll be looking at ways we can strengthen our farmers markets and how can we.

  connect more people to local producers. One of the things that we're gonna be working on this spring that I think we will get off the ground. I haven't made any big announcements about it yet, but I'm hoping to have a marketplace where you can go online, you can order from a multitude of producers in our area, and then on maybe two days a week for a couple hours, you can come and pick up your order. you know, it's reducing that friction point because

  So

  Megan McKay (56:50.678)

  Nobody has time to go to 10 different farm stands to get all the things they need to make a full meal. So we go to the grocery store, which nothing against grocery stores. But I think that would be a great way to raise awareness and allow ease of purchase and ease of people to know their farmers. And then we'll have other pushes with healthcare, know, kind of preventative medicine type things. And can we get more local foods in our grocery stores? So we have a lot of things going.

  but.

  want to touch on healthcare, but before I do that, the marketplace super brilliant. Go back to the analogy of Knoxville or a community is a bill is a building made out of bricks and we are brick asking to be in it. Spire is the coffee shop, but you are a very, the organization that MNM MNM is, is a weirdly shaped rock asking.

  that that doesn't fit the shape of the building currently. And you're asking for a place to fit in and you're trying to make it palatable to start. And I think the marketplace is so brilliant to be able to help people in a language that they speak, which is like e-commerce basically in a language that they speak, be able to connect with their producers and their farmers and the people who are, are touching the ground. Because the, one of the hardest things for

  farming farmers is marketing it.

  Megan McKay (58:22.7)

  Yeah, I mean, they want to grow vegetables, they want to grow great livestock. They don't want to be on social media. They don't want to be standing at a market multiple times a week.

  They don't want to be a sales person. don't want to people.

  It's just not, they're just different skill sets and different types of people.

  Would you offer that service to go in and market the stuff for them?

  Yeah, I mean, that's my goal is that we can have like, the, the working name is gathered local foods. So gathered local foods would be the retailer basically. But then it would be, you know, blue gate farm has signed on that we would be like their veggie mail pickup spot, crooked gap farm. You know, it drives me nuts that Ethan and Rebecca are growing wonderful pork eggs.

  Megan McKay (59:11.638)

  Soaps, some other things, and mostly they're driving that to Des Moines to sell it. Now, is the market here for people to buy those things? I don't know. But if we do this on a really small scale, we take the risk of it. Mint and More takes the risk of it. I'm not putting it on the producers. We're a nonprofit. We don't need to make a lot of money on it. So can we give it that boost?

  to move things forward and get it over the hump so that potentially at some point it could be a for-profit business marketplace. And then it opens up, know, if that does okay, then how do we connect into the food hubs that are around the state? In Marion County and that I always use the little triangle, but Marion County in the county south, we have no access to the food hubs and food hubs are basically aggregators of local producers for produce, vegetables, meats, everything.

  and then they drive them to bigger markets where they have needs. And we just don't plug into that. Transportation, again, they don't like to sell and market. They also don't want to be logistics people. mean, they don't have the time and energy and it really increased the cost. So we've got a lot of opportunities and excitement around that.

  a distribution company. won't lie, that sounds terrible. I would not want to do that, but the idea is boring.

  And I don't know that we will create the distribution company. We just may be the warehouse spot, the aggregator, and then link in with the other hubs because they already have that expertise is my hope because I don't really want to be in the transportation logistics business.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:00:49.902)

  No, The, you create a marketplace where someone said, these are the things I'm looking for and this is my zip code. And you could say, these are your options that are closest to you. Or these are the ones that are close to you that match your credit. Like the things you want in your, your beef, which by the way, at PFI, you, were you in Elizabeth steel from Hamilton native outposts? Man, she said that the, don't, I think I'm quoting her correctly. The gap from

  No.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:01:19.182)

  grass fed to prairie Fred, the nutritional gap is actually bigger than feedlot to grass fed. Really? Yes. Yeah. And she said it like,

  Not the gap but like the benefits. Yeah, like you're saying it's more beneficial to be prepared.

  There's a bigger boost in nutrition if you go from grass fed to prairie, but what, like who has perfect. know Beth and John have some like partially prairie fed and, and stuff, but I don't know. I So that basically doesn't exist, but to be able to someone who's going to pour their heart and soul into having high quality prairie and high quality cattle or hogs that come off of that prairie, basically none of them are excited to then figure out where they're going.

  Vvvvv

  Megan McKay (01:02:04.192)

  And they're, you know, we as Iowans tend to be humble. I think people who are growing those really interesting, amazing things tend to be humble. So how can maybe we be the amplifier of that? think that's our role. We're not coming in to compete or do any of that. We just want to make it easier for consumers to buy it and understand the difference to get over that cost gap is some of it.

  That's so brilliant. Marketplaces are like the hot thing in business right now to make, but you are truly solving.

  I hope so. Yeah, I hope so. You know, there's there are other places that are doing it. There's the Iowa food co-op in Des Moines There's Grinnell farm to table, you know has a nice market that they've come up with and

  line marketplace. man.

