Barn Talk - Barn Talk Q&A: Are Farmers Really Wealthy, Why The Tyson Plant Closed, and the Real Value of Crop Insurance?

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In this episode, We're covering everything from the smartest investment platform to the broader impact of a local Tyson plant shutting down in Perry, Iowa. We've got a lot on our plate, discussing how this affects the community, the not-so-secret use of labor, and what it means for the ethics in business and government involvement. We also get into the nitty-gritty of grain farming economics versus renting out land. And because we all need a little downtime, Tork shares his secret recipe for the perfect freezer old-fashioned —trust me, it’s a game-changer.  Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 No planning, missed planting opportunity due to rain. 05:15 Kudos to Wilman, Iowa hog building builder. 12:14 Hit or miss with draft, pressure from owner. 17:16 One platform offers diverse investment opportunities. 23:58 Meat industry tough, decision to close plant. 29:28 US government complacency enables illegal immigrant hiring. 34:47 Creator relieved by potential TikTok ban. 37:08 TikTok, Twitter allows real, uncensored expressions now. 41:26 Considered bar visit, shared old fashioned tips. 46:25 Enhancing old fashioned with cherry and orange. 53:59 Maximize yield with best available resources. 57:10 Farmers see more profit in farming land. 01:03:18 The US government subsidizes many aspects of life. 01:11:15 Necessary for food production, not very sexy. 01:14:00 Gold, silver, bronze bacon grading explained briefly. 01:22:04 Biodiesel and manure separation require steady supply. 01:25:26 Efficient farming, profitable buildings, ecological solutions promoted. 01:29:06 Exposing the truth and appreciating audience support. ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without und... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a Q&A episode. We're going to answer all your guys' questions that you submitted or emailed to us at BarnTalk Show at gmail.com today on the show. If you want to get your answers, if you want to get your questions answered on the show, can email them to barn talk show at gmail.com we are getting our website put together here we're getting

it close to being done and once we have that done that'll be a good place to submit your questions so be looking out for that you tune in to the show when we let you know that that's live uh if you get any value from the show shared out with who you know the more that you guys do that the more that the show grows the better guests we can get on the more episodes we can make the more credibility it gives our show. You can also feel free to leave a review on Spotify or Apple. That also gives our show mad credibility. Let's us try to get higher level guests on the show. And we're trying. We're trying for them. We're looking for more and more guests, higher level guests. Cool-ass people to come on the show. It doesn't have to just be ag. And if the last thing you can do to help us here

out, help us out here at Barn Talk is you can support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade, Farmergrade.com. We got Wagyu, we got beef, we got chicken, we got pork, all sourced and raised by American farmers and ranchers that are showing people what they do on their farms every day. And we have a special discount code for only Barn Talk listeners or viewers that they can use for the rest of time code Barn Talk, and you can save 10% on your order, individual items, all the cart, whatever you want, you just add it to your basket. So those are all the ways that you can help us.

If you're new here, I don't feel like we do a good enough job saying that for all the newcomers. If you're new here and you're watching or maybe you're listening, this show is actually shot in a hayloft of our barn on our farm that my grandpa built in 1950. And this is a sixth generation farm. And the host of this show is me, Sawyer, son, and my dad Torque. So we're in this together and we're shooting. or not like it or not and there's the straw behind us is actual straw it's straw that sat on the bottom of this hayloft when we first cleaned this out to do this podcast so how are you bailed somewhere around mid 50s yeah from a wire tied john dear bailer that uh got scrapped in the late 50s so yeah

nostalgic yeah i just wanted you know we just don't do that enough sometimes you just got to let people know hey this is who we are no it's hard to believe we've been at it this long that we have people that Just tuning in. Yeah, just tuning in. Yeah, how are you today? We appreciate that. I'm doing good. It's a beautiful day in Southeast Iowa.

We should be doing something, but unfortunately it rained again last night, so no planning. And, you know, in hindsight, last Wednesday and Thursday were the only days where it got thin enough around this area that you could plan. and there were some people that did plant and there were some people that didn't plant and we were one of those people that did not because it was not a damn bit too fit and we really thought we were going to get a lot of rain and we ended up getting about two inches two and two and two-tenths inches of rain between Friday and Saturday and so you know whatever we couldn't have gotten we couldn't gotten a lot planted, but we could have gotten something. So when I run into somebody and they asked me if we planted anything, I could go, oh yeah, yeah, we're getting her done. But we haven't.

The only, I don't know, the only plan or reference that I have is I've got this fancy Z-series soybean hat. And I have some Z-series soybeans, but I haven't planted them yet. So how much of that hat costs you? Fair amount. It was a fair amount. It's maybe not like, it's maybe not like a, a Sinclair tractor hat. Yeah. It's not quite that expensive. But it's up there. Among the hats that we own, it's up there.

Reoccurring. Yeah. We get a reoccurring hat every year, so. Oh, yeah. It adds up. They do. Yeah, we're dollar cost averaging that. The cost of the garb goes down a little bit.

You make good shirts, too. Can't. I still think the most expensive, like, a pair we have are probably our PSI coats with their damn nice coats. the way, but we paid a pretty, pretty healthy amount for those coats, so they should be nice. We did get a cool cooler out of that deal, too. They are. Cudos to those coolers are pretty sick. Yeah, kudos to the precision structures out of Wilman, Iowa, Hog Building Builder extraordinaire, and that is a completely unpaid advertisement. But yeah, they do a good job, and they gave us a

cooler, and that was awful nice of them. So, yeah, I'm feeling good. I mean, we got a daytime episode going today and we're not in any big hurry because pigs are chored and there isn't a whole hell of a lot else going on right now. So we figured it'd be a good time to catch up and try to get a little bit ahead on some podcasts. So without any further ado, I have a fresh market update. These are numbers hot off the cat's grain website in Washington, Iowa. And corn closed today at 439. Best price I could find local is 444 and Cedar Rapids ADM and Cedar Rapids if you want to go sit in line 457 beans 1145 the river I think there's a few sense difference between the two plants on the river ADM and Burlington I think has the has the 1150 bid Quincy if you want to go across the river

1170 bean meal 346 a ton wheat 585, hogs 9410, and that is, is that still the May contract? Maybe that's, I think that is still a May contract. June, July and August, you'll want to listen to this, Sawyer, because now that you're a hog buyer, June, July, and August are all $100 plus hog prices. So, meat cost is going to be going up. There goes my profit. Well, we don't have any to buy it. We don't have any to buy it. We don't have any going too soon anyway till August but it may be higher than that yeah but coming off of the absolute shit show that the hog market has been for the last i don't know 18 months or whatever reminds me i was driving on my way heading south uh close to mount pleasant today and you know there was always this

farm that raised pigs on a concrete lot outside right by four corners yep no pigs out there today really probably was like fuck this hog business shit yep if i was uh if i'm sure there are a lot of guys that uh if there were any in or out hog farmers we call the guys you know that when when uh prices got cheap they'd sell the sows and when it looked like things were going to go good they'd go buy a bunch of gilts and breed them and get in and used to have a lot of people in the hog business that got in and out they called it and uh as the cost of everything went up there was fewer and fewer of those people, but that guy probably is like, you know what? Just

not working. Hiss on this. Yep, I don't blame him. He could make some money for fall if he found some feeder pigs, probably. Cattle 175, feeder cattle, $244. Milk price, $20.62 and I did look at a chart.

