Zach Martin

Eric Girouard  0:00  

This is Bucket Talk, a weekly podcast for people who work in the trades and construction that aren't just trying to survive, but have the ambition and desire to thrive. The opportunity in the trades and construction is absolutely ridiculous right now. So if you're hungry, it's time to eat. We discuss what it takes to rise from the bottom to the top with people who are well on their way and roll up their sleeves every single day.

Jeremy Perkins  0:28  

All right, on this episode of Bucket Talk, we got Zach Martin, also known as the possum King, certified forklift operator. Zach welcome.

Zach Martin  0:38  

Thank you for having me.

Jeremy Perkins  0:40  

Hell yeah, brother, it's great to have you on you have a pretty interesting background, but honestly, have not had somebody who works in warehousing and and with with forklift. So I definitely want to get into how you got in the industry. Then we'll get to the possums and the crazy shit. So let's get a little background into who you are, how you got to where you are today, and and then we'll fucking go from there.

Zach Martin  1:11  

So it originally started. It was when I first graduated high school. I was driving tractors and Dick Akers and I was like, cleaning out chicken houses. Okay, that was a very shitty job, by the way, I mean. But once I left, there I went, and I started working in a fabrication metal shop, making fireplaces. And I drove a forklift there a little bit, but when I seen down the road that a trailer plant had a forklift opening. I was like, man, you know, I don't want to know more this manual labor shit. And so I went and I got forklift certified, and that's when I become one of the few and far certified badass forklift operators that you see. But it's definitely something different. I thought it was going to be a lot easier, but sometimes I look at it and I think, man, I probably should have stuck to building side walls. So

Jeremy Perkins  2:05  

why? Why is it difficult? Walk me through some of that stuff, like, I would assume, just probably, like, your early assumptions that this is going to be easy, just driving for it. Like, how hard could this be? But like, what's up? The driving

Zach Martin  2:18  

part is not what's hard. It's the dealing with people. And let me tell you, you have to deal with them all. You don't get to pick and choose which ones you want to deal with, okay? But also, whenever you you do it in your like, working and receiving or something like that, they expect you to know every part that comes in, and they'll be like, oh, you know this, come in three weeks ago. Do you know where it's at? We probably use it if it's three weeks ago. But, I mean, that's what you want to say, but you can't. And it's really weird, because everything that comes in, they expect you to put it up, you know? So, I mean, it's a lot more than just riding around. Everybody sees the riding around part, and they're like, oh, man, that guy's got it made. Yeah? They also to tell you that during the summertime, when it's 100 degree weather, you're sitting on top of a 200 degree motor all day,

Jeremy Perkins  3:09  

yeah, yeah.

Zach Martin  3:11  

So are you benefits?

Jeremy Perkins  3:14  

Yeah, yeah, go into that.

Zach Martin  3:16  

I mean, the benefits are, I mean, of course, if it's like, cold or whatever, and you're in a warehouse and you ain't got nothing going on, you can easily pop that bad boy in a corner, stand behind it, and you are going to stay warm and toasty all day long.

Jeremy Perkins  3:30  

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So you run in yours propane, or you run in something different. Okay, so, yeah, awesome. We have big one, little one, two different.

Zach Martin  3:40  

We have two different styles. We have a standard four wheel one, and then we have one that we call like the big daddy. It's got the four wheels in the front, the two wheels on the back, for some of our sheet rock and heavier stuff. But okay,

Jeremy Perkins  3:55  

so what do you what usually comes out? So you're saying it's a trailer plant, right? What does that entail? What what's what is coming in, what is going out, what's the product?

Zach Martin  4:05  

I mean, it is everything from your standard single wide that you see in the trailer park to some of these big modular homes that they make. Now, okay, some of the modular homes, they are actually, you know, three and four trailers put together, yeah, to make one big house. And, I mean, in all honesty, it's really neat to see how they do that. I mean, it takes a lot of ingenuity to find out how to put them all together. But whenever, whenever we put them all together. I mean, we make some pretty expensive ones. I think our, more of our standard home is like $250,000 so, I mean, it's not just your your basic trailer. I mean, they come, you know, fully loaded with everything, porches included, and some of some of the stuff, some of these people put in them, because we make ours custom to the people. It will blow your mind. There are some. There are some definitely odd people. We made more. And last year that was purple. And I'm not talking about like purple. I'm talking about like, Barney the Dinosaur purple. And, of course, the son of a gun sat on our lot for three months. And, man, we've got, we've done some that were Pepto Bismol pink, uh, Tiffany blue. I mean, there's been some wild ones.

Jeremy Perkins  5:21  

That's crazy. So, and you said, is it just bigger trailers, or is it, like, actual modular housing, stick frame, like, bring it to a site, put it all together, stuff.

