In the 30th episode of This is Ag!, I sit down with Eric Rygg, president of Huntsinger Farms and Silver Spring Foods. As a fourth-generation horseradish farmer, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge about sustainable and profitable farming practices. We delve into how businesses can endure and adapt over time, with a focus on the importance of long-term investments in both the land and employees as a sustainable business practice. Eric shares how longevity is built into the foundation of his family business, which has thrived for 95 years by remaining family-oriented and investing in future generations. He discusses the critical role of resilience in the face of uncertainty and emphasizes the importance of readiness for opportunities. Eric also highlights the strong work ethic and common sense needed to survive in the agriculture industry. Tune in to hear how these principles have guided Eric and contributed to the lasting success and sustainability of Huntsinger Farms.
In the 30th episode of This is Ag!, I sit down with Eric Rygg, president of Huntsinger Farms and Silver Spring Foods. As a fourth-generation horseradish farmer, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge about sustainable and profitable farming practices. We delve into how businesses can endure and adapt over time, with a focus on the importance of long-term investments in both the land and employees as a sustainable business practice.
Eric shares how longevity is built into the foundation of his family business, which has thrived for 95 years by upholding family-oriented values and investing in future generations. He discusses the critical role of resilience in the face of uncertainty and emphasizes the importance of readiness for opportunities. Eric also highlights the strong work ethic and common sense needed to survive in the agriculture industry. Tune in to hear how these principles have guided Eric and contributed to the lasting success and sustainability of Silver Spring Foods.
Silver Spring Foods website - https://www.silverspringfoods.com/
This episode is sponsored by UnitedAg, one of the largest association health plans to offer healthcare to the agriculture industry of California and Arizona.
Kirti Mutatkar, President and CEO of UnitedAg.
Reach me at kmutatkar@unitedag.org, www.linkedin.com/in/kirtimutatkar
UnitedAg website - www.unitedag.org
Episode Contributors - Eric Rygg, Kirti Mutatkar, Dave Visaya, Rhianna Macias
The episode is also sponsored by Brent Eastman Insurance Services Inc. - https://brenteastman.com
Blue Shield of California - https://www.blueshieldca.com
Elite Medical - https://www.elitecorpmed.com
Gallagher - https://www.ajg.com/
SAIN Medical https://sainmedical.com/
MDI Network - https://www.mdinetworx.com/about-us
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:00:04] I am super, super excited today to have the president of Silver Spring Fruits with us. And he's from Wisconsin! So super excited to be talking to someone outside of California. So welcome to the show.
Eric Rygg: [00:00:17] Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And in fact, I grew up in California. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and spent a lot of my life up in the mountains, in Lake Tahoe, skiing and ski racing. So I took the kind of standard path from skiing and ski racing out to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which is where we have the world's largest grower and processor of horseradish.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:00:40] That is interesting. So from California to Wisconsin, from skiing to agriculture, that's an interesting transition. How does that, I mean, what was the reason behind that?
Eric Rygg: [00:00:52] Well, we're a family business. So I'm a fourth generation horseradish farmer. My great grandfather, Ellis Hunsinger started our company 95 years ago. We're celebrating 95 years this year. Uh, 1929. So it was right before the Great Depression. He was a door to door lightning rod salesman. And I think there's only so many people you can resell those to. So he actually fell back on his family heritage, which was in agriculture and farming. You know, he grew all the things that everybody else did. He had potatoes and he had sweetcorn and strawberries and melons and horseradish, you know, maybe from his German background, heritage. And that really took off and some of the reasons are where we are geographically is near the 45th parallel up here. So the weather climate is just about ideal for horseradish. The soil is excellent as well. So what he found was the horseradish really flourished. If you get farther south in climate, there's a lot more sun, a lot longer summers, and all the energy goes into these big, beautiful green leaves from the horseradish plant. That's not what we're interested in. We actually don't use the leaves at all. We want big, hearty, bulky roots under the ground, and we kind of joke around that. They like to kind of bulk up for the winter. And we certainly do have winters out here. They're cold. It's natural cold storage for the horseradish. And it really took off. It became the real lightning rod and horseradish sales soared in the region and then even nationally.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:02:21] So that's interesting. So he tested. So you are in the perfect. The horseradish cannot be grown in California. Right. Because based on what you just said, the amount of summers, the winter and the time that it takes and the fattening of so is that your.
