Barn Talk - Cattle, Corn, and Content Creation: Sonne Farms Talks Farm Life

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today's episode we have a special guest joining us, Cole Sonne, a renowned cattle farmer from South Dakota. We get into discussions about the extensive fence upgrades Cole and his father Brian have undertaken. With stories about cattle escapes, fencing technologies, and the tremendous effort required in farm operations, there’s a lot to uncover. We’ll also explore the nuances of farming content creation, the economics of livestock, and the challenges of pig farming from feed costs to disease pressures. Cole and Sawyer share insights on the importance of niche farming opportunities, the realities of the generational shift in agriculture, and the sheer dedication required to keep the operations running smoothly. We touch on the significance of good fencing in reducing stress and preventing costly incidents, delve into the financial aspects of livestock raising, and discuss the role of technology. Plus, we hear amusing anecdotes about farm life and strategies to educate the public on what really happens on farms. And stay tuned as we highlight the efforts to keep Storla Station open for local farming needs, legacy decisions, and future plans for expansion. So, get ready to dig into the heart of farming with us, as we balance humor, hard work, and heartfelt stories in today's insightful episode. 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  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ 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 Support our Farmer Grade: buy beef, gift boxes. 08:23 Great grandpa immigrated from Denmark, served in WWI. 14:12 Fill feedlots with calves for the backgrounding phase. 20:36 Dad had better luck with green equipment. 22:57 John Deere succeeded by maintaining local dealers. 27:19 Rarely sell hay; sold in 2020. 33:24 Regular fence maintenance simplifies and saves time. 38:07 Finding new farming niches is increasingly challenging. 47:00 Feed efficiency key for pig growth, care. 52:44 Rented land led to high corn yield. 55:32 Creative marketers capped by fluctuating corn prices. 59:27 Life gets easier with time and experience. 01:03:37 Buying local shop for farm supplies initiative. 01:08:48 Owning a store leads to worse deals, profits none. 01:14:17 Successful farmers often own and expand land. 01:20:19 Farmers fear unknown future regulations and incentives. 01:24:43 Dad rents pastures, but I won't continue. 01:32:16 Evaluating market strategies for livestock sales profitability. 01:39:45 Disease pressure significantly impacted sow breeding success. 01:40:47 Pig farming challenged by disease and prices. 01:45:40 Get beef, support, review, and return next week. 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 special, special guest episode that we got going. This guy has came all the way down from South Dakota. Brought the cold weather with him. Brought the cold weather with him.

It is a blustery day today. We're bundled up. thank God we bought some heaters for the farm or for the barn. A couple winters ago, we had to move this podcast to the garage. I know. And it didn't feel like barn talk. It felt like garage, garage talk. I'm losing it already.

That's all right. It's early in the morning. I'm not drinking already, are you? Not drinking. Not going to drink today. I'm about ready to get back on the donut diet because I feel like my thinner self is way colder than fat self was last year. I don't like this shit. Now you know how I feel.

winner. I don't know. I might just hibernate. You might be on your own. Anyway, we digress. Yeah, we loaded pigs at 3.30 this morning. So, uh, little, little, little, little, little, little tired today. But we're just got to drink some more coffee. That's all, that's all you got to do. So, uh, um, before we get into the show, though, you guys know the drill. If you get any value, share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more of the show grows. The, the more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. another thing you can do to help support Barn Talk and help support us on the show is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. The more you guys do that, the more it gives our show credibility,

and it helps us recruit more guests on the show. And follow us. Follow us on Spotify. Follow us on Spotify. Yeah, Spotify has really up their game when it comes to podcasts and just the platform as a whole. You can comment on any episode on there now. You can leave your, you can leave a review on there. You can watch video podcasts on. there. You can watch clips on there. So if you're on Spotify, get involved in the community. We're going to try our best to respond as many comments as we can. Also a really great place to drop your questions for Q&A episodes. So definitely check out Spotify and let us know what you think about episodes. You can also subscribe to YouTube to watch as well. Last thing you can do to help

support the show and help support our family farm is you can support our direct-to-consumer business, farmer grade, farmergrade.com. We are going to be having sunny farms beef on the website, and that launches today, or launched yesterday. So it is launching. He's bringing 12 head of cattle down here to get processed, and we're going to be selling it through farmergrade.com. So be looking out for that because it's going to go fast. It's going to go real fast. We're also doing holiday gift boxes for Christmas. So we'll be looking out for that as well. And we'd love to help you out in any way we can.

And you can use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your next order. Help us. Help you. You want to be a good gift giver Christmas? Like I said, what better gift there is than the gift of meat? Especially cold weather. You've got to keep that winter coat on. You're trying to hibernate.

That's right. Got to get on as much protein as you can. That's right. Build that muscle or build that fat, whatever. Whatever. whatever suits you uh yeah we don't have a patreon for this podcast we have something better we call it the metrion we have a metrion it's you're not going to get a t-shirt with uh with the shit that's going to fall right off of it when you support us you're going to get a box of meat when you support our metrion so yeah no

bumper sticker no bumper sticker i mean i do like a good bumper sticker once in a while but anyway just buy a box of meat it's all good yeah yeah it helps the show grow it helps us get better here on the show. So our guest today is a cattle farmer in South Dakota. Farms alongside his dad. He's built up a substantial, really huge social media falling around his family farm, raising cattle, row cropping, and he has a hell of a journey. I've been trying to get him on the show for a long, long, long time, so I'm super stoked that he's finally going to be in the barn with us today. So without further ado, let's get into it. Cole, Sunny, here we are.

We're at Barn Talk. Thanks for coming. Welcome to it. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, we've been wanting to have this podcast. We've been wanting to have this podcast happen for a while. So we finally got you here, and I'm excited to dive into all the things that make Sunny Farms happen.

But before we get into it, guys, like I said in the intro, Cole is going to be doing, he's going to be bringing down 12 heifers for farmer-grade meat. and we're going to be launching that pre-sale. It's actually live right now. So you can go to pharmaGray.com and you can get SunnyFarms beef home raised on his farm on farmagrade.com right now. But we want to tell the story of Sunny Farms on the podcast here today. We're not going to go into all that.

But I just want to let people know, so they got it. Yeah, we're pretty excited about this meat sale. You know, so many viewers spend hours with us a year. they actually saw some of these, if they watched every video, they saw some of these calves get born on our farm, go out to pasture, and then come back to the feedlot and get finished. And so it's just full circle there. Same with you guys.

You know, you get wiener pigs in, you finish them out, you haul them out. And it's just, I think it's pretty amazing. This new wave, this new generation we live in, being able to do things like this, show people basically a full life cycle, and then they get to enjoy what we grow on our farm. Yeah, it's a pretty unique. way of just like I just feel like that's our connection to the product as farmers is a story that it doesn't get told enough you know it's not like we're making a piece of clothing

it's we're raising food and like we have the opportunity to show it and I feel like more and more people are getting on it and I think it's going to be good for the consumer and just everybody involved so so it's funny because it's kind of like full circle so you know you go a generation ago or two generations ago people knew their butcher people knew the the people that brought beef and brought pork to the butcher shop. And then we lost all that through the power of convenience. And now we still have the convenience. We can get it shipped right to your door.

But you now know, you know that circle of life. You know the person that raised that and you know where it came from. And I think that's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Before we get into the nitty gritty, tell people where they can find you. all the platforms. Yeah, we're mostly on YouTube, of course. That's our bread and butter.

We're also on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. Just if you search Sunny Farms, spell S-O-N-N-E, you'll find us. Yeah, and it's not Sone. It's sunny. I made the mistake. Cole had to chew my ass a few times because he's like, dude, it ain't Sonae, it's sunny. I think I've heard you mispronounce it more than you say it right, but that's okay. Yeah.

It happens a lot. And you usually know that's when it's a telemarketer calling you because it's sown or soon. Yeah. I'm growing. I'm developing. I'm working on myself. You just got to know that the sun always shines. Yep.

On sunny form. That's right. That's how I'll remember. The sun always shines. Just, yeah, I was going to ask, you know, it's crazy. Like the weather had just, I feel like almost God knew that you were coming because, you know, the weather is just literally turned like the last two days here in Southeast Iowa. And I was like, you wanted you to feel comfortable. Yeah.

We wanted to make you feel comfortable. feel at home. It feels like home. And you pretty much brought the weather with you, but we're going to make it through. That's why it's funny. I always blame it on the Canadians and you're blaming it on me. So it's just whoever's right north of you. It's their fault. That's right. So I guess tell us a little bit about your operation, what you guys all do and just a little bit of history behind it. I know that's a loaded question, but we got time. We got time. Well, I'm not It's terribly read up on, you know, the cool stuff about our history, but I can tell you some main ideas. And it started with my great grandpa George, who he was, I think, not even a teenager yet.

