Barn Talk - Battling Greed in Farming: Preserving Family Farms and Legacies

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk: In this episode, we dive deep into the physical and emotional challenges of getting in shape, the vital importance of estate planning, and the complexities of family farm succession. We discuss the necessity of education and open communication in maintaining family relationships and highlight the impact of setting boundaries and creating a legacy. 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 Podcast discusses listener-suggested deep topic, seeks support. 07:59 Ford F150 stuck on logs, Tesla pulled. 15:07 Meeks and the family's journey to Iowa. 17:55 Family legacy: important, resolve conflicts for future. 22:23 Rural business growth and survival in economics. 29:03 Off-farm inheritance money causes farm pressure. 35:41 Generational land sale due to medical bills. 41:57 Communication issues in family business succession. 44:09 Plan ahead, communicate, or face consequences. 52:45 Planning for inheritance to preserve family assets. 58:41 Estate planning resources are more accessible today. 01:00:46 Family's important, but set boundaries if needed. ------------------------------- ***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 deep talk. It's going to be a barn talk deep talk. We don't really have a hot topic we want to talk about. We don't really have any questions we want to answer today. But we do have something that's been weighing on our minds that,

actually a listener suggested that we should talk about on the show. So we thought, you know what? That's a good one to talk about today. We're going to switch it up and get deep. But before we do, you guys know the drill. If you've been listening to the show or watching the show for a while, if you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show can grow,

the more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make, and the more successful this podcast can be. If you also want to help us out in any way, you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. That gives our show a lot of credibility. It's probably the number one metric that people from the outside looking in on your podcast can look at to see how successful it is, how good of a show it is. And that also helps us get more and better guests on. Last thing you can do to support us and our farm in this podcast is you can go over to our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade, farmagrade.com. and buy some meat.

We got American Wagyu on there. We got dry-aged black angus beef on there, pasture-raged chicken, pork that we raise here on our farm on there. You can save 10% using code Barn Talk. We're also running a 20% off cut of the week, bone-in pork chop. So you can save 20% on bone-and- pork chops as well. So that's what I got going on.

I'll be getting some of those. Yep. They're all 16 ounces, by the way. Big old, big old chop, Iowa chops. 65 grams of protein. in a 16-ounce pork chop for those you did the math yeah trying to prioritize protein at the whistler home that is down 20 pounds 30 pounds how many how many pounds actually uh i don't know it depends on how bad you want to say i was to start with so i'm right i'm right at like 200 pounds depending on the

time of day that i weigh myself and uh i think at my worst i probably weighed 235 233 i try not to think about it. I thought the scale was wrong, but I was down, I got down to about 220 last, last year, last summer I got down maybe a little bit less than 220, but I didn't really keep it there. I stayed about 220 through the winter. And then I just started this year in earnest, and I've been consistent. You know, as I've been, so walking, been walking, trying to get, 16,000 steps a day and that usually I'm walking three miles a day or a little over if I can at you know best pace I can but I try to end up with 16,000 17,000 steps and it that works and the other thing is the more you do that you're not as hungry so you don't eat as much and I don't

eat ice cream in the middle of night and don't haven't had a bowl of cereal in quite a while so that probably all helps but you have you have know it's the hardest thing the hardest part of the whole thing is getting off your ass uh at 630 we know you finish drinking coffee and you're like okay i'm going to go walk and uh getting off your ass and making it the first 35 steps that's the hardest once you get past that then the rest of it's crazy uh trisha actually has more stick toiveness that i do because she actually walks right around the farm. She just makes a loop around the farm. And I don't have as much faith in myself. So I have to take off and I will walk like up the road because the way my mindset works is

you're a squirrel. Well, the further I get away from home, then I got to walk back. If I'm just making loops, it's easy to quit. Well, it's easy for you get distracted too. Yeah, it is true. Because then I'll be like, is that been. Is that fixed? Yeah. Is that broken? Yeah. So anyway. So yeah, I'm right there about 200 pounds. I need to be about 180 probably. And I don't know. I think we'll get there. I think it's starting to come together. It's going to be really weird because I keep getting bigger and dad keeps getting smaller. Yeah. Well, what's scary is you and I were the same weight at a period of time very recently. Like, what are you now?

220. Yeah, so when you were like, when you were like 210, I was like 210. Yeah. And there's there's a foot and a half difference between us. Yeah. There's 2.10 here and 2.10 here. There's something not right. There's something not right with that. And I'm going to say it probably isn't you as much as it was me.

So, I mean, dynamite does come in small packages, but the package can actually be quite a bit smaller than what it is. So we're headed there. So any of you that are struggling with that, you can do it because I have screwed around with that for my whole life. Pretty much when I quit doing construction and started selling when I sat in a truck all the time is when I started getting bigger. When I was doing construction,

you could eat whatever you want to drink as much as you want. It didn't matter because you were burning a lot of calories. But when you start driving around all day, it makes it tough. So anyway, going to get under control. You're going to look svel. Proud of you. Well, thanks, buddy. I want you to last.

Well, I want you to last as long as you can. Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm like my dad was. I'm in fear every day that you and your brother are going to piss this whole thing away, so I've got to take care of myself. That's right. That's right. Put a night in hand. Yep.

