Who is Chase Brooke
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chase Brooke, he is a county extension agent and one 100% he’s a bad ass. He knows all types of things. He’s super smart. He’s quick on the draw. We’re going to discuss who he is. Right. We’re going to go over what goes on. We’re going to see what he likes. We’re going to find out his deepest, darkest fears and all of that and more here in just a second. So, Chase, kind of like describe yourself and start and tell us what you’re all about.
Yeah. So I work as a county extension agent for the Texas A&M or Life Extension Service. We’re part of the university system, went to school there, got my bachelor’s and master’s at Texas A&M, and I liked it so much that I went to go work for him. I have an affinity for the colors, maroon and white, too.
And so really what I do is I work in the county as like a local resource for pretty much anyone farmers, ranchers, landowners, real estate agents. You know, I’m here to provide education and information. Right? So I’ve been on workshops and programs, seminars, but I also do a lot of day to day question and question and answer, you know, whether it’s someone who, I mean, literally will bring in a bucket full of weeds.
They dug up, they dug up out of their pasture. And what are these? And helping them identify them, the ones that they send via email are a little more convenient phone calls.
What’s wrong with my plan? Why is my cow walking funny? You know, hey, I just bought a property. I have 50 acres now. And what do I do with it? You know, kind of covering it. I would say the the way we typically describe it is we’re all about a mile wide and, you know, some places an inch deep, some places a foot. But we do we cover pretty much everything, like I said, again, natural resources related here,
The amount of things that, you know is just tremendous. Your depth and breadth of the items just like goes and goes and goes. So some of the questions I asked you when we were walking around a property in general were things like a bunch of crazy ones. I was like, hey, where should this tree go? What is this one? Where do I plant this? How do I do this? We were worried about, like, soil erosion.
And you told different types of different ways to stop that. Like, what could we do here? How could we do that? Right. And we just walked around in. He just, like, knows it all. And you just walk through and you’re like, wow, that’s really impressive. Then I’m like, hey, let’s get rid of poison ivy. So I have a small patch right here and poison ivy. And that’s always a when you get to wear that badge. But you told me how to get rid of poison ivy, poison ivy, easy on the property. And that was
Well, I’ve been I’m a big proponent of bringing goats on. If you can keep them corralled. They love eating poison ivy. It’s like candy to them. You know, you might not want to hug them for a little bit after, but they they will eat the tar out of it. And it’s a good alternative for especially for areas where maybe you don’t want to spray pesticides or herbicides. Maybe it’s a little too close to a playground or a water body. You know, they it can be a ton of fun. I was actually out wrangling goats yesterday. I’m not even kidding. I was the designated goat wrangler for our horse show.
And then you said so they’re kind of like a center pivot, right?
You put a leash on it. You know, one of those little harnesses like you get on a dog and just put it on a steak and I’ll just eat everything in that circle.
Yeah. So that’ll help us out there. So I need to just get it. Go how to go talk to a guy about a goat some time here pretty soon and see if we get that all solved. Do you have any other like interesting tidbits, just like random fun facts that you want to throw out there?
Oh, I mean, I’ve got I’m full of interesting tidbits. Yeah, totally. I office mates are probably tired of them at this point. But, you know, one of the fun things and I shared this with you when we were out on that property visit, so we have all these cedar trees, these eastern red tiers that grow up here. You actually have male and female trees and the male ones are cows are the ones that cause allergies.
So if you’re looking at cutting down a bunch of eastern red cedars, cut down the male ones, they’re the ones that are orange with all the pollen in February, or this time you’re the ones without the berries on them. Cut those down and it should help with your allergies.
Isn’t it crazy just like that one fun fact. And you’re like, whoa, OK. And then we were talking about like some grasses the other day when we were out there. Right. You’re like, oh, you want this grass but not this grass and like all these different things and how you can test the soil. And I do just like so many items that I want to get to write, talk about maybe soil testing, because that was kind of cool for nutrients and whatever.