He might have been 11 or 12. And he came over from the island of Bornholm, Denmark. It's kind of a rocky hill that it's hard to make it live in there what it sounds like. And so he left with a couple of his brothers, I believe. And they came in at Ellis Island and settled in South Dakota. And then when World War II, no, World War I started, he went back and served. And so his job was to bring food to the front line. One day, artillery struck, killed all four of his mules, and he got a little shrapnel,

and so he was able to go home. You know, if that would have hit a little closer to killed him, I wouldn't be here. because he had not yet found his wife or had kids. So that's kind of how we got to South Dakota, I guess. Real short and sweet. Then my grandpa farmed just about two or three miles from where my great grandpa was. He also served in the Army, and I think he won some awards for being a good shot, like sharpshooter or something.

He never did see active duty because there wasn't much going on at the time, thank the Lord. I guess. So, and he was a lot in the hog business, just like a lot of people around that time. That's how a lot of farmers got started. That's how my dad got his start, I'd say, being able to turn a couple buildings. And then when the 80s kind of came, and there was, you know more than me. But market got bad, and I think my dad kind of started getting more into cattle. in about 97 when I was born my dad started selling purebred black angus bulls

and so he's been doing that for 27 years is how old I am so you know he worked with his brother a lot and just it's really a story of hard work going from dark to dark and you know taking some risks working hard and building something and so I guess I was always around you know here and there on weekends, helping after school, and decided to go to four-year college. And the day I finished my last final, I drove home as fast as I could, and I started in on the farm. So we raised corn, soybeans, black angus cattle.

We got two dogs. And so I guess that's kind of a short story of Sunny Farms. How did you, what made you decide to pick up the camera? So when I was in college, I just thought drones were cool. And I wanted one. So I got one. And then, okay, now I have this drone. Take some video of us farming, raking hay, whatever's going on.

And that's like, okay, now I have some video. What am I going to do with that? It's not worth anything on this microSD. So I did some crude editing and put it on YouTube. And for some reason, a couple videos started getting some. views and it's like that's cool and getting some subscribers and comments and it just kind of starts a whole new world you're like this is crazy people are interested in this and uh you know shout out millennial farmer i was watching him a lot at the time you know being in college stuck in uh brookings

you know two hours from the farm and i could kind of get back into farming by watching some of his videos and so seeing him vlog and how he did things i thought well i guess i could try that so one day we went to ultrasound and pelvic measure, not ultrasound, we went to ultrasound and just see the development of our hepers, see if they were going to be ready for breeding. And Dad said, you should take video of this. And I thought, well, that'd be a pretty boring drone video. And he said, no, like, vlog, talk to the camera. And so all I had was my iPhone 6 at the time.

And did it. Just took some videos probably about 10 minutes long and talked to the vet and had him explain what we were doing, bangs vaccinating. for bruselosis and just edit it up, put it on YouTube like I've been doing with the drone video. And, you know, it didn't take off by any means, but I did the first one, talk to the camera, and now it's like, well, let's keep going with this. And so it was just kind of a keep going type of deal. You hit a new milestone.

You're like, that's cool, and it just keeps you going, get you more excited. And so, really, it was part buying a drone and thinking might as well do something with it. And also my dad pushing me like, hey, you talked about it. Why don't you go do it? Yeah. So that's pretty, that's pretty impressive that he had the, he had the forethought to, to encourage you. Did he know Millennial Farmer at that time too? Like, had he seen some stuff too?

That's a good question. I would say he probably wasn't much into it at the time. But, you know, as soon as I started posting, I'm sure, I know that right now, dad, he surfs and looks around and says, hey, this is new with this farm and that farm. So, yeah, I think at the time he wasn't really watching those other guys. Yeah. So, like, your operation, you guys do cow calf predominantly, right? And then your dad sells bowls too.

Yep. So, you know, I would say our farm is half crops, half cattle. And then on the cattle side, it's about half cowcalf and half backgrounding. Okay. What is backgrounding for people that don't know? Yeah. So we get calves in to fill the feed lots. dad likes to buy them around and when I say we you know I'm kind of just an employee of the

farm you know I I farm some of my own ground I have some of my own cattle but by and large we is my dad so just want to clarify that yeah but we usually buy calves at about four or five hundred pounds so they're usually freshly weaned or been weaned for a month or two and put them in the feedlot and start growing them introducing them to corn and so you kind of call it back rounding because it's the step before finishing you know we don't take them all the way to that 14, 1450 or 1,500 pounds that they'd be at slaughterweight. We get them to about 8 or 9. And there's a couple reasons we do that.

Number one, it keeps their options open. You know, I think back to COVID, I'm sure you hog feeders had that moment where you got pigs ready to go, nowhere to take them. So it's nice for us, you know, if we get to 8 or 900, we can sell them. or we do have the option to keep going if we have to for some reason. It's also good for just our overall timing throughout the year. Usually we're buying around this time. We're finishing or not finishing,

but getting them to our desired weight around March, April, and now it's about time to get into the field. So we empty the feed lots, we get to the field. So you buy yourself some time to do everything else. Yep. Yeah. So it works pretty well for us. Yeah.

Yep. And then your dad sells bowls and he's been doing that. Like, does he just have the rep now where just people will call him up and say, Brian, I need two, three. Most of the sales are repeat customers, local guys, of course, with the channel. We've been pushing into states two or three states away, you know, people coming a thousand plus miles away, which has helped with marketing, of course, and getting them all sold.

But, yeah, most of the time, it's local guys that have bought for years and actually just a year or two ago, the first guy that ever bought a bull from dad just retired and sold off his herd. So you're like, oh, man, you know. Doing it a while. Got to get another customer now. Not a customer, but it's just crazy how he's been doing it a while

and there's people that are getting to the end of their farming career and have been sunny black angus for a long time. Yeah. I'm sure that that genetics and cattle is just like genetics and hogs. is your dad one of those guys that if the right person asks him some genetics question, you're somewhere, you just go, well, I got time to go get, you know, whatever, because we're going to be here a while. Because a lot of those guys, boy, their face, when they can talk about what they're interested in,

they go. And I don't know, I don't know near enough about the whole genetics thing, but the guys that are into it, oh, man, that's like they're. It's an art form there. Yeah. Yeah, I would tell you that is my reaction. Time to go get a beer. I don't get too much into that.

Yeah. But, you know, dad's been, his biggest thing is calving ease. So what you're wanting there is a nice size head, you know, not a big head on it, lower birth weight. And that lower birth weight is usually because it's actually a shorter gestational period. And so, you know, you're using that on a, First time heifer. She's not as developed. She's not at full weight yet either.

So you want a small calf for it to be easier on her for the first time. How much can the gestation period vary in cattle? That's a good question. I have no idea. Pigs. Pigs, it's 113 days. Is that right? Three months, three weeks, three days?

Yep. You knew it. Well, yeah. It's the rule of three. Well, it's so condensed. probably can't change much. Right. I mean, it's within a day.

But cattle can vary, and I just don't know how much. Well, yeah, because, you know, when we put our bowls in, this is a great example. When we put our bowls in for our first-time heifers, we put them in for the date of February 10th. We've been having some calves February 1, 2, 3. So you would say they're about a week early. And so that's probably a lot of... where you're finding some of that smaller birthing cubs, are those calving these bulls and their calves because they're...

All right. That's good to know. They're a little bit early. So do you guys, I assume you guys just probably breed with all bulls, no AI, right? So dad's done some AI. It's, he's had some bad luck with it.

You know, you spend a day, vet comes out, you got to sink them all up, you got to prepare for it. And then half or less stick, and then you still got to buy an, a nice, expensive bowl to clean them up.

And it's, you know, we're busy. We got shit to do. We got to get in the field. And yeah. So we haven't AI'd for probably six years. Yeah. But, you know, he spends the big bucks on the nice bulls. And that's kind of our motto is we spend the big money so you don't have to.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then the calves that you guys raise, do you sell them at that? 800, 900 pounds or do you sell them smaller? So the bowls, yeah, they're yearling bowls. So they're right about at a year when they're getting sold. It's usually third week or so of April.

We have our vet come out, semen test, and we have a big lunch for everybody that bought bowls, and they pick them up that day. So they're a year old, and at that time, they're weighing, you know, 11, 1,200 pounds. I wanted to ask you why, if anybody watches your channel, they know you're predominantly green. Is there a reason why you guys go all John Deere?

As things have progressed in the equipment, you know, sector of ag, people start starting to bash on John Deer saying it's too expensive. What's your guys' thoughts on it? How do you feel about running green all the time? So my dad grew up on red, as I think many, many farms did. And really his take on it is when they started getting more green equipment, they started having less problems. Now, I'm sure there's just as many farmers that say that there are farmers that say the opposite. You know, they maybe start with green and then switched to red and had better luck.