Zach Martin  5:32  

It's some it is exactly like you said, some of them we take, like, down south to Florida and Louisiana, yeah. And like, they actually build them up off the ground,

Jeremy Perkins  5:41  

yeah, yeah. So they bring a crane in, pull it off the low bed trailer, put it on on the site. So I obviously gotta get site work done. The reason I know about this is because I actually looked into a modular house up on the farm. But, yeah, it's pretty cool that you can customize all that portion of the house, right? And then there's seams throughout, and then they, literally, they get bolted together. I mean, there's, like, it's, it's wild. But early on, modular housing wasn't the best, right? Like, obviously, at the Times change, I didn't realize that modular housing is actually pretty good. Now it is.

Zach Martin  6:20  

It. It will blow your mind, how well they can put them together. Now, I mean, exactly, it's amazing. It definitely blew my mind. And the thing that really blew my mind when I went into the trailer Plant Industry, because I had really no idea about it, when I went into it, it blew my mind how many and how fast they actually build them and put them together. Yeah. I mean it like in one week we we consider, like one half, one frame a floor. So when you're looking into some of your modular homes, and homes are like three and four floors, and they will literally start in the back with the frame being done. And by the end of the day, you know, is getting ready for your interior stuff. And it's, it blows my mind, how, in a week, you can actually build like, 18 of them.

Jeremy Perkins  7:09  

Wow, yeah, it's, it was cool because they were ours, was going to come out of Pennsylvania, and obviously, no Pennsylvania, it's huge Amish population. And they're like, that's all that works in this in this trailer plant is, is the Amish community, and they just pump them out, one after the other, after the other, after the other. And yeah, it was, it was, it was wild. Like, you could have your stuff ready in under a month. And, yeah, it's crazy. Ship right to your house. Crane it right off, bolt it together. Finish and touches, see you later. So now, do you have to move those around? Like, are, are you? I would assume something had something picks that up and puts it on the trailer, correct?

Zach Martin  7:51  

No. Okay, so we actually build the frame. And once we get the frame built, we run the frame through the entire plan. And you know, we have, I think it's 14 stations in our main building. So when it comes in, it's automatically in, like station six and station six, they'll put down the floor. Station seven and eight and nine, they put in the walls and all the showers and plumbing and a lot of the electrical work. And then when I get to station 10, you got the roof being put on. Station 11, you're getting, you know, your drywall on the inside is getting patched up. Some of it's getting painted. They're putting in insulation in the roof. And you get into station 12, they're putting the siding and the windows in it, and by the time it comes out in station 14, I mean, it's pretty much done except for the interior work. No,

Jeremy Perkins  8:38  

sure. So, I

Zach Martin  8:39  

mean, like, in a matter of, I think it's like four hours from the time it rolls in to the time it rolls out. And then after four hours, I mean, you pretty much got a house, if you as an interior designer, and

Jeremy Perkins  8:52  

that's all built on the trailer itself, or a frame that then is like a skid, and then that goes on the trailer. How's that

Zach Martin  9:01  

so like whenever, whenever they first start, when they start into the frame shop, they'll take the steel I beam, they'll cut it and measure it and weld it all together, put axles and tire and paint it, and then that right into the back, and then that's what gets pulled around. So that's the

Jeremy Perkins  9:16  

trailers. I was more thinking the modular housing, but no, that makes that makes sense with the trailers, yeah, put the wheels on her and then roll her around. I'm sure that's

Zach Martin  9:25  

yeah, and then once they get it there, I mean, it's just they set it up, yeah, I don't know. I don't know as much about once it gets there, yeah, I just know pretty much about what goes on inside there.

Jeremy Perkins  9:36  

Cool stuff. Cool stuff. Have they gotten into some of this, like, mini home stuff. Have you? Have you seen those tiny homes? We've

Zach Martin  9:44  

done a few of them. And, I mean, when you actually see them, you're actually like, you know, they actually don't look that bad. That we built was a couple of months ago, and the way that it was shaped, I mean, it looked like a storefront, but it was a single wide. And I was like, there ain't no way. That thing's going to look alright. And then we got it built. And I was like, you know, I mean, it actually don't look that bad. But for the for the last three months, we've been doing the FEMA housings, and, okay, for the government. And, I mean, that is, you know, we have had to have people come in and do the sprinkler systems. We've, you know, had all the handicap accessible stuff in them, and those were definitely something really unique to build.

Jeremy Perkins  10:28  

So can you say where those are going?

Zach Martin  10:32  

Honestly, I have no idea, but I know a lot of times like, the reason we got these in, we only get famous every three or every three years. Okay? They got these in because they were being stored in Montgomery, Alabama, and a tornado come through and wiped them all out. So they just scrapped them all and rebuilt them.

Jeremy Perkins  10:52  

Okay, interesting, yeah, I didn't know if they they like pause everything, bring in the FEMA trailers, because I need to get them done for a specific natural disaster or something like that. Yeah, I thought

Zach Martin  11:02  

about that. And then I was like, well, maybe they're going to Maui after them big, you know, the whole island burning. But then I got to thinking, how are they going to pull that to Hawaii? Like, I would assume that's possible. I would

Jeremy Perkins  11:17  

Yeah. I mean, the only, the only logical explanation would be to put it on, like a cargo ship or something and and put them over there. But, yeah, I mean, that's, I'm sure somebody in that area could, could do something out towards the west coast side of things

Zach Martin  11:33  

you would, you would think that they would. I mean, I don't, I don't know, yeah, I don't know if, if, like, if they do in certain areas, and whoever does them in that area, it kind of stays in that area. Yeah, I'm not really sure how that one works.