Milk price, that's a pretty good... People are getting on your ass on this. Well, it's complicated. I tell you, the milk business is complicated. It is complicated. There's a reason why I'm not a dairy farmer. I can barely keep it together grain farm in the hog business and I'm pretty sure I'd lose my ass on the milk deal I like milk no matter what utter it's coming out of so just oh look at that look at that I'll just stick to drinking god dang it I tell you what uh yeah so uh take that for what it's worth I think it's

it's kind of moved up so $20 and 62 cents oil 79 bucks that's the June contract that's down a little bit. The threat of World War III and global meltdown, evidently, has gone down a little bit because, you know, it was up in the 80s and it's moved down a little bit. Bitcoin, 57,000 and change, kind of got beat, hit the old 70,000, and everybody thought, oh, 100K. 100K, here we go, but evidently, not quite yet. Still better than where it was. It is. We're consolidating. Yeah. Consolidating. I still think it's going to run. Oh, I do. for a little bit. I do too. Ethereum $3,000.

The only reason I leave Ethereum in there is because in my crypto wallet, somehow I have some Ethereum and I don't know whether to sell it or keep it, and I just keep it. I keep it. I'm like, ah, one of these days. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are your two ballers. All right. In the crypto space. I mean, if you talk, if you listen to anything, people say, you know,

there's a bunch out there, but those usually are the top two. who knows by the time i'm dead and gone you and your brother will be clubbing each other over the head yes i'm boy i want dad's ethereum yep uh tesel 181 gold 2300 and beyond meat i love bagging on beyond meat six dollars 99 cents so i'd short it you know what if i was one of them guys that had money to play around i'd be shorting the shit out of that so i think it's going to go to like three dollars yep i think so too i i i don't think people are for it that's for sure i mean we in last podcast, and I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole. Speaking of bad investments, how was the NFL draft for your Cowboys?

Honestly, I think people, the draft in all and all was, it was a little more exciting than previous years just because there are so many quarterbacks, and it kind of messed up the draft order, the mock drafts. Falcons came out of left field. They just signed Kirk Cousins, a veteran quarterback that played for the Vikings forever. He's like, he's like, like a Tony Romo. You love him, but you hate him because he can't get the fucking job done. But he's a great man. Good game manager. I mean,

he has some games where he, it's like Romo. It's exactly like Romo. He'll throw 500 yards, six touchdowns, you're like, holy shit, where this guy is, he has a rod. He is here. Then he gets the playoffs and I don't know what happens. But anyway, Falcons signed him, and then they drafted a young quarterback

and they both have the same contract length. And it's not like he's a young rookie. He's kind of an older rookie. He played all four years. So I don't know, that messed up the whole order of the draft. But my Cowboys, a lot of Cowboys fans are pissed that we didn't draft a running back because

Tony Pollard left and the backup, I can't remember his name that backed up Tony Pollard that got some time last year. He wasn't great. He wasn't great by any means. But there's teams that have won a Super Bowl that don't have phenomenal

great running backs. So I'm feeling hopeful We've really We drafted a tackle number in the first round Drafted a hell of a lot of offense alignment Because Tyron Smith left And we just got to We had needed to update the offensive line

And get some more tonnage up there We got a linebacker So yeah I think it was a pretty solid draft And something about being a Cowboys fan They have missed on some first round draft picks but more than likely they hit on them. They do a pretty good job in the draft,

and recently they've done a really good job in the draft. So I believe in their scouts, and I believe in what they're trying to do there when it comes to the draft. So, I don't know, people hate on Jerry Jones, and I think that, I think the biggest problem with the Cowboys that hurts them is not the draft. It's not that the Joneses are kind of running the team.

The problem is Jerry has put such a huge target on the Cowboys back and publicity on the Cowboys back and him talking as an owner so frequently throughout the season rather than just shutting the fuck up and letting the players do their thing.

He just put so much pressure on the team. The team feels that. I think they probably feel that. And so if there's one thing that I wish Jerry wouldn't do is just don't talk to the press. You like every other owner and don't be in the line.

in the spotlight. Because we don't need it. We don't need it to be there. And that's the only thing with Robert Kraft in some in some scene of dive bar somewhere and just stay yourself. Be good for both your teams. Well, they could go to a Korean massage parlor together and try that out for size. But no, Robert Kraft's kind of in the press a little bit more. For different reasons. Yeah, yeah. But he's, he's been in the press too. But Jerry's definitely the most polarizing of owners for sure. But something that I didn't like was the Eagles. They drafted hometown kid, Cooper DeGine, a cornerback from Iowa, who's a white cornerback that you don't see very often. They might move him to safety.

They might not. But holy shit, he's an athletic white guy. I'll tell you that, very athletic. And I think he was a great pick. And then they also got, they drafted him in the second round. They drafted another cornerback that was the top cornerback in the first round. So they got arguably the two best corners in the whole draft back to back. We got to play them.

And they, we got to play them twice a year, and they're already loaded. They got Sequin Barclay, Jalen Hertz, and they signed both their wide receivers to contracts. So that worries me a little bit. But other than that, it was a good draft, good to see. I love when Goodell gets booed every time he comes on stage. That's hilarious. Nobody likes to. And they shouldn't because he's piece of crap.

Yeah, people can argue he's not done a lot of good for the game. So anyway, where did the Iowa kicker go? The Iowa punter. went to the Bears. Yep. And the Bears had a really good draft. Caleb Williams, I don't know. He seems like kind of a prima don't know.

But if he can play at a high level on the field, all is off the field shit. You can say whatever you want to say. But if he can play on the field and he has that off the field personality, he is going to be a star and Chicago is going to love him. If he sucks, they're going to rake him over the Coles. He'll be run out of town. Anyway, my reason for him for.

bringing that up is Caleb Williams, the first overall pick that the Bears took, texted Iowa's punter, like after he got drafted and said, we're not going to be punting here very much. Yeah. I saw it. So, I don't know, good for him too.

So he punted a fuckload last year for Iowa Hawkeyes. He was, so he got plenty of experience punting. So he's probably ready to go for the NFL. So that's all say on the NFL. We'll see how it goes. I don't know. Cowboys, I'm not one of these Cowboys fans that will tell you that we're going to the Super Bowl this year because I have yet to see it.

It's never happened in my entire lifetime. So I've only watched the glory days of the 90s. So I will not be one of these that tell you we're going to the Super Bowl every year. So there's hope, though. I wait for postseason. Yeah, that's what you're playing for. Yeah, with them. The regular season doesn't matter.

All right. Well, I got a question that isn't on the outline that I want to bring up. So somebody asked, first question here, it's going off script, I'm already thrown curveballs. Somebody asked, what's the best financial platform to invest into stocks and stuff like that? In my personal opinion, this is not a sponsored advertisement because in the reason you know it's not sponsored is because I'm going to say fuck. and if I was saying fuck in a sponsorship, they want sponsorous.

So this is not sponsored. This is my personal feeling and personal experience. M1 Finance is a great platform to invest your money on because it has everything. They have a really good mobile app. You can do it on the computer. They have retirement accounts. They have brokerage accounts. You can invest in index funds, ETFs, individual stocks.

You can do a margin loan against your portfolio if you're into that. it's really easy to use tons of YouTube tutorials on how to use the platform and uh you know if you just want to kind of take the investment power into your own hands it does everything my problem with uh like my problem with like cash app or any of these other uh well they're not really i guess and you can buy stocks on there but you can only buy individual stocks in crypto right and that is the one thing that i i will say m1 doesn't have is crypto you can't buy crypto on there or bitcoin on there but you can do everything else. And so when I'm looking at platforms,

I want to stick to one, I really want to stick to one, and have everything available to me, and that's why I chose them. So yeah, I recommend them a lot. I recommend them a lot. It's something else here now, something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus,

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Well, the investment platform that I use is Farm Credit Services of America because I don't have any money to invest. It's all just payments going out. all my eggs are pretty much in this will do his basket at this point but I'll tell you this is how old I am I was actually at a wedding Saturday

the guy, my neighbor, one of my best friends growing up he was the best man in my wedding his youngest daughter got married this weekend so that'll make you feel as though time has marched along kind of harshly, but we were chit-chatting a little bit, and he and I are old enough that we used to have a subscription to Investors Business Daily, which was a printed magazine that ranked every stock that was out there, and it was done every day, and I would run to the mailbox at 1035, because that's when we would get it, and you'd get the updated stock rankings

from the day before and we were investing in, we were day trading, day trading through a TD Ameritrade. Back then it was just TD, because they hadn't merged yet. I can't remember what it was. Doesn't matter. Anyway, we would call in our trades. And we were day trading on, this was right before the tech bubble popped. And so like JDS Uniface and Intel and Oracle and I mean, some of those are around today, but also a bunch of stocks that are not around anymore. So we did all that and then it didn't end real well. And so learned a valuable lesson there. And then after that, I moved into Edward Jones, and I do still have an IRA and all that good stuff, but use them for a long time. And then, you know, when you start building hog buildings and buying land and raising kids and starting businesses within what you're doing, it takes a lot of money.