So that's just, you know, what worked out for my dad. And, you know, we have a good local dealer, a couple of them actually. And I usually have good parts. But yeah, people always bring up cost and reliability and where things are getting built now. And I just think we've had good luck. For me personally, the software side of things, I think Deer is just so user-friendly.

It's just easy to get around their Starfire system. And I just love it. It's good system. I think that they had a lot. lot of forethought when they saw that coming and deer has probably invested more money than anybody in the software side of it and then the other side of it is so many guys that are running that have multiple operators the way you can track your equipment the way you can deer has they've kind of set themselves apart with that and i think it's really helped them

you know how so how close is your nearest like dealer so we have a dealer about 25 miles away that's pretty good for you guys and then the next closest would be about 35 miles away and then 45 miles away so we're kind of we're almost in the middle of a of three different dealers so yeah that's pretty good because one of the things we talk about a lot is you know clear back in the during the farm crisis in this neighborhood, you had guys. There were a lot of guys that ran Case. There was a lot of guys that ran international. There was a lot of guys that ran Massey in New Holland.

And there was dealers for all of them. And in our town here, we had an Alice dealer. We had an IH dealer. We had a deer dealer. Colonna had a New Holland Massey dealer. And I think there was an IH dealer in Riverside, too. I mean, you're talking 15 miles. but by the end of that,

the only dealer that was close was John Deere. And John Deere did a good job, and I mean, I don't know how much was luck of the draw, but of keeping dealers in business. And I think in turn, you look at their success today, and I think a heck of a lot of it comes from the fact that you had a dealer. So when you're looking at buying something, how far am I going to have to go to get parts?

You know, all that. I think that they played that out very well. And I mean, it's all expensive. And, but for us, you know, the number one, the number one factor in what we run is, I know I can get it worked on. I know I can get parts when I need it. And it's close. So I think the one thing pissing people off the most is just the tech is so nice,

but it's also not everybody can work on it. They miss the days where they can just figure it out and work. on it. And that's, I think that's what I hear a lot of people complaining about. Well, that's true, but we all want all the gadgets. I mean, Gitty Gat, what do you say? Gitty go fast shit. Yeah, Gitty go fast shit. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. You want all that stuff.

And, but then the flip side of it is, it's no different than, it's, it's no different than our cars, you know, Wi-Fi and your pickup truck and screens in the back of the seats and heated seats and cooled seats and all that stuff. We love all that stuff, and we love that 25-speed transmission, you know, and all that. But then we complain about how much it costs to have it. It's like, yeah, well, you got a lot of things, a lot of technology put in there.

And that's the thing. I mean, yeah, you want simple, you know, go get yourself a 44-40 or a 48-40 or whatever. Or 1980-Bach Chevy, you know. Yeah, I have kind of gone. Torque simplified. He's a simple man now. I bit the bullet.

I was trying to decide. So the Jeep's not a very good farm truck. You know, it, I don't know, that might have been a moment of weakness. I always wanted it. His life crisis. But, you know, it served the purpose. But so I've been debating about, you know, getting a truck, getting a truck, and looking around, and I wouldn't buy a new one. And you look at used ones, especially a diesel's.

And it's like, you have no idea what you're getting. How many problems I'm going to have with it? and my neighbor out of the blue, he buys this square box Chevy like three years ago, and then he decides he wants another one, so his wife tells him he's got to sell it. So he throws it up on marketplace, and I'm like, where the hell did this come from? So anyway, I got a fire engine red tuner duly, and I mean, it's about as plain Jane as it comes. But you know what? It's kind of like it, I just kind of smile when I drive it because there's really not much that can go wrong. If it starts

and if it stops, other than that, there's not much that can go wrong with it. I mean, it doesn't have seat heaters, though, and you bounce you only spend half the time in the seat because you bounce quite a bit. But hey, it's pretty nice. No air conditioning, though, right? Well, there's air conditioning.

You have them little windows. Oh, there you turn them, you know, and the air funnels it in there. Yeah. So my farm truck is a 98, three-quarter-ton Chevy, and it's incredible when I parked that next to my dad's 22, three-quarter-ton Chevy,

because it makes it look like a Colorado, you know, it's so small, but, you know, it's got the leaf springs for it or whatever. So, but yeah, it's got a 192,000 miles, and my AC is like yours. It's windows rolled down. In fact, my one window rolls down only half the time.

So sometimes I almost have no AC at all. Yeah. Yeah. But the AC blows cold on. a day like today. Uh-huh. I sure does. What do you like more on your operation?

You guys, I think what makes your guys' channel so awesome and your farm so awesome is you guys got a lot of shit going on all the time. Hey, we didn't even talk about hey. So is hay just kind of a necessary evil? Like, do you sell a lot of that or do you, it all goes into the herd? Yeah, we very rarely sell. You know, a lot of the old boys say there's a drought coming, so you never sell. And in fact, in 2019, I don't know if it was like this for you,

but we had crazy amount of moisture. There was like two or three years there where we were just driving around wet spots and it was just horrible, but we had tons of hay. And so getting into the 2020, we were like, we need to sell some of this hay. Like some of it's just going to go bad sitting here. And so Dad sold some hay.

And guess what happened? Drought. Drought started. And then a year and a half later, we're buying hay. So that kind of puts in perspective, like, yeah, maybe let's not sell some hay. Because the thing, when you're selling hay, everybody's selling hay probably. Right.

And you're giving it away for like 60, 70 bucks a ton. And then when you're buying it back, everybody's buying hay. So you're buying it for 200, 220 bucks a ton. How is hay crop up there this year? It was good. Do you have good moisture this year? Yeah, yeah. So this spring, it just kept raining.

That's how it was here too. You know, an inch, two inches here and there. And so it was actually the toughest we've had putting our crop in. because we'd have to sit and wait for quite a while. It took us six weeks to get it in, and I think the previous years it took us less than three, you know, because we could plug away. But we knew we were going to have hay crop and good pasture,

and so this year was the least stressed I've been in a while. It's just I felt like we were going to be okay. Yeah. But, you know, I like putting up hay, and those videos do the best. I think a lot of people watch them. They are satisfying. When you're filling that bunker up,

and you, dude, literally, like I watched one one time, you throw that drone up, And it's up for, you'll have that thing going for like five minutes, but it's so satisfying to just watch you guys do it. Yeah. It's awesome. It did not take long this year for the hay market to go to hell in a handbasket. Like I was just, because we bailed a little bit of hay this year for the hay burners.

And so the wheels, Cat and Sawyer's wheels were turning about, because we've got a three-corner pasture down here that isn't big enough to do anything. and we've got this out here. And we used to bail hay a lot, and we just don't have any use for it anymore. Your favorite time as a kid? Well, I hate bailing hay. Yeah, and I don't need to tell that story again anyway.

So they were like, you know, what's, hey, you know, what small squares going for this? And at the beginning of the year, you know, it could be pretty crappy. And I don't know, you get five, six bucks of bail easy. And so they were talking about it. I got on the clone of sale barns website. It's like, oh, small squares, $2 a bail. So, I mean, it was a matter.

By about the third cutting this summer, everybody knew there was going to be plenty of hay. And so they were exactly, you know, guys are like, oh, we got more hay than what we need, but it's not worth anything. Yeah. And so I had one neighbor that you could just tell because, like, last year was really dry, and they got three cuttings. and they weren't very tall. And I mean, sheets he got, I don't know, I know he got five.

I don't know if he got more than that or not. How many did you guys have this year? Usually just three. Okay. You know, four, you're getting too close to wintertime. If you cut it and then a frost comes, you're going to probably have some winter kill and ruin your stand. And you want, usually,

alfalfa was kind of expensive to put in, so you usually want to stick around pretty good for a while. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, it's, It's, even when you get a lot of rain, sometimes it's pretty hard to get that fourth cut for us. So what do you like? What do you like? I was asking you a question, I veered off.

But what do you like more? Do you like the grain farming? Do you like the cattle side? Do you like it all? Like what, if you had to pick one? My perfect day is about two hours of each. Okay. You know, do a little fix in here, sit in a tractor for a little while, cool off, and then and work some cattle.

I just, I really love doing a little bit of everything each day. You know, he's like me. Yeah, your squirrel brain here. Start a project. Come back to it a couple weeks later. Yeah. You know, what were we doing? A lot of people love harvest, but, you know, if I'm sitting in that green card all day,

I didn't have a particularly great day. Yeah. So in that case, I'd love to run combine for an hour or two, truck for a while, run grain cart. I got to keep some sort of variety. I agree with you. Harvest is, I think people love, there's some people out there just love. it for me i i love i love it but when you just sit in a grain car or just sit in the same spot all the time it does get it just wears on you a little bit it's like yeah you know but same old

shit down on time that's what you got to do is right park your butt right yeah yeah yeah that's what takes what about how much fence how much fence building does it take to or just fence fixing how's that How's that every year for you? Well, so dad and I have been just putting in tons the last few years. We actually, I don't think we put in a post this year, but the last couple years, there was a year we put in about three miles and the year before about two miles. And so we've been upgrading a lot of our fences.