Jeremy Perkins  11:47  

So I know the answer to this, but a lot of our listeners don't know to the answer to this. But you actually have to get certified on the forklift and hydraulics correct

Zach Martin  11:59  

in Alabama, you do not No, no, wow. Alabama is just a standard test from employment place to employment place.

Jeremy Perkins  12:11  

Wow. You guys are wilding out down there. Man, this

Zach Martin  12:15  

is the south, you know, we don't care. We grew up on this kind of stuff.

Jeremy Perkins  12:20  

Interesting. Yeah, up here, you got to get a hoisting license, stuff like that, to to operate all that. That's interesting. No, that's cool. So if you want to, if you want to just get into it, go down to Alabama.

Zach Martin  12:31  

I mean, I've literally seen them hire people like fresh out of high school, maybe, you know, graduate in May, and by July, their forklift certified and in the trailer.

Jeremy Perkins  12:43  

Wow, wild. No,

Zach Martin  12:47  

you know, usually then they come in, they're all cocky, or whatever. My favorite thing to tell them is like, Look, man, I was doing this while he was in math class. He just listened to me.

Jeremy Perkins  12:55  

So now, now with this, is this? Is this a comfortable gig. Is this something you see yourself riding out on, you know, to the end, or honestly now, yeah,

Zach Martin  13:07  

it's what I'm doing for now. I mean, I definitely want to end up doing more with the animals and more with the farm, yeah, just the way everything is right now. You know, the licensing, and that is what is hard here is getting, you know, the proper licensing to do everything that you can with that. Because, like, I definitely want to have more of, like, one of the petting zoo type things, okay, happy animals, where people can see, especially with me working with a lot of the native wildlife. I remember when I was in school that we had these people that would come around into the auditorium and they would show you about all the animals that were native, and they would teach you about them. And since I've graduated now, you know, nobody does that anymore.

Jeremy Perkins  13:51  

Nobody does,

Zach Martin  13:52  

I definitely want to try to get into doing that, so that way some of these kids, and you know, the teachers too, will be able to know more about the animals. Hell

Jeremy Perkins  14:01  

yeah. So let's get into the farm. Now, obviously you have the Instagram handle, possum King. If you follow you on Instagram, there's a lot to take in. So why don't you, why don't you jump into how you got the name and and what you do there? Oh, man. How

Zach Martin  14:21  

I got the name the possum King? I'm not really sure I want to tell that story. So if you remember back when covid hit, the first time, everybody went straight to Netflix and all you seen was the tiger King, yeah, Tiger king. The Tiger King, the tiger king. And I ended up deciding to make a tick tock video, you know, where I took a possum and I dressed it up as a tiger and I used a Joe exotic audio that was like Carol Baskin has killed her husband. Of course, I got blocked by Carol Baskin, but then everybody just. Kind of like deemed it. I was like, oh, instead of the Tiger King, we got the possum king. And I was like, hell yeah, let's stick it to it, yeah. And it just stuck, yeah. That's how the that's how the possum King was

Jeremy Perkins  15:10  

born. Now, you mainly deal with possums, or No,

Zach Martin  15:14  

I deal with anything and everything interesting. I had a, I had a baby coyote probably about a month and a half ago. That was definitely my first with a little coyote. But she was in very bad shape. She had mange. She was very malnourished, so I ended up giving her some mange medication, some flea and tick medicine, some heart lung medicine, and I pretty much just give her a safe place to kind of lay and recuperate and gain weight back up, and then saying, you know, she got all spunky again, so released her back into the wild. And I think I still hear but I'm not sure if it's her, if it's another one, I never get to see him. I just hear him.

Jeremy Perkins  15:53  

So how'd you get into this?

Zach Martin  15:57  

It all started when I I got my first possum. It is a little baby, and I named him Charlie Sheen. He was an alcoholic possum. He'd only drink red Gatorade or beer, no water. If you give him water, he wouldn't drink it. So once I got Charlie, I was the only one around the area that had a possum, and the only one that would even try to consider saving them. And so then it just became, next thing you know, my phone was blowing up, ringing off the hook. Oh, I found six baby possums. Will you take them? And I'm like, Yeah, sure, I'll take them. And then next thing you know, I just kind of like, instead of being the crazy cat lady, I was the crazy possum guy. And then next thing you know, somebody was like, well, it's not a possum, but it's a raccoon, will you? Will you do it? And I'm like, Yeah, I'll do it. And probably the best one was the skunks. The skunks were the ones that I was the most cautious about, but I ended up with seven baby skunks. I've already turned three of them loose, but four of them were still kind of small, so I kept them a little bit longer, and they will probably be getting released, I want to say probably either this weekend or next week. Okay,

