Barn Talk - Barn Talk Q&A: Hiring Farm Employees, Best Town Job as a Farmer & The Future of the Family Farm

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk What happens at the barn, Stays in the barn, But not today! We’re letting it all out! Today, we have a Barn Talk Q&A episode. We discuss: the future of the American family farm, how much feed does it take to finish out a hog, best way to find farming operations to work for & much more.    🇺🇸 Get farm fresh meat that you can trust! https://farmergrade.com Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/  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    ------------------------------- ***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 undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. 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. So thank you to all that submitted your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can submit them through Barn Talk Show at gmail.com. Email them to us at at that email, and we'll answer them on the show. You can also leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We are still doing the pork raffle if you've been an avid listener for a while. We are giving away

a free pork box to one person that submits proof that they left a review on Spotify or Apple. We're going to announce it on a podcast next month, and we will send that winner a free pork box. Not just any pork box. Not just any pork box. Not just any pork box. It's a pork box from our farm, and it is Farmergrade approved, and it's part of the Farmergrade brand. So it is going to be the fresh pork from our farm to you. We also have a 10% discount sale going on on our website at Farmergrade.com right now, and you get a pork box for 10% off.

So go check it out if you're interested. And lastly, if you've also listened for a long time, you know we got this little thing called the fee. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. If you get any value from what we're talking about, share it out with who you know. So we appreciate every single one of you that have been doing that, whether it's leaving a review, whether it's sharing the show with a friend, or submitting, submitting proof, or submitting your questions. We appreciate all of you. So that's all I got. I appreciate you. I appreciate you too. I think we do a bang-up job. It's a gloomy day today in southeast Iowa, so we're up in the barn. And I,

I needed a midday pick-me-up, so I got my coffee here. It's not, it doesn't have anything in it to spice it up. It's just pure black coffee, but I have my pick-me-up, and it is not coffee. It is, well, it's got whiskey in it. There you go. Let's just put it that way. I've had a relaxing day, puttering. I like to putter.

So I've been doing a little of that, and it's 65 degrees today, and I think tomorrow it's going to be about 40. And Aaron Hoffert, if you watch the show last episode, I think, or the one before that, actually, we had Aaron Hofford, good friend of mine. He sent me a really chilly video of his driveway in North Dakota covered in snow. And I don't envy his ass one bit. I have a hot off the press market update, courtesy of Cats Green in Washington, Iowa, and Corn 468 locally 489 in Cedar Rapids

I shouldn't bag on Cedar Rapids so much you might get up there and get through a real quick light but probably ain't going to happen 480 is the December contract and that's pretty close I think corn closed down a penny today so it might be 479 Beans 1261 at the river

1286 on the other side of the river and 12888 on the other side of the river and 1288 on the November contract on the board. Wheat 573, hogs still $68, train wreck, cattle, $181, feeder cattle 240, oil's $84. Bitcoin is rallying up for all you long-time Bitcoin hoarders. You probably are thinking it's going to $80,000 because it hit 33.

It was 338 last time I saw, and that was actually down a little bit. So it might, big things might be in store. Ethereum, 1700, Tesla, $207. It's getting beat down a little bit. So if I, last time I told you I'd buy it at 210. If I had bought some, I'd buy more at 207. This is not financial advice. Lord knows, this is not financial advice.

It's just my opinion. Gold, 1987. 1987. Now, that was a good year. I would have been a sophomore. What was the best song? of that year. I don't know. Probably, probably something by Motley crew or Def Leppard or, yeah, something like that. I think concert in the round was going on in 1987. Any of you that managed to go to when Def Leopard did

their concert concert in the round, that's legendary. A lot of debauchery going on, both on the stage in the audience and underneath the stage. So anyway, that's for another time. uh gold yeah 1987 silver 2179 and just if you're feeling really you know optimistic after this little market update uh u.s debt today i checked is now 33.6 trillion dollars and the total u.s. unfunded liabilities which includes medicare social security and whatever else they have on the books that they're supposed to pay that they ain't got the money to pay 200 and 11 trillion dollars 200 yeah see as for And if you, I think, I should have written this number down, but I think if you take the entire value of the United States economy and all of its asset,

it's like $225 trillion. So yeah, we're just about there. U.S. credit rating got downgraded from AAA to AA plus. And, you know, everybody's just like, well, it's because of the uncertainty in the political. It's all the division within the country is the reason that they gave for dropping that. And we're still the floatiest turd in the toilet bowl, as our good friend David Zezer likes to say. So as long as that happens, we're all going to be fine. We're going to be fine.

Don't worry, we're going to be fine. Total credit card debt now is $1.03 trillion the most since the Fed started breaking it out of their total in 2003. So those are some real feel good. Those are some big numbers. That, I need a drink. Those are some real big numbers. But it's back to what we were talking about last week. We're broke, but everybody's broke.