And at the very least, if we're not starting from scratch, we're putting in some wood posts to keep them from pushing it down and putting in some new posts and new corners and stuff. So it kind of depends. You know, I think before I came back to the farm, Dad was so busy just doing the things that need done, absolutely need done, that some things just weren't able to have his attention, you know.

So when I finally came back, you know, a lot more help, we could tackle some things like fence. We even got to the point where we're fenced around cornfields now, which, you know, usually don't have too much pressure, usually one every other year because, you know, we don't usually graze soybean stubble. But we just have more time to get at stuff like that. So, you know, it kind of depends.

My point of view, like when I'm just going through a normal year, if we have a situation where a bunch of cows get out, that sticks in my mind. And I'm like, what fence was that caused by? What stretch? And so just one single event. And I'll be like, yeah, it's probably time to take that one out. Because, you know, you could, like in the springtime, when you're getting fences ready for pasture turnout,

if you're spending an entire day just going around one pasture, you just think, man, if I just start from scratch, get a new fence in here. And now every year for at least 10 years, it's like maybe tighten up one wire here. It saves a lot of time. It just makes life so much easier. You're not worrying about cows getting in your neighbor's corn, which can be very expensive. So I just, I think it's worth it having good fence. You know, a lot less stress. What's your dad think?

What's Brian think of that? Is he about the new fence or is he like, hey, we're going to fix every little thing we can fix. We're going to run this until it can't be random. Yeah, you know, he'll home and hole a little bit, but he's right there with me. Yeah. You know, he understands just like I do that some of this stuff needs done. And so, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, honestly, like, there was this two years ago we did all the way around a quarter.

And so it's four, half mile long stretches of fence. So it's two miles. And I'd be lying if I said he didn't push us into that one. You know, I wasn't saying, please, Dad, let's go out there and fence two miles. No, he, so. He was like, let's do it. Yeah, he's like, let's do it. So you got her done.

So you guys, do you have any funny cattle stories as far? as cows getting out at all. You got anything that you can remember? I mean, you're kind of probably like us of the fact that any opportunity of shit going south, where's the camera? Yeah. Makes for good content.

Makes for good content. Sucks, but it almost helps a little bit. You know, honestly, when people started adopting continuous fence, I don't know if you know what that is, it's, uh, you can get it in six or five or four bar. It's basically a welded panel. Oh, yeah. I got it.

Not stockade panel, but round bar. when people started using that, a lot less cattle were getting out. You know, when I was growing up, our feed bunks were made out of wood. Yes. And they were getting rotten. And, you know, there'd be a time where a bowl bumps it, and next thing you know, the entire feedlots out. And so just the upgrading we've done over the last decade,

just putting in good fence, a lot less stories like that. Yeah. If you watch my channel, you know, we use something called Dakota Gold Propelots a lot. it's a protein pellet, and our cows are just addicted to it. And so that's changed a lot of things. For instance, one time we had cows get out, they got through a gate, and they were getting into the neighbor's corn right across the road. They had no fence there.

And one of our neighbors called, and so I headed down there with our UTV and a bucket of pellets. And I kid you not, I gave it a shake, and everybody came out of the corn. They left the corn for these pellets. For the pellets. Holy cow. That's the best story I got. drove right back into the gate.

They all came in, followed me, counted them. Yep, everybody's here. They just love those pellets. Did you, were able to shoot that? Were you able to, oh, that would have been, yeah, that would have been perfect. So I'm getting to the point where if I'm not actively videoing in a day, I still try to bring the camera, just in case something happens. It's hard, though, sometimes.

I don't think people realize, you know, doing farm YouTube or doing YouTube at all. It can be a grind sometimes. Sometimes you just want to, like for harvest, for instance, you can get in the, routine of just every day. Doof, doosh, do shooting. And it's just like, sometimes you just want to enjoy it. Probably about 20 straight days of harvest, and I made probably six or seven videos, you know, just like that,

like I'm not going to sit here every day and just take video the same old, same old. I don't think my viewers would like it too much. And I'm so dang busy. I can't edit these videos if I shot every day anyway. So, yeah. Yeah. There's many days where I'm just like, I just want to farm. Yeah.

And really that's why YouTube is so important for me. It honestly allows me to farm. You know, I picked up a few hundred acres of rental ground this year. If I didn't have YouTube, I would not have been able to take an opportunity of that. It would have taken too much capital. It would have been too much of a loan at a bank. And so, yeah, this social media stuff is pretty important to guys like you and me young just coming out of school. and there's not always opportunities in farming.

It's another example of finding an edge, finding a niche. We talk about this all the time because what is there today that's going to start the next generation farming? Because for us around here, the hog buildings, the contract finishing, that was the ticket. their 90s into the 2000s. That deal doesn't work anymore. Land sure as hell doesn't work.

I mean, it's like if you're a young person, even if you have a, even if you've got a family that is farming to add another person that operation, you got to get pretty dang creative. And obviously, you know, and YouTube's gotten harder, I'd hate to be starting what we're doing now. We've been saying that for years. Yeah.

I mean, it's so you, but, you know, it's like anything, it's people ask us, you know, what's your advice? Well, the advice is just don't stop. You just got to keep going because you got to build that, you kind of got to build that trust with people and you got to introduce yourself to people. And if you have, you know, everybody has an interesting story, really. It's just how you tell it and being consistent. But, yeah, I mean, it's for you and for you, too.

It's an opportunity that, you know, my generation didn't have, but I don't know what the opportunity is going to be for another generation, but it's not getting any easier. Yeah. It's kind of scary. I mean, that's why we're in the spot we are with farmers aging out, and we're just not sure who's going to fill all. all these shoes.

Yeah. What is, since we're on that, what is, how do you feel about just the future of ag? What excites you, what makes you feel optimistic and what worries you if you had to think? The worry part's easier.

Yeah. What worries me the most is new legislature that might come through. I mean, look at Europe and just, you know, the, well, what's going on in England right now.

The new tax. Inherence tax. Inheritants tax, the stuff where they're regulating how much fertilizers they can use. It's just everything they do. It's like they've got to ask for permission now, you know. Or like up in Canada, if you're hauling manure down the road, if you get a little on the road, you're going to have cops at your door because you've got some manure on the road and you're disturbing the peace or whatever.

It's like it's so hard to farm in some of these countries. And why would we think here in America it's not going to get that? way. I'm sure there's people pushing for some of that stupid legislature that isn't going to help anybody. So I think that's what worries me the most because things could change in a hurry. I mean, just look at who's RFK Jr. Yeah. And he's, you know, I think he's in it for the good of America. Right. But some of the stuff he's saying is a little scary. Yep. We agree. I think the way he goes about it too. Just one thing that upsets me, like when he's talking about glyphosate,

and I'm not paid by Monsanto or anything, but when he goes in there and says the landscape is saturated by glyphosate, it's like, why are you using that term to scare people? Like go look up how much glyphosate is actually used. And I'm not a scientist. Maybe glyphosate is the worst thing that Americans ever did with their food. but when you use vocabulary like that, it's like, I see where your head's at.

You're trying to scare people. Demonize what farmers do. I mean, he's the same way. He talked about, we did a whole episode when he talked about Wendell Murphy and North Carolina. He was a hog feeder down there, expanded. Well, he basically started the contract. I mean, he invented contract finishing for hogs.

I mean, they pretty much were the start of it. And he villainized the whole, how that all happened. And it was all about money and greed and power and, you know, terrible, terrible, terrible. And that's really not how it all played out, you know. And it's just, yeah, he definitely concerns me. I think you're right. I think his heart is he wants to do right by the American people. And I do think there are things that we can improve on as a food industry,

meat industry, right? Because, yeah, do we need red dye 40 and every little thing? Probably not. But you demonize farmers, that's where it pisses farmers off like us. Because most of the time, they like to paint things with a broad brush. We just did an episode about just regenerative ag.

Everybody asks us about regenerative ag on here. And it's like, you can't tell me to raise hogs here Iowa in this climate, when you live in Georgia with plenty of forestry, it's 70 degrees at its lowest, works for you really well. But then you say I'm a bad farmer because I farm a different way. And I feel like the RFK juniors of the world and those kinds of spokespeople like to just paint things with a broad brush and say, everybody should do it this way. And if you don't do it this way, you're not a good farmer. And you're just in it for the money and greed.

And that, that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That rubs a lot of farmers. It does. It pisses me off. It does. It pisses me off. I don't like that. We get some great comments, man. Holy cow. But, okay, what excites you?