So I don't have, other than my Roth IRA today, I'm not invested in anything. Well, I guess if you're being honest, I'm not really either because to start farmergraded, I need some money. So I had to liquidate a lot of my shit. So, but that's before that, that's what I used all the time. So I do have. And I started out at Edward Jones, but if you do any research, you find out that the S&P 500 index fund outperforms most, like 90% of time and outperforms mutual funds that,

these financial advisors have and you got to pay them fees and you don't have to pay shit when it comes to the index fund. So that was a realization to me that, well, why am I paying this person? That was, and that, there's a lot of value in those people. If you don't got time, you don't want to worry about it. I highly recommend a financial advisor, but if you think you can do it yourself, do it yourself. So it's all, it's all different for anybody. But that was the reason I moved over to there. But yeah, you were being honest, so I'm being honest here too. I don't got much.

I don't got much. We're all in. We're all in on this sucker, baby. We're all in on this sucker. And you know what? That ain't all bad. I'll tell you what. I have a good quote.

Go ahead. Alex Ramosey said this once, you know, if you haven't, you don't know who that is. He's an entrepreneur. He's on social media always coming up with. He's a good thought guy. but you know the best investment that you can make is in the field of knowledge that you know best because you know like if you're a really good real estate guy most of your money should probably be in real estate because that's your field of knowledge that's where you spend a lot of your time

that's where you're learning that's where you're at everybody everybody always maximizes for diversification you got to diversify to get rich a lot of wealthy people will tell you, get wealthy doing one thing, then once you get the wealth, then diversify to keep the wealth. You don't diversify and try to get rich that way. So, I don't know,

being all in on something that we're all in on farming, we're all in on the businesses, and businesses are part of the, it all kind of goes together and it's all in our field of knowledge. So there you go. shoot, it might as well go for the home run. Yep, that's right.

It is. So anyway, all right. I have a question for you off the top, off the sheet. I just thought about that people were, I just thought somebody asked us on a YouTube video. What are your thoughts on the Tyson plant closing in Perry, Iowa? Oh.

Um, I think that I think that Tyson knows that okay, back up. hog prices have been cheap up until recently. Packer margin was very, very good. The plant in Perry is not one of their biggest plants,

and it's an older plant that they bought. But when you're making good money, it makes sense. But I think that Tyson looked at that and saw what was coming because their margin is getting tighter. the more the hog market goes up, the more pressure they're getting, the worse their margin is. And let's face it, being in the meat business is a tough business from a labor standpoint, from a financial standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint. It is not for the fainted heart. and the people that run those businesses

for lack of a smoother way to say it, they are some cutthroat son of a bitches because that's why they're still in business. And I think they looked at that and said, we can close that plant. If we want to double shift or expand or modernize one of our newer plants, we can probably get back the production we've lost.

And so that's why they made that decision. I don't think that it was any grand scheme to screw over the city of Perry. It sucks. And as a hog farmer, I don't like it because it isn't even, that's not consolidation because you didn't lose an independent. they're just, it's more of a consolidation of fewer plants, but I don't, we need more plants, not less, but more importantly, we need more diversification as far as the people who actually own them. The problem is, as I said, that business is cutthroat.

And so I don't think the chances of large scale, there isn't some new competitor that's just going to pop up. So there needs to be, well, there needs to be a hell of a lot more farmer grades. I think that's the best thing that can happen to animal agriculture is independence, gain and power back from the major packers. The big four. Yeah, because it's tough and it's only going to get tougher. And the government's not helping any. The regulatory side of things is only going to get worse. And the ESG score stuff is going to make it harder on them. If you continue with the government that we have, if we don't have a change in the leadership in this country,

you're going to see the EPA. Basically, all regulatory offices are going to just be more emboldened and have more, take more power, themselves if we don't have, if we don't keep that in check, which makes it harder on all businesses. But that business especially, the margins are pretty thin. And so I guess at the end of the day, all of that to say, I think that it was a pure, it was a pure business decision. As they looked forward, they thought we can probably be more efficient if we get rid of that plant. Yeah, I think a lot of people are pissed about it because, yeah, it was probably,

This decision made purely on numbers. Now, was it the most ethical decision? Probably not. Because you had a lot of Americans, a lot of people in Perry that worked there, that had been working there for a long, long time. Real American people working there. And those are good paying jobs.

Good paying jobs. And you take that out of a small town. I think the other thing that was in the news about it was there was speculation that they closed that. that plant down because the labor costs so much. And with all these illegal immigrants coming in, I don't know, supposedly there's a database that Tyson had had, and I'm sure all these other packers have the same fucking thing, that they essentially track illegal immigrants and know how many are coming in and recruit illegal immigrants to work at these packing plants so they can pay them

dirt cheap to essentially do the job and earn more money for themselves because labor is expensive if it's not an illegal immigrant. And so that was a lot of people were pissed off about that because that got spent out in the news cycle. Now, I don't know if that's 100% true or not. I'm just going off of what I saw, but a lot of people are pissed about that reason alone. It's taken away American jobs. And if they are going to opening up a new plant or they're going to double or add a few more shifts in their other plants and they're all going to be illegal immigrants and you took away this plan out of Perry. That's un-American, you know. A lot of Americans don't like that. It's not the most ethical decision. And that's, I think that's,

that's the problem. That's a lot, that's a problem. I mean, you know, business capitalism is great. It's awesome. And yeah, you got to be a cutthroat in that business especially. But I don't know. I feel like ethics got to have a play in there too. And if my legacy as a business owner, I mean, for me anyway, I would like to not go down as an unethical business owner. Right. And so so the, I'm a little bit. I don't know. You don't know about that. I don't buy all that. And here's why. Well, I guess this is what I'll say about it. Is if that's true, if that is true, then the United States state's government is a willing accomplice for that to happen. Because in this day and age, for a packing plant or anybody that, uh, as an employer, the background checks that you have to go

through and there are a lot of employees at packing plants today that I think are probably what they would call TN visa workers. In other words, they're documented. immigrants and they're here for a certain amount of time, then they have to go back and then reapply again to come work. There's a fair amount of that that goes on. That's heavily regulated by the government. So if Tyson's is, if Tyson is able to hire illegal immigrants to work in their plants, the only way that that can happen with any, with any, I should say, with success, is the United States government being completely complacent on their regulatory overwatch. Well, I think some people would say that is the case because they have so much

power and they are so wealthy and they're so big that. Right. Who knows? They could tip them off or they're just not as strong. They're not as, what you want to say? They're not as sturdy on the rules on the big guys rather than the little guys. Right. Well, if that's true, it's another example as to why. Lobbying. I mean, maybe they're lobbying them. Maybe the packing plants are saying we'll donate to your. Well, there's no doubt that there's lobbying. Donate a lot of money to politicians into local governments and to, you know, that's, you know, that's, that goes without saying. So, I mean, it's possible, but if that is going on, it's because the United States government is totally complacent. Allowing it to happen. They're allowing it

to happen, 100%. Yeah, so, uh, I guess final thoughts on that one. Shitty deal all around for the people of Perry, Iowa. I don't like seeing it. I live in Iowa. I'm sure a lot of people in that area are pissed about it. Uh, yeah, it sucks. But there is, and the other thing, thing about that plan is, and it was really outdated. It was. That was a big reason. This is how outdated it is. When I was a kid, when I was a little shamed. Oh, shit. So when I was a kid and we sold our pigs, we raised here a lot of times. So sometimes we sent pigs to Rath in Columbus Junction or a tumwa, but usually we sent ours to Columbus Junction. So that was Rath. Wrath got purchased by IBP. and what,