That's all we've got going for us. You did a good job of picking the U.S.'s debt, but I would love to see what China's debt is. There is a great clip that you can find, and it's a smart guy, and he asked really simple questions. of an economist and he says, if you remember a few years ago, Greece almost defaulted on their debt and the rest of Europe bailed them out. And he said, he asked the question, he says, who owns Greece's debt? And they're like, well, Germany owns it. Well, how much money does

Germany have? They're like, oh, well, they don't have any. They're bankrupt. Well, how far in debt are them? Oh, they're this many billion dollars in debt or whatever. Oh, well, who owns their debt? it just goes in a big circle and it goes all the way around and he goes through all these countries and then he goes well who owns their debt well greece owns their debt well greece is bankrupt and so it's like uh there is no way that any of this ends well i would say uh i don't know you just hope you're not alive to see it huh uh with that i'll have another drink it's what do you always say about all the problems they're going to go wrong here and you just, what are you going to do? I'm just going to cash out and leave it all to my grandkids.

No, that's not what you say. You always say, I'm building this now so that when I'm old and feeble, I won't have to worry about it. Oh, well, yeah, that's 100%. Soyer will just have to deal with it. It's kind of an offshoot of my dad when we would cobble something together when he was 90 years old and he would just look at me and so, or even when he was 70 or 80 years old, we would fix something and he go well that ought to last me as long as i'm going to need it and uh i he's right because now that i'm fixing it all so i'm going to cobble together all the finances to last me as long

as i need it and then it'll be up to you in the next generation to try to sort it out so thanks dad i appreciate the great great planning on your end there okay all right well we're going to get into some good questions here and hopefully that will get us a little pick me up not talking about the dead anymore. Now this is a great name. Cowboy, yeh, asked what's y'all's input on Edison Motors out of Canada if you guys think they're a serious competition to Tesla or not. So those of you that don't know anything about Edison Motors, two guys started this company and the founder, he owns a logging company or a logging trucking company and hauls a lot of lumber logs mostly from where they fell all these trees down the mountain in British Columbia to the logging mills to the lumber mills.

And so he came up with the idea that because most of the where the trees are actually cut, it's very mountainous and most of the trees up there grow at on the mountain like up towards the top so his thought process was if you know a tesla it has what you call regenerative braking where when you anytime you decelerate it charges the battery and if obviously when you accelerate you use battery well his idea was that if you build a logging truck with batteries and electric motors which electric motors are excellent because they have an unbelievable amount of torque which is what you need to start and haul a heavy load and these logging trucks typically haul over 100,000 over 100,000 pounds so not like in the

United States where you're hauled like 80,000 they haul I want to say 140,000 pounds or something like that i want to say is the fully loaded weight because i think the payload is like 100,000 pounds i could be wrong on that but i watched a couple of different deals when he was talking about it and the other thing that's really interesting is the the trailers on the logging trucks you can't you can't just drop a load uh the trailers are actually bolded to the truck so they go together so the trailer and the truck goes together anyway the idea of the idea of was you would start with a fully charged battery, you drive this truck, this electric truck, to the top of the mountain where they're dropping the logs, you load it, and then when you're

coming down the mountain, most of your time, you're not actually accelerating, you're using the electric motors and the braking to recharge the batteries. So by the time you get to the bottom, you pretty much have a fully charged or close to fully charged battery, and then you can use that battery to get to the mills. And one thing that they added is they have a caterpillar engine in the front that they use, if they ever get in a situation that the batteries get too low, the diesel engine will power the truck and recharge the batteries if you're hauling to a mill further away. Anyway, it's really interesting.

Their first prototype, like production vehicles, is out and they're using it, they're running it. It seems to be really good. I think, so Morrow Live did a whole bit on it. And as to whether that is a direct challenger to the Tesla semi, it's obviously not as refined and it's not nearly as pretty. But when it comes to the market that it's specifically developed for, I think it can be very successful because, one, it's made to haul a heavier load than what the Tesla semi is. And two, it's very efficient and it's going to be priced. There's no bells and whistles. So price wise, it's probably more competitive. And to a specialized market like that,

I think it has a lot of future. So I don't think it's, I don't think it's one of those deals that they can build enough to compete with Tesla in the wider market. But as far as the niche goes, I think it's pretty slick. Love to have them on the podcast because the guy that designed it is just, you know, it's necessity is, what do they say about that?

the mother of all invention, I think, is what they say. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and that is exactly what that guy did. He saw a need, and it wasn't being addressed, and he just took it upon himself to do it, and they figured it out. Yeah, what I think is cool about them is they kind of document, they're documenting their journey all through social media, which is pretty cool. Yeah. They seem like just, you know, regular guys that had an idea that love trucks,

love being mechanics, love tinkering with shit, and they came up with this great idea, and it's coming to life, which is really cool. So, yeah, I agree. I'd love to have them on the podcast, and, yeah, I think I agree with you. I think it's Edison Motors is the YouTube channel. Yeah, and the TikTok is Edison Motors too.