I guess what excites you? What do you feel optimistic when it comes to ag? Well, it's, uh, Honestly, that's a pretty tough question. You know, there's so many things against egg right now, whether it's Brazil absolutely taking over our export markets. You know, they're all of a sudden raising more soybeans than us, and they're going to China and where do our beans go?

Used to go to China. You talk about just the war we're at with people that have no idea. of what egg is like. People trying to shut us down. And it's so easy to find a bad story in agriculture because, I mean, if one out of 100 farmers is a bad actor, well, that means there's thousands of bad actors out there and it's easy to find them. And, you know, I always think back to the, I think it's Fair Oaks Farm story where some

reporter went in and got video of one or two employees that were treating some animals really bad. Well, it turned out they had been reprimanded and then immediately fired. And most of the employees there did a great job, but now this one story got out in the masses. And so everyone thinks we're out there just walking around, see a cow, punch it in the face just because we can. It's like, that is farthest from the truth, you know. I get the question, what's the number one thing you want people outside of agriculture to know? And it's just I care so deeply for my animals. And by and large, most farmers do.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a grown man, but I can say I've cried over a cow dying or a calf dying. You know, we lose sleep over it. And it's just incredible that someone will come in and say we don't care. Yeah. Or we're in it all for the money. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I mean, it's our way of life. and it's what we want to do. So yeah, we got to make money to keep doing it. We got to make money to raise our kids. We got to support our families. Like, obviously, we got to make money. But we care so deeply about our animals. And the other thing is, I try to point out that, you know,

if you're selling some cattle, are you going to make more money off one that's got a bruised eye, hasn't been fed well? Or are you going to make money off of the calm girl that walks in there? She got some flesh on her. bone, she looks healthy. We have a moral and fiscal responsibility to take care of our animals the best we can. So anyone's saying that farmers don't take care of them and don't care about their well-being,

and it's just, it don't make sense. It's not true. Yeah, it's, you know, in our business, the number one, the number one biggest expense to of raising a pig is the cost of feed to get it to market. and the best way to be the most efficient with that feed is for that pig to not have any stress, to not be too cold, to not be too hot, to not go without water, to not be wet all the time, to not be, you know, all the things. So everything that we do is incentivized to do the best by the animal,

for it to grow the most efficient way it can. And I don't know why people have a hard time with that. And you don't pick up a pig by its front leg. You know? Yeah. Our number one hateful comment on weiner pigs is we put, you know, when we sort pigs, we go through the pen. If there's a fallback pig, we grab it.

We grab them by the back leg. And people are like, people just don't understand that. And, you know, they think that you're just torturing these pigs. And I don't know how many times I have to explain to people. It's like, well, the front leg of a pig is not attached to their body. There's no socket there. It's just muscle. If you pick them up by the front leg, you'll dislocate their shoulder, basically.

That's why you grab them by the back leg. And pigs don't like to be squeezed. That's why you don't pick them up by the middle. You get them by the back leg. But you just tell that story over and over and over because people, and I don't blame them. If you didn't know any better, you grab a pig, the pig is going to squeal. Yep. It's kind of like if you grab me, I usually squeal.

Yep. That's right. Yep, and that's one nice thing about having a following that watches a lot of videos and they care about your farm. Yeah. Because we'll get questions similar to that scope. And then now we have people that have watched so many videos, they know the answer, and they can answer it for us.

That's the best. Yeah, because that's what we're doing it for. That's the telltale sign that we're having an impact in some sort of way. We're educating people to where they can answer it exactly how I would have answered it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think... That is a good feeling.

I think what you said about there's bad actors, you know, that they like, we don't have enough good actors showing, not actors, I shouldn't say actors, I should say good farmers showing what we're doing. You know, there is an incentive for organizations to find bad farmers, bad eggs, and highlight what they do. We don't have near enough of guys like you and I, us here, that are showing the good, showing what majority 95% of farmers do and how we think and how we care. And that's why it's so important that we got to keep doing that, you know?

It is. But I think that is changing some because part of the reason for that is because my generation and older than me, those guys all have the mentality that you don't, you just put your head down and work. you do a good job, you put in the hours, you put in the work, the rest of it will take care of yourself. We're not going to brag about it. We're not going to say, hey, look at me. That, I mean, that is an entire generation of farmers. And, and I mean, you can't all of that.

I identify with it. But you guys, you know, I'm probably a little bit of an outlier for my age, but I don't have any choice because you just drag me along. but you know you guys and younger generations they realize the power and they're more excited they're more excited to use social media to show what they do and so i think i think we're in a better spot i think more people are are showing what they do and i think i think it's a lot like uh i think it's a lot like the media in general. So we're coming out of a time where all of the modes that people got their information were very narrow, like very narrow. You had networks, and that's where all the news came from.

And like this election cycle, there's a whole bunch of people that woke up and said, what are all these podcasts? Where did this come from? And the spread of the spread of that. People get their information from so many more ways, so many more sources today than what they ever used to. So that bad information, nobody has a stranglehold on the truth anymore. And I think that plays, there's negatives to that, obviously, but it also, there's a lot of positives. I think people crave media from real people doing real shit more than ever before, rather than some talking head on a news network. With their makeup and, yeah, which I was wondering if there's going to be a makeup artist today.

We don't have quite have the budget for that yet. Next time you come, maybe we'll have that in the budget. We also don't have a shitter up here yet either. We're working on that. That's the next step. But we do got a bar. We got the most important thing. Start with the important stuff and we're working backwards.

Although, you know, in hindsight, bar with cameras. Probably would have been, because one without the other is problematic, especially when you have to go up and down a spiral staircase. because the more you enjoy one, the more dangerous getting to the outdoor facility is, and our insurance is not good. So I don't know. We'll have to see. Going back to kind of just your operation, I've seen that you're starting to build a bin,

another bin, or you guys expanding storage on your farm? Yeah, so with being able to rent some, a few hundred acres this last year, I knew I was going to have a lot of corn that. I would have had nowhere to go with. So I built a bin and borrowed one of my dad's old silos and then still trucked about a third of what we grew, what I grew to the ethanol plant in season. So, yeah, it's, and next year my acres are kind of funky, so I'm going to have even more

corn. So it's almost like, I already need to build another bin. Yep. But I, that's $100,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The days of a dollar a bushel for a bin or long gone times three.

What is it? Is it three? Can you get it made for $3? It's about three. Yeah. Yeah, pretty close to three. Hindsight, I should have built more bins back when I first started. It would have been. Yeah, you should have. But I didn't have any more money then they do now. That's the story with everything. Land and, but do you feel like now, you know, going forward, are we going to think that same thing about lands? Like, oh, I should have been buying then, or do you think we're kind of plateauing out here? Boy.

We, so we talk about, we talk about this a lot. Well, everybody's talking about it. I mean, it's hot topic. So the conventional wisdom is, the only time you should buy land is when it's for sale, regardless of price, because they're not making any more of it. It's always going to be, and it's our business, to where if you don't have it, you're not in the business.

So that's the, but, When you look at what you can, when you look at what, within your operation, what is the most profitable things that you could do. For us, when we look at all the things that we do, the least profitable enterprise we have is grain farming. I mean, raising hogs, everybody can say, you know, the contracts haven't gone up and the expenses are this. well that's true but for what we invested in what we get it's a pretty good return um the meat business is a pretty good return the social media is a pretty good return what i'm making farming i feel like i really feel like it's almost worse than the hog business in the fact that my my cost per acre both to acquire land but then also to put in and take out a car

crop, just keep going up, and what I can hope to get for a return on that, I don't care how good of a creative marketer you are. You're kind of capped. I mean, yeah, we all think, I don't know if $7 corn is coming back or not, but if it does, it turns around and bites you in the other foot, if you're feeding it to cattle or we're feeding it to pigs or whatever. So if I had the choice of what, if I had the money to invest in something, I don't necessarily know if I would buy that. I would have to think long and hard whether I invested in some other part of my operation or whether I actually bought that land. Now, rent, it's a different deal.

If it's in the right spot and it fits what you need, maybe that's a deal. But like around here, there's too many guys around here that are paying for, $50 an acre over what they should be paying already because they want to farm the world. And I don't know. That runs in cycles, you know. You get these guys and they're going to be the biggest farmer in the world and they're out and they're rent and ground up and they're paying over everybody else. And then, oh, lo and behold, something happens and they're not farming anymore, you know.

So, I don't know. Do you think it's, but do you think it keeps going up, though? No, I think land is plateaued. out because here's why with you look at what you look at what the financial markets are doing and the the thought process the prospects of what people think Trump are going to do for business the sediment is that there's going to be less regulation there's going to be more investment in infrastructure and in business less taxes less taxes So the flight to safety, I feel like, unless our good friend Joe Biden drags us into World War III before he gets out of office, dumbass.