Eric Rygg: [00:02:37] It grows in California. There's an area in Northern California in, uh, Tule Lake, California. It's right on the border of California and Oregon. Oregon, but it's at an upper elevation, and they have a slightly different process. So I don't know if it's the pH of the soil or the fact that they're at elevation. But our process is we will go out and cut pieces of the horseradish root apart into pieces, and then we'll go back out and plant those pieces, and they grow into another root, and Tule Lake, they actually, when they harvest horseradish, they harvest about half the root. And then the remaining root stays in the ground and grows into another plant. It regenerates that way. So slightly different, you know, processes -- they have the benefit of not having to plant. But I think there has been strain on their system over time, which is kind of more fibrous roots in some more bitter flavors coming out of the product from that region. And it's probably has to do with kind of how they're farming the horseradish.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:03:34] Interesting. So is there, when you farm horseradish, do you grow some other agricultural products? Use the root for the soil and the growth of the soil, nutrients and stuff. You actually have another crop growing in between. Is that true of horseradish?
Eric Rygg: [00:03:52] It is so true. And this was learned the hard way, unfortunately, by my grandfather and great grandfather way back in the day, growing horseradish in the same field year after year, they noticed the yields kept diminishing. Now, why is that? Well, you're taking some nutrients out of the soil. You're not having that biodiversity, which we know is so important and you're more susceptible to diseases. So we got hit by something called verticillium wilt, which, you know, attacks potatoes. It makes these brown and black rings inside the horseradish. Same thing that it would do for potatoes. And so then we moved to a rotation, a crop rotation. And we played around with it. How long, how many different crops do you put in there. Is it two years three years five years seven years. So we've now landed on again. We've had a lot of experience 95 years. We've been now doing a crop rotation for the last 50, you know, about half that time. And it's been very successful for sustainability. And it's 5 to 7 years. So in between.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:04:53] Seven years you, uh have a crop rotation. Got it.
Eric Rygg: [00:04:56] And when we did that, what it requires is a lot more land. So we were able to acquire more land over those years, over those 95 years. So it's nice because we have some land on the books that my great grandfather bought and we have some, you know, all the way fast forward to, to recently where we purchased land just at a very different price per acre for sure. So we now farm on about 5000 acres in Wisconsin to support about 900 acres of horseradish. So we can go through that rotation. And then we grow corn, we grow soybeans, we have alfalfa. Sometimes we grow snap beans depending on the year. And we are leaning into regenerative farming practices. Now where we're looking at cover cropping, we're looking at the bio diversity and biologicals to unlock the nutrients that are already in the soil. Precision farming. So we understand, you know, what the plant needs and what's in the soil in that area, and then only adding what is necessary, not anything more or less right. And looking at tillage and compaction and really everything around it. It's very exciting in agriculture right now because of the knowledge and some of these new techniques that we can really lean into that for the goal of having better soil health and better plant health, and therefore we'll have better yields ultimately.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:06:16] So when you are describing it, when you think of it from an environmental standpoint, it's basically, it's sustainability and all that is taking place here, even starting with crop rotation, you're not depleting the Earth. Right? So you kind of do the crop rotation in a natural way. And just listening to you seems to be you're spending a lot of time with sustainability and what you bring to the farm and what you do.