Jeremy Perkins  17:11  

so you don't really, so you don't really keep them, you kind of rehabilitate them and release them out into the wild

Zach Martin  17:19  

now, every now and then, once you're doing it, especially if you get one that's in like, really bad shape, and you end up spending a lot of time with it, some of them will become more domesticated and won't run away. And that's what ended up happening with the fox. A fox is somebody tried to make her a pet, and then they ended up getting chickens and well, Fox in the hen house is not a good combination, right? And so I ended up taking her in, and I actually tried to release her, and I had her just turn loose in the wild. But every time I get home from work, she'd hear my truck pull up, and here she come running out of the woods. And I'm like, well, that's not very good. So that's how I ended up with her. I mean, she's very she's very domesticated. I have a four year old son that can go in there and sit in there with her and just play with her, and she just licks all over him.

Jeremy Perkins  18:11  

So how much space do you got at your place that that this all happens? Are you looking to get bigger, bigger operation? I mean, I'm sure

Zach Martin  18:18  

I definitely want to get bigger. Yeah. I mean, right now, most of my animals, like the fox, the skunks, they're usually all in smaller cages, but that's because they're not here very long. Yeah, my fox, she has the biggest pin right now. She has a 20 by 20, yep, and I'm wanting to upgrade that and get her a bigger Fox. She like a fox yard, as they as you would call it. But like my deposit that I have right now, he'll be going into a permanent enclosure, because I actually did release him, and I went on vacation for three days and come back, and he was back in his own enclosure, and he was missing an ear, so I reckon he went out into the wild. Must have found him another scrappy little male possum. They decided to fight. He goes butt whooping. He come back home. Now he's missing in ears. So that's how Evander Holyfield become to be part of the crew here.

Jeremy Perkins  19:15  

That's wild. Um, so what? What are you working up to? Because I would assume that like doing what you're doing now, there's, there's not much red tape you gotta cut through, but is there to take the leap into, into quitting the full time job and and starting up an operation? I would assume that there's, there's some sort of level of certification or or licensing, or whatever that you gotta be able to do in

Zach Martin  19:41  

order to do it with the animals, you need what Alabama considers an exhibition license in order to profit and all the stuff like that off of them. That's the only way that you can actually have native wildlife. Now, when it comes to a lot of other animals, Alabama has no regulation zone. I think it was up until. Me 21 you could actually just be some random person in Alabama with a pet tiger. They didn't care. Oh, shit, tiger, lion, anything that was exotic, like that. But now, if you wanted to keep a baby phone that you found out in the wild, that was like, No, can't do that. Go get you a tiger.

Jeremy Perkins  20:16  

Is there any any reasoning behind that? Or it's just all fucking backwards.

Zach Martin  20:23  

A lot of it was all fucking backwards. I mean, it was, it really was like my grandpa started the deer farm that he had probably back in, I want to say, the early 2000s late 90s, yeah, and he used to go up to Ohio and would get some of the big northern white tail deer and bring them back down here to the south and breed them because the northerns had a bigger body than the Southerners. Yep. And of course, once Alabama, the state found out how much he was really making off of it, you know, get into all of that good junk, you know, they was like, Oh no, you gotta have license. Oh no, if you can't bring them out of state, and I know for the deer you have to have, you don't necessarily have to have so many acres, but you have to have a special license. And that license is only good for 50 and under, or 100 and under, 250 and under, and then 250 and over. And, I mean, the game one comes out once a year and will literally stand there with binoculars and try to count the deer as they're running through there. I mean, usually they count a couple, and they're like, Well, this is what I count. And you're like, Yeah, sounds about right. Okay, well, we'll call it that, man, there's no way you can count them. They're all running through here.

Jeremy Perkins  21:47  

Yeah, it's I got. I also have a farm up north, um, none that are really considered native. I got pigs, chicken, stocks, horses. But what is funny is is we had a a Facebook. They said that there's somebody's guinea hen was just going from one house to another to another, and somehow that guinea hen has now found my house and it won't leave. So now I've acquired a guinea hen, not by design, but yeah, it's funny. It doesn't want to leave and stays with the chickens and the ducks. So I guess I might be under the same business model as you, right? Yeah,

Zach Martin  22:33  

now you can just become the guinea King. There you go.

Jeremy Perkins  22:40  

Those things are so fucking annoying.