  Yeah, they also have a retail component where you can just go in and buy things too. We will not start that way. It's kind of, you know, we'll have a space but we're not going to stock products 24 seven. So we'll just see how that goes.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:02:59.286)

  Brick and mortar

  Kent Boucher (01:03:06.862)

  I think this is a good opportunity and maybe, you know, it was, was, you were a kid when this was going on or maybe it was even before you were born, but your, I think, was it your great grandparents were in the grocery store? So while we describe all this thing, you know, we're, rebuilding the wheel, it seems. And, or maybe not. Was the, what do you know if when your great grandparents had their grocery store?

  in the grocery business,

  Kent Boucher (01:03:36.45)

  were they getting a lot of their produce from local gardeners and farmers? Or were they, I guess, filling out the transportation infrastructure, the shipping infrastructure for themselves by, there's a big drop-off point in Des Moines and all the local grocers go there Monday through Thursday for the different things, then they open up at 7 a.m. in the morning.

  Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question. That'd be interesting to go back and kind of figure that out maybe if I can.

  Yeah, it would be very, and I think it would kinda, I don't know, give us a realistic understanding of how much are we building for the first time ever in these small communities and how much are we trying to you know, to revive.

  And it is how

  Megan McKay (01:04:27.814)

  to revive and you know does it make sense? I don't know. There is a part of me that's like okay why isn't this happening already if it makes economic sense? But we can kind of take that economic piece out of it for a little bit at least from the middle person perspective.

  You're dealing with the moat. That's why that's why it doesn't make sense is because that moat is huge and you guys.

  It's huge.

  The two big pain points, Known, I know what's gonna be at Walmart. I know what's gonna be at Fairway. And the stuff that's produced there, unless it's certified organic or certified naturally grown or whatever, if it's not meeting any of those standards, all it has to do is meet FDA standards. And so it can be grown anyway.

  good of quality or low quality as you want and then the consumer decides if they're gonna keep buying it but the consumer, their main thing they're going in there with is their wallet, not their...

  Megan McKay (01:05:28.458)

  Their wallet, exactly. I think that's, you know, that nutrient density, the quality of the calories is something we've got to talk a lot more about. And that's hard. know, again, people are busy. They want convenience. They don't have time to cook. They don't care. It's easy to put it off until like, well, I can take a pill for that later. Right. And I identify with that. I live some of that. Right. We all do. But how do maybe...

  be a little more thoughtful about it. And some of it is just making it easier for people.

  And I think too, it's important to realize that if Walmart and Fairway existed in the extent that they do now, people would have been buying pairs in January in 1951.

  Which your grandpa confirmed they weren't doing.

  Right, because they weren't there. But if they were there, people would be whole hog on this model then. It's not because we suck so much more than the people in 1951 did. It's just a difference in what's available to us.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:06:35.222)

  Yeah, I mean, one of the tough things you're doing is you're trying to shift a whole culture and of how we do things and what we're used to. And that's very difficult.

  convenience and cost. mean, it's just it really Yeah, we have to like being said, it's a reeducation process of stop doing everything because of convenience and cost. We understand that's part of it. And that's it's it's totally fine to let that be your just your deciding factor a lot of the time, but it just can't be that way all the time.

  It can't. And then I think the other thing that doesn't always get tied into this discussion, and it's something that Jill out at Blue Gate and I have talked about a lot, and I know she was really trying to talk about reciprocity, you know, that idea of just what you're taking, you're giving back. And as we look at water quality, we look at cancer rates in Iowa. What are we doing to give back to our land and give back to our communities? And

  how we spend our food dollars makes a difference in that. If we're supporting growers who are supporting practices that preserve our topsoil, that are putting the best nutrients back into the soil, that aren't polluting, we can make those choices with our food dollars. So again, back to the expense piece, I know that's a hard bridge to cross and I know that's a long ways out to look, but...

  It's not just the nutrient density, but it's also this whole idea of like, what are we regenerating?

  Nicolas Lirio (01:08:03.246)

  Well, our system doesn't require us to factor in ecological impact to the economic cost of things. So Walmart, when they price to yes, they're starting to have to.

  Thanks.

  Kent Boucher (01:08:14.766)

  Yeah, we're getting to a point where we can't look away anymore.

  And so when Walmart, when they price that tomato or they price the olives, all of this is a big one, right? Cause that too, too many olives on a landscape can really hurt a landscape to the erosion and stuff like that. Um, and. Oh no, I like olives. you, have you ever looked into the thing where there's like 10 times as much olive oil sold every year than there are olives grown? I don't know anyone that knows like.

  Don't take away my olives, No!

  Megan McKay (01:08:44.344)

  Brian and I were talking about that not too long ago. Yeah, there's a lot of junk that gets put in olive oil.