IBP became Tyson's. Anyway, we sold pigs there, but then right where the Hy-Vee store is, where Hy-V gas is in the little town, there was the Oscar Meyer buying station, and Chuck Hodle ran that, and we would load up old Nuppie,

his grandpa, had a straight truck, a double-decker straight truck, and we sold straight-truck loads of pigs, and we would haul them to the Oscar Meyer buying station, and then walkers, they had the contract with Oscar Meyer, and they would haul semi-loads of pigs to Perry, Iowa. Well, one of my good friends, when I was in grade school, he and his family moved to Perry, Iowa.

And in the summertime, if I wanted to go visit, and I liked going up there and visit because they live close to Adventureland, and my dad is never going to take us to Adventureland. where you had too much shit to do. But old Harry Walker, I would go down to Oscar Meyer and I'd crawl in the

passenger seat of a cab over Peterbill. I think Nupp still have that cab over. I think they sold it and then they bought it back. But anyway, I would ride up to Perry, Iowa because that was the Oscar Meyer plant and then his family would pick me up there from the parking lot. The Tyson plant was in Perryer.

Oh, no. It was Oscar Meyer. Oh, okay. And then they bought it. And then it got bought by somebody else and then Tyson bought it. So it's old, no doubt about it. But, yeah, fond memories. Oh, that I didn't know that. There you go. I like that. All I'll say the last thing about it is there's an opportunity there for maybe an independent to get it.

Yes, right. But it's going to take a shitload of money. Yep. And, I mean, yeah, it's just going to take a shitload of money. You're going to have to redo the whole plant and it's going to take time to make your money back. And you've got to have a market to distribute it. Yep, you got to find some kind of a niche. There's a lot of moving pieces there.

and if hell if I had the money I'd love to do it and if I had the market I'd love to do it but I don't think farmer grade's quite there yet. Not yet. We'll have to wait for another day. Okay, moving on. What do you think about TikTok? TikTok ban. I mean, we've kind of gone over this before if you haven't listened to that episode. My thoughts on the TikTok ban as a creator, as somebody that we post content all the time, I'm a little relieved in the fact that it's just one less freaking platform to post on because man, there are just a shitload of platforms to post on. I think we post it on four total YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

And as a creator, I'm not very, I'm not upset about the idea of losing a platform. It's just one less that we got to post to. But on the side of why they wanted to be gone so bad, and, you know, there's speculation that META is lobbying for them to do this bill and then so that they can take out a competitor. That's shady as shit. And that's, I don't think that should be allowed whatsoever. And then the person that wrote the bill,

there was a video that came out about him that he wrote the bill, invested, I think overall he invested like $1.5 million into META and then the bill passed. So obviously meta stock is going to go up and up because the news came out, less competition, news came out about the TikTok ban. So he just made a bag. And there's a perfect example of how fucking corrupt

our elected officials are right there. That dude wrote up a bill to ban TikTok invested $1.5 million into its competitor, got it banned, and he just made a shitload of money. if that doesn't tell you what that guy's intentions are, I don't know what will. And he's not the only one out there like that. Yeah. That's exactly what's wrong with America right there. That's exactly what wrong with what the people that we've elected. That's what's wrong right there. That's the problem. If you get that out of politics, I think a lot of shit could change, but I don't know how you regulate that. I really don't. So that's, I don't think it's, I don't like that part of it. It's just another, example of powers that be abusing their power for sure. I think it's going to get bought. Somebody's going to try to use it, try to make it better, try to keep it the same. I don't know. Just change ownership. The other thing I will say, TikTok, we've had a great run on there,

whether it was for this will do farm or barn talk. And it was really nice to, I think there was a lot of people. Twitter was always a place that people talk politics and real shit about and like spoke their mind. But I also felt like TikTok became one of those platforms too. Because I felt like Instagram and Facebook, there was a time in there that you couldn't really say exactly all that you wanted to say. But on TikTok and Twitter, ever since Elon bought it, you could say whatever the fuck you wanted. And that was nice because you'd actually get to hear how real people are feeling about the shit going on in the real world. Yeah. And so that's going to suck because I don't know if that'll stay that way. Right. But yeah, I agree. I agree.

the idea that this bill, the idea this whole thing was for public safety is a complete line of bullshit because every social media platform out there is collecting your data and selling that data to whoever they can get to give a buck. The Chinese. Yeah, and the Chinese will just,

if they aren't owning it, they're just going to be soaking it up however they can. So that's total bullshit. It was 100% for profit by somebody. I have no doubt about that. Personal note, it's probably, if it does change or if it does go away, it's probably not all bad for me because I don't really consume much social media other than TikTok and some Twitter. That's about all I do.

And I can go down, it's good and bad because I'm one of these people that, like when I get interested in something, I can really go down a rabbit hole. And TikTok was pretty good for that. I mean, you could go down, you could go pretty deep into stuff. And that isn't always the best use of your time. And, you know, all of the attention is going to go somewhere. If it goes away, it's not like people are not going, they're not going to wake up and say, well, TikTok's gone,

so I'm going to go work on my flower garden. Nope, they're going to go somewhere. So all the attention is going to go somewhere else. So as a creator, it doesn't really, I don't think it's going to affect us one way or another. And a good, you should know this by now, and we've said this for a long time, but you should never be dedicated to one platform because...

This is the exact reason why. Yes, 100%. Your audience could die. The audience that you built could die. in a blink of an eye if you're not on everything. So that's why we post on everything. You think I like posting all our shit on four platforms? Fuck, no, I don't.

But it's what's required if you're going to be on social media. It's what you got to do. And it's insured. And if, you know, like, and this is Gary V to a T. Gary V, you can love him or hate him, but the guy is genius when it comes to marketing and seeing trends and social media and all that. he always talks about the idea of, you know,

you think I like the idea that if VR came out and that became the next thing that I'd have to go on VR? No. But is it the only way? Is it one of the best ways that you're going to get attention on whatever you're doing, your business, advertising, whatever? If that's the case, you got to be on there.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you don't like it. Right. if you want to have a successful business and get in front of people's eyeballs, you have to go where the people are. It's just what it is. So that's, it is what it is. When it's all said and done, we'll all just have to adapt is what comes down to. Yep. All right. I'll ask you one here. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. We appreciate every single one of you guys. Let's keep this ball rolling. Leave review on Spotify or Apple. Follow us on YouTube.

Pay the fee. Share it out with who you know. It all helps, guys. We appreciate every single one of you. We love you. Now, let's get back to the podcast. John asks, any chance we could get the bottle. Old fashion recipe. Yes. Old fashion recipe.

So I thought about this when I saw it and I was like, well, we should just go to the bar and I could just show everybody. And then I'm like, well, if you're listening to it, that's not going to have much effect. So, yeah, any of you that don't know, I'm a lazy bartender. So I enjoy an old fashion and a few people in my family enjoy an old fashion. So when we get together and we feel like having a drink, it's not a case of, oh, I'm going to mix myself an old fashion. I very well am probably going to mix four old fashions. And then, you know, then you're going to mix maybe four more of them.