That's what we need. How about a market update? Yeah, I'll take an market update. There's nothing to be too excited about. I think there's a USDA report that comes out today, so we're shooting this on a Monday. Corn for September 386, locally 380. Cargill and Cedar Rapids, they want corn pretty bad. They're bidding 408, and you can get 395 if you want to haul to the river to GPC.

Beans, 1086, and that's for August. That corn contract, that was September contract. 1086 for beans on the board, Burlington 1113. Sorry, 1013. Who, somebody probably got excited about that. 1045 in Quincy. Bean meal, 361 a ton. It's actually up a little bit.

Wheat 530. Hogs, 9230. Cattle $184. Fere cattle, 249. Crude oil, 7240. Bitcoin, it's stuck in a rut again, $51,000. Tesla's 207. I don't know.

I may have to take the damn Tesla. I may have to take the Tesla quote off. here before long. It just does it does nothing. I don't know when it's going to take off. I still have faith, but it's not there yet. Did you see the Whistling Diesel video where he compared, boy, he trashed the shit

out. I saw a clip, I saw a clip on I think Instagram or TikTok of him taking the strip off around the door. He broke the frame. Did he? Yeah, they got the Ford F-150 like stuck on a pile

of logs because they drove it over this big pile of logs and the Tesla went over it but then they had to go back then they backed over it I think and the Ford got hung up so they pulled it off with the Tesla and they pulled it and then it like caught right at the bottom and they kept going with the Tesla so then it jerked it and when it jerked it it broke the frame on the back where the hitch is hooked to the because it's you know that cast aluminum. He trashed that thing. He fucking trashes. He trashes everything.

It was funny because he didn't tell anybody he was doing this. Like, I think he just bought it and did this. And so he's on the phone with Tesla service, you know, and the batteries are overheated. I mean, it's shut down. And he's just acting. He's like, yeah, hey, my cyber truck has given me this, you know, this error, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. So yeah, probably not. I'm sure Elon appreciates

it, though. Oh, yeah. It's just a good way to, I mean, if you're going to have somebody test the limits of your vehicle, he's the guy. He's the guy. I mean, it's not very practical in everyday life, but he'll fucking push that shit. Well, and the thing is, I, you're right in the fact that probably is good, because what he did was all stuff that people are like, oh, that's crazy. But also, if you're a, if you're an engineer. Like they won't, they're always looking to dream up stuff and they're probably like, son of a bitch. Yeah, I never thought of that. Yeah. So yeah, it's all good. Uh, gold $2,456. Uh, beyond meat. I do like bagging on beyond meat. You say that every episode. I know. $5.60 a share. Their earning report comes out August 7 and they have $1.1 billion of debt that is due,

due to be repaid in 2027, and they've hired an outside accounting firm to help them try to restructure that. So they are 63% loss for the year. So I think for every $1,000 you invested in Beyond Meat, your stake is worth like $17 a share. So yeah, good for them. Can't go out of business soon enough. Greedy bastards. Oh, wait. Maybe that's what we ought to talk about. Yeah, so today, that was a nice, that was a nice market update. You kind of, you just went right through it. Yeah, I did. Well, there wasn't, there's nothing exciting. The whole, the whole, the, the markets all suck. Oh, and by the way, the crops made, I think. I mean, there's, uh, I was out in our corn. It's going to be, it's going to be a monster around here.

I didn't think it was going to be. I mean, I don't know. Maybe the corn could be a little shallow, but I think there's enough moisture in the ground. It doesn't matter what happens. It's going to be a monster crop for us around southeast Iowa. I don't know if it's going to be that way everywhere, but if you think that it's going to be a good harvest.

It's going to be a good harvest, and it's going to be a really shitty marketing year, because I don't know what to tell you to do. I don't know whether to tell you to store it or to sell it and buy it back. I don't know what to do, but it's going to be a lot of it, but it ain't going to be worth much. We're going to be, we're going to figure it out. We'll figure it out. That's right. Yeah, so today we, uh, so a viewer or listener of the show actually sent this, sent this idea to us about talking about greed and family farms and greed and farming and how devastating that can be. and we really haven't talked about this subject very much,

but I think every farmer or every farm community can relate to this in some matter because there's probably some feud happening somewhere in your neck of the woods that you can think of. And or, hell, it could be right at your front door. Yep. Right at your dinner. Right at your dinner table. So we kind of want to just talk about it, talk about our experience with it,

talk about our overall thoughts about it. And I don't know, we don't know all the answers, but maybe we got some tips of tricks we can recommend because we have a pretty good relationship on here. But boy, behind the scenes. Yeah, dad just beats me to a pulp. Just kidding. But no, I think we have a pretty good relationship and a pretty good understanding of, you know,

just team and building stuff together and not, you know, really having our egos involved and selfish intentions involved. And so, yeah, we're going to kind of, we're going to kind of break it down that way. we don't really have a really thought-out outline here. Literally, that's... We're going to wing it today. We're just going to wing it right off, right off the, I don't know, right off the cuff. Yeah, well, so to start, I guess to start, we have this qualification at this will do farm.