  Yeah, so is it just like seed oils? Because if it is all seed oils, then the olive oil, shouldn't even grab. And then where do you get it from? What do you trust? You know, for your all you need to literally visit a local olive farmer or. it's a giant no, no, no, it's going to say olive oil. It'll only say I've looked at all the labels. They all just say all like pressed olives or whatever, but.

  Whatever. jar of olive oil right there.

  Megan McKay (01:09:11.234)

  I there are some like, I don't know what they call it, like in France, they call them AOCs or, you know, growing regions where if it comes from this, it's certified that it's full.

  There's a there's a great show out there that'll change how you view food. I think it's a bear. think it's a four-part There cocaine bears

  Do ever watch the- Have you ever watched the- man, it's so stressful.

  No, it's called, it's a documentary, but it's very enjoyable to watch. It's called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. that show, not, they aren't running, at least I don't think this is their agenda when they're running it to teach people what good food is, but you learn what good food is. okay, yeah. It just goes through the process of,

  I there's a cookbook of the same name.

  Kent Boucher (01:10:04.502)

  of these are the four elements that make food, make a dish what it is. here's how you get it just perfectly. And the care and detail behind each ingredient that is featured in that show just gives you the, it's a light bulb moment. olive oil is not just olive oil. There's a difference here and I want that.

  Man, that would be so much better for me. Exactly. And so I would encourage everyone to go and see if you can find that documentary.

  And then, you know, another factor of that idea of reciprocity too, is you think about who's picking that food? Yeah. Are they making a living wage? Are they able to feed their family? Are they being harmed? You know, there's just there's so much that goes into our food that we

  Can I ask you a question on a philosophical question on that? Okay, so in California, there are a lot of what are the seasonal visas? Sure. Right. come up, they get paid 18 bucks an hour, not a livable wage in California, but they send but their their visa holders or whatever have to provide a place to live and have to make sure there's like means for them.

  I'll try to answer it.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:11:20.418)

  So they don't have to spend very much of it and they a lot of them send most of it home and back home. It's well over. They were making 20 bucks a day before that. Right. And so I am curious if you think that is good or bad because they're making half of what the full time or what other people are making. They're also getting housing for free while they're here. But then at the same time.

  I think a lot of them eagerly are working long days because they want those paychecks. They want to be as big as possible. They know they're only here for four to six months. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

  I don't know. mean, is it good or bad? think it depends, right? As with everything, I'm a person who lives in the gray area. It's hard for me to say black and white, good, bad. I think there's a lot of exploitation that happens, you know, where those days get longer, the conditions are not good, quotas, you know, things are not fairly paid, et cetera, et cetera. So that's bad.

  you know, good, yeah, they're making more than they could make at home. It's an opportunity for them.

  I guess I feel better about today. I get to go pick up vegetables from Blue Gate Farm that were grown 20 minutes south of here in Iowa in the winter. And I know who picked them. I know how they were handled. I know that, you know, I worked with her this last summer. I worked alongside her crew. I know the reverence she has for the people who work for her and how she cares for them.

  Megan McKay (01:12:57.856)

  I know the quality of the land and the water and the soil. And so that feels better. So it's hard for me to say, is that good or bad? Cause yeah, sometimes you just want some strawberries or some tomatoes in the middle of winter or whatever. And you know, we do it, but I guess I'd rather make the choice to like try and eat seasonally from places I know. And that feels, I feel better when I sit down to the table for that.

  Yeah, interesting. I think I agree with that getting local labor and things like that. It feels less exploitative. Even if it's not tech, even if you're a great visa holder, know, even if you're treating them well.

  I mean, I think those are great opportunities for people. I don't think that's inherently bad. It's kind of how the world works. But it just feels better for those dollars to stay local and churn locally.

  I consider it know how in a household if you make money what Abraham Lincoln say a penny saved is a penny earned. Yeah. Is that really Ben Franklin.

  That was Ben Franklin.

  Kent Boucher (01:13:59.528)

  I thought it was Abe Lincoln because he's on the penny.

  Yeah, that might have been. Is that like a common, Mr. Well, I, yeah, Ben Franklin. And so, in a household, like the months where Danielle and I, we're not going to go out to eat. We're not going to, we overspent last month. This is what we're going to do. We're going to clamp down on our grocery budget. We feel so well, we're like, look how much money we make, you know? And then, but then the months we spend a month, the same happens for a community. If a community is really good at circulating their own money and not letting it leave, they get.

  that's the first time I've heard it.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:14:31.404)

  wealthy quickly. Yes. Now here are ways that money leaves your community. If all of your investments are through an investment company that isn't local, you know, it's not the local guy owns it. If you only shop at Walmart, if you, only get gas at the bigger gas station, if you know these, if you, mean, this shameless plug, but if you only get coffee from a place that is a $10 billion company, you know, house on the West coast somewhere, right? So

  Pacific Northwest.

  No, no, no. OK, to be fair, I really like Starbucks as a company and I their founder was an incredible man. But that being said, and I think that communities don't understand if we actually spend more money and effort circulating money, it's it's unbelievable how quickly. multiplier. Yeah, your parks get better very quickly, your sidewalks get better.