Yeah, I... Check them out. I can disagree with anything you said. Go on the back page. I want you to... All the way at the bottom. Oh, okay. This is kind of an off-shoe of...

shoot of a podcast that we had a while ago. We were talking about labor. I feel like we talk about labor a lot, but Joel asks, you guys, you guys talk a lot about the massive labor shortage, but what nobody talks about is how the heck you're supposed to find the jobs without already knowing anyone. What are some tips or just your thoughts on how to network and find operations to work for because indeed.com doesn't seem to be getting it done? Yeah, I think there's a lot to, there's a lot you could say about this subject. And ag is not the only place that's struggling. Like, you talk to anybody in the healthcare space, you talk to anybody, you can talk to anybody. Anybody from any industry, labor is the problem right now. I just talked to a guy that's working inside meat sales, truck drivers, everything, everybody's struggling on it. He said, he's told me he thinks labor is the biggest driving force to our economy right now, as far as. why our economy's not in the best shape because we're just there's not enough people and i think it's a mix of one i don't think businesses necessarily and maybe farming operations necessarily do the

best job of trying to find really good talent like i watched a video of actually Alex and leila hermosi if you don't know who they are you should check them out if you want to be in business and they they drop a lot of great knowledge but they treat hiring people like they treat their marketing of their products. Like they go as hard on marketing their product. They go as hard as finding great talent and recruiting people as they do marketing their stuff. And they're on all the websites for all, indeed, all the websites you can hire people on, Facebook. They're on everything and they're going, they have it like it down to a T.

I don't think businesses probably go to that level of, you know, really trying to find people proactively and being on everything and knowing how it all works. but also I think there's a lot of businesses out there that probably can't pay. I know in ag, you probably can't pay people what they think they're worth. There's a lot of people out there that think they're worth maybe more than what they are, and there's some people that probably are worth what they are, but you can't afford to pay them. So I don't know. I would say, it's good that you want to work, because that's what we need the most. And I think that a lot of farms would love nothing more to get a great farm kid or a great guy with some ambition that loves farming and wants to hop in and help us contribute, you know.

And like we're one of those farms. But in our situation where we're at as a farm, we simply just can't afford to hire a hired hand right now. We'd love nothing more to hire out some of the stuff we're doing because we're pushing the gas pedal as hard as we can push it right now. And we would love nothing more to get some help. but it just comes down to will it pencil really you know it will at pencil and i think a lot of farming operations are kind of at that point when margins are just getting squeezed and everything's so expensive uh not only just living but just like all the inputs costs went up this year equipment's coming down a little bit but it was it was at record high land prices are record high

it's just it's just a tough time right now um but i would just i would just i would say where i see a lot lot of farms market for help is predominantly Facebook, believe it or not. That's where I see the most marketplace. That's where I see the most job listings is Facebook. That's where I see it for farms. So that's a good place to start. I'd also say like send send a resume email like for us. Like if you emailed us, I would definitely save your email contact because like right now we're not you're not ready to hire somebody but in the future we would love nothing more to hire somebody with some ambition and then even maybe wants to hop on the YouTube channel and like be a part of the farm in that way too you know like those are don't be afraid to shoot your shot like like this whole year are our biggest lesson

learned is don't be afraid to ask and don't be afraid to ask you know scroll facebook marketplace or scroll Facebook cold email whether whether it be social media farms or just people you come in contact with. I'd also say go to farm events. Go to like anything that you can, any event that you can go to or you know there's going to be a shitload of farmers there. That's a great place to go and work the room.

Like all the industries out there have industry events. Like we've gone to the pork board, the pork producers here in our local town. They always have a banquet every year. Great place to go. the state fair and county fairs. That's all a great place to go and find farmers. There's a shitload of places you can go to find it. And that's where you got to work the room.

And, you know, I think if you, I think honestly at this time, if you were to go to those industry events and you just started talking to guys and just said, hey, I'm interested in ag, I got this much experience in farming, and I'm just looking for an opportunity. you got any work available. I think you'd be surprised at how much work you could probably get.

How many guys would be like, yeah, I'm gay. Or we're not, but you know who you need to talk to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The other thing is like ag retailers,

implement dealers, mechanics at implement dealers, not necessarily. Yeah. So salesmen at implement dealers, mechanics, crop input, people, seed corn people. Those guys are talking to farmers all the time. Yeah, that's a good point. If you can strike up a conversation with one of those guys,

they'll say, you know, they may tell you, oh, you need to talk to these guys because they're whatever. Yeah. And it really comes down to not being afraid, but not being afraid to ask the question. That's a good, really good point. That's also, that's really good. to people that know farmers, work with farmers directly every day. Because those guys,

everybody's hurting for labor and they work with these farmers every day, and they know that. And so if they can not only sell them fertilizer and help them in that way, but also, hey, this guy called me and he's looking for work. I know you're struggling with labor. He can provide a, make a connection there. Yeah. He's going to do it. He's definitely going to do it because it's going to benefit not only him, but you and the farmer. So it's a win-win for everybody. yeah that's what I would say and I say in the meantime because I know it's really hard

especially if you're a first time guy trying to go work for an operation you can't go get the skill to drive a grain card unless you go work for a farm to drive the grain cart you might not know how to do that but what you can do in the meantime is learn some skills that you know

you can practice and apply in a farm setting like if because there's a lot of shit that goes wrong there's a lot of shit that needs fix so if you know how to work some power tools you know you know the difference between tools you know how to crank on something that's going to be that's going to be helpful it's going to be useful those kinds of things like learning what you can with what you got right now so that if you get in a situation you can show hey I know a few things you know I might not know everything like I might not know how to run a grain cart because this is my first time working for an operation, but I do know how to tinker on some shit.