I think this is going to come out just about right. So by the time you're listening to this, the state fair will be going on in the state of Iowa. and I think it's Thursday the 22nd. Our family is going to the state fair because the state of Iowa and Farm Bureau, they do these awards every year for what they call Century Farms, if your farm has been in the same family for 100 years, and then they also have heritage farms.

They have two different awards. One's a Century Farm, one's a Heritage Farm, Heritage Farm is 150 years, years and we are going as a family to accept that because our farm was settled in 1853. So we're a little little tardy on collecting our heritage or century farm awards, but I just thought it was something that we should do. It was pretty cool. So Sawyer is the sixth generation and, you know, we're Every generation in any business has to make the decision of how selfish or how humble they're willing to be as to whether or not it's important enough to them to allow another generation to farm.

and when you think about all of the strife and all of the struggle, you know, I'm kind of into family history and family trees and all that. And, you know, for our farm, the family that was the most important to bring it all together out of our family tree were the meeks. And the meek that started the whole deal that traveled from Scotland, you know, he had to make the trip. He had to decide that it's not like picking up and say, hey, I'm going to move to, you know, I'm going to move to Austin,

or I'm going to move to whatever. I mean, they left everything and came here, and then not only came here, but made their, way as the frontier came all the way to Iowa, obviously not all of them stayed. But anyway, we are standing firmly on the shoulders of all those people that came before us. But at any time through those generations, you can imagine the amount of strife and a lot of kids, a lot of kids. Like my great-grandfather, I got to get this right. I think. my great-grandfather, there was 10 kids in that deal. And it's a miracle that it's all held together

as much as it is. But it also isn't. We also have a story in our family. I mean, my dad and his brother and his sister didn't have a very good relationship. And my dad and his brother, they farmed together and they split up and they let their ego and they're, I don't know what, you know, I don't know what it was. Neither one of them ever wanted to really talk about it much, but there had to been some greed in that and over who got what. And, you know, they didn't speak to each other for 50 years. And the three of them never reconciled. together and they all took that to their graves and I don't know bad deal but that's just one and it's not just farming it's it's any family business it's just really easy to let to let little

things become big things and then granted there's some big things too that can happen that shapes shapes a family, and when that family is tied to agriculture, it can get pretty nasty, pretty fast. So I don't know if that was kind of a rambling start to all this. Yeah, well, I think legacy's got to be important to you, and you always have to put, you know, that in the forefront of your mind of no matter what argument you. you have no matter what happens, you know, you got to do what's best for the family, the family unit of who's going to be taken over the farm and keeping it in the family and keeping it going. I mean, that's at the end of the day, you got to find a way, if it's important to you,

you got to find a way to resolve problems and how can we pass us on in the next generation. And that gets lost between the bit, and I feel like the bigger the family, the harder to, is because there's just more people at the table that have a say and if you have people that live off the farm versus people that live on the farm they might have a different opinion and perspective than you do and they want to say when you know they haven't been here and it just it can make things really really messy um but i just think i think people just it's a perspective thing you got to realize how rare it is to even have a farm nowadays how rare it is to even be able to farm and have farming in your family, it's really rare.

And to be able to keep it going, that's even more rare because more family farmers are going away by the day. And so, I don't know, I would have a lot of regret if I were, if my brother and, let's say my brother and I couldn't get along, or my dad and I couldn't get along. And we pissed away six generations of blood, sweat, and tears because we couldn't fucking agree on X, Y, and Z thing. And we just let this family legacy of six generations of, like I said,

hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, just get pissed down the drain for one generation of wants and needs. Yeah. It's just a different perspective. I feel like now in society, everybody's so fucking self-centered because that's all you get told that, everybody gets told to be selfish. Work on you. Work on yourself. Be selfish. You know, do what's best for you, King. Do what's best for you, Queen. You know, that kind of shit. And it's like, yeah, you need to put yourself first because if you put yourself first and you're better as an individual, you'll be better around for the, better for the people around you. But at the same time,

if putting yourself first is trying to figure out how you're new, how you're going to afford that new Durhamax. Yeah, I mean, if it's all about worldly possessions and all about me, me, me, and what can I have and how can I look to people and you play the keeping up with the Jones's game and you don't think about your family and you don't think about legacy and you don't think about having a purpose and leaving some, leaving the place, leave in the world a better place than when you were born into it. If you don't have that, if they don't have that mindset, that it's real easy to just get caught up and all that stuff and piss something away like a family farm or like a small business

because you're selfish. So I would just say, you know, it's all about perspective and people lose that really, really easy. Yeah. And I know there's stuff, you know, we're lucky that we haven't had, at least I haven't had any perspective or any experience with like, somebody really fucking up in the family.

Like really fucking up. Like, you know, there's people that, you know, have stolen money or play the Chicago Board of Trade. Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, fraud. You know, there's shit that, yeah, okay, if your brother or sister does some really fucked up shit, like really fucked up, uh,

then yeah, it's probably worth having a conversation like, okay, is this act too far gone? Is this a too far gone? Is this a too far gone act where it's like, dude, they really, like, I don't know what's going on there. We got to maybe think of, we got to think of something else here. They've really messed up. I mean, there are situations like that, and that's where it gets really complicated.

