Welcome to the We Live It podcast. Once again, today, we are live here at Cooper's Barbecue and historical stockyards in Fort Worth. We have an auction coming up today at 11:00 with a little over 12,000 head today with a lot of good feeder cattle and a lot of good weaned calves. We have a little section of calves off cows there up at the panel of Texas that are really neat. A lot of programs to them.
Speaker 1:We got a really, really nice set of bred heifers at the end of the day. So tune in there at the Cowgirl channel or at liveag.com. Today, have Wade Liesch. He's filling in for Casey. Casey bailed on me again.
Speaker 1:He had some meetings down in Houston he had to get to. And also, have Dean Edge from Remy.
Speaker 2:Remy.
Speaker 1:Remy, Alberta, Canada. So yeah. Knew I'd messed that up.
Speaker 3:Fifty first state.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Fifty first state. Exactly. Alright. And he is the reigning world champion, livestock champion auctioneer. And Wade is the past.
Speaker 2:Yep. I was 24. He's 25.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And he was down in the area doing a qualifier for or emceeing a qualifier for next year's world championship. Yeah. In Fredericksburg, Texas.
Speaker 1:Down with the guys whites. They do an awesome job. That sales been there for a long it's been in that family for a long time.
Speaker 3:Celebrating their seventy fifth anniversary. Part of the reason why they had the qualifier there. It for their family right there for seventy five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Good people. Great people. I've known them a long time. I used to go down there and buy a few cattle out that barn.
Speaker 1:It was a long time ago, but it was good. I used to enjoy going down there. So as far as being an LMA champion, you tour around the country. You go do sales for other people. Like, what you'll do today with us, you and Wade will sell for us on our auction.
Speaker 1:We thank you for coming and thank you for joining us. We love to have champions behind the mic, marketing our customers' cattle and they love it as well. So kind of tell us about your travels, where you've been. We was talking a little bit before we got started here about Fredericksburg. When you go to those towns, you get to go meet the community.
Speaker 1:You get to do neat things. So kinda tell us a little bit about that. Schooldale interests me.
Speaker 3:Well, Fredericksburg is actually I've never done it before where I got to go to the high school and meet with the FFA. They have a program that is just beyond belief. Their agriculture program for high school is what a lot of colleges would be. There was a meat shop in there, and they studied meat sciences. And meat sciences is a regular science class there, that counts towards their credit as science class.
Speaker 3:So it's a German town. It's a long time ago, and a lot of the Omas and Opas still speak German. So the one teacher, he said, was, you know, going through a course and we were learning how to make sausage and we make the sausage. And the one kid said, well, this isn't how Opa makes it. He said, so it's a big deal in Fredericksburg going back for generations, but the agriculture side of it, I was so impressed.
Speaker 3:You know, they have their show barns, their show trailers. A lot of it is community supported, but for them to have a butcher shop, a meat facility like that in high school, I was I was blown away because that's a college thing at home and maybe even further than college at home. What a head start those kids have in life for being in the egg side. They've got a a few acres there where they raise their own crops. There's also a greenhouse where they raise some specialty crops and do some studies on different types of crops.
Speaker 3:There's small small cow herd, but they wanna get to the point where they finish those calves off in their own facility, in their own feed lot and then slaughter them, bush them, harvest them right there in their own facility and then put that meat right into the culinary program they also have in high school. I was super impressed.
Speaker 2:You you got to speak with the students?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I spoke to the students and, answered some questions.
Speaker 1:Was there
Speaker 2:a bit of a language barrier?
Speaker 1:I was say, did they understand you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. They spoke, plain English.
Speaker 1:No. We weren't worried about them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I've been to South Carolina and South Georgia. There was a language barrier there. And I might as well been talking French. You probably don't even know what that means.
Speaker 3:I might as well been talking Spanish because in South Carolina and Southern Georgia, it was a total different language. I didn't have my bib overalls on either, so we couldn't communicate that way. But, no, yesterday was real good.
