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Joey: I'm here with Chris Cable, and I was looking at your bio. So we've never met, and the board has a group of, we like to bring entrepreneurs on local business owners, faith-based leaders, things like that. People engage in the community, and they gave me many things you're involved in. I was like, this is one person. Yeah. This person owns a business. He's involved with two major mentoring organizations. We were talking off-camera and started the Anderson Cottonwood Christian Association.
Chris: Assistance.
Joey: Assistance. I am struggling. I said alliance before, like, yeah. For some reason, it's that last A keeps blocking.
Chris: It's, it's just assistances, like a, like a soup kitchen. Yeah.
Joey: And it's through the churches, right?
Chris: Yeah. A lot of the board members. There's like one from every church in Anderson Cottonwood that shows up.
Joey: What do they do? Is it like the outreach for who?
Chris: I'm still learning? Okay. I only went to one board meeting, so that's the next board that I'm hoping to get on. See if we can make a difference there. But I don't know where they get their food, most likely from the community. And then they have people sign up, and then they hand out boxed lunches and dinners, and it's kind of crazy.
Joey: Do you know who their target is, like is it, is it homeless or is it families? Low income.
Chris: Low income.
Joey: That's awesome that people are doing that. I didn't know that existed. And I'm sure there are probably several of those around.
Chris: There could be.
Joey: Yeah. If you.
Chris: This one's just on my radar, so here I am.
Joey: That's awesome. And you're a husband.
Chris: Yes.
Joey: And you're a father?
Chris: Yes.
Joey: And you helped facilitate goat yoga.
Chris: Oh, Gosh. That was once. That's right.
Joey: Hey, that's once more than me.
Chris: It was during COVID, and a yoga friend of mine saw we had baby goats. because I'm also a farmer, and so she came out to our farm and tried to get the baby goats to jump on her while she was doing yoga.
Joey: Did it work?
Chris: I don't know. I can't remember.
Joey: Were they, are they like pygmy goats, or are they become the big ones?
Chris: No, they're actually LaManchas. So we use them for dairy goats.
Joey: Oh, really?
Chris: So my wife milks them. Yeah.
Joey: And you guys like, just for the family?
Chris: Well, yeah. My wife has a lot of food allergies, so that's why we have a farm. We grow all of our food.
Joey: Very nice.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Like all, when you say all of your food.
Chris: Like, we have a greenhouse, and she goes out there and picks a salad every night. My garden's twice the square footage of my house. And we have cattle, pigs, dairy goats. We raise chickens for meat—chickens for eggs.
Joey: How many acres you got?
Chris: Five. 2.
Joey: How long have you been doing that?
Chris: 12 Years.
Joey: How many hours do you get in a day? How do you pull this off, man?
Chris: I sleep about five or six hours a night, so.
Joey: Oh, okay.
Chris: Is that enough?
Joey: I don't, not for me. I'm an eight-plus-hour guy.
Chris: I wish.
Joey: If I don't get it, I know that they're, we're different, right?
Chris: Right.
Joey: Physically different. So you have a, you've had a farm. You have a farm. You have two kids.
Chris: Two kids. Yep.
Joey: They're growing up on the farm.
Chris: Yeah. They wish we would've known we were going to have a farm. I would've had like eight kids. because it's a lot of work, they're all moved out now. My son moved on to the Marine Corps. He just got home.
Joey: Super five. Please tell him I said I sent former Marine.
Chris: Will do. Yeah. He works for me now. So he moved back? Yeah. So he got married and bought a house. He's settled down. My daughter's 19. She just moved out, and she works at Sierra Gibbs.
Joey: Oh, very nice.
Chris: Yeah. And she's a student at Shasta College.
Joey: My daughter's are 19 and 17 and the 19-year-old one off to St. Mary's. And the 17-year-old is at Shasta College.
Chris: Oh, there you go.
Joey: Works at the YMCA.
Chris: Oh, nice. Okay.
Joey: As a lifeguard. I just outed her.
Chris: Oh, nice.
Joey: So back to, I have to go back to the goats.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I don't know if goat cheese, goat milk, that's like a nonallergy thing.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. No, she raises all the goats for their milk and that's what she consumes. She puts it in a lot of her recipes. We freeze it when we can. So we have a freezer full when the goats aren't in milk. Just this year we got a buck, so now our goats are all pregnant and they will be pregnant around the year. So it's kind of nice.
Joey: Wow.
Chris: Yeah, she does make cheese. She makes soap and she just cooks with it. So it's a little better than having a cow, a dairy cow.
Joey: What is, why is that like a common thing that people are? I know a lot of people are lactose intolerant, but I would think lactose would be in goat milk, too.
Chris: Yeah. She's not lactose intolerant, and it's just something that agrees with her body because of her food allergies.
Joey: So the best milk I've ever had, I was in the Marine Corps. Yeah. And it was during the Gulf War, and we were off the coast of Oman. And they do something where they will get jet fuel in the water lines. They use some kind of pipe, and they turn it off. And I don't know, but it happened multiple times. And one time, it happened badly. And so for multiple days, all the water we drank, cooked with, showered with had this like fuel, and it wreaked. Yes. That's as bad as you can imagine.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: So every now and then, it would happen, but it would last for a few hours. But this one was something really bad happening for a couple of days. And so we're drinking powdered milk made with water and like some fuel. And it's as bad as it is when you, the water faucet, you like fumes would come out. And so I was friends with the cooks, and in the middle of the night, we got like a replenishment ship comes up in the middle of the night and they put some, they woke me up, and I had a TV with a VCR at the bottom. Remember those?
Chris: Yep.
Joey: That's how, that's how.
Chris: Oh yeah.
Joey: Yeah. Okay. So I had that. So they wanted to watch a movie. So they made brownies and got goat milk. And I remember, like, this is the best milk I ever had. But I wondered, like, well, that's what happens when you drink jet fuel, powdered milk for a few days. They could have given you crocodile milk, and you go, this is the best milk I've ever had.
Chris: Wow. Okay.
Joey: But maybe goat milk is just.
Chris: I don't like goat milk personally. It tastes a little sweaty when it's pretty fresh like that. But she has a trick where she takes it from the bucket and she'll put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes. And then she strains it, which takes the goaty flavor out of it, and it works. So I tell her, I'll drink a glass if you pour it for me. And it's just sitting there, and if it tastes goaty, I just pass it right back. Like, no, it just tastes sweaty. It's gross.
Joey: And you are not. Yeah, you, I was thinking. Oh, I'll try some goat milk. No, not so much now.
Chris: No.
Joey: But when you're that close to the tap, so.
Chris: Yeah, exactly.
Joey: You're a, you're a business owner. You have caliber.
Chris: Office furniture.
Joey: Office furniture. Yeah. And you were in the furniture business in the late nineties. You were doing like sales.
Chris: I've been doing this for 28 years. I started as just an installer. I was making eight bucks an hour thinking that was great money back then.
Joey: Probably was.
Chris: And it wasn't bad. And then got laid off. They had too many guys, and I was a low guy on the totem pole. And then, I went into the satellite industry. So I did sales there for about two or three years while I was.
Joey: Like dish.
Chris: Yeah, just DIRECTV.
Joey: DIRECTV.
Chris: Yeah. So I was their Northern California rep and installed furniture like a 1099 on the side. So, I never really got out of it. That career ended, and then I went right back into it in 2000. And then that's when my son was born. And I've been in it ever since. I put myself through college through Simpson and got a business degree. I went into sales with furniture, and now here I am with my own business.
Joey: So I want to go back a minute. So, your son was born in 2000?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: So he's, I do the math. He's 24.
Chris: He'll be 24 in June.
Joey: You don't look old enough.
Chris: Thanks.