They're going to take notice of that. Or like welding. You know, just a little shit like that. There's a lot of stuff that you can think could be useful on an operation. You can start practicing now. I think most operations have, if you can show up on time every day and you're willing to learn,

and you're willing to take direction and not be too good for this or too good for that or too smart or, you know, whatever, you guys are willing to help people learn what they need to because let's face it, we have a huge gap in needs versus skills in this country. And I'd also say one thing that I see a lot in these job posting by farmers and usually what it is, is you need a Class A CDL. And I think that's back to like what you were saying, like, don't be afraid of a job. You know, don't think a job's too big for you. Like, Junior, great example.

Yep. He wanted to go out to North Dakota and be a welder's helper. And he got out there and what he started doing? True. Hall in fucking pipe. He started hauling pipe because that was the need. And then he finally became a welder helper. And then he became the welder.

The welder. So it's not always, you know, you know, it's not always where you starts where you end up. So just keep that in mind too. But I just putting that out there because that might get you an opportunity and get your foot in the door with an operation. So that's all I'll say. You got anything else on that one?

I think that's good luck to you. And hell, we'd love to have some people work for us that this will do farm eventually, but we're just not quite there yet. Um, Micah asks, how much feed does it take to finish a hog? 900 pounds. How much do you eat every day? That's 750. That's a good, I mean, that's right on the money there.

I eat less than what I did. I'm getting a little, trying to slim down a little bit. I'm just giving you shit. I know. That's all right. Uh, so typical pig, uh, here's, here's the master plan. when we put a set of wiener pigs in our building the goal is to take the first cut the first load of pigs to go out of those buildings or the first two loads on a 2400 at 150 days or the week of 150 days so from the time the first pig goes in 150 days later you should be able to get a load of pigs they're going to weigh 280 to 290 if in a perfect world you a pig's going to eat six pounds of feet a day average obviously when they don't start they eat

that much but when they're done they probably eat a little more than that and if you can get a one point if you can get a 1.8 1.9 1.95 uh feed conversion you will put on you know two pounds a day if you're eating six pounds or a little over six pounds so that's the between 850 9 hundred pounds of feed, should get you a pig to that mark in about 150 days. Now then. Doesn't always work that way. You get sick pigs, you get, you know, diseases, you get pigs that are smaller that don't start as well, go longer than that. But that's the goal. That's the perfect, the perfect world. So, and only the best pigs are farmer great pigs. that's i can't send it better myself um okay this this is one you can talk about this a little bit um

Ethan asks my question is what would be a good air quotes town job for a farmer um to basically he's saying to supplement your income so you can afford to farm because we talked about how hard it is to just keep a farm going strictly being on the farm. And you can give your two cents, and then I can chime in too. I would say any job that you think you can gain a skill set, not only to, you need to get a job that makes decent money so you can contribute back to the farm, you know,

you've got to have a life. But also if you can do a job that also teaches you a skill that you can apply to the farm as well. That's kind of, I mean, you're kind of winning, you're double-dipping there because you're learning something. You're getting paid to learn a new skill, and then you can apply the money and the skill back to the farming operation. I think that's awesome.

So anything in the trades would be awesome. I think that we've said it a million times on this show. The trades is just going to get more and more. There's going to be less and less people doing it, and I think the price, what you're going to be able to charge is more and more, and I think you're going to have more work than you could ever, do. Like there's going to be so much shit. There's going to be so much opportunity in the trades. So I think those are all good. Welding. Welding mechanic. I think there's obviously some basic

skills too that any business, including a farming operation, can massively improve if you have those skills, like marketing, sales. I mean, all that shit of just talking to people. I mean, all that shit. I'm just talking to people and in getting, getting accustomed to talking to people, getting accustomed to negotiating, getting accustomed to talking to numbers, all that stuff is going to help you. But I think that's, that's my two senses. If you can get a job that serves you in both those ways, that's a pretty good off the farm job. Yeah, and follow what you're passionate about, because if you can, to what you said about the trades, I was just thinking about, like, when we talked to to plumbers or electric or carpenters or people like that.

The nice thing about the trades is typically those guys that own those businesses, they are willing to be very flexible on time because they need the help. So it's like if you can only work there, if you have, like if you're a livestock farmer, you can't start till 10 o'clock. or if you're a livestock farmer or grain farmer and you've got to be off by three o'clock. You know what? A lot of them guys, they'll play ball with you because they'll take what they can get. And then if you can learn a skill on top of that that you can use, that's just a bonus.