Eric Rygg: [00:06:43] Yeah, I think sustainability has been important to us for a long time. We realized that if we want to be around for a long time. And we have; we're for generations, right? I think that's a huge advantage to family businesses in a lot of ways because we can think long term. We can think, you know, what's going to be good for not just the next quarter and to maximize my return on investment, but what's going to be good for the next generation, what's going to be good for the next ten years? So I view us as kind of stewards of the land, and we want to be good stewards of the land, and I think we just have so much more data and knowledge and technology available to us to understand what's really going on right with the land. And we can then deploy some practices to make sure that we are going to be around. I want to be around for another 95 years and another four generations if possible. So I think that long term thinking helps us. Yeah. You know, do some of these or make some of these long, maybe longer term investments or decisions.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:07:41] And you know what? That's the big underlying theme across all the episodes I've done. When somebody's looking at it from outside, right. And any other industries, I think one of the big lessons in agriculture is that long term thinking, because in everything that we do, it is for the long term, even including when you look at United Ag and what we do right, when you look at the health and wellness of our members that we serve, it actually does not have an impact right away. Sometimes people say, is that going to make my renewal less or my prices less might not happen in a year or two, but when you start thinking long term, that's going to bring the health. Taking care, like you said, taking care of the plants. That's a long term. Another 95 years, right. Your kids and grandkids. And that's the same thing. It teaches you to think long term and make sure that you're not making a decision based on today's quarter this year, right. You're making it this sustaining year after year. That is so true.
Eric Rygg: [00:08:42] Yeah. It's, and again, with our health care here, it's expensive like it is in California. And we are self-insured for you know pairing the agricultural side with the manufacturing side. And we have a huge incentive to have a healthy workforce. Uh, one to, to keep them out of the hospital system, if possible. Yeah. And also to maintain that productivity. And that's a long term process, you know. So what kind of wellness programs can we bring? How can we make sure that we're making healthy choices on a day to day basis. So again, over the long term we can be healthier or we can catch something early before it becomes a bigger problem. You know, there is a corollary there that's 100 agriculture.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:09:24] 100%, and you have around 200, 300 employees. Right? Is that.
Eric Rygg: [00:09:29] Yeah, we're about we're about to kind of hold and steady about 250 right now.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:09:33] Oh, and do you have seasonal and non seasonal workers? What does that mix look like?
Eric Rygg: [00:09:39] We do. Yeah. So 250 would be our full time employees. And then we do scale up in the spring and in the fall for spring and fall harvest. So for horseradish we do harvest every year and in the fall we play a game of chicken with Old man Winter. The longer we wait, the better our yields are going to be. But if we wait too long, we can get frozen out.. So. We got stung a couple of years ago where we got frozen out and we had about $2 million shortage of horseradish that was hard to fill. So we're always kind of conscious of that. We have to harvest to be able to plant. As I described before, we take pieces of the root off called setts. And then we have to go back out and plant. So years that we haven't been able to harvest, we also haven't been able to plant. So it affects us for the next 12, 18, 24 from four months. And then we go back out in the spring as well. Whenever the snow melts here in Wisconsin, sometimes that can be late. We've been as early as late March for harvest. Average is about mid-April, but we've also been as late as kind of mid-May for harvesting, depending on the season. And I just actually saw a big snowstorm in California, and Tahoe was like two feet of snow. Yes, in May it was like the biggest snow. So the weather can be a little bit erratic. And, you know, that's possible.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:11:02] Yeah, that's for somebody outside of agriculture. And that's always when you think of your managing risks, when you run your business and you have the known risks that you do and the unknown risk and weather is such a big unknown risk, right? How does that work?
Eric Rygg: [00:11:21] We live in two worlds because we're in food manufacturing, where we are trying to control literally everything in the factory to improve efficiencies and just keep grinding away at that and getting better, you know, every week, every year, a little more efficient. And then on the farm, we're trying to do the same thing. We're trying to control what we can, which is about 10%. I feel like 90%, you know, so it's a little tougher.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:11:45] 90% of the will of God.