  You're all contributing to the same pot in a way. mean, yeah, it goes out to the different holders, but in a way, it works in that way. Also, you guys ever hear a quote and it just takes on more meaning? Like the longer you've known the quote and the more life experience that comes to it? A penny saved a penny, no. You ruined my confidence. Now I do wonder if that was able.

  That was bad.

  Megan McKay (01:15:51.874)

  Franklin? think it is Ben Franklin. Yeah, Google that.

  But but Ted Cook told us, I think we interviewed him within our first five episodes of this podcast, more on 300 and some now I think. Okay, good. The sundown was kicking in.

  Benjamin Franklin.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:16:12.47)

  No, think Abraham Lincoln, it was the fact that he like traveled miles to return a few cents to someone. Anyway, so Ted, Ted Cook.

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I have heard. Honest, Dave. Yeah, so love that guy. Ted Cook said if we want the ecological benefits, the environmental hazards to be mitigated, we have to pay for them. And, you know, you can look at that in different ways of like, OK, subsidized.

  Kent Boucher (01:16:46.68)

  conservation practices being put in place on farmland. That's probably the, like that was my first understanding of when he said it. Like that was the first place my brain went to. But then you start to see as, okay, new legislation being proposed that opens up more money. Okay, yeah, back to what Ted said. But then, you know, start to like, as you spend more time with it, it's like, no, it doesn't have to just be that. It doesn't have to just be.

  taxpayers are subsidizing this thing. It can be in this too, where we don't have to wait for the government to take the money from us to give to the farmer for those practices. We can, with our dollar, go and say, no, I'm gonna choose to give to Blue Gate Farm instead of industrialized ag model, whatever, for

  my tomatoes, because I know if I'm paying more for Blue Gate Farm, everyone downstream of Blue Gate Farm is a little bit better off than those upstream of Blue Gate Farm. And that is a way which we can do that, where if we want these benefits, we pay the farms that are doing them already without waiting for the government to get involved with the process. Although I do think those programs are

  are necessary, you gotta have a little stick and a little carrot to get those changes and they do serve their purpose. It's just nice when we can choose to do that ourselves.

  We can choose to do it ourselves and going back to then nobody's telling us what to do, Nicholas. We just do it ourselves.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:18:30.274)

  Yeah, but and part of what I mean, I've talked about this a bunch, but part of what we fight with that is a site we're going to interview Dr. Karen Cleveland, who's a psychologist and and she.

  Really bring up so much stuff about Nicholas's college years. See what you think

  She is awesome. She is so awesome. But she really like pressed it into me. Humans believe in path of least resistance. That's how we live our life. Yeah. At least resistant. What's the cheapest? What's going to be the least amount of work? And to some degree, it kept us alive for thousands of years. But now we could end up like the movie Wally.

  If we're not careful because we could just, you know, have all the least resistance in the world straight into having no purpose and no exercise and no high, no quality food and.

  we become Wally than the mid-court melee that breaks out of the giant basketball game. It'll just be a big game of bumper cars.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:19:38.03)

  No bleachers in a place anymore because you can't get up and down. no, that's terrible. Okay. I want to move on to the health side. I know you've had conversations with healthcare leaders about it. Getting healthy food prescribed.

  Yeah, this was, you know, something that I read about early on as I was kind of doing research and I was really blown away by this program down in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was called FoodRx and the woman that runs it, her name is escaping me right now, but she was kind of tapped to figure out how to address root cause of diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, you know, just these chronic health.

  conditions that are costing a lot of money, and typically costing all of us a lot of money because it tends to be in the Medicare population or our tax dollars are going to healthcare to help pay for some of these things. And so they started this pilot program and her tack on it, and there's other places that are doing prescription food programs, so by no means is this the only way to do it. I just really appreciated that she's like, okay, if you're gonna tap me to do this,

  here's how it's gonna go. We're gonna use local food because we're turning those dollars back into our community. It's gonna be organic or chemical free because why would we add another, know, something not good in

  another health hurdle to get over.

  Megan McKay (01:21:07.662)

  process that we're trying to do. And so what they do is they can prescribe a box of vegetables, you the doctor can write a prescription for a box of vegetables for people who are at different health risks. I think it even extended sometimes to pregnant mothers or to people who are going through cancer treatment in addition to people with these chronic health conditions. And they're seeing just great.

  response to this. They're seeing health conditions reduce. People, they kind of have wraparound support with like cooking. So they learn how to prepare these things because a lot of people don't know how to cook anymore. It's just, you know, we've kind of lost that art. So you, get this education on cooking and then you get this community piece because they're getting together to talk about food and talk about cooking and you know, kind of that mental support around it.

  So it's just had great, great response. It's something I think, you know, I would love to get going in Knoxville. I've, I've talked with, you know, the hospital a little bit about it. I think there's some challenges to making that happen quickly in our community.

  Is it a culture thing or is it a money thing, challenge is?