And I'm lazy and I don't want to do it. And I don't want to spend all my time standing there doing that. while people are sitting around playing a game or doing whatever. So I saw this, and maybe this is why it's going to be bad if TikTok goes away, because I learned this from TikTok. There's a lot of good knowledge on there. So they call it a freezer door old-fashioned, and you can really use whatever your preferred whiskey is. So if you're a purist, you probably want to use a rye whiskey, but you can really use whatever you like mixing. What's your go-to? Four roses.

Four roses. It's got a sweet flavor to it. Yeah, I like a sweeter. I like a sweeter old-fashioned. I've done it with a rye, but I really do like the four roses. So you just take a regular bottle and pour yourself, oh, like,

pour yourself like a two-ounce or a two-and-a-half-ounce shot and do what you think is. best with that and make sure the bottle's actually good. That's usually what I do with that shot. And then put, I use two kinds of bitters. I use the orange bitters and the regular bitters, and I'll put 20 dashes of orange bitters and 40 dashes of regular. And that sounds like a lot, but you've got to remember you're making like, I don't know, I think you're making like, 10 or 12. So what bottle, you got to give people, you got to specify.

So you're taking a bottle, you pour a shot out. Yep. Then you put the, you're making this all in the same bottle that you just pour the shot out of. Basically, you're taking the shot out to make room for everything else you're putting in. Okay. Is what you're doing. And so, don't use a handle. Use a 750 milliliter bottle, standard bottle of whiskey.

And so take the two ounces out. and then 20 dashes of orange bitters and 40 dashes of regular bitters, whatever kind you want to use, and then an ounce and a half of simple syrup. And one thing that makes a huge difference in how good that old-fashioned is, is do not use some simple syrup that you got at the damn liquor store that's premixed because it's trash. It's 100% trash.

Make your own simple syrup, and that's super easy to do. If you want to make it single strength, it is, say, you take a cup of sugar and a cup of water. You put it on the stove, and you just keep stirring it,

and you don't bring it to a boil, you get it simmering until all the sugar disappears. And I use that demara sugar, so don't use cane sugar. Use brown, demara sugar that's the best you can get a lot of places and i actually make my simple syrup double strength so i'll put two cups of sugar one cup of water and then you just sit there and whisked and whiskit and whiskit and whisk it and the and the sugar will break down and get stirred in and then

you let it cool you put it in a bottle you put it in the fridge and hell it'll keep for i don't know it'll keep for a month in there uh at least two weeks i don't use when i do want to it doesn't usually last that long anyway. If it gets, I'm pretty sure I've used it up to a month. Maybe that's longer you're supposed to, but I'm still here. If it goes longer than that, I'd probably get rid of it. But, and I think you can tell if it went bad. But anyway, so all that to say, use a good simple syrup.

Yeah, make your own simple syrup. Don't buy some cheap ass shit. If you are going to use a good bottle of whiskey, why would you use shitty ingredients to go with it? so don't do that. How much simple syrup? Yep. Put an ounce and a half of that in that bottle, 20 ounces of orange, 40 ounces of regular, and then...

Not again. Just... Nope. Total. And then there's two different things that I have done. And you could probably do them both, but I will take just like, oh, probably not even a half an ounce, but up to maybe a half, I don't think quite, maybe like a quarter of an ounce of the syrup from those luxardo cherries.

There again, if you're going to make an old fashion, some people don't put a cherry in it. Some people just garnish the glass with an orange, and if you're purest, you can beat me up. But I like a black Luxardo cherry in my old fashion and an orange slice, but I'll put just a little bit of that cherry juice in, that bottle and it gives it some color it makes the color rich and it adds a little bit a little bit to it now i still put a cherry in it when i mix it the other thing that some people do and corey

actually turn me on to this instead of the cherry he'll put a half ounce of maple syrup in that bottle and that's pretty that's pretty square either one what you do with that last half ounce is up to you but anyway you take that put it put it in there and then just you you just turn the bottle up and down a few times, stick it in the freezer, and you're good to go. And when you have people show up and you, you're like, you want an old-fashioned, get a glass, get a nice piece of ice, put however much you want in it,

and then garnish that with an orange slice, or an orange peel, if you want to put it in there, go ahead. I always add a cherry. And then we're off to the races. So if we're playing cards or we're playing a cutthroat game, a monopoly, whatever it is. You don't give a shit because you're off. to the promise land.

Yeah, I can stand. The rest of my family is hyper competitive. So whatever game I'm at, I'm probably going to get screwed at. But I don't care because I just mix myself another old fashion. I just smile and nod my head and go, oh, that's a good play. Yep, you really fucked me over on that one, didn't you? So, yeah. That's what dad's for.

Just provide the venue, provide the food, provide the drink, and then take a beating and then everybody goes home happy. Build us up. That's what you do. build us up. Okay, just to recap, good bottle of whiskey. Pour that two-ounce shot out. Yep.

Take that for yourself, make sure the whiskey's good. You get 40 bitters, 40 of the orange. No, 40 of the regular. 40 of the orange. Good, simple syrup. Yep. Pour that in there. Oounce and a half.

Either good cherry juice or maple syrup. Yep. How much of that? Half an ounce. Shake that bitch up, throw it in your freezer. Don't shake it. Okay. Don't shake it.

Put your hand on the top. Put your pork back on it and just roll it. Just roll it over. Roll it over three or five times. Yep. And then put it in the freezer. Put it in the freezer. And it'll keep in the freezer for a long time.

But let's face it, it ain't going to last very long. Yeah, it is, I am a testament of trying it. It is really good. It is really good and it's really easy because, let's be honest, mixing those up every time somebody wants one. It takes time to do it right. Yeah, I like mixing a drink, but my whole thing is when we're, like if we're doing something, like if we're playing cards or, you know, have a group of people, you know, you have, if you get,

if you get six people that like a drink and you have a bottle of that in there, you've pretty much got two drinks you can mix for everybody. And the other thing is they're really good. And if you've had two good old fashions, then you can give, then you can give them more. whatever the hell you want. As long as the first two drinks are good after that, they don't even have to be mixed well. Because nobody cares. Everybody's like,

yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, and as a host, you don't want to get up and be the bartender the whole time. Yeah. So, yeah, no, that's, it is really good. So take his advice on that if you want to give it a shot. So Dean wrote us and said that he'd seen, you know,

we've talked about equipment preferences. Iowa and Farmer was on here. We've had Wisconsin-Tyke and two was on here. And we were talking about equipment preferences. And he said, what about seed? What do you plant? And why do you plant it? Well, I guess we touched on that. Pioneer. We plant pioneer 100%. Biggest reason. And this is all just what I've heard from my dad. Because I always asked you this question as I grew up. I was like, why do we plant 100% pioneer? Everybody else, you know, there's a lot of people that plant, you know, different seed companies.