Joey: To have 24, I think. I think you started young.
Chris: I'm going to be 50 this year.
Joey: Were you, were your parents entrepreneurs, like you're kind of a hustle, then you said like, well, I had a day job, but I was 1099 doing this that.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Joey: The word that went in my head was hustle.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Right. People either kind of have it or don't. Did you, were family entrepreneurs?
Chris: You know furniture industry is just so much fun for me. It's like putting together giant Legos. And that's what we were doing, putting panel systems together. And back then, it paid well, too, as 1099. But no, they weren't. My dad was a firefighter with Cal Fire. He retired about 15 years ago, maybe.
Joey: Good for him.
Chris: My mom was a stay-at-home mom and now she's a quilter. She lives in the Redding area. So she makes quilts for a lot of the pregnancy centers and shelters, and wherever else she can do.
Joey: That's where the that's where all your volunteer work comes is from your mom.
Chris: My whole family is kind of that way.
Joey: Very nice. Are you an only child?
Chris: No, no, I have a younger brother. He has a salsa business here in town called Mark Salsa.
Joey: Really?
Chris: Yeah. And my sister's eight years younger, and she lives in the northeast somewhere in Missouri, I think.
Joey: So what made you, what sparked you to start your own business?
Chris: I was kind of thrown into it. The economy was circling the drain with the company I was working at. And when I started Caliber, I was working in a closet basically, is how I started. And I just slowly grew into this career. And I couldn't bite off more than I could choose. I just started small. I didn't have a showroom. My philosophy was Redding is my showroom. I'd been doing sales already for about five years. So, I already had a clientele. My clients were begging me to start my own business. So, and that's what we did.
Joey: What was going on with the main business that you said? It's a circle; it must not have been the economy, and it circled.
Chris: It was like in 2008. So things just.
Joey: Oh wow.
Chris: Doing too good.
Joey: Oh. Yeah. No kidding.
Chris: Yeah. So I didn't really have to change careers I thought about it for about two seconds. A friend of mine took me under his wing, and he said, you're going to start a business. And he, I said, I don't know anything about it. He took me down to Sacramento. We applied for the LLC right then and there; I got a line of credit through a HELOC, and the rest is history.
Joey: In 2008?
Chris: No, that was 2010.
Joey: 2010.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I was going to say that's hard. That was a hard time to get a loan, man.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah. We had a lot of equity already built up, so it was kind of good.
Joey: And now how big is it?
Chris: Our business?
Joey: Yes. Like, I mean, how many employees? because not just you anymore.
Chris: No, I got about six or seven, I think six. Yeah, six right now. That's, we're growing like crazy. We just had a couple of guys leave, like my son wants to move on to become a firefighter. So I said stay put until I can replace the guys in the warehouse. So, as soon as we can get the right guys in the warehouse, he's bouncing out. But yeah, about six or seven. I have a sales guy who's been with me for about eight years. His name's Dylan, and he's amazing. So I take care of him like my new son.
Joey: Very nice.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Your son going to stay local?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. He bought a house, and his wife just got a new job here working at Prestige Urgent Care.
Joey: Oh, they're set.
Chris: Yeah. She's going to stay for a while too.
Joey: Are you born and raised here?
Chris: Nope. I was born in Fontana, California, and raised in Blythe on the Colorado River for about 12 years. Then we moved to San Diego County, and I grew up there and did my high school years there. Came up here in '92 to go to Simpson College, and I was there for about two years.
Joey: I didn't realize Simpson's that has been around that long.
Chris: I think they moved here in '89.
Joey: Oh wow.
Chris: Yeah, before that, it was in the Bay Area. All of my aunts and uncles were all attendees of Simpson. So it was like a family tradition.
Joey: Oh wow.
Chris: So it was my cousin and I. We just both decided, because we're the same age, said, let's just go to Redding and try out the Simpson thing. I got married, and he stayed in and graduated. So I bounced out.
Joey: But you went back.
Chris: I did. I went back, and it was easier doing the degree completion program. That SPIRE program.
Joey: Was that like at night or?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of like I saved up all my cash just to pay for it all at once. And that way, I was a little, my brain was involved a little bit better.
Joey: Are you still active with, because you're involved in some stuff? We'll get to it in a minute. But are you still? Do you still have a connection to Simpson?
Chris: I try, yeah. They're one of my customers still. Okay. One of my good friends still works there, and he calls on us to furnish stuff when we can, we do like a non-profit discount. So we just did a pretty big sale for them for the athletic department. And I guess they really liked what we did for them because they want to put my name on their furniture.
Joey: Nice.
Chris: I know.
Joey: I heard a story about you about somebody, it was like a nonprofit or something, and they said, oh, we've only got this small budget for furniture. And you're like, that's not enough. But you know what, I'm going to hook you up and give you some furniture. So can you tell us again?
Chris: Which one was it?
Joey: I say you've done it more than once.
Chris: I don't know.
Joey: That's good stuff, man. That's tithing.
Chris: Yeah. Exactly.
Joey: Helping out.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: Helping the community.
Chris: Yep. We give recklessly.
Joey: Good. Yeah. And it comes back, though, right?
Chris: It does. That's how that's kind of one of my philosophies. If you take care of your community, it'll take care of you.
Joey: Totally.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And you're involved in I wore my Catalyst T-shirt.
Chris: I see that. Yes.
Joey: Yeah, this was, I was like, I got, I've got a catalyst. I gotta wear it today. So you're involved in Catalyst Mentoring?
Chris: Yep, Yep. I do that every Tuesday at lunchtime.
Joey: Chris, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Chris: I started, I got invited to their golf tournament, which was a fundraiser man, five or six years ago. And I showed up, and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't even have good golf clubs at the time. And a friend pulled me aside and said, I'm giving you my golf clubs if you promise to take lessons. I'm like, sure. So I got into golfing, and then I showed up the next year knowing a little bit more about how to golf. And it was the same fundraiser. And giving the money was the easy part. And it's like, ah, I'm being a sponsor. I'm buying the gift baskets that they have. Later, I heard one of their speakers, Aaron Hayes.
Joey: He is awesome.
Chris: Yeah, he is. And he was heavily involved with it then. And he was saying you should become a mentor. And I'm like, the money's the easy part. I should give my time and be a mentor. So, I jumped through all the hoops. It took me like three months to go through everything because you have to get fingerprinted, and you have to take, take these tests, but you have to watch these videos, and if you don't pay attention to the video, you fail the test. So it's like you actually had to be involved. And I was glad I did. Because it gave you information on how to interact with these students you're involved with, they quickly tossed me in. I was at Pacheco Elementary for about two years; it was a blast. The first is like you show up; they have a school mentor. You don't even have to prepare anything. All you do is show up, and then you're playing with these kids. You're breaking through these barriers. And once you break through, it's just action that starts happening. They start breaking down and telling you their stories and stuff that I can't talk about right now.
Joey: Sure.
Chris: Yeah. But it's a lot of fun. It was just breaking them down and making that trust happen between them.
Joey: Is this what is like the main goal of the mentoring? Is it just to just be a soundboard for them, help them be a guide? Or is there like.
Chris: I think for most of them, they have kind of a, I have to say, like maybe a little bit of a rough background. Suppose they have anything in common. Maybe their home life's not the greatest. Maybe their father figures are not really in the picture. And I'll tell you one of the stories. I had this one kid who was my most troublesome kid. Whenever he shows up, there's this dysfunction. And it just made it a little rough. And they said, at the very end of my two years at this one school, they said, Hey, I want you to know that this, I don't have to say his name.
Joey: Sure.