Eric Rygg: [00:11:48] But what it does is, at least for our mindset, as we're trying to focus on things that will help us knowing that the weather is a little bit erratic, what can we do to be ready? Right. What can we do to build in that resiliency into the farming side of our equation? Because there's so much that's out of our control. So that looks like, you know, we built a new farm shop for maintaining equipment. So over the winter months we're able to do the maintenance, everything that we need to do so that our equipment is ready to deploy when the weather cooperates and allows us to be out and do the field work, making sure we're staffed properly, we're trying to get our farmland closer to our center of operation as well, so we're more efficient with deploying the resources to get out to the field and back. So when we have those windows of opportunity, we can be ready. We are not broken down, we're not in the shop. We're not waiting for moving equipment around. We can go out and do what we need to do because we feel like though, it's becoming more erratic. You know, whatever's going on with climate change, as a farmer, we just notice that it seems to be, you know, it's going our farmers are never happy. It's always too wet, too dry. It's too hot, it's too cold. It's too something. Yeah. When we have those windows, it's so important for us to be able to take advantage of that time and not be waiting around for equipment.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:13:12] Yeah. And it's such a narrow margin of business. So anything up and down, right. It throws it off. But Eric let me, uh. So looks like when we talk about this, it's a lot of stress, right? I mean, not stress, but you look like you manage it well. But as and this question is more as you as a human being and I'm always curious about. So when I started This is Ag! 2 or 3, two and a half years from that point to who I am today, I'm a different person because I've heard a lot of people come into this show and talk. I'm a different person from when I started at UnitedAg and where I'm today. And every day as I'm going through the pressures of running United Ag and things and exploring what our members need or not need, I am changing as a human being for the better. So that's what makes it very exciting for me. So when I was thinking about this, this is Friday morning, I was excited to get on this call because I wanted to hear you and learn and grow. So do you feel, so you had a different, uh, you were thinking of skiing and a different career for you before, and then you came into agriculture. Do you think this has had an impact on the way you live life and who you are today?
Eric Rygg: [00:14:27] No doubt. I think one of the reasons I got sucked into the Ag side is I found it to be very interesting. And, you know, it's a family business. So we've had horseradish at our dinner table my entire life, even as a young lad, traveling around all over the world to ski and ski race. And I got asked a lot about the farm and about the company over those years. And I got frustrated with not knowing the answers. So I would then go and ask, like, how do we do this? How do we get this product on the shelf? What is the rotation for horseradish? What makes horseradish hot? Why is some hotter than others? And so as I built up this base of knowledge, I was able to answer, you know, more questions. But as you know, as you learn more, you find out the more you don't know. And it's a continual lifelong learning of being kind of humble in that. And even now, you know, with all the years now that I've been involved with the company, I'm still in a learning mode. One of the things I think that's changed over the years for me in getting into agriculture and understanding that I can't control everything. Things are going to happen. Problems are going to come up. Sometimes I feel like the whack a mole game where kind of tackling, especially as a as an executive, president, CEO. You tackle one problem and then two come up. And I used to get pretty frustrated by that. You know like, oh man, we just kind of got our hands around this issue. And now there's all these other things coming up. And I've learned to embrace this fact of life that, you know, think about farming, too. It's just you never know what's going to happen. And, you know, the process of trying to solve the problems, knowing that they're going to be more coming up, not getting too comfortable with kind of complacency in the status quo. And that's the journey. And that opened my thinking up a lot more. And it became less stressful, to be honest.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:16:15] That's actually yeah. As you're talking about it, it has a from a spiritual standpoint, the good or bad, whatever comes our way to have that sense of calmness and deal with the good and bad in an equal way and learn from it. Right. That's how, as you were talking about, that's what I see because as I'm looking at you and this is going to be a more audio podcast than a video podcast, I might come in to Wisconsin and kind of do it on your field one of these days. Uh, but today it's going to be that. But if somebody were looking at you, I see a sense of calm on your face, even when you're talking about all the things from that could be stressful in agriculture. And that's the reason it made me ask you that, because it seems like you bring a sense of calm into anything that you do, and that seemed to be how you approach your problems.