Zach Martin  22:42  

Oh, man, my grandma had someone who was growing up and like, they were bad. And then anytime, especially, like, where I'm at being in the back road, a lot of people let their guineas just free range, yeah. And so next thing you know, you're coming around a curve and there's like, 15 guineas in the road, yeah. And it's like, What the I can't tell you how many times I have tried to, it's like, speed up just to see how many I can get. But I think it's, it's probably impossible to hit one, is it not? I'm thinking, anybody's ever hit one? Well,

Jeremy Perkins  23:15  

it's wild because I have my my dog, Jolene. She's Anatolian Shepherd and Great Pyrenees mix. So she's a livestock Guardian dog, and she don't mess with the chickens, don't mess with the ducks, and she'll, she'll move them around a little bit. But that guinea hen came, and she knew that this wasn't part of the family, and Jolene has made an effort to try to get this fucking thing. And it's like a dodo bird thing will just launch right in the air. You can't hit him. Fucking crazy. But, yeah, that's Wow, and it's cool too. Like, I only recently got into chickens. Ours are technically considered free range, but they're in, like, they're in livestock fencing, so they can jump out and do whatever, but they never really go that far. So I'm either doing it right, or I just got lucky.

Zach Martin  24:09  

I mean, I know of a lot of people that's just had them and they, like, had them in, like, a barbed wire fence, and it's like, you know, you realize you could walk right under it, but they get to, like, where the fence is, and it's like, since it's head high, they're like, No, turn around, go the other way. Yeah, yeah. The one that I had the problem with keeping it in was our pig. We got one of them, Coon, coon pigs, I believe. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  24:33  

that's, that's what I breed. I Cooney. Cooney pigs. Yeah, oh, man,

Zach Martin  24:37  

let me tell you. Got to read about it was like, Oh, they don't really root Yeah, and I got one, of course, they're like, like, this one is like, rudaholic. I mean, we, it took us probably a week before we could finally actually keep it inside the pen. Yeah? I mean, I. It. I was almost like, tempted to go get a little nose ring for it. I didn't know if that would actually work. But then I got to thinking too, like, anytime you try to pick up this pig, I mean, it would scream bloody murder, and just like, like, try to bite. And I was like, Really, don't know how piercing a nose on a biting pig will go.

Jeremy Perkins  25:18  

We gotta, we gotta trim their hooves, obviously, because you get things like arthritis and and our first pig kind of had a weight issue. He enjoyed eating. We had to put him on a diet because it was like he was limping. But, yeah, our our Cooney Cooney pigs were as well. I mean, we have two pure and then we have two Cooney Idaho pasture, pit cross. But, yeah, they're out there just fucking I mean, they don't go crazy deep, but they can get underneath the fence if they wanted to.

Zach Martin  25:56  

I can't tell you how many afternoons I spent out here chasing a pig, and you would think I was like, Oh my God. I thought I was gonna die. I didn't realize how out of shape. I was like, go to my son's T ball games. Help him practice T ball. And I'm like, I'm still good shape. Got a pig. I'm not in good shape no more.

Jeremy Perkins  26:18  

What's the biggest possum you've ever found?

Zach Martin  26:21  

So the biggest one, I actually never did weigh it, and it was my cousin. It got into his little carport, yeah. And so I was just going to take it right down the road and release it. And usually when I would do something like that, you know, I would just catch it and I would hold it, yeah. And so when I got there, I was like, I was mind blown at the size of this possum. The only thing that I had in the truck that I could actually put it in, to keep it in, was an igloo 45 quart cooler. And so I ended up putting it in the 45 quart cooler, and like had to press down on the back of it to get this possum in there. And then I had to ratchet strap it so I could drive it down the road, some of the most written I've ever done. Now, how big it was, but it was a 45 quart cooler, 45 quart possum.

Jeremy Perkins  27:15  

So obviously, you talked about people contacting you, about, you know, animals that need to be rehabilitated, or what have you, um, do you actually have to go get them? And if so, like, what's the craziest one you've had to deal with?

Zach Martin  27:32  

I mean, I don't necessarily have to go and get them. I can have the people meet me. And sometimes they could, you know, just come here. But that's also kind of like when the ones it's like, I don't really want everybody time to come into the house, yeah, you know, I mean, if I had, like, if I had my setup the way I wanted it to be, which is, you know, like, where the house would be out of the picture, that would be, you know, ultimate goal then would be to have people just Go ahead and bring them to you,

Jeremy Perkins  28:01  

right, right?

Zach Martin  28:03  

The craziest experience I had. Ain't really had too many. There were, okay, there was one possum that I ended up getting a call about, and it was on the Fourth of July. And of course, it was a raining Fourth of July, and when I pulled up, this possum was literally just sitting there, and it was so wet that it like almost had a bald spot in his back, from where the water head, like, caused his hair to go off. And that's, that's probably the craziest one, other than just the skunks. The skunks was definitely crazy. You don't get them very often.

Jeremy Perkins  28:38  

No, I watched the old timer at the shop. We had a we had a skunk issue, and he got out there, got to have a heart trap, and then the first thing you do is he threw a wool blanket over the top of it. He's like, I ain't getting sprayed. And then, yeah, he took care of it. But it was, it was funny. It's like, I never thought to actually do that. I would have gone in there and just picked it up and probably made a mess of myself. But it's kind of funny. All the old timer knowledge of trapping and and stuff like that. It's kind of interesting.

Zach Martin  29:12  

But, you know, you would be amazed as many old timers that do know that, there's a lot of them that don't know that

Jeremy Perkins  29:20  

it's probably true as well.