Yeah. So one of the big one of the services we provide and there are other labs around the state, but it’s soil testing as a service. So really being able to go in, you dig up some soil from across your yard or your garden or your pasture and you mail it into our soil testing lab and they’ll analyze it and send you back a result of the nutrient of what nutrients are in there.
And so you can know exactly how much fertilizer you need to add. Right. And so the idea is then you’re not wasting any money by putting on fertilizer you don’t need or, you know, you might be applying fertilizer and your lawn isn’t looking as good as a result. So being able to really tie in exactly what you need and dial in your management regime can save you a lot of time, money and heartache.
And so it could be different from one piece of property to the next. Right. So like your neighbor and yourself could have different ones.
It’s even different. It can even be different from your front yard to your backyard. You know, there when we were walking around, we were pointing out like there you could see almost where the soil’s change
While he could see, you know, the glasses. Yeah, OK, I put these on the sidewalk outside. I’ll totally know the difference in the soils and.
Mm hmm. But yeah. And and so you can actually have a difference in the front yard or the backyard and whether that soils and maybe it’s the same so. Well you know it maybe you don’t fertilize the backyard as often just because, you know, maybe people don’t see it as much. But those kinds of things, you know, we would always I would always recommend you test them separately. Then that way you get kind of a very customized personalized analysis result to use for when you’re doing your yard work.
Yeah, that was tremendous and you said there’s an app for that, right? And tell me about because there’s a huge study done on that. I had no earthly idea my mind was blown.
Yeah. And so that goes back to the back in the nineteen hundreds through. I think they finished in like twenty seventeen or somewhere. More recently though, do you think they surveyed every single soul in the United States.
Ok, so just stop and think about that for just a second everybody. Right. All the soil samples and the like. The whole country. Mm hmm. And it’s already gone. It’s been mapped.
Yep. And I was done through the I think it was the Department of Interior and the USDA went through and categorized and classified all those soil so that we know you can pull up a map through an app like Social Web from UC Davis or the USDA’s website or survey and pull up a map of exactly what kind of soil you’re on and not just what kind of soil, but all the characteristics.
Is it good for building a road? Is it good for planting corn? You know, should you build a house on it? What can you expect as far as how deep it is? And they really go into the weeds, if you would, on all the different properties of these soils. And it’s very it’s a very useful resource when you’re just trying to wrap your head around what you’ve got and where you are.
Yeah, so let’s go into some of your you know, so you go out and you do all these site visits and you get to have all these planned interactions. Tell me some of these things. When you go out there like your your time when you’re standing there and you’re just like, hey, this is amazing. You just kind of feel like goosebumps. What does that for you?
And it’s what I’m walking out not in August, OK, anyways, when we’re kind of like that nice April time frame, when the weather’s cool, you know, you got some nice sunshine, you know, walking out and just the air’s real crisp in the morning and just looking out. There’s just like a beautiful pasture. Got maybe some livestock, a little pond. You just sit there, you’re just like, hey,
I now know there’s do you want it with, like, a little bit to do on the ground or like, what are you looking for there.
So it depends. If I’m wearing my boots at night and I’m wearing my normal slip on boots, they get a little damp. Wet feet is worth it, you know, because I’m typically only out there for an hour or two anyway. So, yeah, it’s like I can drop them off later, you know,
And then like the sun rising. So I have no idea. Maybe just I’m getting super old, but like a great sunrise and sunset really does it for me as well. And we kind of have that in the background here with the wheat and everything going on. But has it been getting older? I really enjoy a really good sunset, especially, I don’t know, there’s just kind of something about it.
Yeah, and we had some beautiful ones last spring. Yeah. Even last month with all the storms just. Oh, man,
You know, so I really enjoy that. I hope you guys do as well. And I think that’s kind of good for topic one. If you would hit the with.
Episode Links
Chase Brooke , Texas A&M , Acquisto Real Estate , Mike Acquisto