Eric Rygg: [00:17:01] Well, in ski racing, too, I had spent a lot of time with the, you know, the training part, and you get into the race and it can be a little bit scary, especially the downhill skiing so fast and you don't know exactly what's going to happen, but you just say, hey, I'm going to rely on my training and see what kind of results I get and be pretty happy with that. And I think that helped kind of deal with some of the stress and anxiety that could happen here. And I certainly felt that earlier in my career with the agricultural side and the manufacturing side. And just you could get overwhelmed so fast if you worried about all those things. And I agree with you. I think, you know, some of these problems that come up can be opportunities to get better or to learn. Someone, someone once told me the high cost of education is really what happens after college. You know, and it's through our experiences and through our trials and tribulations and often our mistakes.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:17:59] So true. And yeah, and especially when I see a lot of this in the Ag industry and even at United Ag, it's not the colleges and the highups that people have on their resume, it's what you just said. It's what you learn from day in, day out, doing the things that you need to do. And those are the ones who actually have a bigger impact on what they do. So that's that is so true. I actually see it happen within United Ag. It's what you learn. The lessons you learn from that education definitely happens outside of college, that's for sure.
Eric Rygg: [00:18:36] And allowing my teammates and employees to be able to fall, you know, to get back up. Hey, what did I learn from this? Yeah. And that knowledge I want to keep here. Right. If there's a big mistake, it's like, well yeah, that was financially impactful. But what did we learn from it. And then that knowledge can stay here and we can move on and we're much more seasoned. I feel like as a team with that allowance, knowing that it's going to happen, it's going to be okay. We'll find a way to work through then. And when we face the next set of challenges, we have so much more knowledge and we're kind of more calm. I guess in the storm, if you use kind of a sailing analogy, but it's been fun. It's a fun business. We have a long term view, and its super, super challenging at times. But I'm just excited again, back to learning. You know, what else can we do? How else can we lean into regenerative agriculture? What kinds of things can we do on the farm that help us generate the flavor profile that we're looking for in the horseradish for the factory? And one of those things was kind of innovative. We novel to our category. We created a heat index for horseradish. Yeah, we looked at peppers. It's kind of in our space, different chemistry. If you look at a jalapeno or a habanero, it's capsaicin is the chemical in there. And Doctor Scoville created, you know, Scoville units to measure how hot a pepper was relative to other peppers based on kind of a dilution strategy.
Eric Rygg: [00:20:03] We're like, well, why don't we use that model and do something for horseradish? Yeah, horseradish has different chemistry. The chemical that makes it hot is called allyl isothiocyanate. So it's a long word. And we developed in partnership with some universities. And then we brought all that process in-house. We call it the zing factor, where we can measure different levels of ITC and the horseradish roots as we grind them. Some interesting thing about horseradish is that when you put it in your mouth, it's not hot, but as soon as you start chewing on it, it releases this enzymatic reaction to blast you with this ITC. And that's what goes up into your nose and makes your eyes water and makes you cry. The more of that that's in the product that releases, the more of that tear to your eye sensation you get. And it's in the same family as mustard, so it's also in mustard. It's also wasabi is related. The same chemical at the core of the mustard seed in a wasabi root is this allyl isothiocyanate. So we created the zing factor to be able to measure different heat levels for different products that we bring to market. And we can use that process to look at our agricultural and farming practices. You know, what is it that generates the heat on the farm? What are we looking for? What kinds of things can we do to make sure that we have meet the consumer's interest or expectation? So it's been really fun kind of leaning into those types of projects.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:21:39] That's so interesting. That's interesting. One of the things I've been asking, uh, so we're going through a performance review process right now at UnitedAg. And one of the questions I ask everyone is, do you find joy in what you do? If you don't, then maybe this is not a place for you, right? Because if you're doing it as a job, if you're doing it as a day to day, I have to do this, then you don't find that fulfilling. It doesn't really, uh, reflect on the work, and it feels like you find joy in this, so, uh, that's exciting, I think.