  I think it's both. I think it's both. think, you know, we definitely have a culture of healthcare is there to treat symptoms. We're not there to prevent things and it's how our system is set up. It's how our funding is set up. It's how they're graded on things, you know, all of those things. And so there's some changes that need to happen on that side and I'm not sure we're ready for that.

  Megan McKay (01:22:50.922)

  here in Iowa yet. From a money standpoint, you know, is it something that Minton Moore could do this as a pilot project that we fund or go out and get funding for and just see how it goes. And I think that's where we're starting with this kind of health baseline and identify maybe a couple things and then could we bring something like that in the other things that you can do. In addition to this prescription produce program there is in Iowa, they have prescription produce program, but it's basically you just get a

  benefit card so you can go buy fruits and vegetables at the farmers market or at grocery stores, which I think they've limited that now. What I don't like about that is there's not a lot of support around the cooking or the community piece of it. You're not necessarily getting local foods. They're just coming from whatever distributor. So, you know, I, there's ways we could do it. That would be quick and easy, but I don't think those are the right answer for us today. that makes sense. then, no, I was just going to say there's,

  Yeah, I

  Other pieces to that where you could do like medically tailored meals. So the hospital could, or some other organization could actually make meals that are medically tailored to what people need, kind of like what you would get if you were in the hospital, but you'd get them at home. So if you have a hard time cooking or you're in assisted living or something like that. so yeah, there's a lot of different parts and pieces to that.

  Man, that what I think that it could be a brilliant thing. want to, I want to bring up some hurdles because I'm willing to bet you've thought about it. Now this is at the risk of othering people pretty hard. So, so please everyone listen to me have grace on how I'm trying to describe this poverty. Yeah. Poverty leads to poor decisions. It leads to, mean, why is the

  Megan McKay (01:24:35.534)

  This is your choices.

  Yes. Quickly. And you're in survival mode. So path of least resistance is high in the mindset. Right. So what what's the easiest, cheapest, fastest thing to get done now? It also it there's just in hit inhibited decision making in general. If you look at like decisions made by people in poverty versus people who are middle class and above and and so people who are struggling with

  diabetes. No, are they all poured? No, but the, is, it is an outsized, the percentage is higher when people are poor or overweight. Yeah. Yeah. You're a lot more overweight and then, well, you're a lot more, you're a lot more likely to be overweight if you're poor and you're a lot more likely to have diabetes. All right. I'll

  that for

  Kent Boucher (01:25:22.35)

  I'm not giving you any grace on this right now. Well, we need to make sure these are backed up.

  This is a real thing because I talked about it in my podcast with.

  Alright, I'm not here

  It's a big tell me what to tell me what to Google

  Is it more, are you more likely to be overweight if you're poor in the United States?

  Nicolas Lirio (01:25:48.454)

  And so you correlate those things. And then I've talked to our friends that are doctors at Knoxville hospital. And I asked, asked them like, what's, what's the most frustrating thing? We can't get our patients to take their medicine. That's the most frustrating thing. When you do all the work for them, you send them home and all that is, is uphill a day or, know, something like that. How are you going to help them? And this isn't just poor people, but

  A group of people who already their decision makers are inhibited. They're looking for path of least resistance. They're not wanting to go buy more, you know, higher quality, more expensive groceries, right? So there's more friction for them. What do you

  How do you shift that?

  How do you shift it? I think you have to start really small, which doesn't feel like impactful, right? But if you could start with say five to 10 people and you put them in a cohort and you get them a box of vegetables every week and you wrap that with some cooking classes, you know, just, and I'm not saying cooking classes like gourmet five-star cooking, but like very simple how to chop vegetables and prepare them simply.

  how to use beans and grains, whole grains, how to use meat sparingly, those sorts of things, just very small, simple things. And you do that in a group setting. So now you have this like, you're building your own little culture within that small cohort. And I think once people see success with that, people are attracted to success and then they continue to build from there. It's not gonna be like by January, 2027, we're gonna make giant change.

  Megan McKay (01:27:33.72)

  But it could be in five years. We've slowly marched toward that. Culture change takes a long time. And I this is a really hard one. Food is really personal for people. And there's, like you were alluding to, there's a lot of barriers. Cultural issues, poverty, what your family thinks. If you don't have meat and potatoes on your table, you're crazy, you're not Iowan. There's a lot of stuff that goes around.

  And so it's going to have to start really small. But I don't know. Yeah, I just do it. Right. Like, just try it and see what happens. And maybe that's my entrepreneurial spirit kicking in. But what's it going to hurt? I mean, that's kind of what I keep coming back to when this feels a little hard or weird. It's like, yeah, here's this crazy lady talking about vegetables all the time. Well, it's like, well, what's it going to hurt? Like, if you eat more vegetables for the next year, nothing bad is going to happen.

  And are you trying to get in does this lady and it was Oklahoma. so insurance helped pay for.

  Yeah, they had, think through state Medicaid. And I think there's actually even a provision under Medicare where you can get that. But you have to get like a different waiver or something like that.