Zach Martin  29:21  

I mean, there's it was one that told me one time it was like, the only way to keep a skunk from spraying was to shoot it directly in the head. And I can't remember who it was. They told him that, and they ended up catching a skunk, and they tried that, and it was like, man, as soon as I shot that thing, it turned around and started spraying. He was like, well, obviously you didn't shoot it right. He was like, I put the gun to the camera. The cage and shot it directly in the head. He said, Well, you must have missed.

Jeremy Perkins  29:47  

That's why, a lot of it's a lot of it too is kind of stories,

Zach Martin  29:52  

yeah, oh, man, I've heard some stories. How long

Jeremy Perkins  29:56  

do you think it's going to take you to do it? I mean, is it really. Attainable. Can you get funding?

Zach Martin  30:03  

You can actually set it up as a nonprofit? There's a 501, 3c that I believe that you could set up this, like for Allen, or for animal sanctuaries and and things like that. I don't really want to do it that route, because, I mean, nonprofits get such a bad reputation, obviously, for, you know, just swindling money, yeah? I mean, I want to find a way to do it to where, you know, people have the trust in you, yeah. But I also want to be able to do something that, like, where we're at, we're so far away from a zoo that there's a lot of the kids around here that will probably never get to go to the zoo. Mm, hmm. So I want to definitely find some kind of way to incorporate where a lot of people can grow up and, you know, grow up learning about these animals. So

Jeremy Perkins  30:53  

it's cool that you actually say that, because I there's a place up in Maine where I live. It's called the main Wildlife Preserve. And everything there is native. And like, I take the kids there all the time, from turtles to deer to white tail deer to, I think they have a couple of forcu pines, raccoons, all sorts of stuff. But you're right. I mean, it's, oh, they also have, they rehabilitate some moose, but they have a couple of moose there. But what's interesting is, is, like, you know, all that helps for the preservation of animals that are hurt, or what have you. On top of that, it's education too. So it is kind of cool, like the kids do every time they go, they learn something new and but that's run by the state, so that the game wardens run that whole operation. But it would be interesting to model after that, something like that.

Zach Martin  31:57  

Yeah. I mean, see the main thing is, is like, where I'm located at, I believe there's like seven different schools inside this. In the one county that I live in, there's like seven different schools, yeah, that range anywhere from one a to six A and so, I mean to me, you know, you could really, you know, educate a lot of kids by going to there. And, you know, especially like with, say, like Foxy, where I have her, where she's, you know, real calm and docile. You know, you could take her and put her harness on her, you know, a lot of people would be able to finally see a gray fox. Like, a lot of people don't know that there is a gray fox family. Know of the red fox, from The Fox and the Hound, yeah? But, I mean, the main thing is, is not necessarily finding a way to to profit off of it, but for it to be able to sustain itself, yeah? Because the sustaining itself, which is like, that's the hardest part for me right now, is to feed everything, to feed everything and to spend all the time, because, like, whenever I got the baby skunks, they had to be syringe fed five times a day. Jeez, yeah. Luckily, I live close enough to work, and I get a long enough lunch that I was literally going, you know, going to work. And on lunch, I would come home, warm up milk, syringe feed seven skunks, clean everything up, turn around, grab something out of the microwave, and then turn around and go back to work. And as soon as I got off work, he was coming right back home, doing it all over again. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  33:37  

yeah. I was, uh, farm life's different if you're not, if you don't understand it, or you haven't done it and you want to do it, start slow because, because the more you can get

Zach Martin  33:52  

overwhelmed, quick feed cost,

Jeremy Perkins  33:54  

um, medical. I mean, like the first I had to tell my kids early on that, like, death is actually part of this. Like, I don't know, we've lost chickens randomly for god knows what, and, and it's not due to, you know, I guess, what is the what is the term, like, negligence. It just is what it is. When you have so many chickens, shit happens and, yeah, so it's, it's wild, and you never end up really looking into it. It's just like, you know, they're fed, they're watered, they have open space, they're in good health. And then you just find one dead, and you're like, well,

Zach Martin  34:39  

is what it is. I had a, I had a little raccoon that that ended up happening with me about and luckily, I had some friends in upstate New York who she has, like, 23 raccoons that she has right now at this moment. Yeah, and so, I mean, luckily I had heard that I was able to turn to to get some advice on. But I did not know that a raccoon could easily chip a tooth and get an infection and die in a matter of, like, 48 hours. Oh shit, yeah. So, I mean, I had this little raccoon. He was doing good, he was eating good, and it was, like, at six o'clock he was, you know, up on the door of his little cage, and he was just chattering away at me, and I preached in there, and I pet him, and I walked on nine o'clock dead, wow. And it was like, what the happened in three hours, right?

Jeremy Perkins  35:29  

Right? Yeah, that.