Eric Rygg: [00:22:12] Yeah. I've been surrounded by piles of horseradish abundant supply my entire life. What else can we do with this? Well, how can we innovate? So that's been kind of weighing on my mind for nine decades. And now at this point, it's kind of it's kind of fun. It comes out and we can bring some new and innovative products to market in that regard. Yeah. One thing about the review process. So we asked something similar on our review process. And we have a matrix and we do a self-assessment version. And then the manager can look at the self-assessment and then put their own information in. I think that's helpful to get like hey, how do you view how you're doing here? And then your manager can confirm it or point out some of the differences, like I thought I did well here. And well, we have a matrix and it's on a scale of 1 to 10, how challenged do you feel at work, you know, and then how appreciated do you feel at work and when they fill it out? It's a great tool for managers to say, wow, okay.
Eric Rygg: [00:23:12] If this person is low on the I feel challenged at work. You know, maybe we need to get that person in a new role where it's more challenging or difficult or more responsibilities. So that's a way to kind of, this came about with the kind of the great resignation when we were challenged to retain and recruit new employees. Well, how do we how do we make sure that we keep everybody we have? And then the appreciation side, if you're low in appreciation, that's a flight risk too. So if you're bored and not appreciated, you know that person probably isn't going to stay a long time. If you're highly, you know, feel appreciated but not challenged, maybe we can move that person around. Or if you feel really challenged and low on the appreciation scale, then there's a risk for burnout there. So this is a good tool for our managers to say, all right, where do I need to work on with this person? And it was great. It was a good self assessment.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:24:04] That's actually I might add that to mine as I do it because how challenged are you at work is again, it goes back to the joy part a little bit, right? Because if you're not challenged, some of us might not find the joy and how appreciated you are, because sometimes you forget. Even as managers and leaders, we forget to appreciate other people because there's so much that happens, right? You kind of when something goes wrong, that's when you jump in like, oh, why did this go wrong? But when you are doing a great work, you don't usually tend to say, stop and say, oh, this was really good. What happened here? So that's a great way to kind of look at my performance review. The way I'm looking at it is I give them when you said matrix, I also have a matrix, but I usually what I find is we decide if a decision is a good decision or a bad decision based on the outcomes. Right. So especially in agriculture, that's so true because your good decisions could have bad outcomes, because the bad outcomes could be weather related or whatever. It happens. Or it could be a bad decision with good outcome, but it is a bad decision. So I want our managers and supervisors to think, is a decision inherently good or bad in itself? And without basing it on the outcome? So that's one of the things that we want to reflect on and see.
Eric Rygg: [00:25:21] That's a great insight. I think especially in agriculture. You're right. It was still a good decision, even if we had a bad outcome sometimes. Sometimes it was just a bad decision. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is a distinction between those two.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:25:31] Yeah. Because you couldn’t plan especially during Covid time. We saw that right. You planted, certain expecting that the market is going to be this or whatever that number was. And if things changed and it would, would you still repeat that. Of course you'll repeat that because maybe next year you're not going to have Covid or whatever. Right. So it's very interesting to look at it from that perspective. It just gets you thinking in a different way. But Eric, anything else, any stories that come to mind for you as you think back at your journey at Silver Spring. Is there anything that stands out that was like a learning lesson for you?
Eric Rygg: [00:26:07] I think one story that's coming to mind again, putting me on the spot here a little bit, but it would come out. So I grew up in California and I got to, you know, ski a lot. We, we did the commute up to Lake Tahoe every weekend, and I did the skiing and ski racing thing. But I'd come out here in the summertime and I'd work on the farm in the summertime. So I kind of my whole life we'd at least visit. We'd come to the farm, we'd come to the factory, we got to see all the cool equipment and all the John Deere tractors and everything. I got to walk through the factory, and every time I came back, it just we added another piece of equipment or we got a little bit more efficient, or there was something, there was always something new there. And that kind of struck me. I came across this photo of me and my brother in the factory when we were probably 7 or 8, and so much has changed. Literally, we were wearing shorts and a t shirt, Velcro shoes, no hairnet or anything. So we're walking around and there's pictures of us. And now, of course, food manufacturing in the factory, full garb, you know, the white coats, the the hairnets, you know, you have to do all the hand washing.
