 My name is Chris Sweatt and this is my wife Denise. We're here with my two kids, Sarah and Anna. We're here on Sweatt Farms. We farm right out of 1,100 rented and owned land. More cows than any other species, but we also run sheep as well. I was born into farming. We've been farming on, you know, right here where we live for four generations now. I met Denise. She was from a farm family as well. We met in, actually, when we was in college and high school, we met Shoe and Cattle. But then after we got married, we moved back here to the farm and we wanted to start our family here just like I grew up, so that's what we did. We moved back here and started growing the operation. I work for Farm Credit. I'm a regional vice president for Farm Credit and manage five offices for them. I started as an intern back in 1999, and then after I graduated college, come on full time with them and have worked my way up through the years. Chris has taught agriculture. He was teaching before I got out of college. We got married while I was still in college and he was teaching ag and taught ag for 25 years and then he's retired from ag, so he's farming full time now. We both chose roles to work that involved agriculture. So, even though we might not be farming all day, we're helping farmers in everything that we do. You know, we have two girls and both of them are very, very active in agriculture. Both of them are in FFA, both of them are in 4-H. We're very blessed that we've got friends and stuff in our 4-H club that are very active and public speaking. Our daughters have really taken to that and livestock judging. It makes my heart swell with pride that, you know, I was on a state winning livestock team so was Denise and both of our girls have been as well. It's a lot of hard work. There's a lot of mornings that I'd rather, I wish I could sleep in. I wish I could, you know, all of my friends in high school, not many of them had farms, so you know, they were always going to the lake or hanging out and I had to get up and take care of show cows and work cows and so it's something that you think about and, you know, some mornings I wish I could sleep in but I honestly wouldn't trade it for the world. It means a lot to know that I'm learning lessons from people that have been through the same experiences that I'm doing now. Like Sarah mentioned, it's sometimes better to stay quiet because they've been through those things and you can learn a lot from just watching. At the sheep and goats buy-in station, it's fun to work with your family because you know, everyone's got a role to contribute to the industry that we're trying to build at Hope and it's exciting and sometimes nerve-wracking when you've got a bunch on a big sale to get it right but you know, if you do make that mess up, I've got my dad in the ring, he'll help me out and Sarah on the pen and side, I know that she's skilled enough to do it and I feel like it helps us build as a family to work together. He told us you can't raise sheep and goats in South Arkansas because there's no market farm. You have to ship them too far to sell them so a lot of times if you have something that comes up that's you know, a hindrance that just prods you to find solutions and that's kind of what we did. We went and built a market. Everybody said, well, you know, you won't be able to sell 50 head of sheep in Hope Arkansas. Our largest sale that we've had was a thousand. After that, we decided to go into a buying station and we knew the buying station wasn't going to be the fix for long term but we knew it was a short time fix. Last year we was just a few dollars shy of half a million worth of sheep and goats sale dollars wise. Projected this year is going to be a little over 600 within another three years, probably going to be staring right at a million if nothing happens. And I can truly say that the sheep and goat things, one thing that we made an impact, we have built, not single handedly, but between Mr. Duckett and myself and several other people, we've built the sheep and goat industry in Southwest Arkansas. We always run right around 300 cows. We have a set of Resturant Angus cows. We have a set of Resturant Sembrock cows and Resturant Herd of Semitole cows. This herd here is actually Recip cows that we contract the calves out of them from people across the United States, send us embryos, and we put the embryos into our cows and then we raise them for other people on a contract. So we know that when we get a calf on the ground he's pretty well already sold. You know, if you're going to be successful in farming, you can't just sell a product. You know, you got to sell a service. We finally found a niche that we could sell a service and a product. And through the embryos, it helps us sell a service. Chris's goal is to be happy and retired. But I tell you this, our goal is I want to see my kids come back here and add to it. If our kids can come back here and make a living doing what we're doing, then I think that will count that as a win. You know, in terms of direction of our farm, I don't know that I think a lot of people get stuck in a rut and they want to make sure they all go in, you know, they set a goal and they want to go in one direction. You know, I don't know, next year or 10 years from now, you know, we may be putting in more embryos or we may be raising turnip greens out here. I don't know. I think you've got to have a little bit of flexibility when you farm. I let my kids have a lot of input in it. You know, if they want to go in a direction and we can justify it, then that's what we do. There's a lot of things we don't have flexibility on and, you know, we don't have flexibility when it comes to, you know, the integrity of the land, the integrity of our family. We want to do stuff that, you know, my great-grandfather would be proud of. You know, when I was in school, when I was in high school, we had a teacher tell us one time that you find a job that you like and you'll never work a day in your life. That's false. That's absolutely false. It's hard work. It's hard work. It's getting out there and going to work, you know, every day, saddled with debt, saddled with high input costs, saddled with the uncertainty of the weather, saddled with the uncertainty of the markets, but on the flip side of that, you know, I wouldn't choose anything else. If I had to do all over again, I'd do that every day.