And it's also back to what you want. I mean, if you're trying to optimize as much money as you possibly can, learn a really high level income skill so you can make as much money as you possibly can to grow the farming operation if that's your goal. If it's work-life balance or wanting to work on the farm, like be at the farm and work your town job, quote-unquote, while you're just still on the farmstead. Maybe doing something where you can work from home,

getting a job where you can work from home, that might be a benefit you if you're thinking about that situation. seed dealer. There's a lot of guys around here that are seed dealers that have a shop built at their farm and they're dealing seed and they're also helping out at the farm too. So they kind of get that ag lifestyle and they're close to home, close to family and they enjoy that thoroughly. So it just really depends on your situation. But those are kind of, that's my two cents anyway. Absolutely. We've got to take a little break because I got to tell you something real important. If you guys aren't watching or this will do farm YouTube channel, you're missing out.

It's just like this, only shorter and on the farm. Definitely go check it out if you haven't subscribed yet. Give us a like, give us a comment. Let us know you came from Barn Talk. And with that being said, let's get back into the podcast. Daniel asks, this kind of goes together here. This is a good question. Okay.

Daniel asks, I personally have a town job and help after work. but my uncle and cousin full-time farm, the original farmstead from the 1800s, and close friends still farmland their original farmstead from the 1920s. My question to you is in that time frame, late 1800s until current day, the amount of progression in agriculture

has been astonishing. Do you think that the time frame into the future there will be family farms or just factory farms? Well, what fuck are we, Dad? We get called a factory farm every single day. when we're just me and you doing this thing. We're a BTO farm.

There we go. BTO. I don't feel like a BTO most of the time. I feel like a STO. Okay. Well, it ain't going to get any easier. And I think I have a little bit of, I got a little bit of perspective on that because I've told

I've told some of this before. When we first started this podcast, we did a few episodes where we talked about kind of like my family history and that. But something that's unique about me is the fact that there's like a generation missing. So my father was born in 1919. And if you do the math real quick, you'd think that I'd be older than what I am. But I wasn't born until my dad was 52 years old. And so there's kind of a gap, you know, like he literally was old enough to be my grandfather,

which made for, you know, great father-son relations until we got older. So I heard all the stories. I heard all the stories about two-row corn planter, plant with a check wire, picking corn by hand. You know, we still have our corn crib. And I just told the gas man the story today because our crib has the hoist in it to where you pull. the wagon through and you tied it down and then you cranked it and it tipped the wagon up so the ear corn would roll out of the back into the bucket elevator that took it to the top and all that

stuff and i often thought so my dad literally went from you know farming with horses to the last tractor he owned before he passed away was a 7820 and we no-tilled and he grew up you know the only thing you had like you burned the stocks like when you got done hand harvest and corn they had a big they had a 40 foot chunk of railroad iron that they pulled with two teams and they dragged that across the ground to bust off all the stocks and then they would windrow the stocks they had a dump rake and they would windrow the stocks then they would burn them and then he would always make the comment that in his day when you plowed if there was any stocks left showing above the dirt,

you were a piss poor farmer because that's how you judge whether somebody knew what the hell they were doing because you did not want to see anything but black dirt. So we've come a long ways since then. But for us to sit here and think, oh, we'll never see that level of innovation in our lifetimes that that generation saw,

I don't think that's true. I think that we make incremental gains all the time as far as technology goes and efficiency and all that. But then every once in a while a technology will come along that makes a huge jump in a short amount of time. And I just told this story a while ago to somebody I actually heard this. but, and I might get the years wrong, so don't crucify me for it, but a guy told the story and he was being questioned about the, about electric vehicles, and the idea that they couldn't, we couldn't move that way very quickly because of all the factors everybody likes to talk about, and that's neither here or there. But his, his analogy was that, let's just say in 1913,

85% of the people in the United States traveled short distance by horse and buggy. Within seven years, 75% of the country moved short distance by automobile. Seven years. So that's a very short period of time with a very huge amount of innovation. and his point of that was every wheel builder, carriage builder, horse breeder, haymaker, barn builder, barn builder, horse poo, picker-upper guy, whatever the hell is. All those people were massively displaced by that technology. A lot of them probably went to work for the Ford factory or, you know, whatever. They all had to change.

none of those people saw that coming in fact a lot of this is a true story my dad told me a farm that is just around the corner from us 240 acres the guy that farmed that he was the last person in jackson township to give up his horses and he was convinced tractors were a fad and that they would never catch on and he kept farming for horses with horses until he actually retired and sold him and never did own tractor, but he was displaced. And we have the same thing. Whatever your, whatever your temple is, whatever is the thing that you hold on to that you say, this will never happen, this will never change, your paradigm. Guess what? You too can be displaced. And so I think it's very possible that we could see that level of innovation in our lifetimes. And to your question,

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That is very, I'll say this. If you are a family farm and you're not willing to adapt, so what a family farm looks like is going to be much different in the future than what it is today. If you're going to be a family farm, you're not going to be a one-trick pony, just like us.

We raise pigs and we grain farm. Grain farming makes no money. We sure do love it. I'd love to do more of it, but it doesn't really make any money. But the other things that we do allow us to keep doing it, and there is value there to our farm, but as we build the other businesses that we're doing... And there's value there in the long term, too. Yes.