But barring that, I feel like the flight to safety has leveled off. And land is like the gold standard of safety. You know, if you really feel like the stock market is top heavy, if you really feel like gold can't run anymore, if you really feel like gold can't run anymore, if you really feel like, You know, you can't live off the interest of bonds by you're buying land. And land has ran up. But if you're more optimistic, I feel like land is topped out. And now how long it takes it to soften? I don't know.

Maybe it doesn't soften. But I think the run up is done. This is not paid financial advice. I am not a, you know, financial advisor, even though I play one in my own head. Yeah, I don't know where it goes. I hope it doesn't keep going up because it's already too damn expensive. But I do think you got a point. I mean, I think there was a time in there where everything was so uncertain.

You had a lot of outside guys buying land just for the investment and rent it out. You know, you heard a lot of outside investors coming to buy land and just hold on to it because they knew that they were going to park their money somewhere, get a better return than what the market was doing. or what a real estate property was going to do or something like that. But I don't know. I mean, urban sprawl isn't stopping any time soon either. I mean, we were coming from the airport,

and I was showing coal just how much everything was developing up north of us and keeps moving its way south. And, I mean, that doesn't help land. I mean, that increases land prices dramatically if you're close to one of those areas. So that plays a big factor into it as well. But I wish I had a magic eight ball that could tell me the answer, but I don't. I will say, I will say this. I thought about this yesterday. One thing that you guys will, you will get to this point at some point, because when you're in it

and you're building and you're trying to start a family, and then when you're raising a family and the mailbox is full of bills, or your email is full of invoices, you know, it just seems like you just are getting hammered in the head all the time. But every once in a while, you will over your lifetime look around, and you'll remember, and you will say, yeah, this is a lot easier than when I started. You know, because I say that. I was in the shop.

I was in the shop working on that heater. And, you know, I look at it, and I'm like, well, I'm not doing this in a dirt floor. this is easier and you know i actually have i actually have nice tools and you know it's the little things that as in farming it's just you just are building like you're just building and you just hope that you just hope that you build you build enough pay enough stuff off that you get a little bit of breathing room but it takes time and you know you two are smart enough that you'll get there to where you'll look around someday and you'll be like

well, this isn't too bad. It's better than when I started. But anyway, one thing for me on the land side is, you know, I like to think I'm smart, but as far as cash and what I should do with it and what investments should I kind of dive into, land is so easy, in my opinion. If you're already farming and you know you can farm it, you got the machinery already or have access to it anyway, it's just like, well, I know, usually it doesn't depreciate.

So, and then I get to farm it. So that's kind of my philosophy on that. Well, if you can make it work, it absolutely, if you can, that's the saying. I mean, if you can buy it, you should buy it. If it pencils, you should buy it. Well, if you've got the, if you have profit, if you have the money, if you have the cash, it is a great investment. See, and that's one thing when my dad,

dad was just starting out. He made it sound like you could, the payments on a land purchase were pretty dang close to what you'd be paying and rent. So you might as well be building the equity. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly right. I don't think it's like that.

It's not the case anymore. Yeah. Well, it's like who, we just, we were talking to a guy, you talked to somebody. The number of farmers out there today, the number of farmers out there today that all they do is farm, that number is dropping like a rock. I mean, so many people have a side hustle. There are so many guys out there that they own a construction business,

they own a tile-in business, they own dirt-moving business, they're selling meat, they're doing something. And the land is what they want. The farming is what they want, but it's not the actual farm that's paying for that growth. They're bringing capital in from outside to grow that farm. Speaking of that, storeless station, how'd that get going? What's the story on that whole deal?

And what do you guys do there? Yeah, so there's a farm store about three miles away from where our main farm is. And it used to be a bigger egg retail company. and they were kind of selling some of those smaller locations that did things like tire repair. And it was mostly for liability reasons. You know, employees can get injured. And also those smaller locations didn't always make the most money.

And so they thought it was in their best interest to sell that location. And that's just fine. But for us, it was like, well, now we're going to, where are we going to go when we have a tire issue or need a hydraulic hose fixed, need some fencing supplies? and so, or a crappy gas station sandwich when we're too busy to cook for ourselves or whatever. So, you know, dad and a couple farmers started talking about, like, what would it look like if we were to go in on this and buy the location?

And so they talked to previous manager and looked at some of the books and talked about how much they thought they sold them feed and stuff every year. You know, we knew it was going to be kind of a tough go. But the pros would far outweigh the risk. The price on the building wasn't that bad. Great location. You know, like I said, nowhere else around. So we kind of got that market you would assume anyway.

And so there were nine farmers that went in on the store. We call it storeless station. A lot of people, I don't know if I have a Lisp, But a lot of people think I say storeless station, which I don't think that makes any sense, but it's in the town of Storla, South Dakota. So that's why it's Storla Station. Yeah. But so, yeah, nine of us farmers went in on it.

Basically bought the building, put enough money in to start building some inventory. And kind of expanded a little bit. We got way more into fencing, have tons of fencing supplies around. We now have well-d-on gates. We got feed bunks. We got drive-through gates. And then the biggest thing, in my opinion, and personally, because it's benefited us a lot, is adding vet supplies.

You know, you're working cattle. You run short of poor or whatever. We would have had to drive 25 minutes to go get it one way. And now it's three miles down the road. So that benefits us a lot. But also, dad thinks his whole point was when I go to a vet store, I'm spending $1,000. Yeah.

Like there's vaccines, you know, five, ten bucks ahead on some of that stuff, like it's a lot of revenue. And so it just made sense. I mean, Dad just thinks about how much he spends himself and we're hopefully going to have more customers than just Dad. Right.

So that's been really great. Just having a lot more things that we need in everyday life on the farm three miles away. Do they have pie? Do we have pie? Yeah, pie there. We pizza, Tombstone. We do have ice cream.

Oh, that's a plus. So, you know, like a Twix ice cream or whatever. There you go. It might be worth a trip for me then. Tell them about that story of that farmer of that kid that we know that his dad goes to the mall and gets a tombstone. It seems that farmers do like a good tombstone pizza. Oh, gosh. So, well, it's cheap.

Yeah. That's right. A kid that, well, I actually, I actually, he used to work for me when I was in. previous life, but he farms down south of us, and everybody knows the sprawl of Dollar General. You know, Dollar General is popping up in every little town everywhere. Well, the little town they live in, got a Dollar General. And, like, it's the newest thing that's been built there in, like, 30 years probably. Yep.

And all the locals call it the mall. You know, it's the mall. Oh, gosh. But this guy, his dad, cattle guy, probably not. doesn't necessarily take the best care of himself, you know, and he's always ready for winter. He's carrying a few extra pounds. His wife bugging him, go to the doctor, go to the doctor. So he finally goes, and, you know, it's, you need to cut back on sweets. Your blood pressure's too high. You're not getting enough exercise, all that. So the wife and this kid's mom,

she's very focused on this. And so go through the fridge, go through the coverts, all the sugar cereal's gone. All the treats are gone out of the freezer, all that stuff, and eating healthy. And so he was telling me that his dad's, his dad's evening routine is that he'd come in for supper and then get done with supper and then go have projects at the shop and go to the shop and then go out the back door of the shop and take the side by side to the mall and get a tombstone pizza and bring it out, bring it back, and then have second supper in the shop. So you made a good decision. You know what?

There's probably more guys like that than you know. Yeah. So your hottest, your hottest item's going to be a tombstone. Yeah. Going to the ball. Yeah, that's awesome.

Well, so has it been a good deal then? Like, are you guys happy that you went out and did that? I mean, it sounds just the idea of it's pretty freaking awesome. We have one goal. And that was to keep it open.

Yes. And we didn't care if we were making a bunch of money or just enough to keep the doors open. We wanted to keep the doors open. For the convenience of your own use. And I got the comment the other day, you know, when I'm videoing some days, I'll need to go grab a gate

over at store of the station or whatever. And I got the comment, well, it's easy to go buy a gate when you own the store and get it for a better price. And piss you off. That's the furthest from the truth because we get bad deals

because we own the store. When a bag of mineral gets stabbed, we buy the stabbed bag that a third of it went out and we pay a full price, you know. none of the nine owners have ever received a dollar from that place in any sort of profit. So we just want it open. People are just cynical. That's all there is too.

One thing social media will teach you is people are just dicks sometimes. They just are. Well, I think what I've learned in the time that we've done this is really, people are simple. people are simple and just about half the world sees things one way and half sees it another. I mean, it's as simple as that because some of the comments that we get like a comment like that, there are just people that how they perceive anything is just totally opposite from how I see it. And sometimes all you can do is laugh. I mean, that's the thing about that comment is that's not even reality.