Chris: He started a UNO club, like we're playing cards. And I'm like a UNO club that's like the game UNO. And they said, yeah. I said, a club? And they said, yeah, instead of beating up and bullying kids at recess, he started a club, and now there's like 25 kids playing UNO, and it's because of, and they said, why are you doing this? And they said because that's what Chris taught me how to do. I'm like, what?
Joey: That's awesome man.
Chris: So this kid, like, he's not a bully anymore. He wants to hang out and play cards. It's like, no way. And this is coming from the school counselor. She's telling all this. I was like, that's kind of cool.
Joey: So the, the takeaway, there's a bunch, but like two of them is that kids just need, they do. I think a lot of people think, well, I can't do that. I'm not, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a this, I'm not a that. And it's like if you can just show up and give a little bit of attention. A little bit of energy. Play UNO.
Chris: That's it.
Joey: You know what I mean? Yeah. And I, when you were talking about that, one of the things I think about is you hear all the time the statistics of people in the prison system and how many of them grew up in a fatherless environment. And it's like the high 70s or mid-70s. It's very indicative of people who make some bad life choices. There is no father in the home. And that, to me, is a pandemic in America that we're dealing with. And so anybody that can get, especially males, I mean anybody can do it, but when you say there's no father in the home, it kind of, you kind of, you're looking for a father figure.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Catalyst Mentoring is a big proponent of just showing up. They want you to show up and be there. I'll tell you, for instance, that I didn't show up one day. I was out of town, and I told the kids, I'm not going to be here next week, just, I'm going to be out of town on a work trip, man. They let me have it for about three weeks after. They wouldn't stop. Oh, you decided to show up today. They remember that you didn't show up.
Joey: Yeah.
Chris: And even though I warned them, so now when I accidentally or intentionally have to leave, I show up with cookies from Crumble or something, and then they could just go crazy, and then they're like expecting cookies every time. So, I don't know if that was a good move.
Joey: The first time I heard about Catalyst, I heard through Aaron, but I heard about Aaron from Coach Todd Franklin.
Chris: Okay.
Joey: And he's somebody who's, he's talking about like you involved in a lot of things. Yeah. A lot of working with youth, a lot of activity. And he, it's been a while since I watched that episode, but he had similar types of things like just showing up.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Be good. You know, you don't. Too many people think they have to be too much. You know what I mean? What do heroes look like? They're just the normal people. They were doing normal stuff.
Chris: Yeah, exactly.
Joey: You know, but with like a, like a giver's heart. And you're also involved in a national organization called Girls Inc.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Right?
Chris: Yeah. I can't be involved there because it deals mostly with girls, but I'm on the board. There's another guy on the board, and he and I are just, I'm like, I'll join if you join kind of a thing. And I'm just trying to manage it from afar. But they provide after-school or during-school events for girls in the middle schools, and I think junior high, I'm not sure. And they're sprinkled all throughout. And the director, I actually did leadership Redding with her, so she's a dear friend of mine, so I just wanted to give her the support. And then the board president's a good friend of mine too, so they made me the vice chair of the board. But we're just helping that organization stay alive. We help with the fundraisers, and we're actually doing a bingo night on March 15th. So, we are just trying to raise money wherever we can for them.
Joey: I had never heard of Girls Inc., so I did a little research on it. It was started after the Civil War.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I mean, I was like, wow. It goes way back. My wife was like, I think they do this thing where they have these running programs. I don't know how familiar that is. Is she, she goes, I think that's Girls Inc. That does it.
Joey: Girls on the Run or something and they, they get them all running.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: There's a lot of things, but there's physical activity, but they're trying to build, oh, what's the right way to put it? Trying to build self-confidence and self-esteem.
Chris: Yeah. Exactly. And there's that too.
Joey: Yeah.
Chris: There are girls that, as we had, our gala last year, the first time I went to one. And they had one of the guest speakers, one of the gals who was in our programs, and she was kind of like a, you know, the black sheep kind of in the corners. And now she's like this public speaker, and she's got all this confidence, and she was in front of a couple hundred people just speaking so eloquently. And we're like, wow. She went through our program. That's amazing. Today, in fact, we just did a park cleanup at Enterprise Park. They had a whole bunch of the girls and a whole bunch of the school liaisons, who are some of our employees, with them, so they're giving back to the community wherever they can, too.
Joey: We've got several, and I, there's, it seems like there's a lot of organizations and like, just for example, you, I learned about three that you're dealing with, and I think Catalyst is, is Catalyst merging with another one or something is going on?
Chris: I heard they merged with the Pathways to Hope.
Joey: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. I don't know much about what Pathways does yet. But yeah, I think that merger made sense because the director from Catalyst went to Pathways, so they were just kind of floundering. So I think they just kind of said, let's just merge it together too.
Joey: A logistics thing.
Chris: Yeah. I think so.
Joey: And Bring it together.
Chris: I don't know much behind the, you know, scenes on that because I'm not on the board there. I just like to mentor and.
Joey: But if people want to get involved, reach out. And then.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: You, you said you're a male, so I guess that with Girls Inc. It's pretty much women helping women.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Or Women helping young ladies.
Chris: Exactly. Yeah.
Joey: And so if you're a female and you want to help.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: You can do Catalyst or Girls Inc.
Chris: Yep. Somebody just, there are several people, they reach out to me, like, how can I help at Catalyst? And now it's like, that's easy. I can show them there, but then they say they're all filled up. If they're filled up, I'll send them to Girls Inc. For sure. Because I think they still need adults helping and volunteering. So however that looks like.
Joey: What about finances? Are they?
Chris: Oh my goodness. Yes. That, that's amazing. So if you went into their website, you would see where you can give monthly, and it's just, it links to your, you know, account and go from there.
Joey: And It's, I'm no accountant, but I play one on TV.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: No. I'm no accountant, but I think you can give a certain amount and get a tax break. Right?
Chris: Yeah. There's exactly that too. Yeah.
Joey: We'll need to, we'll need to reach out to our accountant and find out. So that's awesome. Why Redding? You moved here to go to school and just stayed. Is your wife from here?
Chris: Yeah. She.
Joey: Did you meet your wife Here?
Chris: She is. Yeah. I, gosh, it's a long story how we met, but I was at Simpson, and I kind of rededicated my life to Christ during a chapel.
Joey: That's awesome.
Chris: Because I was showing up, and I was kind of, off doing my own thing. Then, suddenly, God got ahold of me and shook me. So I snapped back into gear, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to do this the right way. And I started going to church again. So I said, I'm going to go to a college group. So I went to this college group; it was at Neighborhood Church in Redding. And so I'm sitting in there, and I'm like, all right, just focus on what the pastor's talking about. And I said quick glance around the room. Ooh, she's hot. And I ended up marrying her. So we met at church.
Joey: Hey, that's a great place to meet people.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Joey: We go to a Pathway, which I think is, was that the old neighborhood?
Chris: Yeah, that's, yeah.
Joey: And is there another? I get the church is all mixed up. Was there another neighborhood that was up on Churn Creek? Or is that?
Chris: No, so there's a, well, if there is one on Churn Creek, I don't know about it, but there's one in Anderson Neighborhood Church in Anderson.
Joey: Okay. And then, but is it still affiliated? I'm putting you on the spot by asking you all kinds of stuff.
Chris: Yeah. Ask away.
Joey: You're like, I, are you running everything? No, but it's Pathway still. Because they changed the name of the neighborhood. Was that just a name change?
Chris: That I don't. That I don't know. I know they changed their name. I don't know much beyond that.
Joey: We go to the Saturday evening service, like, it logistically, it's way better for us.
Chris: Good. Okay.
Joey: We're, we're just better evening people.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Joey: And it's great. And I, they were talking about, we've never been to the Sunday service, but they were thanking people and saying, Hey, thank you for, I guess the pastor had said, Hey, we're really booked on Sunday because some of you start going Saturday evening.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And they were talking about, and they're, thank you for doing that. And they're already booked on Sunday. So it's, I, it's a good service. My wife got us involved, and they have a bunch of programs for kids.
Chris: Nice.
Joey: And so we homeschool. And so my son started doing things. They do things with both Grace Baptist.
Chris: Okay.
Joey: They get like some programs, there's, there's a tremendous infrastructure for people who have to homeschool. It's not like when you and I were young and homeschooled.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: It's not. And when I talk to people out of the area, just have a conversation, I'll say something like, our kids are homeschooled. And I'll say, Hey, I have to take this class. I thought you said they were homeschooled. Well, they are, but we do this science program here with this church organization. And this church organization has a physical education program. When my daughters were in high school, they would go to the high school on Saturday. The high school teacher would teach biology and chemistry to a small little homeschool which his kids were in. So it's.
Chris: Oh, nice.
Joey: The infrastructure, if you have to homeschool, you have a lot of options.
Chris: Yep. For sure. My kids are both homeschooled.
Joey: Oh, very nice.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And.
Chris: So we get it.
Joey: So. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: It's, well, I, one of my, my vision board, I've got not super into it, but I'm trying to visualize. But one of them is I want to, I told my wife within five years, I'd like for us to live on a small farm.
Chris: There you go.
Joey: I would like to produce. I, you can tell by my hands, That I've kind of, sworn off physical labor. Right. So she's like, well, so what, what are you going to, are you going to get out there and garden? So, we have like a couple of fruit trees and, and I usually do like a small tomato garden each year. So, I started looking into aquaponics.
Chris: Oh, nice. Yeah.
Joey: Right. With the fish and look at the systems. And I bought a couple of books that were like, Hey, this is how to do it. Watch some little videos. And I'm like, we even built a small one where we had, with the girls, as part of a science project. We did some lettuce and a couple of coy, and it was really small. We did like the little bacteria tank, and then the.
Chris: Yeah, I've seen all that.
Joey: It was about the size, honestly, of this table.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: But we grew butter leaf lettuce, I think is what we did.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Just to, for fun.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And so, when I say a farm, I'm thinking more of, like, maybe an orchard with some, just some, just what I want to consume.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Like, I wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to get too crazy. But I think about like, the 12 things that we eat over and over.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And we, we get a cow each. We started getting a cow from a friend, Dr. Seton. And he grass feeds and grass finishes. And then this, this morning, my wife was, we used to get them, I always mess up the name Dover Doven.
Chris: Duivenvoorden.
Joey: Duiven. That's even easier for you to say.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Duivenvoorden milk. But they put out a thing saying, Hey, if you guys want organic pigs.
Chris: Oh nice.
Joey: We're going to, so we put the deposit on. So we're really into that. And trying to get more and more where everything's locally sourced.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: It's organic, you know, it's not because our food source is because of, the push on production. There are a lot of compromises made in a food source.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: And so we live in a place, this is not, Manhattan. There's tons of space around here.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And it's not that hard for a guy saying that that doesn't have one. It's not that hard to do, like some small farming. It's gotta start somewhere.
Chris: It's not. And we invite people out to our farm just to tour it because people just, like you were saying, I have to start a farm. I'm just not quite sure how to do it. I didn't either. I have farming in my roots. I was in 4-H and FFA growing up.
Joey: Nice.
Chris: So I knew a little bit about how to do it. My grandfather owned a farm, so it's in my blood. We just kind of. We watched our neighbors learn how to be a farmer, and now they've just kind of moved on. They're not doing too much with farming, but we stayed true to it. We actually raise about 75 to 50 chickens a year and.
Joey: Oh wow.
Chris: Yeah. We'll buy them, we get them in the mail. And they take about six weeks to get fully grown. And then we have a butchering party. So, we invite people over to see how chickens are processed. And then we just put them in freezer bags and freeze them. People call me up to say, Hey, can you come help slaughter chickens with me? And I'll go out there and show them. I won't do my own pigs and cows because, I mean, I can, but I choose not to. It's so much easier just to call someone, and they can do it in an hour, whereas, for me, it's a whole-day thing. But yeah, if you ever have to learn, I can show you how easy it is.
Joey: I'm going to take you up on that.
Chris: Yeah. Just for five acres.
Joey: I've been watching, there's a ton of great YouTube videos of people that, I mean, it's well documented. Pretty cool. Some really amazing people.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Especially like, I don't know what the right title is, but some of these people that they'll go in the desert and they're like, Hey, let me show you what I did in five years. And they have these video documentation where.
Chris: Oh yeah, cool.
Joey: Where they're like, this is just, like they're ecologists maybe or something.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: They, they build entire ecosystems, and they're like, okay, we damned up the, there's a couple of them out of, Colorado and Arizona where, I mean, they literally take acreage that they show and, and they'll zoom out usually. And all the acreage around it's desert.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: It's like brush, you know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And then here's this oasis sitting in the middle, and they'll just talk about how they did it. And I was watching one yesterday where there's a famous guy. I can't remember his name. He's in a wheelchair and he did it.
Chris: Oh my.
Joey: And yeah. And I think he's in Arizona and he was talking about, traditional farming a little too, there's a lot of compromises made.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Because they're just trying huge production. So he is talking about not turning the soil over, but just loosening it up. And, I mean, he went through a bunch of stuff. Obviously, they're big in the compost.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: Imagine you're part.
Chris: We are too. Yeah.
Joey: Yeah.
Chris: The thing about farming for us, it's just you, you learn as you go. And that's what I want to teach people, is don't make the mistakes we made. There's, there's shortcuts on how to do it the right way. The first time, we lost a lot of our, agriculture and our livestock a couple of years ago. ACID turned off our water.
Joey: That's right.
Chris: Yeah. And we were kind of downstream from all that. So like, we lost all of our giant trees. I had to sell off more than half my herd. It was costing close to $30 a day just in feed. And I just couldn't sustain that when they were out there usually grazing. And then last summer we had water. And I couldn't keep up with how much grass we had. It was three feet tall and five acres. And I didn't have enough cows because I sold them all. So we had more than enough. So right now all of our heifers are pregnant and happy and Yeah. We're growing it again. So we actually have a waiting list for, people that like to buy our beef.
Joey: Oh. Very nice.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Well, I'd love to get on that list.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: We, we've been ramping it up, although my daughter's moved out, so maybe we're in a, we've been, it was half cow, half cow. Then we ordered a cow. And so we've all become like super carnivores. I was even a vegetarian for a while.
Chris: Yeah. Wow.
Joey: Yeah. Crazy.
Chris: Oof.
Joey: And, I know, I made it about seven or eight months, and one day I was like, man, I'm craving a Turkey and bacon sandwich.
Chris: Absolutely.
Joey: And then once that happened, the veil was pierced, and then somehow we shifted into super carnivores. And we eat a lot. We eat. I can't believe how much beef we eat. Well when you buy a cow and you, you have to buy a special freezer because you have, it's like just, and all, all different cuts. I mean, we're, we're cooking all different, all different kinds of cool. The great thing is you get on the internet, and there's a recipe for everything.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: And it's, everybody's so happy just to show you like, Hey, let me show you how to make this. And it's like, well, that was, that's not that hard.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: We live in good times. But you do have to be proactive. You do have to take control.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: Of your life.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And so when you're dealing the farm, what is like the, I'm thinking the big things for me, which you just said big one's going to be controlling water.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: That's a big one.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And that's not just here. That's everywhere.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: So that's a big one. Is the Anderson Cottonwood irrigation ditch back on and running?