Zach Martin  35:32  

Mean, the best that I could figure, you know, is he probably had an infection, or where he had been bottle fed. You know, he could have easily got, like, a, what they call an aspiration, yeah, which is, like, where they get a little bit of air in their lungs that causes a little bit of fluid to get in there. Yeah, you'd be amazed at the little things that can kill them, so simple that people don't understand. Yeah.

Jeremy Perkins  35:52  

No, it's, it's, yeah. So you gotta get used to death.

Zach Martin  35:58  

Yeah, that's definitely the hardest part. Yeah, it's like, with a with a possums, the way that a possum is nose is right on the end, yeah, well, right on the end of his face, right at the opening of its mouth. Yeah. You're like, syringe feeding a possum. If it overfills their mouth and they get it in their nose, you'll put it down, and it'll be completely fine. And you're like, Oh, okay. Well, you know, that was all good. You go back out there in two hours and that same pasta be dead because it got the milk and the fluids up in the nose and ended up drowning itself. Interesting.

Jeremy Perkins  36:33  

So you gotta, kind of, you gotta know your stuff when you said, set out in this in this world. So that's wild. Wow. Awesome. So, yeah, I mean, I just wanted to dig into why they called you the possum King. Get get behind the whole rehabilitation. It's awesome that you're a certified forklift driver, because now I could say I have I interviewed one. Everybody says they are, but you're truly one. That being said, what do you do? I outside of all this, what do you do for fun? Is it just the animals or you doing some other crazy shit,

Zach Martin  37:11  

pretty much. I mean, now with taking on the farm as much as I have, I mean, there's pretty much, like, basically no free time, yeah, but, but beforehand, I used to like to fish a lot, yeah. And that's the only thing a lot of people don't know about me, is I used to actually knowing, did I fish? But I was actually pretty good at it,

Jeremy Perkins  37:32  

almost like going out Pro. No,

Zach Martin  37:35  

not that good. Not that good. I mean, we had, you know, local tournaments on the lake that this around the house. I mean, I've won a several of them. There was one that we ended up winning. It was a three hour tournament on a Thursday night. Yeah, it was, like, from six to nine. And it was, as a matter of fact, is the very first time that I ever fished a tournament. And like, I was so excited to go, but then so many people was like, oh, you know, this guy's not going to take you to any of the spots where you're going to catch any big fish. You know, he's just taking you. Kind of bummed me out. And actually, an hour and a half into the tournament, we were back sitting at the boat dock waiting on everybody else. Because, I mean, we was pretty much caught all that we could catch. We ended up with five bass, five largemouth that went for a total of 30 pounds, six ounces. Wow, that's great. Our biggest one, our biggest one was nine pound, 15 ounces.

Jeremy Perkins  38:27  

That's That's crazy. That's good stuff.

Zach Martin  38:31  

But I think, I think my all time favorite was trot lining. Okay? And you know what a trot line is? Right? No, okay, so a trot line is, is basically a long ass rope that's got about 100 hooks tied to it that dangle, okay? And so at one end you got a brick, and then every 1520 foot, sometimes, you know, farther in between, you put a jug that kind of holds it up off the bottom, okay, and it get to the other end, and you turn around, you put another brick on it, and you put a jug there, so that way you know where that brick is, and it sits right above the bottom. But you got your jugs, it's keeping it off the bottom. And it's just 100 hooks. You set it out one night, you know, right at right at dark, and then first thing the next morning, you get back up, and you go and you check it. And I can't tell you how many monster catfish we have caught doing that. So

Jeremy Perkins  39:25  

obviously, there's bait on the hooks. What? What kind of bait you guys use chicken,

Zach Martin  39:30  

believe it or not. So like, the biggest one we ever caught was 56 pounds. That was my personal best, and it was a flathead. And of course, everybody's like, Oh, what did you catch it on and always tell them, caught it on a minnow? And they're always like, Oh, no, you didn't catch No, 56 pound catfish on a minnow. And I'm like, technically I did just that minnow got eaten by another small catfish, and that catfish ate the other small catfish. But technically I caught it on a minnow. I mean, I just didn't tell the. In between part? Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  40:01  

it's funny. I have heard trotline and, yes, that does make sense. I just honestly, when you ask me, I'm like, I can't, for the life of me, tell you what one is. I've heard it. It's in every country song for the most part. You know, right? I

Zach Martin  40:17  

didn't even think about that, but that's probably the first time I've ever described one too, yeah, kind of struggling with it.

Jeremy Perkins  40:26  

I mean, they do that stuff up here too. Um, not necessarily with the trout line, but we're known for lobsters and crabs and again, it's, it's all the same, same idea. You throw it out there, you bait it, and you're using hooks, we're using traps. Same idea, though.

Zach Martin  40:46  

I think the one thing that I've always wanted to do, though, is, I think I've always wanted to go Newland, you know, the hand fishing.

Jeremy Perkins  40:54  

Yeah, hillbilly hand fishing.

Zach Martin  40:57  

I've wanted to, but, you know, every time I get there and I'm looking at it, I'm like, I just don't know if I could stick my hand in there when I don't know what's underneath that rock.