  I'm the first to admit it's a lot cheaper to buy healthy vegetables than it is to treat cancer and diabetes. So there's an obvious benefit when you sit down and think about it. But also selling to the masses, pay insurance, like subsidized insurance is going to pay their grocery bill. They will not like that. What do you say about that?

  Megan McKay (01:29:17.102)

  The hope is to get them to the point where they're making those choices themselves. But sometimes like with CRP or conservation or whatever else, sometimes you need a boost to get you over the hump.

  Hopefully the cost of, I think a lot of people don't understand that, we were talking about this yesterday in the office, the new thing now is when there's a storm in an area, the storm chaser, home renovation companies come running around to see, mind if I check your roof? Mind if I check your siding and your gutters? And a lot of people get their house completely redone on the outside after a hail storm.

  Two little dead.

  And they think man all I had to pay was my $1,500 deductible and But while that's happening insurance companies aren't in the business of losing money. They just raised everybody's premium to pay for The whole neighborhoods right new outside of their house and the same thing happens for health insurance You know if you're in a group if you're if you're like at a workplace and Five people are battling cancer. That's costing that insurance company

  Yeah, a lot of money and they can't stay in business unless they raise the premium. so I think, and I don't say that so people get mad at somebody who's got a chronic, that's not their fault, right? But if everybody is healthier, then less money is being taken from the insurance company. Now you'll have to shop around to get a better rate. You'll have to be a responsible customer to say, hey,

  Kent Boucher (01:30:52.696)

  I think we're gonna go look at another company see if we give us a better rate so that the market can respond so that the insurance company is not gonna want to lower their premium obviously unless they're motivated to. But I think that again is part of playing the long game is you gotta be patient for those market dictated responses to get put into play. But I'm really glad I looked this up. I'm really glad I looked this up because it's very interesting.

  No way I'm wrong. wouldn't

  Nicolas Lirio (01:31:21.848)

  So.

  On a global scale, you're dead wrong. on a global scale, the poorest countries are actually, they're actually, you know, like there's malnourishment problems, but not overweight, not an obesity problem. However, when you come to America, it totally flips. And I did believe you, I just thought that was a pretty big claim to just say it out there.

  That's I- I to look up America.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:31:50.19)

  And that's how it always was for thousands of years poor people have been super skinny super wealthy people were overweight and it was almost a status like people were more attractive to have some chub on them now in America it's totally switched right with means are healthy and fit and they're and they're taking all sorts of steroids or whatever and for and who knows why they're balding might be the steroids well

  But even even even the people though that are so there's enough abundance of calories that even if you are impoverished in a first world country, you're you're getting you're still able to get enough calories to be overweight and and it's right. It's just it's a very interesting how we've like totally and you know, it's not like it's this is groundbreaking information. I think it's

  their nutrient dense.

  Kent Boucher (01:32:38.478)

  we've probably observed this, but it's just interesting to have the data, and this is from PubMed, so it's good resource. Yeah, I was just. No, it's just very interesting.

  I'm also really glad you looked at it. I was ready to die on that hill. Well, and if you like with poverty, this is going to this is not this is not going to go.

  Alright, I got the phone here, so go ahead. Rude reputation and all that trying to

  So what is interesting is that people, poverty is highly correlated with decision making. Caused all the time? No, heavily correlated. And so same goes with decision making when you're eating food. So yeah.

  But. Well and also access. If you think about food deserts and you don't have great transportation or you need to get somewhere inexpensively and so many of our rural communities now, you have a Casey's, you have a Dollar General, you don't have a lot of access to good healthy fruits and vegetables or high quality lean protein sources.

  Kent Boucher (01:33:24.257)

  Yeah, food desert.

  Kent Boucher (01:33:46.242)

  Do you know any food desert data about Iowa off top of your head that would be interesting to hear?

  Off the top of my head, do not. have done some research on it and Knoxville isn't necessarily a food desert, but we're not far from that status. And I think if you look at, if you can get more granular and look into like what our grocery stores carry, skews us a little more.

  has more vegetables than and I mean your great-grandparts did great job but it more-

  I though, if you look at like the they kind of look at a radius around the community of what how much access we have to grocery stores and who like within a mile I think it is because if you don't have reliable transportation, do you have access to high quality food within? I'm just telling you what I've read in the data that I've seen is, you know, like if you live on the north side of town,

  I think I disagree with you on this.

  Megan McKay (01:34:47.872)

  away from or the east side of town. think that's a better example. If you live on the far east side of town and you don't have a car.

  Yeah, and I would if you compare to you and I or you myself and you then yes, their access is very limited. But if you compare them to 100 years ago, it is easier for them to walk to Walmart and back than it was and get broccoli than it was for thousands of years for people to get broccoli out of broccoli season. So I would say access has been greatly enhanced over the years. And in that we are still getting

  I'm not diminishing people that don't have cards, but it's just if you compare it to wealthy people today, yes, they have way less access. If you compare it to humanity over the long standing of us being around, I think...