But as we do, the other things, it actually has become less valuable, because the other things we're doing, leveraging our time are becoming more valuable. So I think for anybody, if you, if that's what you want to do, you could totally be successful. You can totally be successful without farming a gazillion acres. In fact, there are a lot of people that farm a gazillion acres that are freaking miserable, and they're not really successful. They might look like they're successful because they have new equipment

and they go on that seed corn vacation every year, but they're not financially stable. They're financially tied to a lending organization, and all they're doing is trading their time for money and money for time, and it's a vicious circle. And when it's all said and done, there's no loyalty there because that rent that they're paying, somebody also pay that rent.

And so, just because it looks like their BTO doesn't really mean that they are. It's just different. It's not, and that's not going, we're not, we're not using a paint brush here, saying that's, that's every big time operator's that way. But I see what you're saying, and there are a lot of guys out there that it seems like it's the dream life to just grain farm a fuckload of acres, but it's just like anybody that's rich. There's a lot of rich, miserable fucks out there. And there's a lot of quote-unquote on paper

what it looks like big BTO farmers that look like they got all their shit together because they got all the new shit. But deep down, they could be miserable inside too because it's exactly what you said. But stresses. I think what this guy really meant, the term factory farms,

I think he kind of just means corporate farms. I mean, it's like we've talked about on this podcast before. The thing about the family farm and corporate farm thing of how do we keep family farms going and how do we stop family farms from getting bought by or getting in bed with corporate farms or bought out by how do we how do we stop that and have more family farms and i just think at the end of the day you have to create your own market or you have to do exactly what dad says you have to make enough money off farm with

other ventures to help weather the storm of what it's going to take to stay into the business of agriculture at the end of the day. That's what it is. Because the margins are just getting squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and everything is so expensive. So you either have to find a way to differentiate yourself as far as what you produce on your farm and see if you can not play on the commodity market, you know, not play the commodity game like everybody else. Or you can play the game everybody else plays, but you got to realize that just farming, might get you far along, it might get you far in the short term, but will it carry on for generations after? I don't think it's the same as it once was where you could just farm,

that's all you could do and you could pass it on for generations. We're getting less and less of that's happening because I think it's getting harder and harder to continue to farm with just a sole income of farming. Right. So if you want to have a long-lasting family farm, you have got to do two of those things. Make more money off the farm or differentiate your product. Or do both. Or do both.

Exactly. Or do both. But it's only going to get more corporate as more family farms get pushed out. And that's just, that's this reality. And we say a million times as the consumer out there, vote with your dollars. And it's not just, it doesn't just mean when it comes to your food. It means everything. What you pay, what companies you support, that matters the end of the day.

That matters. If you want more family farms, if you want more small businesses, if you want more industry and more jobs created here in America, support the American businesses and support the family farms out there that are doing those things that you want to keep happening in our country, you know? So that's my two cents. And I would just say also to touch on your innovation point, I mean, there's a lot of shit coming down the pipe. I think, and you're going to be a grandpa and you're going to be shit in your pants, I think,

even just what's coming down the pipe and I'm going to be mind-blown when I'm a grandpa because I don't even know what it's going to be like but I think with the AI technology and self-driving and drones

and just all this shit I just feel like there's it's going to be a lot there's going to be a lot of stuff I'm going to be in my Wally chair talking on my big gulp with my VR goggles

just out riding the dunes on my 250R like it's the glory days listen to some crew I'm not going to give two shits nope there you go I love it maybe yeah don't just stay in your box though

we always say that definitely definitely look outside your box every once in a while because you don't want to get left behind Dan or ask how big do you process your pigs at and have you ever tried liver mush never tried liver mush

I've actually never tried liver so not a I've seen a lot of liver king videos of when he was just blowing up on the internet and he claimed that he was so so shredded just because all the carnivore diet and all the liveries

but he was really on I mean geez guys he's on fucking gear he's on gear I mean it's pretty obvious he was on gear but how big do we process our pigs at or how big do we yeah process our pigs at so for farmer grade pigs we process them at our ideal weight for those would definitely be 300 or above for sure,

just because I'm trying to get the most meat yield out of those pigs as I possibly can. And obviously, I don't want them to get them too fat because that's a pain in the ass to move them around. And, you know, they get to a certain point where it's just like, you know, you want that animal to not be so goddamn fat that his quality of life's terrible, right? you know, they're 300's about the perfect, 300 to 315, 315, 320 is pushing it on a pig, I think. They're pretty decent size. That's about the max I would go. But 300's pretty ideal. The frame of a pig has gotten longer over time, the breeds that we raise today, the hybrids. So they carry that weight a little better. But one thing a lot of people don't realize is,

and this goes to the, to like this will do the farm channel, people, think that it's that it's mean for us when we're sorting little pigs that will grab the pigs by their back leg well the reason you grab a pig by their back leg is because their back leg that's a joint and you can pick them up and they're fine doesn't hurt them a bit you never want to grab a pig by its front leg because the front leg of a pig that where their front leg attaches their body, that's not a joint. That's just a muscle. That's just muscle that holds that all together.