they always do different hybrids different numbers all that and we do do different hybrid but it's all pioneer and he just said you know because it's all about there's really not a whole lot of difference between all of them but every time somebody comes to the house and tries to sell us on other seed they always compare their numbers to pioneer and the service has always been good to us the people that we get our seed from the dealer we get our seed from they've always been great they've always been phenomenal they've never given us a reason to not go with them so maybe we're losing out on not trying another company or are seeing in a different direction but our yields have gone up year after year if it's you know if the conditions have been good uh service if we get it planted

the service has been good and everybody else compares their numbers to pioneer when they come over and try to sell us on their seat the only thing that would piss me off and stir me to go a different direction. If they get so woke and do some stupid shit like Bud Light did, that's what will take me away from Pioneer

right away. You do some stupid woke shit, I'm out. You're going to lose our business. So don't do that. So in my past life when I was working in the hog industry, a guy that I worked with, you know, we had people coming down there

all the time trying to you feed, trying to sell you injectables, trying to sell you, you name it, you know, feed trucks, whatever it was. And he had a really great way of dealing with it. He would just tell them, he would say, here's the deal. X, Y, Z, let's just say we were talking about feed. He would say, this is who we use. They have provided us with great service. Their prices. Their prices. They're is always competitive, they do a great job for us. They may not always do a great job for us. And if the day comes that they screw up, we're going to look for somebody else. But until they screw up, we're going to keep using them. Thanks for stopping by. I got your number. If anything

changes, I'll let you know. And I always like that. And that's really at the end of the day. That's it. Another thing I think that plays in more with us. If we were, if we were farming five times as much ground as we are today, well, to me, I think I would feel a little bit more like I had room to experiment. Yeah. But the problem that I have is every acre I farm, I have, I have. I have. I have to get the best yield I can out of it. And to me, I feel like I don't really have, you know, people like, oh, just try, you know, just try eight bags of this. I can't afford to try eight bags of that. I've got to use what arguably is the best, the best out there. And, you know, you can beat me up and say, you know, it's really not and it's all hocus, pocus, and that, you know,

somehow there's all kinds of theories on how that they have managed to stay where they have and that's fine and there's lots of good seed companies but at the end of the day to what soyer said that's absolutely right until they screw up uh that's what we're going to keep doing so and i think for most people if i just take off my personal you know off my farm most guys out there at the end of the day they want to work with somebody that feels that they make them feel that they make them feel like their business is important to them and they're doing a good job for them. Now then, there are farmers out there that do not give a shit about service. The only thing they care about is price. Price. Price and they spend their time going through these hybrids and there's a hell of a lot of

hybrids out there that are basically genetics that are farmed out. In other words, there's a lot of companies that are selling seed that don't actually have their own genetics. they're using somebody else's. And so they know what this number is under five different people's names or 10 people's names. And it's whoever they can get that hybrid from for the cheapest price. And I'm not one of those guys. And I probably never will be. So.

Unless I did hear this from somebody that deals with a lot of ad companies. And this is like, this isn't any other business. But the guys that farm a shitload of acres. probably get a cheaper price than what we do. Oh, guaranteed. Because it's just all about, I mean, it's all about supply demand. It's the same thing with the companies that I work with inside Farmer Grade. If I order more boxes and liners, I order more volume.

I'm going to get a cheaper price per unit when I order more volume. If there's a farmer out there that farms 40,000 acres, he's probably going to get a cheaper price per bag than we do. Right. No doubt about it. So price matters, but we're just, this grain farming thing, it's awesome. We love to do it, but, you know, it's not like our end-all be-all. It's not what, it's not the foundational piece of our operation. It's a big part, but the hogs are probably the biggest.

And then what we do outside of, outside of the hog building with the podcast and showing what we do every day on the YouTube and Farmer grade, that's, those are kind of, Yeah. Those are kind of the big things. Yeah, you know what? At the end of the day, grain farming is, to me, it's like I look at it as, how much could I make renting all this ground out versus how much can I make farming it myself? Right now, I can make more money farming it myself, so that's why I'm doing it.

I don't foresee a time when I'll say, yep, let's just rent it out. But it could happen. And I am, I am, I feel like I am not that tied to it that if it came to the point where somebody is dumb enough to pay me X versus what commodity prices are, I am not going to be one of those people, and I don't think you are either, that are going to say, oh, you know, we farm this for how many generations and we're going to keep farming it. No, we'll keep raising pigs and we'll keep doing all the other stuff we're doing, but if somebody wants to rent it, knock yourself out. and when times changed, maybe we go back to farming.

Because this industry... Numbers have gotten stupid. Yeah, the numbers are just... It don't even make sense. It's ridiculous. Especially this year. Yeah. It's just, it's...

Fuck, people are out of wash. You're losing money. You're working for nothing. You're working for a loss. Some people are working for a loss. Yeah, and that's... I'm not so tied to it that I'm willing to do that. I just, I'm not.

I know, I've done enough thing. to lose money I don't need anymore. And we're just, we're really blessed. Truly, we are blessed in the fact that we have some options. And thank the good Lord that we have decided to try to diversify some. Because if I was a pure grain farmer, well, shit, we wouldn't mean be here. No, but even if I was to the size where it was, you know,

worked. I, uh, if all my eggs were in that basket, that's a tough, uh, hats off to you guys because it's just tough because you are a price taker and every input that you put into a crop is, it matters big time. You don't have control of any of it. And mother nature better, I mean, yeah, she's the biggest factor of all. Yeah. So, so yeah, long-winded answer there, but yeah, I'm asking you a question now because you use that one. All right. So we're going to be on some controversial topics here. So this guy, he is a supporter.

Jeff is a supporter, but he just wanted to throw this out here just to get our opinion because he wants us to really stick the knife in and twist it. So Jeff asks, how can you call yourself a capitalist and then take money from the government in reference to subsidize crop insurance? Yep.

you greedy fucking farmer you. You guys, you know, it's so funny. Hold your thought. You guys would be surprised at how, if you go look at the YouTube shorts on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, you look at the comments, man, there are really some people out there that hate farmers and truly believe that we are just sitting on piles, piles of cash.

There might be some guys out there like that. but when it comes to not like they just don't get it they they must just not know what an operating loan is or they just don't get it whatsoever and they they truly believe we're able to just buy equipment with just i think they think we're buying it in cash and we're buying like iowan farmers bulldozer clip they're like all these farmers they're so poor they buy construction equipment too because they're so poor it's like do you Dude, you don't even, you have no idea. You are literally so removed. You have no idea the reality. So continue, but it's just funny. Well, I mean, I don't know. So first of all, I don't even know really where to start on that,

other than to say that, for one thing, I guess this is the deal. You do have a choice. Like, you can farm without crop insurance. and my dad farmed without crop insurance for a long, long time. And as long as I've been doing it, I've had crop insurance, and I've never collected on it. So to me, crop insurance is a piss poor investment.

But I farm some really good ground. You know, my family was lucky enough that when they left, when they left Illinois and came to Iowa they settled here and it's good dirt and very rarely do we get in a situation where we raise a poor enough

crop that I could actually excuse me collect on crop insurance but you're right I don't know what the split is I don't know how much the premium that I pay is subsidized by the federal government. I should know that, and somebody can probably correct me. And we've actually talked about having somebody on to talk about crop insurance from a crop insurance provider.

And maybe we should, I think, now that I think about it, I should get a hold of John Greiner at Cass Green, because I think he does crop insurance. And so, upcoming episode, we'll have to have old John back and we'll talk about crop insurance and what the subsidy is and all that. But before, I can't really say a whole lot more about that, but I will knock you down off your pedestal a little bit and say that as convoluted as this country is,

there is not many people that are living and that are either running a business or buying things or have a retirement account or you name it that something that you don't something that you come in contact with is not somehow subsidized by the United States government it their hand is in so much shit that, like it or not, you are, you're getting something that's subsidized by the government, whether that be education or whether that be ethanol at the pump, or whether that be your crop insurance, or whether that be, if you live somewhere where insurance rates have gone through the roof,

you can bet your ass that the United States government is going to come in and probably backstop some of that so that those people can't actually get insurance because there's a lot of insurance companies that don't want to insure certain areas, and you can bet that the United States government's probably going to step in and say, we're going to backstop this so you can have insurance. And so, yes, I would say I'm still a capitalist, even though every year I buy a crop insurance policy. and I don't know how much it's subsidized,

but I can tell you that if it is subsidized and I'm going to get a freebie, it ain't subsidized near enough because to me I pay a hell of a lot for something that I have never used. And like Iowan Farmer, when he was on here, he was talking about crop insurance. If you farm somewhere where your yields are just,

they're not in a certain criteria. Yeah. They don't even get it. He can't eat. Well, he doesn't even get crop insurance because his proved up yield so low that it, like if he got the crop insurance, if the crop insurance paid out, it wouldn't make any difference. He'd be losing his ass. So it makes no sense for him to have it. So you're right. I mean, for me, the rates are, are decent, I guess.