  I access to calories, not always good nutritious calories.

  part of a food desert is it's not just calories it's the vegetables that jives well with it not being a food desert.

  Megan McKay (01:35:46.729)

  We're less borrow.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:35:51.496)

  And I would say the vegetables and the meat at best, Walmart, they're sprayed on, they're feedlots, but that's still a C+.

  Look up what constitutes a food desert. I've been thinking for a while. There's some specific, but I think there are some specific qualifiers, aren't there?

  Pretty.

  definition that's

  Megan McKay (01:36:10.638)

  There's good data. I'd kind of pulled a bunch of that together and I haven't looked at it for a while.

  low income area with limited access to affordable nutritious food defined by the USDA as a census tract where a significant number of residents live far from supermarkets often relying on convenience stores or fast food and I'm not I'm not trying to take away from them but like two miles I don't want to walk two miles but when it comes to life or death if you say hey if I eat these chicken nuggets every single day for 10 years I'm gonna get way over overweight or if I walk to Walmart or fairway and back

  I know the people that sounds absolutely, I would never, we did it for thousands of years for less. did it, we got, we would get like six eggs and we would walk a mile in each direction. I know that because my grandpa would talk about a story where they would do that. They walked a long ways to get their eggs almost like every other day. It was one of the kids' turns. And so I just wanna, I just wanna relearn.

  I think you're also thinking of it too of like, you know a city the size of Knoxville, know, like where I grew up in Illinois Western, Illinois We were in a subdivision outside That was yeah that was 600 people yeah, and it was 15 miles to the nearest to the nearest grocery store and So where did everybody go? There was this gas station everyone called corner Mart

  of the town, like seven or eight miles away.

  Kent Boucher (01:37:36.844)

  that was the only gas station for probably 15 miles.

  Yeah, we go to zip in and love zipping eat their fried food if we forget something. Yeah.

  Yeah, lunch option and and there's a lot of people especially in rural America Where the healthy food should be grown? Yeah that that you just don't have that but also but also You definitely notice this when you go to a big city

  Good point, that changed my mind.

  Kent Boucher (01:38:09.762)

  The food that is available at even the restaurants is just higher quality. Like my sister-in-law, brother-in-law live in Columbus, Ohio. And there's kind of a local chain there that does Mediterranean food, which to me is the best quality food on the planet. The Mediterranean diet, if you wanted to follow a healthy diet that's like just kind of easy to figure out, yeah.

  Yeah, flavorful.

  It's a Mediterranean diet and they have this restaurant called Brassica. And you just, when you're standing there like ordering, because it's kind of like, Poncheros went to the Mediterranean. You know, you like see all the food laid out in front of you and you're just like, man, the richness of color, the freshness of the vegetables, it's like there just isn't anything like that in Iowa. know, like you go to Des Moines and you're just not gonna find.

  Why do you think we don't have the choice they've got?

  Not a big enough market to warrant flying your vegetables on it.

  Megan McKay (01:39:16.682)

  Truly in Iowa, I mean we're a meat and potatoes place I hate to say that but like if you don't have a big piece of meat and a starch on your plate, it's not a meal

  Interesting. and, Interesting. yeah.

  I mean, wouldn't you say that? I mean, you're from here, but you grew up elsewhere as well,

  Yeah. There's definitely just cultural differences to areas. Yeah.

  And I think, you know, men joke about it here. Like, yeah, my wife made like a salad for dinner.

  Kent Boucher (01:39:49.632)

  Yeah, food. Yeah.

  Yeah, it was Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. That's the food my food eats. Yeah. But I don't know. I think I think you guys are right. Like the rule, the rule accessibility now, the percentage of people without cars. mean, people just went quite a ways on into town with less reliable cars. I'm not saying there's nobody without cars or reliable cars, but I just think

  we're in a much better space than we were 70 years ago. And I think it's important that we recognize that because otherwise we can get into a

  Well, what did people what did what do you think the percentage this this be a good one to look up? Yep percentage of people who had a garden 70 years ago today. Yeah, I could have that be a great step Sure, it's right out your door

  Yes, exactly.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:40:38.368)

  I, I... Yeah, but that's not accessibility.

  No, but it's their choice. So accessibility to me is out of your hands. You cannot do anything about it. You choosing not to have a garden when you have the space and the capability to buy seeds. That's a choice. And, and I understand that, that, if you're in a more poverty mindset and you're, struggling, you're struggling, make ends meet and you don't have the time. I like, get it, but at some point it is not somebody.

  I see what you're saying. don't have a garden today because they don't have a place to have a garden. They don't have a garden today because they choose not to do a garden.

  Well, be fair...

  Yeah, accessibility. mean, if you're working at a factory, you know, overnights and weird hours and I don't know, there's a lot of demands on people for their time that make it difficult to garden. get that. I don't know.