Eric Rygg: [00:27:18] So it was a little more lax back then, I think. But then, you know, as my brother and I got older and we got to then start working on the farm and engaging with employees, it was so helpful to understand, you know, working side by side with everybody to learn about different aspects of the company. I particularly enjoyed working on the farm side. I felt like as the owner's son, that I had to work harder and not break anything. And I was so fortunate that summer that I put my hours in. I worked as hard as everybody else or harder, and I was just really focused on not breaking any equipment and doing everything I needed to do. And I remember there was two guys that were working on the farm crew that summer, and they kept kind of messing up a little bit. You know, one guy drove a tractor with a smokestack, was a little high under a bridge, and then bent the smokestack backwards. He couldn't hear the end of it in the lunchroom. So you absolutely got skewered if you messed up. So there's farmers have a lot of common sense. There's a pride in that, and they are not afraid to share their thoughts about what you're doing right and wrong.
Eric Rygg: [00:28:30] That was a great lesson. And there was another guy who, you know, had the misfortune of we were hauling hay bales around, and he's not supposed to smoke, of course. And this guy was a smoker and was smoking in the cab and threw a cigarette out the window, and the hay bales stick out a foot and a half on either side. You know, they got the red flags and everything out there. And of course, the whole thing goes up in flames. You're driving down the highway. What does it need? It needs oxygen. It's got a little, you know, spark. And it was a wooden lowboy trailer and the whole thing, he had to pull over, of course, and the whole thing burnt apart. And the next month, as especially, we hauled it back eventually and we're now have it in the shop that the Lowboy trailer. And we are literally repairing it piece by piece, board by board, the melted lights on the back. And this poor soul just couldn't hear the end of it. And he will never do, he'll never make that mistake again. But those two, you know, definitely took the heat off of me. That, you know, that summer, I can't keep my head down.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:29:39] Actually, when you're telling the story, I was seeing the picture of the flames going up.
Eric Rygg: [00:29:45] So I just keep my head down, work hard and get through it. And it was so valuable that what I got to see, too, is just the work ethic of farmers, of people in the ag industry, and the common sense that you have to have to be able to survive. So it was very impactful and informs me now, as we're still running the farm and some of the challenges that we face today.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:30:08] And keeps you humble. All right. I think you you've grown up. I know you've learned and done everything that needs to be done, so no job is beneath you. I think that also.
Eric Rygg: [00:30:19] Especially when you're the rookie on the team and the youngest, you get the shovel. And I got the best MBA you can get better than an MBA from Stanford.
Eric Rygg: [00:30:32] The calluses on the hands. Yeah.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:30:33] Yeah. Agreed.
Eric Rygg: [00:30:34] That was one of my first jobs was to we had a lightning storm and our irrigation system got affected by that. There was a guide. I don't think they do this anymore, but there was a guide wire underneath the soil, and a lightning storm broke it apart someplace. So we had to find the break, dig down 3 or 4ft, and then try to then fix it. So of course we had a team there and one guy was looking for the hole, and the other guy, me, had the shovel, and I had to dig the ditch and dig down. It was a little bit of trial and error. Find the chord. And if you found the break, great. Otherwise, you have to move on and dig another hole. So yeah.
Eric Rygg: [00:31:14] Pretty good experience.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:31:16] Good stories, good stories. Anything else that we missed? Anything you would like to add?
Eric Rygg: [00:31:22] Well I think yeah. One other thing that is interesting for us. Well, I usually start out, uh, I read this book by Simon Sinek and he started with the why.
