Ty Walker was raising livestock on his grandparents' land when a phone call put an old trout farm in Newcastle up for sale. He and his wife knew almost nothing about fish.

There were no investors. They used savings. The ponds were neglected. The early mistakes were expensive and they went broke before they had fish to sell.

Ty took a grocery-store job to keep the place afloat. He says quitting would have been easier in more than one season. The farm is what they point to now when they talk about a million-dollar year.

Ponds before a paycheck

On Upflip he walks through cleaning ponds and learning a crop he could not see the way he could see cattle. The episode is about the years with nothing to sell.

The revenue figure is his account of the farm after it started to work. The start was a phone call and a neglected set of ponds.