Speaker 1:Good deal. Good deal. Kinda a little bit of background on you kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I got three kids, starting high school rodeos. They've been to three or four now. So tomorrow is, like, the fourth one. We have the junior high program just like they do down here.
Speaker 3:So my twins are in it, and they're 13 years old, Lane and Lexi. Lexi competes in six events, and my boy Lane competes in two. And then the high school rodeo start the next day, and, my older daughter, Erin, she's 15, and, she's a sophomore in high school, and she competes in four events. Of course, all the open events and go time and everything like that. And then the twins also play hockey.
Speaker 3:Hockey started up here two weeks ago. They've been to summer camps in August, and, they skate three, four nights a week now, and then tryouts will be next week. So, boy, lots lots to do at home. Lots of traveling.
Speaker 1:Sound like lots going on. That rodeo and the hockey will just keep y'all busy chasing them kids around. But man, what what better life than to than to put it in your kids like that. So and I guess this kinda keeps you away a little bit, but
Speaker 3:Oh, a little bit. I I used to travel all the time and, now I'm just a little bit maybe further away is all. But, they're part of the program and and part of the journey. So
Speaker 1:You used to travel a lot roping calves. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I used to rope calves a fair bit, and, I've been to Fort Worth here, oh, probably eight times or so. Used to go to all winter rodeos, Denver, Fort Worth, San Angelo, San Antonio, and then spend most of the summer at home in Canada going to all the rodeos up there as well. But I've been, right over there a couple times, the Cowtown Coliseum for the Friday and Saturday night ropings.
Speaker 2:Yep. Good deal. And then, you you're not only accustomed to Texas, but don't you winner, or did you win in was Arizona?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Since about 02/2001. I've been going to Arizona in the wintertime, and, I got family that has, you know, three acres there, and it's a real destination for a lot of western Canadians, especially if they got horses and whatever. So we do spend a fair bit of in Arizona in the wintertime.
Speaker 1:But the you bring the kids down too?
Speaker 3:Or Oh, yeah. Is that Yep. Kids started coming since they were just born. Yep.
Speaker 1:Cool. Cool.
Speaker 2:Your your your roping career. So when I started going up to when I met Dean, it was at the International Livestock Auctioneer Championship, which is in Calgary, and they hold it in conjunction with the stampede. So I found out about that contest in, like, 02/2014, '15, or something like that, or maybe a little bit before that, but that's kinda when I started thinking I'd like to go to it. And I went up there in '16, and I didn't meet Dean because I think you're out roping at the stampede instead of in the auctioneer contest. And everybody kept telling me that when Dean when Dean gets back into competitive auctioneer, you're gonna have to look out because he's he's top notch hand and of course of course he is.
Speaker 2:But that's where I met him was up in in Calgary and over the years. So what like what what's some of the like, watching a rodeo up there, that was a huge deal for me. And what's what's some of the the heights that you went to in the rodeo world?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess at Calgary, it it's pretty tough. The top 20 in the world get to go then. Now the top 30 in the world get to go, and and that's all they limit it to. But I made the final four there one time. I tied fastest calf I ever tied.
Speaker 3:I was seven flat, and I split third and fourth. Cody Ol was six eight. Matt Chazal was six eight. I can't remember who else is seven flat with me. And it was a
Speaker 2:little bit like, well, gotta step it up a
Speaker 3:little bit in this next round. You know? I was always real near the top. Probably not the strongest. I know I maybe look at now, but probably not the strongest guy in the world, ever for for some situations, and always had a different avenue to go down to to be an auctioneer.
Speaker 3:And, those avenues kinda parted ways, and I got pretty lucky in both of them.
Speaker 1:So do you sell couple days a week in in Canada, or what do where out do you auction?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I mostly sell for, Volt Jones of Vold or VJV marketing group. It's owned by a different family now. It used to be owned by the Volt family for three generations. And now, a new family is involved, and they're probably gonna have it three generations or four generations also.