They think the business owner is fucking everybody over, but in reality, you're really fucking yourself over because you're like, Offer's, yeah, right? You're trying to do something right to keep it open. That's your intention. But they look at the business owner like, they're the evil, they're the evil greedy guy, right? That sucks.

I thought you were going to say you learned, we've learned a few things like you sound like Tony Stewart and Sawyer has autism. Yeah. Because I have, I guess I get, I stutter too much. So people, somebody straight up asked me like, Cesar have autism or is he got Down syndrome or something? Because he just stumbles way too much. And I'm like, thanks, man.

I've never once thought that for a second. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I have always kind of hoped that somebody would ask me if I had Tourette's. So I got something kind of funny on that end. So I have a retainer in right here. Yep. I was essentially bullied into getting Invisaline through YouTube.

And you know what needed done. If you've watched my older video, I had a pretty big gap teeth in the front here. Yep. And just, you know, I should have got done anyway. But, yeah, going through the first year or so of putting videos out there, you know, you can type in keywords that get blocked so when someone comments it, it doesn't go through.

One of my keywords was Gap and the other one toothed, you know, like I was sick of reading about my Gap teeth. Yeah. And so I was like, yeah, Mom, I think I need to get Invisal. Yeah. So, yeah, I got Invisaline basically because I was bullied. Yep. Hey, but now I look a little better. Yeah, there you go.

Somebody just commented yesterday. I don't know who that guy was, his comment was the podcast equipment is obviously way too cheap. Oh, that's become more expensive. That's the most common freaking. see that comment everywhere. Podcast equipment needs to be more expensive. Yeah, or you need a, you need written. Yeah, I need a license or something.

Yeah. So do you feel like you get a lot of people outside of farmer? Do you feel like you get a lot of people travel to store the station to just check it out? That's incredible. I bet that's cool. You know, we're about 14 miles off the interstate there. And a lot of people drive through I-90 on their way out to the Black Hills and Deadwood and all that.

And so a lot of people going on vacation. So especially August, the month of August, I mean, we'll have five vehicles in one day stop there. You know, we tell people we're usually busy. We're probably not at the farm. We probably don't have time for you. You're more than welcome to go to Storlist Station. We actually have a map where you can put pins on where you're from,

and that thing is just littered with pins. It's incredible, yeah. A lot of people go there just to say they've been there, check it out. store, buy some gas or whatever. It's pretty awesome. That's pretty sweet. If I'm ever coming, I'm calling you first because I do not want to go 14 miles off the interstate and have them be out of ice cream bars. And Tombstone pizzas.

Tombstone pizzas. We got one of those things that's... Rotissory. Yeah. Yeah. I'll call first to make sure that you'll heat her up before I... Casey's is in trouble. They got the rotating pizza circle thing. There's a solar station out there with a rotating pizza warmer. Yep. They better, better count their days. What do you think, what do you want sunny, sunny farms to look like in the next five years? If you had to look out in your crystal ball and projects and dreams and aspirations, what do you, what do you see for yourself? What do you see for the farm? Or what do you want to

try to achieve? You know, part of it is just go with the flow and take advantage of any opportunity that comes my way. You know, I do want to buy some more land. Now, I don't want locals around my area thinking he's going to try to buy everything up and it's like, well, obviously, I don't, I don't have the ability to do that. So don't be worried about me, but I, my plan is to buy some more lands. You know, when you look at just the, I guess the successful farmers as a scope, what they have most in common is they probably bought some land. They've got a base. And it's probably most of it's paid off, you know. And so I think if I have the cash and I don't have to get too deep in debt and it looks like an okay deal close by that helps a lot just i think with overall morale

a field a couple miles away versus 20 miles away like you're going to get stuff done i think it's way more profitable um just take advantage of that and buy some more land um i i have no goal to get two three four employees or anything like that and start pushing out into other areas Like, that doesn't sound like fun. I don't want to be a manager. I want to be a farmer. Of course, don't say, oh, he's not going to look at numbers. I'm going to do my due diligence, but I don't want to be massive.

But, you know, you kind of, you need to build a base. Yep, yep. Yep. Now, on the fun side, I'd, in the next five years, I want to spray foam our big machine shed. It's about a 60 by 120. Turn that into a big shop. Just battery issues.

and cold starts and just I don't like it. Yeah, you're definitely in an area that having some place that you can keep stuff. And your son's going to have to have somewhere to throw these parties. So, you know, got to have one of those shops somewhere. Somebody's got to have the insulated, heated shop. So better start. You've got to lay the ground work now. Yep, I got a few years to build that nice, warm shop.

It will come. It will come. So, yeah, you're going to be a dad. here coming up real quick. Yep. So Tiffany's do win? About New Year's. Okay.

She's getting real uncomfortable now. Yep. Yep. She's kind of rolling out of places. She can't just stand up. So she's got ways to go yet. You know, it's on one side, we're like, you know, looking at it from the point of view of you're uncomfortable now,

you're going to be uncomfortable because you've got this much time left. But then it's also like, man, six weeks. Like, we're going to have to take care of another human. being in six weeks. It's a different perspective. You're excited, but are you also scared a little bit? Like, are you, how do you feel about it overall? We're mostly excited.

I'm not too scared because I have her. Yeah, yeah. And I know she's going to be home for the first 12 weeks. So that helps a lot. Yeah, I think she'll be a good mother. And, you know, I got two older brothers. One of them has three babies. One of them has two.

And so I can bounce questions and ideas off of them. And so, and my mom and dad live three miles away. Got a sitter if you need it. Yeah, she said she's not going to become a slave to the child, but she will watch him every once in a while. She doesn't want to retire and then give up her freedom, you know? Yeah. Because that's one thing my parents haven't had much of is a freedom.

You know, they've both been working. I mean, just like you guys have day in, day out, trying to build something, starting from scratch. You know, I think that's one of the things that that is the biggest, that's one of the biggest differences, I think, with building a business that lasts or being successful is, your generation has kind of made it sexy, you know, entrepreneurship and, you know, starting these businesses and all that.

But I think what a lot of people don't understand is, it takes a level of dedication. There's just a lot of people. There's a lot of people out there that should just work for somebody else and punch out and go home because they don't realize. They don't realize what that's when you make that commitment. Years. You don't ever punch out. Sacrifice.

You can either make $20 an hour, working eight hour days, or you can work $10 an hour, working 16 hour days. But you don't have to answer to anybody. Right. And it's all what that's worth to you. But it is true. It is true. Like, I mean, and I've done both. I have done both.

But, you know, when he messaged, former co-worker of mine drove by yesterday and saw my curtain that tore to living shit out of it from a South wind. And it was supposed to be getting fixed anyway, and they're here today fixing it. But anyway, he drove by and messaged me and said, you know, holy cow, did you see your curtain was ripped? and I said, yeah, like, you know, why didn't you stop and help me fix it?

And he told me he had to get to the office because he had a meeting. And I told him, I said, yeah, I would stitch that back together myself before I would go to another office meeting. And he gave me a very lively response because he's about to the point where I don't think he has a whole lot of office meetings left in him before he just goes out on his own. But, yeah, I mean, you just have to decide. It's

There's trade-offs with either one of them. That's right. That's the thing. People glamorize one side, they glamorize the other, but the truth is there's trade-offs with both sides of it. But you're 100% it's what it's worth to make your own decisions and not be beholden to somebody else. I got a question, speaking to just about future,

just future and ag, what do you think about carbon credits? Do you think, like, is that, something that is on your radar a little bit? I mean, I think every person in ag right now is kind of just trying to figure out what that can look like. Because like you said, kind of just looking around at opportunities and seeing what sticks and everybody's talking about it, but what is it actually going to look like? Well, I think a lot of farmers that are scared of it is because you don't know what they're going to do with that information in the end. You know, they could entice you with you get so many more pennies per bushel or whatever and then next you know five years down the road it's you have to be

meeting these different things otherwise you're getting shut down or whatever so i i understand why anybody would have a reserve about it and i'm not read up on it too much and i think even the people that know quite a bit about it still are pretty confused about it as well but yeah i mean just our local ethanol plant talking about carbon intensity and you can get so much more sense and you know in an hour time fill out some paperwork and talk about some of your farming practices you can probably qualify for a penny or two or three per bushel but you know just like what i said earlier what scares me most about the future of egg is different legislature that we haven't heard of yet you know if they start tying into carbon credits and they

say okay well you're not doing as much as this guy now what's what's the issue here and then they start creating new bills and Yeah, as long as the carrot doesn't turn into a stick. And that's the problem with government is they're usually pretty good with the carrot on the front end. Like Ronnie Reagan said. That's why we got to have guns. Shoot our way out. Yep.