  Kent Boucher (01:41:40.334)

  We have have affordability is definitely changed in the Probably has been a net negative for the the movers and shakers today compared to what it was then however, we do consider more things Necessities now that weren't considered necessities then yeah, but that being said my grandfather was a laborer for the railroad His job was to weld on boxcars

  And no problem. He was the only source of income in the home. Raised two kids. I just don't, I mean, could probably, if you had no other debts, if you lived a very simple life where you didn't have to drive any significant distance, so needing a reliable enough vehicle.

  I don't know that that's really an option anymore right now to live that way on that kind of a job.

  I totally disagree. I think we've turned so many wants into needs like for him

  Well, I admitted that but I just don't I I don't think that To to because part of those is kind of like the sports thing, you know Damned if you're do if you damned if you don't right the the Yeah, our kids just are not gonna play sports. Okay. Well that means that They will not be friends with this kid this kid in this kid because that kid is playing sports and their lives are going two different paths from

  Kent Boucher (01:43:12.898)

  fourth grade on, right?

  And if we were on a coffee time, I'd want to argue with you so bad, I really want to get

  So you can try and force those things to happen, yes, but there are parts of just being a part of society, you got to play the game to some degree, not I agree, not all the way, but you can choose to be a total outlier and a total against the grain person. And there is a trade off for doing that. And it's not just, I don't get to watch the TV show I want. That's not it.

  Yeah, I get what you're saying.

  You don't fit in in a way that is fulfilling to, maybe it is to you, but not to your 10 year old. You know what I mean? And so I do think that things have gotten more expensive in a lot of ways than they were in even factoring in inflation and things. And so I think it is much harder to raise a family on a low level, blue collar, single income home.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:44:14.136)

  think it is much harder to raise a family how we want to.

  especially in a safe neighborhood and in a good area than it was then. Not impossible, I agree it's not impossible.

  Don't you think we've lost some of that skill set too?

  Absolutely, yes. yeah, absolutely.

  I think you're right in that it is a lot harder.

  Kent Boucher (01:44:42.646)

  And I didn't say impossible. think there are people doing it now. Yes. But way fewer than there were then.

  Yeah, I think that.

  Nicolas Lirio (01:44:50.54)

  Most I believe that most satisfaction in life is locked behind difficult decisions. I'm sure. So, you know, we want our cake and we want to eat it too. Yep, totally.

  Yeah, I've said that a lot. You're not as mad at me as you think.

  You mean I don't disagree with you? Yeah. I'm always kind of just low grade.

  I know, you just always want to fight with me.

  I didn't have an older brother, you know? There was no one to-

  Kent Boucher (01:45:14.19)

  I'm older brother you're just gonna have a rug burn on his forehead next time

  man, that's funny. That's funny. Megan, I really, really appreciate you joining us this morning. I think that, you're the way that you think about small communities and really you've been diving into food in small communities recently and all the, but I mean, it's one of the pillars, one of the pillars of life. it should be looked up to.

  Yeah, it's it's fun. It's kind of a you know, it's interesting. Like it feels like a very new different career choice for me. But yet I've been a member of Jill's CSA for I think 17 years, you know, 16 years maybe. Wow. 20 years she celebrated last year. That's amazing. You know, work in, you know, the insurance agency, it's like local small businesses. That's what you need. You know, selfishly, we needed more people to

  I didn't realize she was doing it that

  Kent Boucher (01:46:02.766)

  Proof that it works.

  Megan McKay (01:46:12.302)

  create and build and do that. So we had more customers in the beer business. It's all about access to market. It's, all of these things kind of interplay and intertwine. And I think at the end of the day, it's those relationships, that fabric of community health, it all just kind of comes together. So it's, it's very purposeful work. I'm excited about what we're doing. I'm excited about what we have coming up. So.

  If you could snap your fingers and change one thing, force change one thing that you're working for to implement. Because right now you're having to do heavy lifting to get any change. You could snap your fingers and make one of them a change. What would you change?

  Hmm, that's a hard question. I think It would be for more people to pay attention and choose local Chemical free grown food Like to make that choice because that would drive The producers to produce more that would drive people to want to get into the business that would drive the distribution system that would drive everything else, you know that demand is what's gonna

  drive production. And I think there are farmers who want to be more connected to their land and be more connected to their consumers. I think that's why a lot of people get into farming or, you know, how their family was a long time ago. And now they're feeling that disconnect and they would love to get back to that because that's where that sense of pride comes in. So I think if consumers could make that switch, it would have so many upstream effects.

  Yeah, absolutely. It would take Beth and John to fully sell out locally of their beef every year for us to be able to handle two or three more in the area that are going to be selling. I think that's a great one. Cool. Well, everyone, you know, we're talking about changing full culture. Get your kids out of sports, get rid of your cars.

  Megan McKay (01:48:08.11)

  I think that's it.

  Kent Boucher (01:48:16.875)

  Kids quit sports.

  Come home. Yeah walk 15 miles you guys

  No, it takes all these that you... If you're not doing these things, you're not in conservation. Because conservation happens one mind at a time