So I usually start my presentations with our why, you know, why do we exist. You know what's our purpose. And that that's kind of helped guide us along the way. You know, for a while we just looked at ourselves as a horseradish company. And when I came in, I was trying to challenge that, thinking a little bit and try to think, you know, why do we exist? Why do people buy our product? And I kind of boiled it down to a very simple thing, but we make your food taste better. You know, we make condiments. We're we're in the condiments space for sure. But when we make something, if it's making your food taste the same or worse, no one's going to buy our product again. So everything we make here, we kind of hold up through that prism to make sure that we are delivering on that purpose. So the long handed version of that is we bring excitement and flavor to the food you eat. Yeah, the shorthand is give it zing with silver Spring.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:32:29] Nice, nice. I was just going to say you add flavor to the life, right. I like spice and, uh, without any spice in there, especially actually the when you're talking about peppers, uh, the green peppers. And I am recently I'm finding I found out that I'm allergic to something in there. And I like spicy food. So there I'm going to be a horseradish fan. They're different.
Eric Rygg: [00:32:51] Yeah. Totally different chemistry. So you can. And what's great about horseradish is like a roller coaster. It hits you in the nose right away. It's the excitement, but then it dissipates.
Eric Rygg: [00:33:02] Versus the capsaicin from peppers. Yeah. You know, hits your mouth and the heat builds. It's kind of telling you like your mouth is on fire. So. Yeah. Um, so that's pretty cool. And again, so back to our mission and the fact that we're kind of a long term tenured, business, family oriented, fourth generation, 95 years, you know, my goal really is to, you know, leave the company when I, when I come in, you know, what am I trying to do on a day to day basis? Well, what I'm thinking about is how can I leave this business? I was I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity to leave it in better shape for the next generation. That's guided a lot of our thinking on sustainability and regenerative ag, but also in the factory. How can we just make things better? And I've got four kind of pillars. I call them pillars that kind of guide our planning, our senior management and kind of everything rolls up into these pillars. And it's number one, we want to be a great place to work, you know, with great employees. You know, the farm crew I mentioned, you know, giving our employees opportunities to advance. You know, we talked about appreciation and the challenge, making sure they're in the right spot. We'll be able to have and retain the employees. We need to be able to do the second pillar, which is essentially what every business is solving problems for customers.
Eric Rygg: [00:34:21] And we want to continue to focus on that, making sure that we're adding value to who we're working with. And if you have great employees and they're solving problems for customers, we'll be more successful and we'll be able to then give back to the community. So we talk about how do we weave our brand into the fabric of the communities that we serve. And my last pillar is to make the world a tastier place. No roast beef sandwich left behind. That's back to the, you know, the products we actually make here to making sure that when we bring them to market, when we bring them to consumers, they fulfill that value proposition that we're thinking about and that we can be different from some of the other bigger players, that we're a family business. But there's mega food companies out there that have vastly more resources than we do. So how can we be different? How can we stand out? How can we still appeal to consumers? And I think if we do those four things well, we're going to be future proof, meaning we're going to be around, we're going to be able to be around for another 95 years and kind of have that longer term thinking. So I kind of leave you with that. That's kind of guiding our thinking and helping organize all the activities of the employees moving forward.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:35:33] So just listening to you today and listening to you the first time when we met, you are different by being just who you are, right? By being who you are. I think you are setting a difference the way you are looking at the business and the way you're approaching your employees and what you do. And kind of when you said the Simon Sinek Why? By just doing that, you're adding flavor. I mean, the This is Ag! podcast was flavorful because of that and I, I just because I think just the flavor part of it, I, I think that's the most important. Right. Because when you think of when I was thinking through it and earlier I asked you, flavor is so deep within us of how we enjoy food and the flavor. And when you do it with the right intentions and the right whys and do the way you're running your family business, I think success is yours to have. It's, um, a kudos to you for what you do. And thank you for coming and joining me today.
Eric Rygg: [00:36:31] And we'll pray for a great weather.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:36:34] For sure.