Speaker 3:How fast they produce is probably why. So I get to sit They own five markets. I sell it two every week. The one in my hometown in Rimbey, Alberta is I'm the sales manager there. We're open seasonal.
Speaker 3:We closed down for a few months in the summertime because we are a little bit smaller. Our our country used to be covered in cow calves all the everywhere, and now every time you turn around, it's a wheat field going up or a canola field. So we're losing quite a bit of pasture ground there. But anyway, I get to sell there on Tuesdays, go to Panonka on Wednesdays, and then here starting the October, we'll have a bread sale every other Friday, like in one in Penonka, one in Rembe, one back in Penonka. But I also fill in once in a while at West Loch, Alberta where they own another market.
Speaker 3:And then in Northern British Columbia at Dawson Creek, they own a big one up there. I'll go there once or twice a year. And, they also own one in Beaver Lodge, which is a small town in Northern Alberta as well. So I can keep busy doing that. I do do a lot of bull sales and, replacement heifer sales and horse sales that are all over kinda central in Northern Alberta.
Speaker 3:The bull sales, we got a real strict season on that for some reason that kinda starts February 10. There's a handful before that, the January, but from February 10 till April, there's four or five bull sales to go to a week too.
Speaker 2:Tell us how you got started in the auction industry. That was one the questions that I was surprised that people were the most interested in when I was making my tour last year. Tell us how you got started.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Everybody does ask that because maybe they all think, jeez, I could do that. And and I guess we thought that early enough in life that we could go down that path. There was a a high school teacher and he would chant, just blab on once in a while, mister Collis, I know his family really good and he was really good to me and he would just chant once in a while and thought, man, that's something I could do. And I used to go to the auction all the time.
Speaker 3:That's how my dad marketed his own cattle and we'd go to bull sales and that's how we'd buy bulls is at the auction. Everything was done at the auction. I was lucky enough to grow up about five miles away from 2,004 livestock WLAC champion, Dan Skeels. And I was able to be under his wing right from when I was a little guy. The Skeels' had been friends of my family forever, and Dan Skeels is the best auctioneer there is.
Speaker 3:You you're a world champ. I'm a world champ. And, not degrading you at all, but he's better than both of us.
Speaker 1:He's as
Speaker 3:good as it gets.
Speaker 2:There there's a there's a crust to that, and he's in the crust.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. And I was able to work under him, and now I get to I've worked with him, and now I actually am the auctioneer for his bull sale. So it's if if it hadn't been for him, you know, I might have got roadblocked here and there and just would've stayed pretty local. But, he's the guy that that kept the ball rolling for me to to move up to higher levels.
Speaker 1:We we asked this to Wade when we had him on first. What is the strangest thing you've ever sold?
Speaker 3:I got asked that the other day in Texas, and they didn't think too much of it. I actually didn't sell it. Was in Southern Georgia, and a snake came in the ring. Indoors over here, outdoors over here. The guy in the ring jumped up on the stand, and he's all scared, and I didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3:Well, a snake just crawled in the ring. That's the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. Yeah. In Texas, they're like, I
Speaker 1:don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And the teacher said
Speaker 1:It wasn't a skunk.
Speaker 3:How many kids here have seen a snake? And they all put their hand like, own. Well, ain't too many snakes in Rimbey. But so it might not have been the strangest thing I've ever sold, but there was a snake in the ring right there.
Speaker 1:Well, believe we'd had to clear ring.
Speaker 2:That'd have been the first
Speaker 1:one out. Yeah. I'd be gone. Oh, man. So you you enjoyed your time so so far?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's it's kinda nice
Speaker 3:It's been wonderful. It's beyond belief. Wade knows what I'm talking about. And every single place you go, it's just so many good people, and I'm gonna say 95% of them are so family orientated too. They they they are third, fourth generations, and a lot of them are celebrating 50, seventy five years of owning that auction market in that town, in that family.