When you have somebody having an interest in your farm and they really mess up in a way that's like unforgivable. Yeah. Then it makes it really hard. I guess my first thought about all this with everything going on market-wise, the financial markets, interest rates, land prices, equipment prices, all that. So, you know, there's a, there's kind of this, there's always this, there's always this outcry from politicians especially when they're on the campaign trail in rural America that, you know, they always beat the drum of small business and they always beat the drum, at least here in the

Midwest about family farms, how family farms are under attack. And this is all true. The economics, I worked for a family farm, a huge family farm involved in raisin hogs. And they're very successful. but one thing that the founder, if he said once, he said many times, is in that business, if you're not growing a little, you're going behind because everything costs more tomorrow than it did today. So even to keep at the same level you are as far as the number of people you're employing, what you're paying people compared to what the cost of living is, you have to grow because everything gets more expensive. And that is all true, but I feel like something nobody talks about is the truth the matter is the reason there's fewer and fewer family farms is because there's

fewer and fewer people out there that are willing to make the sacrifice to be selfless enough to have that life and maybe not have the lifestyle that they could have when you sell all that land. Because the biggest detriment to family farms is, may not be the biggest. The asset values? The asset values because, and it is not for everybody. It is absolutely not for everybody.

The biggest fights that we have within our family is about time and priorities. Because this is not a regular job. And we make it worse. All the other shit that we do makes it much worse. There are no down days. There is literally, unless we physically leave, which we don't leave much. there is not a day that you don't do something, whether that be chore, because you got a chore every day, or, you know, check bins or fix something, or mow something, or do something because it always has to be done.

But within a family, that asset value has just gotten outrageous. And then you have family members who may or may not, priority. the value of keeping that intact versus what all that value, all that value, all that money could buy them. Yeah, and I think we're in this, again, we're in this generation or in this mindset with social media. Everybody wants the lifestyle. Everybody wants the aesthetic that they seek out and want. You know, they've searched it out, they found the aesthetic they want, they found the house that they want to buy, They found, you know, they found all the shit. And everybody, everybody wants to quick fix.

Everybody wants to get rich quick scheme. Everybody wants the quick money. Everybody wants the likes. Everybody wants, they want it done as fast as they can get it done with the least amount of effort possible. And so if you're somebody that doesn't value legacy, doesn't value keeping a farm intact, or hell, you're not even a part of the operation. Yeah, you want to pay out. You want to sell your piece because you want, you want that quick fix. You want that lifestyle.

You want, you want, you know, you want that. And that's what a lot of people, unfortunately, want nowadays. They want the quick and easy, and it's never really quick and easy. Yeah, so at the end of the day, this, I actually, I've actually heard, I've had people running for political office want to talk to me, you know, just because whatever, if they know, you know, somehow I'm known. as a farmer and they want to talk about

what can be done to save the family farm and I'm like you got a fucking you got a notepad and a pen? Because it's it isn't the answer isn't government the answer isn't anything from the government. The answer is the people that are on

those family farms is right here because there's another side of this there are a lot of family farms out there that are 100%, and this is going to piss some people off, but this is the fucking truth. They're coasting. They are coasting because they've got this chunk of ground. They've got this chunk of ground.

And in 1980, that was a big chunk of ground. Big. Today, it's not that big. but they're in a competitive place where rent more ground doesn't necessarily mean more income and to do that with the cost of equipment, you know, it's just a never-ending cycle. If you're going to farm the world, you're going to spend a shitload of money on equipment and then the equipment's going to be worn out by farming all that and it's just this big. But there are farms out there that they're grain-ne-house.

farming. That's what they're doing. They're grain farming. And that's what they've always done. And the return on that investment has not kept up with the cost of living. And you have multiple people that are drawn a check. And then if it gets broke down to the next generation, you have off farm members of that family that are getting paid, not doing the work, but getting paid because it's part of their inheritance. So it's all getting squeezed. But the people that are off the farm are unwilling to take a pay cut and the people that are on the farm, this is the way we've always done it. And we sure as hell are not going to go get an off farm job or we're not going to do, we're not going to get into livestock or we're not going to

get into you fill in the blank. Anything different to diversify that operation. We're just going to keep doing what we're doing. And guess what? They're going to get squeezed. They're already getting squeezed. And they're going to get squeezed. And then the decision comes, it's going to get hard enough because the people that are the ones that are actually doing the work, they wake up one day and they've got all the debt of all the equipment, of all the inputs, of all the stuff, and they're doing all the work, and they just get tired. And they're like, that's when a blow up happens. Fuck it. I'm. I'm, yeah, I'm for selling it.

Let's sell the bitch. That's the, that's what's doing away with the family farms. I mean, it's not some, it's not some big master plan that the government wants to put all the small farmers out of business. That is the, that is economics. So it, you could make a monster out of capitalism. You can say that that's capitalism and that this, the little guy. loses. Well, it's true, but that is true. But the little guy needs to not be a little guy all the

time. A little guy's got to, that's being a business owner. You got to run your fucking farm like a business. You can't run it like, you can't just coast. Like you said, I mean, yeah, because the competition is coming. Coasting in any business ain't going to help. It's, you're going to go backwards. Yeah. It doesn't matter what fucking business you're in. If you're coasting, you're going to go backwards. So if you're not expanding a little bit, if you're not diversifying, if you're not figuring out a way to add value to your farming operation just a little bit every single year and getting better, and you have more kids and the cost of living goes up and inputs go up. Like right now, for example, markets are shit.

Inputs have gone up. Everything's fucking up. Cost of living's gone up. Yeah, it's harder to make a buck. Yeah. And what I was going to say about those farms too is they probably haven't, those kinds of farms probably haven't left money into the business. They take a lot.

They live off the farm. Yeah. And that's not a bad thing. I think you should enjoy your fruits of your labor and you should definitely pay yourself. But there might be seasons in there where you're like, you know, we should probably take less. Or, you know, we should probably think about doing a few projects. So we need to probably leave some more money in the business. And that's what a normal business does.

I mean, that's like most businesses think that way. You know, you got to, money is the thing that helps stuff grow and makes changes. So you have to keep it. It's the fuel that fuels the fire. Yeah. So if you're constantly taking it all and not leaving it in, there's no expansion to be had. There's no, there's no new opportunity to be had. There's no growth.

Got to have money. So I think that's also a problem. If everyone's just taking and nothing's being left in, how the fuck are you going to grow? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the other, I feel like we're wondering a little bit, but along those lines of, you know, coasting, this is a huge, this is a huge problem in rural America and in agriculture specifically.

And I can speak to it, like spot on. And I know a lot of, I know personally a lot of people that this affects is we, this farm that we supports the previous generation. So we have basically three families that we're feeding off of our family farm. But one of those is in a retirement home. My mother is in a retirement home. And those costs are absolutely outrageous.

Like it is, it's a killer. And part of the reason that we have to do everything else we're doing is because we make no money off grain farming. In fact, we lose money grain farming because we have the cost of that retirement care. We treat that like rent on the farm. And it'll be in the red this year. Guaranteed it'll be in the red this year. We'll have to subsidize it because, and I just have one. parent that's that way. There are families out there that have parents from both sides,

or they could have multiple parents depending on, you know, how many siblings that have another spouse that has somebody that is in that age that they're having to support. And health care and retirement home, nursing home, that kind of stuff. It is an absolute killer. And that's another thing that's just trashing family farms because I have a neighbor that married into a family and he was kind of the only, the only on-farm person, you know, to continue that family farm. So he rented that ground and started farming it. And then the grandmother was in a home, and due to the way that they structured everything, she, I mean, I don't know what you, I guess for, for lack of a better term, I guess you still call it Title 19, in that all of her

assets were exhausted except for the land. So they just, they just racked up the bill against the land. And when she died, they had to sell that ground. So he had the choice of, you know, trying to buy this or not farming it anymore. Well, the land prices are so outrageous. There was no way he could swing that, you know, and he'd only been farming on his own, or, you know, he'd only been farming this for just a few years. So anyway, he had to let it go, gave it up, and it got sold. That happens multiple times a week all over the United States, where there is land that is the only asset that the oldest generation has,

nursing home and medical insurance, medical issues, literally bleed the, that's the backslash. stop for all of it and then when they pass sold and it's that's you want to from a political side you want to help the family farm uh work on that because i don't know how many people i know where uh there's another generation that is retired that's in some form of uh skilled care and they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a month to keep that person to take care of that person. And it's a shit show. That's one thing that we've had a conversation as a family about just when you get a little older and you need your ass wiped.

Who gets the short straw? Who gets the short, short straw, you know. You're not going to like take me out behind the wicks, are you? No. No, I would never. No, but what I was saying there is we've had the discussion of like, well, should we build something here on the farm to allow my parents, you know, to still live here? Yeah.

Is there a cheaper option? Is keeping you guys around here building a facility or building a room or building like a little house that has everything that you need that's, you know, handicap accessible and just has all the stuff that you think you would need for somebody, getting up in those in those years so that you don't have to pay 10,000, 10,000 plus dollars to keep somebody in home. Oh, it'll be 20,000. Right. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, thinking about that, it's like, well, shit, there's got to be. So yeah, the government can help, but I don't fucking ever bank on the government helping. So what can we do to combat that? All right. What can we do to combat that? That's what I take. And I think, I think that's a serious conversation needs to be had more and more is these the the nursing home thing there's got to be a

better way it's not sustainable it's not there's got to be a better way there's got to be a better way and i don't know but we're going to figure it out because i don't think the answer is going to be sending both of my parents in 30 to 40 years to nursing home because yeah it'll be 40 000 Just freeze us. Just freeze us until they get, you know, that where they can spend the odometer back. Yeah. And just thaw us out. Han Solo?

Yeah. I don't know. I look painful. Yeah. What kind of painful? Well, he did look good after he got out. Yeah. But yeah, I would just say that's something that you're right.