And you can very easily dislocate or break a front leg because they're not attached. And the only reason I say that is because they get bigger, carrying all that weight, they get to a point where it's hard on their... joints to carry that weight. So that three between 300 and 315 is where we like them. And the other reason for that is because we want to give people a really nice big pork chop. And if you like if you if we laid them out and showed you the pork chop from a pig that's say 240 pounds compared to a pig that's 300 pounds, there's quite a bit of difference. Uh, in that in that the size of that cut and so we like that um but then the other limiting factor is

time because when we start closing out a group uh when they're big enough they're big enough and they got to go because we got to make room for the next group so it's not like we can feed these pigs till the cows come home so yeah when i said earlier about that 150 days you know we're want to take pigs. If we can get pigs that are weighing 300 pounds at 160 days, that's where we want to take them. And you wait too long and they all got to go. So time is not on your side. Yeah, you want two groups a year per barn. So you want to definitely stay on that time timeline. And I think the packers, all these packing plants, if you didn't know this, they're all set up for kind of a certain size pig. And some of them vary. So some of them are a lot, some of them are the same in the

fact that they might want a 300 pound pig, but there's some that their market is, they take smaller pigs where they're like at the 280, 285 mark or 260. So, and that was kind of the big thing with COVID when everybody was like, why are these, why are some of these pigs having to get euthanized? Well, when that was all going on, because all the plant, all the packing plants shut down. Well, when you have a pig that goes, when a packing plant is set up for efficiency and they take pigs at a certain weight range and, and it gets outside of that weight range, whether it, which for the COVID case,

they got way too big. That plant's not set up to process those pigs. Their whole efficiency, everything on that line is set up for that pig. And when it, that pig can't fit that line. They can't, they can't go anywhere.

No one's going to process them. And there's not enough small town processors to be able to process that meat. So that's what happened. So that's, that's why we don't shut the fucking country down. Yeah. And another thing is,

on that, and we talked about this back at that time, but, uh, so a federally inspected facility, when you process that pig and you hang it on the rail, like we've seen a carcass on a rail, to Sawyer's point that it's set up for a certain size, it's set up for a certain weight and it's set up for a certain length of pig. So you get a pig that's too big, it gets longer. if at any point during the processing of that pig, that carcass touches the wall, touches another metal surface, touches the ground, touches the floor, that carcass has to be destroyed.

As far as that's USDA, that's their, you know, and that's a food safety issue. So when these pigs got too big, they would hang them and their hoof would be touched the floor, their snout would be touching the floor and you can't do that so they couldn't process it so yeah yeah uh long long answer to a short question well we gave you the we gave you the one-on-one on that whole fucking deal so you should know exactly now you should know to a t 300 300 pound pig that's the magic 15 feed him 900 pounds of feed for the time he's little and you ought to have a

nice big uh pork chop fat ass butt on him too nice pork butt absolutely nice ham yeah yep good What are, so why do they call them the butts when they're not the butts? Yeah, so pork butts actually the shoulder of the pig and the ham is actually the butt. And the whole, how many people you think actually know that? Out of the Midwest, almost nobody, probably. I mean, very small person. If you get outside of the Midwest, I imagine, I bet you less than 20% of people know that a pork butt is actually not the butt. I mean, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I would definitely say. Because it's weird, it's a weird thing. one of them weird things like why in the hell did they call that a pork butt well this is and i don't

even know if this is right this is what i've read so pork butt comes from the the term comes from back in long long time ago when they would process pigs that shoulder they would shove them in a barrel uh sold them shove them in a barrel and ship them and a lot of that processing was based in Boston and they were called Boston Butts. So once in a while, you'll still hear somebody refer to a pork shoulder as a Boston butt, but the Boston part dropped off, but the butt stuck, and they call it pork butt. But it's not pork butt. And the other thing is, the hams, I don't know why they started calling them hams,

but the butt of the pig, the two big muscles, there are those joints that are connected, the back legs, those were what people started curing and smoking and they called them hams instead of pork butt and the shoulders they put them in a barrel and called them a Boston butt so that's it's just one of those weird weird deal weird deal weird deal yeah it is weird taste fucking good though it's damn good real good I think it's going to be our last question here and it's kind of a fun one

So Joseph asks if Elon Musk's end goal is to live on Mars, they will have to have some way to produce food. Do you think they could possibly take Tesla self-driving technology and build self-driving tractors to possibly send them to Mars and try to raise a crop before we send people? They're going to need you to go up there and do that. Well, they're going to need our buddy. We're going to need our guy.

Greg Rupp. Yeah, Craig Ruff. Sabonto. They're already doing it. So get on... They're already on Mars? Well, they're not on Mars. I think they'd be just fine.

So that technology is already... I mean, yes, I think you're right. I think you're 100% right. It'd be a good idea to know that we can grow food on Mars before we sent people to Mars. Because the rations will run out quick and then all bets are off. Right. When the pork butts are gone, fists come out.