Speaker 3:Elgin, Nebraska, Ted Baum, him and his seven brothers and sisters, I believe it is, and his mother, who's 94 years old, is the office manager still, and all of his nieces. I shouldn't say all of them, but quite a few of his nieces and nephews and everybody. What a family operation. And a lot of them are just like that. Geiswoldt family, yesterday, they're third generation, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, everybody's there for the seventy fifth anniversary.
Speaker 3:I get a real joy out of that. That's way it is at home too. Like, the the auction might the Dane's family in Innisfail, the Nilsons, the Vold family, the Phalen's will be like that. They the family atmosphere, that three generations, I think that's a big part of it that really That's highlights
Speaker 1:a big part of our industry as a whole. I mean, as our as a livestock industry, we it's a family oriented and relationship business. I mean, it just the family deal just pretty pretty good. So Are you are you
Speaker 2:doing anything? I started doing this when I was doing it, and then I got lost. Are you doing anything to, like, memorialize your your trips? It it's been hard for me. I was just talking to Eric Smith earlier in Alabama.
Speaker 2:He was reminding me what we did for for lunch and and and, you know, why the story came up and how humorous it was, and I and it just took me a minute to kinda, like, to to catch back up. But I I'm I started making a diary. I probably went halfway through documenting these. Are you doing anything to memorialize it?
Speaker 3:I should be doing more, definitely. And, Chris, take a lot of pictures. Usually, it's of the stake or whatever, wherever I am.
Speaker 1:I But I do take try to
Speaker 3:take some pictures and some videos of every auction market I've been in, and, of course, family pictures too, and, send a lot of them into the LMA so they can, you know, do what they want with them for advertising purposes, but I should be doing more, obviously. Make sure I get some sort of memorabilia whether it's a a shirt or a hat. Of course, a hat because, you know, I can have a collection of hats. My father-in-law, he came with me to a couple when we were in Missouri and Iowa and I don't know. He left for like a truckload of hats.
Speaker 3:So I'm trying to get him a hat everywhere and myself a hat everywhere. I should be writing more down though. So it so it's better remembered. Do take a lot of pictures and a lot of videos though and and try to remember that part of it. The reason why I say that, we had probably the best steak I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 3:The Geisweig family put on a meal there the night prior. And you go to any steak house, it had been like a $125 meal. This thing was huge. But that day, I had biscuits and gravy in the morning. Those egg teachers took me to something Texas authentic, Whataburger.
Speaker 3:And then I had that giant steak dinner that night, and I drank sweet tea all day. And I said it yesterday. Like, my calorie count was just over 22,000.
Speaker 2:You're gonna get back into rodeo. You're gonna be a steer wrestler
Speaker 1:here Yes.
Speaker 2:Before the end of your tour.
Speaker 1:Hey, Katie. That I think that was a hint. We gotta get some caps ready for Dean before.
Speaker 2:Oh, he he got one.
Speaker 3:I got one already.
Speaker 2:Jason got one.
Speaker 3:I need two though. One for my father-in-law.
Speaker 1:Needs two. Needs two. One for the father-in-law. Well, guys, we we probably need to wrap it up here. Dean, thank you for for joining us.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming. Thank you for being a a promoter for the industry, for the auction industry. It's the best way to market cattle, in my opinion, that there is. If you want a no true price whatsoever, you take them to auction.
Speaker 3:Well, of course, there'd be no way we'd be at these levels without the auction. You put them on Facebook and say you want $750, the buyers would be happy to pay you. Yeah. But you've taken the auction, they bring $2,750 Yep.
Speaker 1:That's right. Wade, thanks for filling in. No problem. Everybody in social media land, thank you all very much for watching. If you had any questions for Dean or for Wade or for myself, just put them in the comments.
Speaker 1:We'll get right back to you with those. Don't forget to hit subscribe and like. And if you wanna be a part of the program or you wanna do some advertising, go to live-ag.com. Reach out to Katie, k a t y, at live dash ag dot com, and she will get you fixed up. Thank you all for joining us, and God bless.