But we also farm somewhere where I've been doing all the farming as far as putting the money out there and making the decisions for, I don't know, 12 years probably. I don't know if it's been longer than that or not. I can't remember when I took that all over, but I've never had a claim, I've never claimed it and I pay it out every year. So I think my capitalism is still fully intact. as much as it can be.

I guess my only comment on it is, you know, I saw a comment. It was like, well, these farmers are all subsidized by the government. And they all,

if it wasn't for the government, farmers wouldn't be here. Those are the kind of comments that I see. And they're like, well, you know, other small businesses don't get subsidies from the government.

They have to produce their product. And, you know, it's just got to work, you know. Like general motors? Is that who you're talking about? Most small businesses.

but they said small businesses. But here's the thing. What we raise people need. Like your little small gadget that you make and sell on Amazon or whatever, is it a need or is it a want? Because if we don't raise enough crops and the farms go out of business, that crop production is not going to be there. And ain't going to feed the pigs.

Pigs aren't, we're going to, it's just less pigs. It's less livestock. it's less crop production. So the government steps in when they need to for farmers because if they don't, the farmers go out of business, which means more corporations are going to buy the farms or less production, which if you talk to the American consumer,

they don't want that. Probably don't want that unless you want to eat fucking crickets. Or you want corporations to own all the farms and farmland in America. So there's the other side of that. That's the other reality. Am I wrong or I'm right on that? You're right.

I mean, that's the truth. Like it or not? You bring up a really good point because hang with me here a minute. I wanted to say this because I just saw this story last night. And I think it's a really good example of what you were talking about, how do you have a business that creates a need or a want? And in this country, that is one of the problems that we have that our economy is so upside down because today the most valuable companies, let's go Apple. Apple is one of the most valuable companies meta. Most

most valuable companies worth trillions of dollars is do they create a need? Do they create a product that is a need or a one? Well, most people would say it's a need, but is it a need? Yeah, that's a hard one. So Apple, what's the difference between the Apple first generation iPhone and the 15th generation an iPhone. Well, the 15th generation has a way nicer camera and it runs a lot faster. But does it do anything really different than what the first one did? I think you might want to go maybe like the fifth or, I know what your point is, but yeah. But when you look at when you, so today we put so much value as, as Americans, we put so much value on stuff that companies that create things for our wants and we undervalue so when you look at Union

Pacific or you look at Tyson or you look at General Electric or companies that create stuff you actually need the value of those stocks is shit because they're not sexy because are not techy. Our whole society today runs on once. And the shit we talk about how like the last podcast

we were talking about like the day of reckoning or when that switch happens, when public services break down or when, you know, the economy goes to shit, That's when people wake up and it's not about what you want. It's about what you need.

And so all of that to say that subsidized crop insurance is a holdover from a time when the United States government knew that if shit really hits the fan, we got to make sure that there are farmers out there, that they don't all go broke so they can produce what we all know. need. There isn't about what we all want. It's about what you need. And it's not very sexy. And you know, you can give me all the shit you want about it. But at the end of the day, that's why it's there.

And like I said, I don't feel like it's subsidized. We will find out, we'll come back to this. We'll find out how much it is subsidized. Because I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. But like I said, I think it's. necessary, I think it's a necessary thing to keep food production going in this country. And I think we're both still capitalists. Yeah, 100%.

Oh, that's a good one. You're the resident meat expert. Zach asks, what is the best way to prepare bacon? His preference is a cast iron skill. Oh, boy, I have actually never made bacon on a cast iron skill. I take that back. I have going on a camping trip with my good buddies over a fire with a cast iron skillet. The only problem with a cast iron skillet is that thing is a bitch to clean.

It is. You didn't season it correctly. Well, we did, but then, well, and then the bacon grease, but then if you make eggs in that thing, I don't care how good you season that thing. It sticks. It sticks a little bit. Anyway, I've never made it in a cast iron skillet. Oh, I have, but, you know, we were all drunk.

We were hung over. It probably wasn't done the best that we could. probably get it to be. But my personal favorite, if I'm in a pinch and eat it quick, I'll just season it throw it in the oven. I know that's not very sexy. And you probably don't get the most flavor on it. But I think pan fried or on the blackstone, on the blackstone, there's nothing better

than skillet or what do you call it, flat top bacon. Grittle. griddle that's the word i was looking for a griddle that it's hard to beat breakfast on the blackstone no matter what it is is really hard to be you can do pancakes bacon sausage uh i don't know eggs they get a little too done on there i think unless you do them over easy and stuff like that but when you're talking meats on a blackstone well damn that shit is really really really really good so i would say that's probably my favorite method to cook bacon and i like the thick shit yet. I don't want that thin stuff.

Here's an interesting thing I learned this week about bacon. So, you know, as farmer grades progressed, we've looked into doing some more wholesale partnerships with people locally in the area, restaurants, stuff like that. And, you know, U.S. Foods is a huge distributor of food, especially in the restaurant industry. And, you know, they have gold, they have silver, and they have bronze grated bacon. And, you know, I've never heard of that. dad never heard of that and they were talking this you know this restaurant we're talking to they were

talking to us about that and you know i wrote it down and i had a buddy that works kind of in the wholesale side of the business uh around the country and i asked them about those grades i'm like what you know what's the difference how do you how do you even go about getting gold graded bacon and he said that your gold graded bacon is very it's very lean in the fact that that that that's that belly on the pig doesn't have a lot of fat on it when you go to process it. So they process those pigs at about 275, 265, 270. Because the pig grows from the hind to the front. So their belly gets developed pretty early,

and it's more lean doesn't have a ton of fat on it. So the bigger it gets, the more fat is the positive belly. Yes, and then it, it, that kind of bacon, when you throw it in a pan or whatever, it shrinks up because it's not as lean, it's not as muscular, whatever. So you, so gold is a leaner pig, smaller frame pig, smaller pig, and then silver or silver and bronze or fatter pigs. So, so that, I guess I didn't really know that, but anyway, I love bacon and no matter, no matter what it is. but I do like bacon to kind of stay, stay intact and not shrivel up as much. So the way they market that is your gold,

that is like for breakfast. Plate coverage. Because it's your presentation. When somebody orders bacon, they use that gold bacon because it doesn't shrink up and it feels, you know, it looks good on the plate. Yep.

And then the next, the silver is like what you put on a BLT. Yep. So, because it doesn't have to look perfect. You just want it. so that it sticks out the end. And then the bronze is like what you chop, you fry it and you dice it and it goes on a salad or it goes in a soup or you use it for garnish or whatever.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, so I thought that was really interesting. We were just on the topic of bacon. But man, I could just, I could eat bacon in a pan in the stove on the blackstone in a cast iron skillet. Hell, I would even, if I was desperate enough, I would put it in the microwave and eat that shit too.

I would. I love baking. It's the best food. It's one of the best foods out there. So I got to give the cast iron skillet a try and really do it when I'm not hung over around all my buddies where we're just trying to feed ourselves. You're not trying to fry eggs after. Yeah. Don't want to do that. Yeah. We were itching to get on the boat that morning. So we were just like, let's throw this shit in there and get it done enough to where we can eat it. So, I agree with you, the griddle, the flat top. I love baking on that. And I will just tell you what, if you want, if you want everybody around your table smiling after breakfast, if you have the clan over, make breakfast on your blackstone and do your, do your bacon. and if you're going to do eggs, do your eggs over easy, but then do your pancakes on that griddle with the bacon grease on there.