That's true. Yeah. So I think that would be the plan. but you have to terraform, you have to terraform Mars to where you can actually grow something or build an incredible network of greenhouses because it's not, the atmosphere is not good enough. That's why Elon kidded a little bit, but he was kind of serious that probably the first thing you should do is nuke the polar ice caps of Mars. And the reason he said that is because there's a huge amount of ice at the poles, just like here on Earth.

you could melt that fast enough, you could give Mars, in theory, you could give Mars an atmosphere, which in turn would give you a buffer that you could probably start terraforming it, and then get yourself, disassemble yourself a bunch of cabotas and get Craig up there. Get Craig up there. Friend of the show, he was an early episode. Maybe we should get him back on and see how they're doing, but Craig Rup, Sabanto, It's an early episode. You can go check it out,

but they're doing a really cool autonomous tractors. It's like their whole thing. That's what they're working on. I know that autonomous tractors is kind of becoming more and more thing in every brand of tractor, but he's doing something really cool over there, and he's been kind of a pioneer of that. Yeah, I think they'd get that nipped in the bud pretty quick.

There you go. We would, I hope they'd have some bacon on Mars because life without bacon. I don't know how the vegans can do it. I don't know. Be tough. Pretty shitty. Absolutely. Can't. I'm not going. It's one of my stipulation, I'm not going if I can't get bacon.

Yeah, probably. That's part of the torque steel. Yep, pretty much. I get it. Okay, I'll give you one last thing. I'll give you the golden nugget of the day. I heard this story. So this podcast is probably somewhat skewed towards men, I would think, and it's probably skewed more towards people that would proclaim themselves to be kind of like self-reliant, I guess, you know, bootstrap it, you know. Pull them fucking bootstraps, that boy.

Yeah. And I was perusing YouTube one night and I do, I check on a guy. He's got a chance called Rangelstar, I think is what it's called. He's, I think last time we talked about him on the podcast, guys were like, that guy is fucking. crazy but he's got some crazy he is a pot he's a homesteader he's a prepper and all that yeah but he he and i actually can't take for this take credit for this he told this story though because what he was talking about he was talking about all the equipment that he has accumulated in his kind of off-grid living you know homesteading prepping like all the stuff it takes and how expensive it is and and and he acknowledged that and he said, he told the story of this journalist that in the 1800s, he spent a year or six months

with a group of Finnish whalers. They were on a whaling ship. And these were, that was a very tough job. Very rugged, cold, you know, dangerous. And, but they, for their time, for their, for where they were, they made really good money. but the life expectancy was not that good because it was dangerous. And they came into port after being at sea for however long, and they all get paid. And this one veteran, Whaler, old guy, grizzled, he promptly went to the general store and bought just every pack of American cigarettes that they had.

And they were very expensive. And the journalist asked him, he said, you know of all the things that you could spend your hard-earned money on why why are you buying cigarettes and he took the first pack of cigarettes and he opened it up and he lit a cigarette and he took a poll off of it and he said to the journalist he said well i just chalked that up to uh it's damn expensive being a man and i just thought that was i thought that was good because you know all of us life does not get any easier and people rely on you and as we go through life we just add more burden to ourselves and being a man is expensive yeah i would i uh i think that's good i saw a clip of a guy

that was talking about how to be a a man of god but it if if you're not religious it kind of just comes down to a man if you're to be a man it's all about sacrifice you sacrifice yourself for everybody around you your family your your wife your kids even your community i mean each day you are sacrificing if you're a good man if you are a man you are sacrificing your own you're sacrificing your own whatever once needs everything to support and help and make things better for everyone around you. And I thought that was really good. And that's just that guy's opinion.

But I, you know what? I sat there and I thought about it. And I was like, that's pretty good. Yep, it's pretty good. Side note, I think Wrangler Star would be an awesome podcast guest. And also, I just was sitting here thinking, a great business idea for him would be, he should come out to people's properties and just consult for him and say, you know, if you lived here, what would you rig up as a booby trap?

Where would you bury the bunker? Yes, right. Where would you have your turrets that come out of the ground when there's an intruder or something? You know, seriously, I think people are more weary than ever before. And shit, he could five grand a pop to come out to your farm or your homestead and say, this is what I would do, boys. I'm not saying that 8,000 rounds of 556 isn't a good start. I'm not saying that.

but this is where I would put the additional 10,000 round. Yeah, he'd be pretty good, but he would be awesome to get on the podcast, I think. We'll put it on the list. And if we ever did come on, I would tell him that idea. Yep, absolutely. And I would definitely have him come walk the property a little bit. For sure. If he'd be interested.

We got a lot of hog panel that we could turn into anti-vehicle, you know, the deals that tumbleweeds. Yep, yep. I saw that episode. That was a good idea. Yep. Well, I think that's going to wrap it up, guys. We appreciate all your questions. Keep submitting them at Barn Talk Show at gmail.com.

Share the show, pay the fee, leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Get yourself a pork box if you'd like. And we love you guys. Thank you for all the support. We'll see you back here next week for another episode.