Jeremy Perkins  41:08  

When you met Jeff and Hannah Barron, you didn't, you didn't like talk to me.

Zach Martin  41:13  

I didn't. They had so many people that was really there. Yeah, I wanted to. I mean, they, you know, they're such great people that so many people want to meet them. So of course, I mean, I think I ended up waiting in line for, I want to say, like, almost 45 minutes before I actually got to meet them, yeah? And, I mean, they're really good people, but I think that would probably be about the only way that I would go is if I went with them, yeah. I mean, somebody that knew what they were doing,

Jeremy Perkins  41:39  

she's, she's pulling monster catfish out of that.

Zach Martin  41:43  

I think I seen where her biggest was, like, 64 pounds. That's crazy. And that, I don't know if I want one that big, but yeah, I definitely want to try it. But Knowing my luck, I'd stick my hand in there and, like, there'd be a turtle in there, and it would bite my finger off. And of course, if it did, it would end up biting my middle finger off, and that's the one finger I don't want to lose. That's that would be my luck, I mean. But the funny thing about that is, my grandpa was actually missing his middle finger.

Jeremy Perkins  42:19  

You got to tell me the story. It's gotta be,

Zach Martin  42:26  

well, the story that I was always told was like, back in the 80s, whenever he was hunting, all the time, he was muzzleloader hunting, and ended up in a hotel room and was clean out his muzzleloader and he was going to put his finger in the barrel to kind of muffle the sound when he pulled the trigger after he unloaded it. And turns out he didn't unload it, so he shot it off in a motel room in, like, the 80s, with a muzzle loader.

Jeremy Perkins  42:53  

I mean, hey, that's, that's not, I'll let's roll with that one. That's a good story.

Zach Martin  42:59  

I mean, that's the story I was always told. But I was also told that when he got to the hospital and they went to remove it, he actually asked him if he could keep his finger in a jar of embalming. Yeah, I reckon he would just keep his finger in a jar. I don't know what he was planning on doing with it. I mean, but that's, I mean, that definitely sounds like something he would have asked him to.

Jeremy Perkins  43:30  

That's wild. Well, yeah, I guess, I guess, if we go noodling, we gotta bring you along, because that'll be, that'll be an amazing experience. I think either that'll have a catfish fucking drown me. But, yeah, no, this has been a great episode. It's great to get to know you a little bit more. You. You've always got crazy content. Seems like you're super passionate about what you do? I do. Wish you the best of luck. And for our listeners out there, are you looking for anything help in any area that maybe we can amplify your message and people can contact you about anything or even just learning about what you do.

Zach Martin  44:22  

I mean, I'm always open to learning, and I'm always open to learning from people that are already doing it, yep. Um, I do have a lot of friends that are already doing it. They have been giving me some really good advice. Nice. One of the, one of the things that makes it so hard in the state is the amount of volunteer hours that you have to put in before you can get a lot of your license, yeah. And so like already working a full time job, running a farm, taking care of what I do have already that is hard to, you know, to find time to volunteer, yeah, and especially, I think a lot of the nearest places for me to. Volunteer are about two hours away from here. Wow, so you're driving two hours one way to volunteer. And I mean, it's got some crazy volunteer hours, like, I think one of the exhibition license was like 75 hours of volunteer work.

Unknown Speaker  45:17  

That's a lot, and

Zach Martin  45:20  

it really is. That's, that's the main thing. Well, I guess, yeah, that would probably be the main thing is the all the licensing, knowing exactly where to go through with all of that awesome.

Jeremy Perkins  45:34  

So if somebody could help you out, that would be, that would be amazing.

Zach Martin  45:37  

Oh, it mean the world. Okay, so

Jeremy Perkins  45:41  

maybe there's somebody out there listening to this that can give you some advice, help you out. I think that'd be wonderful. And if they want to learn more about what you do, where can they find you?

Zach Martin  45:53  

On Tiktok. You can find me at the underscore Fossum King and the same on Instagram. That's That's usually the main two places that I'm at, Tiktok and Instagram,

Jeremy Perkins  46:02  

awesome. So if you want to know more, hit them up in the DMS and and sure he'll respond to everyone in a timely manner, right? Oh,

Zach Martin  46:11  

yeah, for the most part, for as long as it's not a text message, I reply text messages I suck at. Think I've got 330 text messages that I haven't opened. Oh shit,

Jeremy Perkins  46:21  

that's wild, wild. Well, hey, Zach, thanks for being on the show. This has been amazing. You're an awesome dude, and keep up the good work. Because, you know, somebody's some you actually give a shit and, and that's cool that you're out there helping animals out and helping people out. Because, again, you know, a lot of people don't know where to turn when they're when they have this something show up in their property, and they they have nothing to do with it. So that's awesome. You're awesome. And thanks for being on the show, bud. Thank you for having me. And as a special thanks to our loyal listeners, we're giving $10 off your next purchase of $60 or more at Brunt workwear.com Use Discount Code bucket talk 10. That's bucket talk 10. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai