The Rural Dispatch

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode I'm joined by the rhinestone cowgirl herself, Olivia Harms. We chat about growing up on a 150-year-old ranch, running one today with her husband in Northern California, and chasing big dreams on the road.  Olivia Harms has created her own “Rhinestone Cowgirl” sound, blending Texas, Bakersfield, and Nashville cou...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week we’re talking trucking truths — who should buy their own truck, how driver pay really works, and what happens when trucks get ordered but never used. We also touch on getting started feeding cattle. This one is a real, no-filter look at the business side of hauling livestock.  Keep track of your income, expenses, invoicing...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week’s episode is a snapshot of life right now — the kind where life and business blur together in the best and busiest ways. We’re fresh off our wedding weekend, still soaking it in, and juggling everything that comes with it, because you have to make hay while the sun shines and that means they honeymoon can wait. Smoke and I...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, we’re switching gears from hauling livestock to hauling a bar! Join me for a quick solo update on a busy week in trucking, Smoke getting back into cow buying, and the chaos of wedding week prep in our backyard. Plus, hear about our friends at Agar Transportation and PAR Repair driving a custom bar ac...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, Smoke and Aly talk trucking, cattle, and life.  We dig into what a “slow busy season” looks like in livestock trucking, how the cattle market is shaping both hauling and beef availability, and why trucking’s connection to so many industries is both a challenge and a blessing (hello, reefer division r...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! On this episode, Aly is joined by Ashley Brincks, ag professional and leader specializing in cattle and conservation. In this episode, Ashley shares how her journey through both personal loss and professional opportunities has shaped her into the industry advocate she is today. She reflects on the ways resilience and hard work have...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week Smoke and Aly are diving into a mix of trucking life, ag seasonality, and some good old-fashioned storytelling. We chat about whether the days of handshake deals are behind us, swap stories from Smoke’s time in the truck (including 5 Hour Energy, CB radios, CDs, and stacks of DVDs), and share some ideas for Truck Driver Ap...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! The countdown is on: we're one month out from a wedding and life is a mix of bottle calves, bin dust, broke down trucks and last-minute details. This week is a quick update plus we're asking for your best wedding/marriage advice. Send us your tips and I'll share them on the show!  Keep track of your income, expenses,...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, Bryan and Rochelle Heiman join Aly and Smoke to share how they came to be Heiman Farm: A Raw Milk Diary in Iowa. With five kids under eight, four (going on six) milk cows, plus pigs, chickens, and turkeys, the Heiman family is living the full farm life while serving their community with fresh raw mil...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, it’s just Aly + Smoke catching up on life, work, and everything in between. We kick things off the way most summer conversations in the Midwest do, talking about the weather. From there, we shift gears into family life with a recap of our annual trip to Branson, a streak of Behrens bad luck, an...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week on The Rural Dispatch, I sit down with Maury Eickman, a 97-year-old lifelong farmer from Templeton, Iowa, to capture nearly a century of farming history and wisdom. Maury shares stories from growing up during the Great Depression, surviving the unforgettable “year from hell” in 1936, and building a life on the farm with hi...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week I'm joined by Brandon Roering, third generation dispatcher for his family's livestock transportation business, Lambrecht Livestock Trucking, and the creator of Beef Hub — a brand-new app created specifically for the needs in the livestock transportation world.  Join us as we dive into Brandon's journey from...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This week, we're joined by both the founders of Agar Transportation, Matt and Debbie Agar, and the current owners of Agar Transportation, Paul and Kindra Radloff.  Matt shares how he got started in trucking, and Debbie brings an honest look at what it's really like being married to, and raising kids with, an over-the-road...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! NEW: LEAVE US A MESSAGE Fresh off Day 1 of the Western Video Market’s biggest sale of the year, Rick Machado joins us for a boots-on-the-ground conversation in Reno. As an auctioneer, cattleman, and part owner of WVM, Rick shares how the video sale works, what makes it unique, and other industry insights. Plus, we’re joined by a cou...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Catch up with us on the road this week. From behind the scenes of podcasting to the current cattle market and life lately, this episode is short and sweet and packed with a little bit of everything from our corner of the world.  Need livestock hauled? Give us a call: 712-790-3359 Suggestions for a podcast guest? Email Aly: behrensan...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Ryan and Ryam Nelson joined us for a real, down-to-earth conversation about building their concrete business from absolutely nothing - literally. In this episode they share about the early days of Concrete Creators, how they figured it out as they went, and what drove them to start a business and work together. The two of them now a...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, we are honored to have Mark Handlos on to share his story — a farm kid turned medical warrior whose life is rooted in resilience, hope, and an unshakable sense of humor. Mark opens up about what it was like growing up in rural Iowa and then facing a mysterious illness that began at age 15. With no diagnosis and no t...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! If the words “hedging,” “options,” or “basis” make your eyes glaze over — this episode is for you. Today I’m joined by Zach Tindall, a commodity broker with Producers Livestock and a farmer feeder himself, to break down price protection tools in plain English. We talk about the real-world side of managing market risk — not just the...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, Aly sits down with farmer and cattle feeder Justin Heiman, a Carroll County native who built his own farming operation from the ground up. Justin shares how he got started with nothing but work ethic, a love for agriculture, and mentors who were willing to show him the ropes. We talk about the...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! This episode is for the dads — the ones who hauled cattle before sunup, made you work when you got in trouble, and taught you how to let things roll off your back like water on a duck. For this Father’s Day edition of The Rural Dispatch, we’ve pulled clips from past episodes where guests told stories about their dads — the things th...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, Smoke and I sit down for a real-time check-in — no guest, just us. Following up last week’s episode with Rich Pudenz felt like a tall order, but we wanted to bring it back home and share what’s going on behind the mic. We talk about what it means to build a life and business together — especially when your past does...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we sit down with Rich Pudenz—a cattle feeder now in his 90s—who shares what it was like growing up in rural America during the Great Depression, feeding cattle alongside his brothers, and watching the livestock industry evolve over the past century. From early mornings in the feedlot to navigat...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! Sit down with us as we talk with Howard Curry, owner of Howard Curry Transport Inc, a brokerage business with deep roots in hauling livestock.  Howard takes us all the way back to 1953, when his dad first got into hauling livestock. Born into the business in 1962, Howard's been a part of the livestock world ever since. At 16 ye...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode, we sit down with Paul Radloff and Brittany Fenstemacher from Agar Transportation to talk about what it means to buy "blue sky" in the trucking industry. Paul bought the company with just $300 to his name but a whole lot of ambition to make it work. Brittany, the brains behind the scenes, helped bring struc...

Send us a text or leave a voicemail - we’d love to hear from you! In this episode of The Rural Dispatch, we’re sitting down with James and Megan Holz—farmers, livestock producers, entrepreneurs, and one of the husband-and-wife duos behind Iowa Cover Crop. James and Megan share the story of how they ventured into feeding hogs and the lessons they’ve learned navigating that world, and how it differs...