And those pancakes will be the best damn pancakes you've ever had. When we have breakfast at our house in the summertime, I'll make everything on the flat top. Like I'll do sausage patties. I'll do sausage patties and then just about when they're done, I'll throw the bacon on. And when I pull the sausage patties, I'll do the eggs and throw them off and then take the bacon and then I'll do the pancakes last. And the pancakes in that bacon grease. Yeah, the nice thing about those pancakes, I feel like we're on like a food podcast right now.

We're like a barbecue guys. We're talking about our recipes. But the best thing about those pancakes on the black. stone is i don't know how you do it but the edges crisp up yeah that's the shit is fire that shit is so good it's so good oh man i mean it's you should not eat that every week but no shit it's good no but you know what once a month have everybody over do her upright and uh you'll be fine yeah how long do you want to keep rolling here i don't care i don't care we're let's do let's do i don't care let's do one more all right

All right. You want me to ask you one? Pick what you want to. You pick. Well, you want to talk about LWE? I got the LW shirt on. All right. So Eli asks, I'm 19.

I'm in the process of adding a hog barn to our operation. With interest rates and building costs, the cash flow is really hard to do. We feel for you, brother. The treatment system you were putting in really caught my attention. With the treatment system,

could you make the pit three to four feet instead of eight foot? The savings in concrete, would cash flow way better. I feel like a treatment system, I feel like treatment systems are definitely the way of the future. What's your thoughts and ideas of building new barns

to be compatible with new technology with treatment systems? Here we go, boys. I love talking about this. This is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, and I'm pissed. We want to get going on this thing so bad, and everybody within LW does too.

It has just been, when you're starting, when you're trying to do something that nobody's done before, or I should say nobody's done well, because I just had somebody message me today and said, oh, we put one of these systems in and it didn't work worth of shit. Well, you didn't put an LWE system in because they have not put any out on hog farms yet. There is a company out of Canada that has a similar name that has been doing it, and they use a different technology, and I don't really know the fact that they've been around as long as they are, and it's not more popular than what it is,

tells me it probably has not worked very well. But to answer your question, first of all, you're totally right. If we can get to the point that we're processing manure in real time where we're separating the water out of it, and we're getting the solids, and then we're also taking all the salts out of it. So you have your pot ash as a separate slurry, a separate pile. And then that water, we can treat that water,

both pasteurization and reverse osmosis, plus the level of filtration is excellent in it. You can get that water to where you could totally feed that back to your animals. Now, some people are going to definitely not want to do that to start because they're worried about pathogens. Pathogens within the water. And that's fine. It's going to take time and that water is going to be tested

and people are going to run trials. And I think at the end of the day, ultimately it will prove out that you can totally do that with no problems. But not three or four foot pit, you will be able to build these barns with a two foot pit. because for a system, the way a system works, it needs to run a continuous. This is the same kind of issue in the, like in the biodiesel business, when that all started, there were guys that ran like what you called,

I guess for lack of a better term, they called it like a still, like a pot still, a biodiesel plant where they made, they refined the diesel like in batches, and they had a really hard time with them because every time you started a new batch, you kind of had to experiment whether you got the mix right. And most biodiesel, or most diesel plants today, they're a continuous flow where they're just monitoring it and they're tweaking the process. Well, this manure separation system, it's the same in the fact that it wants to have constant throughput for the way the filtration works, for the way the separation works, it needs to have

just a steady supply of liquid manure going through it. And so, on the building side, you want to be separating, you want to be pulling manure pretty constantly. So you may not be pumping manure constantly, but you may pull out of your pit every morning for so many hours or every night for so many hours. And if you have multiple buildings, the system is going to be sized based on the annual production of manure. Like how much manure are you actually putting in there? And that's based on size of pig you've got, a number of pigs in the facility. Is it winter? Is it summer? Is it summer? or you have wet, wet dry feeders, dry feeders, nipple bars.

All of that goes in because basically they're sizing it based on the amount of manure that's fallen through those slats. And so in our situation where we've got four 2,400 head barns, the way that machine is probably going to work is we're going to be separating about every 21 days or 28 days. I can't quite remember if that. I think it's every 21 days. I think it's 21, three weeks.

So every three weeks, we're going to be going, making a circle. So we'll only be pulling manure out of each pit for so many days. But the amount of manure in that pit is only going to be maybe 10 inches, 14 inches, something like that. So if I was, when this system proves itself out, and I am confident that it will, that it will prove out that we can make it work, it's not going to be it will not be perfect to start with i guarantee it because nothing nothing is until you've done it and if you god if it was easy everybody to do it that's the thing it just we just got to get going and and do it um but i i believe that this technology has the best it creates the the possibility that we can get back to a world where uh a hog billing action

cash flows to where when I started selling buildings I what I loved about it as much as anything else is it was an opportunity because somebody could build a building and bring a son and daughter son or daughter back they could work on the farm the hog building cash flowed well enough that you could pay them a wage to chore that building after seven to 10 years the building was paid for you had the cash flow and you had them there to help you farm. And we've lost that because they just absolutely do not cash flow. And you actually have to subsidize it if you want to bring somebody back to do it. This is the best opportunity that I've seen out there that we can get back to a situation where these buildings will cash flow and you have a cheaper building design and you have the income off

the system as far as the carbon credits and, you know, a better quality fertilizer. I mean, obviously, I'm drinking my own Kool-Aid, so line up. I mean, I believe in it. If I didn't believe in it, we would not be doing what we're doing. But look around. Everything is getting more expensive. Everything is getting harder to do. So to me, it's like we've got to come up with a better mouse trap in animal agriculture than what we've got today and I think I think the LWE system is it so yes you I think you can build a building with a two-foot pit and I think you can take between a third probably around a third of the building cost out of it because I would assume you're saving about a third of the concrete by going to that shallow pit so yes we're very excited we're very close

There is a lot of regulatory bull crap that we've had to go through to get this figured out. And it's really easy to be second. It's really hard to be first. And that's basically where we're at is we're just every day we're pounding the stone on getting this thing across the finish line. So stay tuned to the farm channel because as soon as we break ground and there's something to look at, we're going to have it and you'll be able to see it on our YouTube channel. I'm a little excited about it. Yeah, I'm, I mean, I'm amped up too.

And, I mean, the thing about it is, this, this whole idea, this whole system. It will change, it'll change the hog business forever. If it, you know, if the system plays out, it works, this whole idea of separating the solids out of the manure and all the byproducts of this system, it generates a lot of income. It's more sustainable. It's more regenerative, whatever you want to say. And it really, it really helps out hog farmers if it works. So we're really excited to do it. And it's like dad said, if it was easy, everybody would do it.

And I think that it's worth the pros of it, what it can yield versus the risks or the downsides. the pros and the reward outweigh the risks and the downsides. Yeah, and you may not care anything about the environmental side of it. The environmental side of it is what makes it cash flow, but at the end of the day... Well, I mean, the thing about this, this guy doesn't even give a shit about the system itself. All he cares about is the fact that if you don't have to put as much concrete, into the building design, it'll cash flow just off of what you make on the hawks.

Right. He ain't even looking at what the system could potentially yield you in income. So that's a whole other ball of wax that we'll dive into the more that we get into this and when we get the system actually built. So more to see very, very soon. We're going to document the whole process and just lay it out. and tell it how it is. You know, we're not going to sugarcoat shit,

and we're going to show you guys the 100% truth of all of it. So, just like any other thing that we do. So if you guys got any value from the show, share it out with who you know. We appreciate all your guys support on everything that we do, whether it's the clips, whether it's you guys sending us questions, whether it's you guys comment it or sending your thoughts to us.

All of it's appreciated. We try to look at everything that you guys send us best we can. we're just so happy to be doing this and we love doing it every week and we love you guys we appreciate you guys have a great rest of your week and we'll see you back next week for another episode