It does, it does hurt. And it's hurting a lot of family farms out there. But I don't know. To get back to the greed thing, I don't know. I feel like, I don't know. know. I feel like we kind of answer it. It's a mindset thing. It's a total mindset thing. It's leaving your ego at the door. It's doing what's best for the team and having a team outlook on the whole operation. If you don't have that, because here's the deal, you can accomplish so much more

as a family unit working together as you can as one person. If you have a team built, assembled, going after one mission, everybody's doing the role. Everyone is pushing. You can achieve so much more. And people lose that. Family farms lose that. So when you're working as a family unit and a family farm and you're doing everything you can to make it work, everything you can to push it to the next generation and you leave your egos at the door,

a lot of good shit can happen. Yeah. But that gets lost. Not everybody does that for X, Y, and Z reason. But I don't know. I believe leaving a legacy is one of the most important things that you could do while you have a life on this planet. Some people will disagree with me and say,

well, nobody's going to remember you in, you know, 100 years. Well, I would say, fuck you, that's bullshit because I know who founded this farm six generations ago. I know his name. I know his story. You know, that, I do remember. And maybe it's, well, maybe just me, Torque and Sawyer know Samuel Meek or whatever, right? We're the only ones that know him.

But at least somebody's talking about him. You know, somebody knows him. Not the whole world's not talking about him, but we know. And guess what? That drives me to this day to know generations before me came and laid the groundwork, and I should do the same. So to say that leaving a legacy is pointless, I would say that's bullshit, because that can drive the next three generations, and you don't even know it.

Right. It matters. It really, really matters. And it gives you purpose. It gives you meaning. and let's be honest, just being a selfish fuck your whole life doesn't really give you a lot of purpose, doesn't give you a lot of fulfillment, doesn't give you a lot of meaning. The best sense of fulfillment and reward is accomplishing something together with a team of people and, you know, doing stuff

for other people. I feel like that's where you get a lot of fulfillment and, you know, joy from. And so I would just say, yeah, I'm going to chime in. I'm going to give you the, so I'm going to address the first comment that I think would come from what we haven't addressed. And I think that comment would be, yes, I know that, you know, my brother knows that, my sister knows that, but one of the biggest stories that I hear from people where there's big problems within these families is the generation that owns it all doesn't communicate. The generation that owns it all, they aren't letting anybody be involved in what's going to happen. And the question is going to come,

what do you do about that? What do you do when, you know, mom or dad, you don't have any idea what the plan is. You're working for, you're working on the farm, but you don't own anything. And my answer to that is that start chewing some ass. Well, and what happens is a lot of times is this stuff ends up in a fight. But you have to look at that. You really have to look at that with two possible outcomes. because if I'm a young person, if I'm you, and I'm putting my, put in my, you know, best years of my life that I could be building businesses,

I could be doing something else, if I'm exchanging that on this family farm with the idea that I'm going to take it over, and that is not being communicated, communicated, then why am I here? And yeah, you could say, well, because I love it and I believe in the legacy and all that. Well, you need to speak that. You need to let the person at the top know that. You need to let your mother, father, or grandma and grandpa, whoever, know that. And you need to, you need to come to your own clarity that if they're not, if they're not,

willing to communicate with you and to make it clear how things are going to go and to write a plan, then what's going to happen is going to happen no matter what. It's just whether it's going to happen 20 years down the road or 10 years down the road or five years down the road and you're going to be out on your ass and have to start over or whether it's going to be your decision and you're going to say, you know what, if you're unwilling to do this, I'm going to change my situation now and I'm out of here. Because the only thing worse than getting screwed over in the end and having a bad outcome that you never saw coming,

well, that's the worst outcome. if you're going to have that outcome, have it now. Right. Have it now where you control your destiny and say, okay, then I'm going to make a change. If you are unwilling to put, because obviously to that person, legacy is not that important. As much as they want to talk about it, well, as much as they may think in their own mind that it really is, if they're unwilling to have a conversation to have a conversation and to do what needs to be done so that it's clear. And that's the other thing. Another fallacy when it comes to farm planning is,

is it has to be fair. It does not have to be fair. And it won't be fair. Because the person that is making the decision, they are steering the legacy of that farm. So in other words, if I'm the dad and I've got four kids and I want it to be fair, Well, then we're going to have an auction and we're just going to sell it all out. We're going to divide it out. I'm going to take it all and put it in a trust and then you each get the same amount. That's fair. And I would argue in that situation, most people don't want that because they want the farm to go on.

Well, if they want the farm to go on, then it ain't going to be fair because all those assets that have this big monetary value to them don't cash flow. Don't cash flow can't be sold. So you can't give, you can't give two and a half million dollars to Sally because two and a half million dollars doesn't exist. It's in the dirt. It's in the dirt. It's in the hog billings. It's in the equipment. It's not tangible. So it can't be fair to Sally. And Sally needs to realize that. Now, there's things you can do if you start talking. talking soon enough, there's things you can do that you could take some of that money and invest that money and do things with life insurance and whatever to where Sally gets something. Sally gets closer to what may or may not be fair, but unless they're going to take an active role in the

farm to make money off the assets, it'll never be fair. And for all these families that the kids are like, well, that's not fair. Well, fuck, no, it's not fair and life's not fair. But you made the decision, you made the decision that you weren't going to be the one to be here. To be here doing it. So you lose some of your vote of making fair. Yeah, what happens. But it's really up, it's really up to the, it's up to this generation. I hate to admit that now I'm this generation, when I'm out walking and I go down, the road and I think about all the all the old guys that I'd like to ask for advice that aren't there and the people that I think that I thought growing up were like young farmers that now then

they're like the really old guys and you're like how did this happen well now then I'm creepily getting to I'm going to be one of those guys I hold I hold the cards and if I want to be a real son of a bitch I can do whatever but the fall out of that is you have to decide. You have to decide. Do you want, do you want that farm to be a legacy or do you want that farm to be one last big piggy bank that you just give a payout to all the kids and say, do you want it to die with you or do you want it to keep going? Right. That's what And if you want to, if you don't give a shit and you want it to die with you and everybody gets a check, then you need to communicate it. Then you need to communicate that. But if, if that's what you want,

and your son's been working for you for 20 years, and he's put his blood, sweat, tears into it, but he doesn't have any equity. You need to have that conversation because he's going to get fucked. And that happened. And now, I would, there's a lot to unpack there. That was a good one.

See, you're ending on the right note here. Good, good ending thought there. But I would say also people is everything and family is everything. And so, you know, is it really worth losing your relationship with your son, with your daughter, with your, I mean, that's the sad part about the whole thing. Lack of communication, lack of planning can result in people getting fucked, not knowing that they're going to get fucked and then losing a relationship with them. Because that's, that's responsibility on the older generation that's got the carts. That's on you. You did not.

And I think your point of, if legacy is important to them, if it really is important to them, actions speak louder than words. So if it's important to you, you need to be actively working on coming up with a plan on how it's going to work. And I would also say, my opinion is if you do not add value to the farm or add value to the family in some regard, money-wise, financial-wise, You don't get a vote? You don't get a vote. If you're not providing value to the farm, if you're not providing value to the family in some capacity,

you don't get to say what happens to the family farm, in my opinion. Right. You're not here working or you're not here or you're not contributing in a different way in a different industry to the family's legacy and the family's long-term wealth, then you have no, you have no fucking say on what should happen. In my opinion. Right. Because you did not, yeah, it's like you said, you did not contribute here.

You didn't contribute. You chose the leaf. And you didn't find a way to somehow provide value to the family in a different way that might have been in your wheelhouse. And you want, then you selfishly work on your own family. And then when dad gets older, now we're going to creep back and start kissing ass. And then you want to say, it's like, that's not how it fucking goes. that's my opinion anyway if you're not if you're not contributing in some some capacity you should not have a say but i also think it is on the older generation to don't just talk about it be about it

yeah make the plan get the will wrote up sit their asses down and have a conversation about how it's going to play out and take some input because it isn't just as easy that's another thing is there's a lot of people out there that think that, well, I got a will. I got a will. But nobody knows about it. Well, no, but even if they do, just because you have a will doesn't mean that, like, does it work? Like, if you wrote that 10 years ago, is it still work? And then you can't just, if you're the person that has all the assets, you can't just write a will and go,

set in stone, baby. It's good to go. this thing is going to work out fine because the world changes the world changes and how is that going to play out so when you die and the will is executed how is how are they going to be able to secure how are they going to be able to pay the tax liability if there is one and how is the debt that's there if there is any going to be structured to where they can continue to farm just because you have a will that says this goes to so and so this goes to so and so well it might but it also may come with a huge liability that at the end of the day,

they have to sell part of the ground to be able to pay the taxes or to pay whatever. Or they can't put together what they're left with is not enough to be viable because it's split up eight ways from Friday. Like, if you're the person with the assets, you have to think about what happens when this executes? The last greatest thing that you can do as a parent, as the grandparent as the generation that holds all the cards the last greatest thing you can do is to make a plan but then put yourself in that generation that is receiving that shoes and figure

out how how should they receive it to where it's optimized to put them in the best position to be able to keep the farm going and i'll say one i'll say one more thing my dad and his brother and his and his sister to some degree they they got in this fight and like i said my dad and his brother didn't speak literally didn't speak maybe 20 words in 50 years they didn't give a shit because they wrote each other off they were both equally stubborn and their sister kind of tried to play both sides and we would see her some you know she would stop but we did not have a relationship with her kids we did not have a relationship with my cousins so to this day because of because of what happened to that generation our families are not a family in the fact that we know each other it's

split forever it's split forever and what an incredible selfish thing between two people that has screwed up. And I don't want to say it's like it's not like you have ill will towards them. It's just you didn't grow up together. You didn't have a relationship. Right. We're just living with the consequences of what happened to that. And so be conscious of that. If you're that, if you're the generation, the decisions you make and the interactions that you have or don't have, that ripple effect rolls out for as many generations

as that whole deal will keep going and it really, at the end of the day, it comes down to communication and team first. Egos at the door. Well, just know, just whatever it is,

whatever it is, just put it out there. there because you can deal with anything no matter how bad it is you can deal with it because you don't have any choice but you can deal with it when you know what's going on yeah but when you don't know what's going on that's the worst that's way worse i would say last thing i'll say is it's if you want an easy out anything the result of doing hard things the result of how having hard conversations equals an easier life, a better life.

If you want to get in good shape, you got to have, you go out of going on three mile walks at six in the morning. You got to go to the gym. You got to lift weights and you got to be uncomfortable. It sucks. But your result is you have a better healthy lifestyle. Your body's better in better shape. You want to have hard conversations with your spouse, with your family to work shit out.