Chris: Yeah. I think it's up and running now. They got a new board from what I understand. And, the water's flowing again. And hopefully, that's not going to happen again. It's funny is we're not even customers of ACID. We just, our lot is set so that we get runoff from our neighbors that are customers. But we are still affected, by it because we, we required, our farm required that water to replenish our, our groundwater, which, we have a well.
Joey: Yeah, of course.
Chris: And if that water is not being recharged into the ground, it's not recharging our well. So we're like, how deep is our Well? Are we going to run out? So we were like trying not to flush toilets too much, trying not to water the grass. We let our grass die. We just had to let stuff go. It was kind of tough watching others like water away. Like it's an endless resource, and we're like, oh, well, whatever, it's just.
Joey: Well, it was, I can't remember when it was. It's been a few years, but I felt like California said, Hey, we're in a drought.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And you And they, I think they told people like, you should only water. They even think they put something out where you can only water on these days.
Chris: Yeah. That could be.
Joey: Because we, we turned our water way, way down.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And our lawn looked like it, but I would drive around the neighborhood, and there were several people they were like, you know.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: So you get up in the morning at like 4:30 to go for a walk, and that's when they got their sprinklers running. Because they don't want to.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And.
Chris: It's tough for us to not water. Because our front yard is about an acre and it's all orchard. So it's like, you don't have to lose your trees simultaneously. But they survived. We didn't lose any orchard trees.
Joey: We, I, it's been, man, it's been a little over 10 years. I got wild hair and went down on a wind tour and bought peaches, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots, apples, and pears. And you can imagine how that turned out in the heat of Redding apples and pears. No bueno. But planted all of them had a few years of ups and downs. And then, most of them were grafted. And so, like the fruit tree died, but the other part survived.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And I, yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know if I got the right ones. So all we've got, we've got two cherry trees and a peach tree left and We got that peach curl that.
Chris: Yeah that happens. That Yeah.
Joey: I know. And it, it ravaged. But we had some good years there, and I've threatened to replant them. But I was like, okay, I have to think about this. I gotta, I think I have to go somewhere else. Maybe.
Chris: It's all about your soil too. If you don't have the right soil, it's hard for trees to take root. So.
Joey: I'm down the garden track.
Chris: Oh. Okay.
Joey: It's usually, I know. It's, it's pretty.
Chris: You should be in good soil there then. Yeah.
Joey: Just about anything that hits the ground grows.
Chris: Yeah. There you go.
Joey: I mean, if you can water it, but like I said, I, I don't know what, we had several of the trees died after a few years and the peach curl every year dealt with that.
Chris: I've always had peach curl. I, you just, I can't get away from it. So I don't know. There's some arborists that can tell you what to do with that. My uncle's really good at that and he'll come over and he'll educate me. But applying, it's a different thing. So.
Joey: Yeah. And we, we didn't, we don't.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I mean we have, what is it? It's industrial-grade vinegar.
Chris: Okay.
Joey: That's our, that's our de-weeder.
Chris: That's okay.
Joey: That's our weeder. You know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And you know what's great about when you're spreading that?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: It's like, I'm like, man, I'm craving french fries.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: This is like, this has that weird, french fry ketchup for some reason that smells triggers. But so we try, so like, I remember some of the, at the time they're like, oh, you can buy this and spray it on the trees. And I was just like, I'm just not going to.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I, maybe I'm wrong. I'm Like, ah, that's not going to hurt. But I'm, I lean the other way.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I lean towards, like, maybe the tree wasn't supposed to live.
Chris: Yeah. Right. No, we don't use Roundup anywhere on our property.
Joey: No, that's super bad.
Chris: Yeah. We don't put any kind of hormones in our animals or anything. Nothing sprayed. It's all as organic as can be. So.
Joey: Does that make it a lot harder? I mean, does that make a lot?
Chris: We do a lot of weed pulling out there just to stay ahead of it. Critters happen. Moles, voles, gophers. You just can't get away from it. We have all kinds of critters out there. I've learned that skunks and possums are good because they eat ticks.
Joey: Yeah.
Chris: So if they, if I catch them in my garden, I let them live. So, and that's some, a product of me spending time at Turtle Bay, just being educated out there.
Joey: What do they have some programs for teaching?
Chris: Yeah, well, I do, a fundraiser there called Caffeinate for a cause every year where we raise money for them. And I think we raise about five grand every year we do it. But during that, they have somebody come out with the animal, say, Hey, we're bringing animals by each of the Dutch bros that we're going to be doing this morning. And they'll say, and this is the possum we're bringing in, the possum's nice. Because they eat ticks. Don't ever kill them. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm never killing a possum again. It's the same with skunks. I was like, this is great. I didn't know this.
Joey: Yeah. But skunks, I.
Chris: I know.
Joey: Possums, I mean, come and go. They're kind of freaky looking. And you're like, okay, you stay over there. But skunks, man, if you've never gotten close to a skunk, it's not a bad smell. It's you. You have a visceral reaction. It's.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: Oh, I'll just plug my nose. No. And when they, they, you don't have to be close.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: If they get even remotely, like in the, a couple of doors down.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: You can smell it, and they'll, if, if they get underneath your home, that's bad.
Chris: Well. I was all happy that we bought our house and our farm out in the country. I was thinking, oh, I can shoot my gun out here because we're in the country. So I went out there, locking up the cat one night. I'm like, oh, there's a giant skunk in the yard. So I got my shotgun, and I went out there and just turned that thing inside out. And boy, was that a bad mistake.
Joey: Oh.
Chris: It was like, oh, the smell was, I'm digging the hole. I'm like, I should have dug the hole first. That smell was like on me for two weeks. I couldn't get it out of it. It was just in the air. So that's when I learned not to shoot skunks again.
Joey: We. In the first house my wife and I bought, skunks got underneath. It was an older home, so they burrowed into the HVAC system.
Chris: Oh no.
Joey: Yeah. So it's about four o'clock in the morning in February. Right. And my wife and I wake up, I mean, we come out of sleep like it, it's like, whoa.
Chris: Yeah. Because it just wakes you up.
Joey: Yeah. So we hired a guy as a skunk removal guy.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And I remember he used to come out with, he had this, he had taken those typical traps, but he had, put duct tape or something. Make it the skunk. It's just like them going into the HVAC system, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: You can't see in it. Right. And I remember the funny thing is he used, powder coated, jelly Donuts.
Chris: Oh, nice.
Joey: He's like, oh yeah.
Chris: They love that.
Joey: Yeah. He's like.
Chris: Taking notes.
Joey: Yeah. He the hostess, you remember the cheap hostess Powdered?
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: You've seen them.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: And he's like, oh yeah, they, these, so it was $75 for every skunk he caught. And then he's like, he, this is him telling me, so I assume it was the truth, but he says, you have to kill them.
Chris: Oh.
Joey: And he goes, I have to kill these skunks. And he goes, because there's some law, and he is like, they don't want somebody catching the skunk and then going to release it over and like, oh, did you.
Chris: Yeah.
Joey: I heard GhostBuster style. Did you, you have a problem? Do you need me to show up and get rid of this? And so he said it was $75, and I think he got eight skunks out from underneath our house.
Chris: Yeah, sounds right.
Joey: That was a major bill. We were young, and this was 20 over 20 years ago. And I was like, whoa.
Chris: So you don't want to keep those under your house, though?
Joey: Oh, you can't. You can't like it if they're under your house. You're going to smell it. It's pretty crazy. And then we have a Jack Russell Terrier, and he doesn't think his drive to destroy is greater than his sense of, like, no brother, you need to back off and leave this. No, he's like, ah, I'm just going to get it. But we don't have any. We had two Jack Russells, we had one, and he passed away. And when he passed away, the rats came. We immediately, there was.
Chris: Oh, no kidding.
Joey: We were close to the canal, and we're close to the river. Rats and mice and shrews were just all of a sudden everywhere. So we got the second Jack Russell Terrier at Round Mountain, and no, he's a ghost face killer.
Chris: We got a barn cat. Our barn cat takes care of all that stuff. She'll come around it with a big critter in its jaw late at night, and we're like, good girl, drop it. Go to bed.
Joey: So if people want to get involved, catalyst.
Chris: I mean, I can direct them to the right place if they need to. I can tell them all about it. What it's like, how much of, it's not that much time out of their schedule really. It's 45 minutes during lunchtime for me once a week. And it's only during the school year. So, summer, you're off. So it's not that bad. So.
Joey: And if people have to get involved in Girls Inc. If you do a Google search for Girls Inc., You're going to go to their national level website, and I'm sure you.
Chris: Yeah, there are ways to get involved just financially. It can show up with all of our fundraisers. And then, if you're a female and you want to volunteer, I'm sure there are ways that they can take that as well.
Joey: And with the Anderson Cottonwood Christian, hold on. It's not Alliance, not Association.
Chris: Assistance.
Joey: Assistance man. It's a third. I was like, I wasn't going to pull it out. I knew it was Letter A, but I'm like, I don't know why, but that is not.
Chris: I'm just learning about that one. But I know it's just in Anderson, and that's their location. I don't know if you went to their website, I'm sure they would take donations there, but I don't know where they get their food yet. So.
Joey: And do they need people, probably too, to deliver.
Chris: Volunteers? I know they could use volunteers there. Yeah.
Joey: Are they connected? Do you, I'm putting you on the spot, asking you all these things. You're like Brown, I told you.
Chris: I'll try.
Joey: Well, I think of the Good News Rescue Mission. I would imagine that there's a lot of overlap there.
Chris: There could be.
Joey: There could be. It's just like these mentoring programs, like you said, Hey, logistically Pathway and Catalyst. We were both kind of doing the same thing. And.
Chris: I think they're just running parallel to each other. They all have their own different drive. But the Rescue mission is a place for shelter, and it's Faith-based Anderson Cottonwood Christian Assistance is, that's Faith-based as well. So, but that's the other side of town, really. So I Got Rescue Mission up in Redding, and they're down in Anderson.
Joey: I would imagine that coming together and for resources especially, I would imagine there's a lot of grants out there and being able to find people that can write and apply for grants. because it's pretty arduous, I've been involved a couple of times, and it was like, man, it's a ton of paperwork and a ton of triplicate, and you gotta word it just right. And it's, I mean, that's why there are people that that's their specialty.
Joey: That's what they do. Yeah.
Joey: You know what I mean? So I would imagine just some of those resources because I think there's a lot of money out there that probably never Because you hear about a lot. For example, there are funds that nobody applied for. So.
Chris: All the boards I've been on, they've always had people that do their grant writing and they, and then we get the grants, somehow they get the right people to search for these grants. There are people that know what they're doing.
Joey: And I'm a big believer. I like the idea of giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish. Sure. That's one of the reasons why I love entrepreneurial stories. I love people who started a business. I think from the outside it can be very intimidating, but I've met so many people who started businesses that it's like, it doesn't have to be. That hard. You said you had a business mentor, or at least he forced you to go down and get your LLC.
Chris: He did. Is, yeah, that friend, he just was, he's, he believed in me. He saw the potential that I could have, and man, he held my hand to get me going in the right direction. And he's since moved on to the Philippines, and he's retired now, and he's just kind of unplugged. But we keep in touch every now and then. But yeah, he is the one that kicked me down the road to get me started here.
Joey: Why, why did he just.
Chris: He and I were we did leads together. Like we shared leads together. So as soon as he saw that I was by chance going to step out and try something else, he's like, no, no, no, you're good with furniture. Stick with it. So he just took my hand and helped me. He says, I've started hundreds of businesses, maybe not hundreds, dozens, I don't know. So he knew what to do. I had no idea what to do. I would've never done this without him.
Joey: I think we have, like, there's an organization. There's gotta be. Is it smart or something? I think a couple of local organizations are designed to help people get started with business.
Chris: If there is, I don't know of any, I don't know what smart does.
Joey: I don't either. I could be like, Joey, you're so far off. I think something resource or something like that. And then, like you said, you got a business degree from a local university.
Chris: I did. That helped a little bit, but you know, what really helped my psyche was I had a business plan because I went to them for help. And I don't have to mention them because I don't have to bad mouth them, but I said, this is my business plan. What do you think? And they said you are never going to make it. I'm like, Oh darn. Well, I'm going to prove you wrong. And that has been my mentality ever since. It's like, I hope I proved them wrong. So.
Joey: Did they give any insight as to why you wouldn't make it? Is it like, no, you just won't make it?
Chris: Nope. They didn't. So.
Joey: I had, it's been way over 20 years, but I had there was a couple of like business resource, I think it was one in Chico. And I look back on it, it was like I think the people helping had never actually started a business. It's like, they were like, hold on.
Chris: That's how I felt about this company.
Joey: Let me open this manual. It says here you're going to want capital. Like, okay, and you're going to want sales. But it was like, but your friend, this person who helped you, he'd been the dozens of businesses. That's a good mentorship. If that's not the case, that's not something that's going on in Redding. I mean, is that what leadership Redding is?
Chris: Leadership Redding? No, that was more of an opportunity to get to know the Redding area a little more. And there, the experience is amazing. I highly recommend that if you have the chance to go through leadership Redding, you do it. You have to apply. And then there's, they accept, I think, 40 people a year, and nine months or so is how long the program is. But that's just being thrown into a class with like-minded business leaders. And then you just have a different topic once a month. because You only meet once, one day a month. And you're learning like healthcare one month, education the next month, or your loca,l like the Indian tribe stuff one month. And it just keeps going. I was a class of 2013, and it was one of the best times of being a business owner just going through that class. Highly recommend it.
Joey: How long did you say? Nine months?
Chris: It's about nine months. Yeah.
Joey: Once a month. That's not very long.
Chris: No.
Joey: It's an all day affair.
Chris: Yeah. It's like one Thursday a month. So I kind of feel like, I had the full blown experience because they made me like their class speaker for our graduation. I was in charge of the class project because nobody else would step up. So I was.
Joey: What was the class project?
Chris: I put garden boxes in at one Safe Place.
Joey: Oh, very nice.
Chris: It was kind of fun. It was actually called Women's Refuge back then. And then one Safe Place picked up about a year later. So the boxes are gone. They're no longer around. So it's okay.
Joey: Project got the government. No.
Chris: It's what I knew as a farmer still. So it's like I know what to do.
Joey: Speaking of farming, have you heard anything about a local garden? Do you know how those are popular in the bigger cities? I've wondered why one hasn't popped up around here.
Joey: Do they not have one.
Joey: Or what is that? Down there by the river?
Chris: There's providence?
Joey: There's something down there, but I never see humans down there. That's the odd thing I've seen some, a lot of goats a few times. But.
Chris: My wife and I, we went.
Joey: Community garden. Thank you. That was the word I was going for.
Chris: We looked at some gardens called Providence Garden. They're off of Railroad Avenue. Okay. And that was maybe two or three years ago. And we were walking through it like, holy smokes. These guys know how to garden. I don't know if it's still active, my brother, because of his salsa business. I think he purchased his peppers from them. Cheap. But it's locally grown peppers. And I think they're down off of i5 now, but I don't know too much about them.
Joey: I don't know where on the railroad, but there used to be a big, a long time ago, there used to be a big nursery.
Chris: Or maybe.
Joey: Railroad.
Chris: Maybe they moved into that.
Joey: I'm talking like when I was in high school. But it was a pretty good-sized nursery. I'm wondering if that's what they are.
Chris: It could have been. I don't know.
Joey: So I don't know of any other community gardens that I'm kind of shocked that one of them popped up.
Chris: I think there used to be one over by the Court Street bridge next to the river. I think there, I remember seeing one like, is that a garden? Wow. That's like a city-run garden. I don't know if it is. It's like an underground kind of. I don't know about it.
Joey: Well, there's also, there's there's down there by the river, like you said, court. It's kind of below where Caltrans is. Yep. A lot is going on down there. But my wife and I walked through there, and like I said, I'd never seen any humans. There are multiple, multiple times we've gone down there, and there are goats. And they got a bunch of goats.
Chris: I didn't know that.
Joey: It's like they're, it's they're there or they're not. There are either 50 goats or no goats. Wow. So I'm wondering if it's like a way station.
Chris: I don't know.
Joey: You know where before they take the goats out and clear out like People rent them and clear. They're like, Hey, come. I'll pay you to come.
Chris: That's, that sounds fun if you can keep the goats contained.
Joey: Good luck with that. I think the goats got out a couple of years ago and caused an accident.
Chris: I think that got shut down. I think it was because they were considered shepherds. They had to stay there 24/7. And I think they got in trouble saying, you can't do that. You can't work 24/7. And they shut the whole goat program down. That's just what I heard. I don't know. Kind of a bummer. I know.
Joey: But there's another garden I think is, is it Rother school? There's a big old garden? Or it might be.
Chris: I don't know.
Joey: I think when I drive by there, I feel like that's, there's a big one there. And then there was another one. Is that school? Is the school called Juniper? It's a little elementary school back there.
Chris: That's where that's where I'm doing mentorship right now.
Joey: Okay. Is there a garden there too?
Chris: I've seen one. I don't, it might be their own garden. I don't know.
Joey: I would, I think it's very valuable to teach kids. To grow their own food. I think it's really important. There's a lot of conversation about the current health of Americans and how much of that is our diet.
Chris: That's funny you say that. My wife's a school teacher at Stellar, and she's, where they have a garden there. And she's teaching these kids how to grow their own food. And we're.
Joey: And they've got acres Stellar's down there off of South Bon view. Right?
Chris: Yes.
Joey: Yeah. They've got a lot of space.
Chris: So she and I are going to replace all the garden beds in a couple of weeks here against my will. But we're going to do it. And we're going to bring in fresh soil. because What they have in there is just full of weeds. And so we're going to do it the right way. We're going to do it our way and then show the kids how to do it. And they're going to see lots of produce. She had tons of produce, but somebody came through and like harvested everything when it was ripe. And the kids were all excited to come into school and pick all of the everything and it was gone. I know. So we got to make a cage or something for it now.
Joey: And there's a strawberry field right next to that too, isn't there? It was like always.
Chris: That's probably owned by somebody though.
Joey: Oh. I love hitting the strawberry. The two times when Haws is producing all the peaches. Or if we are feeling like it, we drive down to the Las Molinos area. And hit those on the side. You talk by the crates of white peaches and donut peaches. My mouth's filling full of spit.
Chris: I know right?
Joey: Blackberries strawberries. I think teaching kids how to grow food is super important. I also think like maybe revamping our education system a little on, saying, Hey, you know what, trigonometry is pretty awesome. But being able to balance a checkbook. And understanding how taxes work. Like, could we put a little bit of effort into that? Because none of that stuff's really kind of weird how our education system's, but.
Chris: Yeah, I know.
Joey: I go, it's a rant. You know? It's never going to be perfect.
Chris: That's the beauty of homeschooling. You can teach your kids that.
Joey: You, you get to, you really get a lot of leeway. I mean we've gotten like I said, it's homeschool, but it's so supplemented with there's so many programs. And I'm trying to think, I think it's new Day Academy is the one that we go through and my wife was really attracted to it because she got to pick her curriculum.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Joey: So she'd go to these curriculum fairs. Right. So you go in there and they're like, here's all the life science books. And it's basically vendors. And you know, here's all your math. And so they're like, Hey, you have to buy our book? Do you have to buy our book? And she, they would give them books and she would come home with the kids and say, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go through, you're going to go through these books just like randomly and you're going to tell me which one you like.
Chris: And so they got to pick their life science book. And they got to pick, their math book and stuff like that.
Joey: That's great.
Chris: It would, it's. And I think it helps with some ownership too. Because the kid's like, Hey, you're the one that chose it. You know, you gotta learn math. That's right. Giving them multiple, we didn't do a lot of the I, and we flirted with some of the new math stuff just a little bit. And right away was like, yeah, this doesn't make any sense to me. Oh. Like, oh, it's so much easier than fractions. You just put a triangle instead of a circle, and then you write and like, no, no, no. Four four thirds. Divide. Divide.
Chris: Wow.
Joey: You know what I mean? Like, just inverse. And we're going to learn the old-school math. So I think we did good, kids.
Chris: Good job. I was disconnected when it came to homeschooling. That was her job. I was, I was selling furniture.
Joey: Oh, my wife's, it's, I'm taking credit for stuff I didn't do. My wife did 99.9% of it. There you go. I just witnessed it. I'm giving a third-party account of what I saw.
Chris: Well, thank goodness for our library. That new library, yes. That we have. That's where we lived with our kids.
Joey: Yes.
Chris: During homeschooling sessions. So.
Joey: Always library books. My wife is big into the library.
Chris: Whenever they have a fundraiser, we're jumping on those.
Joey: It's a great resource.
Chris: It's sad how much it's overrun with homelessness, but just, you can't let the homelessness issue in this community ruin it for you. So.
Joey: And I don't know what the solution is for that. I don't.
Chris: Yeah, I don't either. We have our own approach to it, but we do it quietly. That's one thing that leadership Redding kind of puts you through too. I don't want to give away too much of what they do, but they make you very aware of what it's like to be homeless. Like they, I don't have to say too much.
Joey: Wow. Wait, huh?
Chris: Yeah, no. They, they kind of like, today is what, here's what we're going to do. Give us all your money and keys and your phone and your wallet and try to put yourself in the shoes of what it's like to be homeless and ready to go. And it's like, where do you go? So you go to like, CalWORKs and you find out assistance and you, do you have a social security number? Great. What is it? You don't have it memorized too badly now what? And he's like, you gotta, how do you get plugged back into the system? So it's teaching these other people that have never thought about that process. You know, putting yourself in their shoes. Like, how are you going to get up and off your feet on your, own? It's tough. Especially when you don't have a place to shower you're afraid to go in, and you're stinky and hungry. And that messes with you too. You didn't get a good night's sleep and it, I don't know. It sucks.
Joey: I feel like, I feel like we can solve this. I don't know why we're not putting more energy into it because it's one of those topics that is constantly coming up. People are constantly, it's not like it's, oh, I forgot all about that. It's, it's really in our face. And we're not, I mean, this is nothing like Los Angeles or San Francisco or any major city Sacramento or anything like that. We're nothing like that. But you can definitely see it growing. And it's weird how it seemed to come out of left field. Like it really hit hard I think around that 2008, or 2010 time. It seemed like it ramped up. And then like another phase. I remember talking to a law enforcement agent years ago, and I don't remember the timeline because I'm at that age where like it all blends together.
Chris: Yeah. Same.
Joey: Like I'm like, was that 2012? No, it was 2019. Like, eh, close enough. Hey, you're off by seven years. But I remember that methamphetamines were more prevalent. And you could tell people on methamphetamines are pretty aggressive. Sure. It's a different drug. All of a sudden, it seemed to like the shift. And I remember saying something to a member of law enforcement like, man, it's different. And he said, well, they've changed the laws to get them off methamphetamines and get them on heroin. And I'm like, what? And he's like, you're not going to get them off drugs. So what we did was we cracked down really hard on methamphetamines. But if you have heroin, we, if you don't do, we leave you alone. We're anything to do with meth, we're coming down on you and everybody around you.
Joey: And we're, we are not going to play this game because they're, it's, there's so much violence around methamphetamines. Right. But their idea was like, they'd thrown their hands up and said, look, we can't get them off drugs. We can't get drugs off the street, but maybe we can at least get them to something where they sleep, ad they're subdued versus breaking into cars and stuff. Because I, that's the thing I noticed. It seemed like I just didn't see the super aggressive anger in the, in the, that went away. This is more of the passive. And that's what he said. You know, and I'm sad that that's like, it feels like giving up. But I can logically go like, well, we're not the war on drugs. We lost drugs won. I have to let you in on a little secret.
Joey: Drugs won. Right. We lost. So if we can at least get them to where they're not trying to stab people with, you know, with screwdrivers or something like that, or break into windows. Because we'd have, if it weren't nailed down, it'd be gone in the morning. Like if you had a gas can in the back of your trailer like just anything was gone. And that seemed to just suddenly stop. And I was like, why? And that was part of that conversation. He's like, oh well. Because they, nobody was hanging out.
Chris: You know, as a business owner, I don't see it calming down too much. I had a, my business was right in the middle of Redding basically. And I had to relocate just because I was right at the front door of the homeless camps. I was off of technology way progress drive, but Breslauer a little bit.
Joey: Okay. Yeah.
Chris: And man, we were, it was gross. Daily. We were cleaning up piles of just everything. So I said to my landlord, I have to get out of here. So I moved out to Airport Road, and it slowly started to slow down. But we would still, if I left a truck outside, there goes my catalytic converter, my gas tank, the windows, and we went the battery. I would be stripped down. My truck is stripped down. Like, what are these people getting?
Joey: That doesn't sound like homeless. That sounds. It's not homelessness.
Chris: No, that's tweakers.
Joey: I don't know what they are but.
Chris: So it's like I had to start parking my rigs inside. If I didn't park them inside, it's going to get stripped. Oh, wow. So, that's still the mentality to this day. So I'm actually looking to buy a building probably next year. I just got prequalified, and I was putting an offer in on one. And the real estate agent said you know, there's a lot of homeless issues here. And I was like, oh, then I don't want it. He says, Chris, don't let the homeless issue stop you from buying your dream location. You can deal with it. I'm like, you know what? You're right. I can do this. So it's like I've pressed forward the offer fell through because my landlord wouldn't let me out of my lease. But, so I kind of have that mentality now. Like if there are homeless issues, we're going to address that. And maybe God put them into my path for a reason. So that's my take on it.
Joey: I feel like we can do something. I feel like we can do something compassionate. I feel like there, there must be you know, it's like, I always feel like we're, we're watching a chess game, but we don't, we can't see all the, we can't see all the parts. You know, like, like the game is, that's why things don't make sense when you're like, wait, why, why would you do this? And if I.
Chris: I don't want to see all the parts.
Joey: Yeah. It's a little too much. But I feel like we could do something. I feel like we could help. And I don't know who, I'm not blaming anybody, but I feel like as a community, we put a lot more resources behind this than we think. There's a lot. The cost of homeless and dealing with some stuff is, I don't think people are seeing the true price tag. Our law enforcement and our emergency responders are inundated with this and we pay for that. And I mean, it's definitely nothing like the, the the Bay area, thank God. But it's a tax on retail. Yeah, it is. It's tough. You were talking about how, I mean this office furniture, they weren't coming in and stealing chairs.
Chris: No.
Joey: Probably because they were locked up, but. Right. You know, but like there is, there is a pressure there.
Chris: Yep.
Joey: And I feel like we could get together and, and I was the other day thinking like, okay, I want to do something, something in the community. And I thought, and I think, maybe start picking up trash. It, it sounds, I don't know. But just seeing that it's like because it's, it's such a visual blight and I think it kind of hurts your soul to see it. And so it's like, hey, we could get the community. There's gotta be every now and then I see like the police will have like a big, like dump trailer and there'll be several people and they're picking up trash. They'll go in and I've seen a few where they've gone down by the river and said, Hey look, we got X number of tons of trash that we got rid of. And so I'm like, I should probably reach out and find out, hey, I probably could use another person.
Chris: I think they're cleaning up homeless camps when you see those too. They're probably for.
Joey: But, that is.
Chris: Sleeping bags and tents and whatnot, just trying to relocate these folks. Unfortunately. But I look at it as I use the resources God gave me ,and he blessed me with a successful business right now. And it's kind of a tithe mentality. It's like, okay, wow, I've, hit my gold double this month. So it's like, let's give a little bit back to the community and I'll keep an eye open. So if I see these non-profits that are like, Hey, this is our budget, this is what we need. And I'll say, tell me your hopes and dreams. What's the best we can do here? And they're like, oh, we can't afford the best. I'm like, that's not what I asked. So they say, oh if I had a blank check, this is what I would do. I'm like, your wish is granted. And that's, I'd see, I want them to be comfortable, successful, and not spend their money on furniture to spend their money on the resources that they're using to impact our community. And I think that's kind of the mentality I take to approaching nonprofits with my business.
Joey: That's awesome. And baked into what you said and what we said earlier was that there's a lot of ways people can help people that have capital can say, I can donate money. People who have other resources. And just back to what you said about just showing up. That's not just for catalysts. That's, that's life. Just showing up and helping. It's contagious. Good things are contagious too. And they get momentum. And so I think it's awesome. You're you're involved in a lot. I'll tell you, you've motivated me. Okay. because When I saw that, I'm, I'm like, okay, I need to get out and be a little bit more. That's one of the things I hope that this does. This is All Redding is. I wanted more positivity even though we were just talking about homeless.
Joey: I hope that people pick up that. But we're talking about it and that there is a solution. We're not just complaining. Part of being positive isn't like being Pollyanna. Right. Like, oh, there's no problems. But it's not fixating on the problem. It's like, what is the problem? Can we define it properly? Why? because That's our best chance at coming up with a real solution. Right. We kind of, otherwise you're just trying to get lucky. To solve it. You kind of know it, but then shift to, okay, what can we do? And a real important word in there is we This is a community. You said something earlier I can't remember. I think it was somebody put instilled in you that like the community really matters and, and working in the community and, and being a part, like these things need to be community led. It can't just be one or two people having to, to bear all the right load. We need to come together.
Chris: Yep. I like, I like to join arms with those that are giving back to our community and take notes and see how they're doing it. See if I can do the same thing if not better.
Joey: And I'm an unabashed capitalist in that I think small business built America. I do. And, and it's a small business. It's not going to be with a lot of people thinking like, no, the government's going to, like the government gets their money from somewhere. No. You know what I mean? So you have to realize it's you, you need step, step one is the small business. And that's, I think that's what it means to teach someone to fish. I think someone running a business, starting a business is so, I think what you're doing is awesome, and I'm glad we met, and I hope you had a good time and.
Chris: Yeah, definitely.
Joey: I'm going to take you up on your offer.
Chris: Come check out the farm. Yeah.
Joey: You remember your offer?
Chris: We have baby goats coming in the spring, so maybe come by in springtime.
Joey: Oh. So where is your business located? because I imagine you don't want people just showing up at your house probably should reach out to you in business and coordinate this.
Chris: And it's on the airport road. It's between Burrito Bandido and Dutch Bros. On the.
Joey: And the name is.
Chris: Caliber Office Furniture.
Joey: Caliber Office Furniture. Chris, thank you so much.
Chris: My pleasure.