Might make your relationship better. Might give you clarity on the situation. And at least now you know. Yeah. The result of hard conversations is better than not having the hard conversation. You're 100% right. So there is no people are like, I don't like that because it'll be uncomfortable.

It'll be painful. You got to. It is fucking painful. It is painful when you can't butt in your pants. It is painful when, you hurt to bend over, your feet hurt, you can't see your dick. That's painful. That's painful. I just had to bring it in there, comedic relief. But it's painful to get in shape. But it's, I'd say it's more painful to be out of shape. It's just, it's delayed. Choose your hard. Choose your

hard. It is, and it's 100% true. When it comes to family, it is easier in the short run to not have the conversations and not have that friction. But in the, long term, the wasted time and the wasted opportunity and the pain and the utter mayhem that ensues from shit that happens that nobody saw coming, way worse, way worse than just having the conversation. And it stings worse. The other great thing is, like when I was a kid, you had to like go, you had to go to a lawyer's office and that lawyer may or may not have had any freaking idea about estate planning. Or you'd go to seek out some specialist in some city and pay them how many dollars to get them to come to your house, to sit down, and there was all this paperwork.

And today, you can learn so much in an evening. There is so much great information out there on podcasts, on YouTube, on people that make their stuff for free. I'm not telling you to make an estate plan off of TikTok. Probably not a good idea. However, you can learn all the basic terminology. You can learn about trust, you can learn about irrevocable trust, revocable trust, wills, life insurance, cash value life insurance, how to structure stuff. Like, you can learn all of the basics to where when you seek out somebody to help your family put together a plan, like you know when they throw out a term, you're going to know what that term is. You can learn all that stuff. You just have to want to do it. And it's so much easier. It's like everything. The knowledge is just, it's free.

The knowledge is free. And you can educate yourself. There's really no excuse to not have a plan. And if we want to keep family farms going, that's what we got to do. We got it. We got it. We got to have communication between family members, and we got to educate that generation that is not the one that holds the cards, basically. You got to educate them, and you have to stand up to them because some of those are situations where, let's face it, you know, well, you don't want to piss off dad. Yeah. Well, sometimes dad needs to get pissed off. Yeah, sometimes you need to yell at dad. Yeah. Yeah. My kids know that very well. It's like, I would just like to say too, you know, I think family's everything, but if family doesn't treat you like family,

then you need, I mean, and you try to work on that, you try to have hard conversations about, hey, I don't like when you say this or, hey, I don't like when you do this, or hey, we need to have this conversation. They won't have it. And you've tried and you've tried and you've tried and you've tried. I think that's point of, you need to control your own destiny at that point then. You need to set boundaries. You need to, you know, go a different direction. Right. as long as you put in the effort, you put in the effort to try to have the hard conversations. You voiced your opinion on, hey, I don't like when you do this or I don't like when you say this to me. You did the work and they repeatedly do not change their behavior.

Do not ever have the conversation. And they just keep kicking the can with nothing. It's time for you to build your own legacy. It's time for you to build your own legacy because that's not a team. That's not a team member that wants the team to win. And that's the unfortunate truth. And you just, you can't, you can't win when you got fucking players that don't want to play with you. You can't, you can't go after anything.

You can't achieve shit when that's the case. So, uh, there is that other part of it. If it's just a no win scenario, you got to go, you got to go create your own legacy then. Yeah. And it, it's, it's like that with just relationships with family. If family does not treat you like family. they're not fucking family. If they cross the line that much,

you can only fuck some, to me anyway, this is how I operate. If you do not treat me like family and you continue not to treat me like family and I've voiced what I said to you and I've said, hey, I don't like when you do this or hey, I don't like when you do this and I say it over and over and over and over

and I put in the work and you do some shit that combats that, I don't need you to be in my life. I don't need the negativity. I don't need the shit. I don't need the shit that you bring. Because you're not treating me like family.

You're not acting like a family member. And that's another conversation to be had on a different day. But anyway, that's all I'll say. I'll close with this. So if any of you are at the Iowa State Fair next Thursday, we're going to be there. I think it's at that pavilion where they do the Century Awards and the Heritage Awards. if you see a real tall kid real tall man leading a circus midget around that'll probably be

Sawyer with me but the whole family's going to be there and if you happen by say hi we'd love to we'd love to chop it up yep chop it up with you yep bring me a bucket of cookies bring us a pork chop on a stick yeah probably don't bring me the damn cookies just give me the pork chop i need the protein i guess i do like those cookies hey you'll be getting in plenty of steps so i can have some cookies you think if you if you get 20,000 steps in oh i can do that yeah i can do that just got to get up to your walk then go to the state fair and walk around a few times and you'll get there it's a lot it is a lot of good mat feed some pigs okay i'll try i'll try well i think that's going to wrap it up guys i hope this brought some value to you i know we're kind of a little bit all over the board but

i think we we had some pretty good thoughts so if you got any value from the show please share it out with the people that you know. If there's somebody in your family that you think needs to hear this, have the hard conversation. Don't be afraid to share it. Yeah, you make us the heavy. Yeah, make us the heavy.

That's right. Make us the heavy. And then you can come in on the back end and, you know, reiterate some points maybe. I don't know. But share it out with who you think this might give value to. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Go to farmagrade.com.

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