You can vote your way into socialism, but you got to shoot your way out. That's the hard part about it. Well, if all the rest of the country can't do have ag and then we can't have a, have ag. There's going to be a whole lot of, I mean, I shouldn't say have, not have ag, but if it's going to be really hard to be a farmer everywhere, some point that's going to catch up. Some point someone's going to say, I don't like spending 40 bucks for a pound of hamburger that was raised organically and was pet every day and rubbed down with butter. Or it's not even hamburger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I got to drink Fiji water, whatever they make

you do in the end. Or where the fuck's the ground beef? where's my ground beef? Where is it on the shelf? There's no food. Yeah, true. So yeah, I agree. That's a good point. You know, that doesn't get talked about enough, but I think you're right on the money. Given too much information. We know where there's ground beef. Yep, Farmer grade. That's right. Yeah. In your plans there, I was throwing you a softball because I'm trying to see, do you have any plans or growing your own herd so we can run some more cattle through Farmer grade and sell some more sunny farm beef? Well, I got bad news on that front. Actually.

Oh, boy. Don't shoot me here. No, you're all right. No, the one pasture that I rent, the rent has gone up every year the past three years. And so it's finally like we've had enough. So I think we're going to be getting rid of a couple pastures, but we'll still have plenty. I'm going to have to, dad's going to have to let me in on some of his stuff. and, you know, he's thinking about retiring in the next however many years anyway.

So, yeah, it's kind of a bummer. You know, it's the first thing I ever rented first, any sort of farming that I did with my own money and having to get rid of this first pastures kind of. How many cows do you guys run? Yeah. Or do you know? Oh, yeah, I know.

You can give me a range. Yeah, I don't know. Well, so part of that is, like, when I say, say we, it's usually my dad. Right. And so I don't want to speak for him, but I guess I'm very comfortable with talking about how much I farm. Up to this point, I've had 35 cows. Okay.

Yep. And up until this year, when I rented a good chunk of land, I was farming about 200 acres. Yeah. Yeah. Now, at respect for my landlord, I don't want to say how much he owned or so. I just, so do you, so is your desire to, as your dad cuts back, do you want to, do you want to have as many cattle as you're running today, is your goal to raise, have more than what you're running today?

So dad not only runs cows on pastures, he owns, he also rents some more about 20 miles away. And if, if I were the guy in charge, I wouldn't be able to handle it, you know, especially assuming dad's retiring, so he's not going to be. He's not going to work as much. That's kind of the whole point. So in that situation, I plan to always until the day I retire, fill the pastures that he owns, or if I were to buy a pasture, fill that. But I don't plan to rent as many acres as a pasture.

Just out of labor concerns. But the farmland, yeah, I would definitely farm all that. Yeah, still try to buy some more farmland. Cool. Maybe finish out a few more cattle. someday maybe. Hey, we're building one right now. All right.

There you go. That's all I needed. I just need it a little glimpse. It's got to look. We just poured a 110-foot bunk line last Monday. We'll be putting some bunks on it here probably next Monday. So are you looking to use that to finish out your own cattle, or is that more for the bull side of it? So that's kind of for, most importantly, is we like to have her.

in that pen. Okay. It's a good location. And it's just, it's a lot nicer not having to, we have some bottomless munks that you can move around. So when we drive into the pen,

sometimes the cattle run out. Sometimes we put in big ruts when it's muddy. And, you know, like most farm animals, they know how to kill themselves. So if critter lays down in that rut, you know,

can't get back up. It's expensive. So it just makes it a little easier, but also having another feedlot to where we can. can move stuff around or finish some critters and yeah it'll uh i like how you i like how you guys say critters so that's kind of your guys is your guys thing critter the reason i say critters is sometimes i'm a little slow sometimes we're working in a day we're running some bread heifers some yearlings

some bowls some steers and i'll jumble it up and i've i've had it before where i was talking about a cow and i for some reason said my red cow did this I don't own a red cow. Why did I say red? So if I say critter, I'm now I'm not saying, yeah, I'm not saying something wrong because it's a critter. Your story is always the truth then. Yeah.

You say critter. Yeah. It's a broad. It's insurance. It's hard to mess it up. Yeah. What is, so I know you guys do, do you, does Brian do a joke of the, joke of the week or a joke every video?

No, so. Or is it kind of just sporadic? Back when we first started, he would, about every video, tell a story that, just happened to him and it was usually something funny borderline uh inappropriate but you know we've made over 800 videos so he kind of ran out of good stories that you can tell you need to send him to the city need to send him to city to get some life experiences so he's got some new stories yeah and that he worked in uh around Minneapolis for a year or two before he came back to the farm and he's he's got some good stories from those times something about a professional

sport athlete that he used to see from time to time hanging out with some women. And then he saw on the news that they're expecting their second boy with their wife. And that's like, hmm. And so he doesn't name names and neither will I. Always wise. But where was I going with that? Oh, yeah.

So then after he was running out of good stories, he started doing the song of the day, which some people really miss. We've also heard some people don't care. for it and I don't know in the last three weeks three months about he's kind of stopped doing that it's kind of repetitive he thought and some people just said hey yeah don't like the song of the day so you know kind of like how I got bullied into Invisaline he got bullied into no more song of the day so do you have a joke do you have a joke that is worth telling on the on barn talk if you can

remember it that's one of his one of his favorites or story or something well we got it we got a we got a we got a we got a pay tribute to Brian in some way. I don't have any new. I'm where he is. I don't have any new stories. Yeah. You got to pay tribute to Brian in some way since he couldn't make it.

I wouldn't do it justice if I told any, I think. But have you ever heard of the Ollie and whoever? There's these stories called Olga. Is it Olga and Ollie? Yeah. He tells some of them. Yep. Those are pretty funny.

They are pretty funny. There's one in particular where Olga and Ollie wanted to go to this who is it something boys some band way back when from California Beach Boys? Yeah there it is

How did I forget that? I'm old. Anyway But they could only afford one ticket and so Ollie said well I'll go and I'll get you a souvenir and so he goes and he was a fabulous show

He had the greatest time. And then he's coming back and he's thinking, crap, I didn't get a souvenir. And so he's walking by a tattoo shop. And so he said, okay, I'll go in there and I'll get something for Olga. So he comes back and she says, how was the show? And he's just raving about how great it was. And she says, well, where's my souvenir? And so all he turns around bends over and Olga says, who the hell's Bob?

So that's the best one that I remember. Well, that was more appropriate than some of the old and allie stories that I've heard. So that's good. You got any? No. That one? I don't have any. You just got, all dad's got is the Amish potato story.

Amish potato. Oh, that's the best. That is, so Sawyer didn't realize how, like, how bad I was until he started going to, like, World Pork Expo with me. And we would walk around. And that was when it dawned on him that, like, I would just always have. one story, but when you see 500 different people, you can tell the same story 500 times. And he was like, God, you, that's where I was like, I need to get a beer or something.

Get me out of there. But anyway, yeah, these two Amish ladies, they're out digging potatoes in the fall. And the one, the one looks to the other one and says, says, you know, these potatoes remind me of my husband's testicles. and the other the other Amish lady goes wow they're that big and she goes no they're that damn dirty never gets old that one never gets old nope and it's you know it's short and sweet so that that makes it that makes it so what you know you you talked about how you you like the flexibility of selling your cattle um and having the opportunity if you decided you wanted to finish them out, you would. So what's your deciding factor?

Like, is it time? Is time your, in other words, is the return that you can make finishing them all the way out, not great enough? Like, how do you weigh that out? Yeah. So, I mean, to start with,

we usually just have the mindset. We're selling them at about 8, 900 pounds. Yep. And then also, markets, how they're doing, what that looks like, the futures. And if it makes sense, are we going to make money now? Are we going to take a bath? And if we are going to take a bath, can we buy smaller ones and maybe try to make money

on those? Or do you just want to get out from under them right now, you know? I don't have much experience fattening out critters, but they start eating a lot of corn. Yeah, they do. Yeah. And we'd rather sell the corn, I guess. But a lot of it's the flexibility, really. Yeah.

And just, you know, not having the feedlots full. And we, honestly, if we kept the feedlots full year round, we probably wouldn't have enough feed. Yeah. So that's another part of it. Yeah, well, when you look at the cattle market, the feeder cattle market, that number, like we do the market every week, and that number just does not, it has been high.

I mean, fat cattle have too. but feeder cattle, that price is, I don't have the desire to go buy a bunch of feeder cattle, finish them out. And I'm glad they're people that are, but that is an expensive proposition. And you've got to have some, you've got to have a lot of optimism and a lot of grain.

Probably a fair amount of cash. Yeah. Don't you feel like? Yeah. That is a, because you're going to have a pile of money in those, you're going to have a pile of money in those critters by the time you get them finished. I mean, if you think about a potload of, say, 500-pound critters, you know, you see it drive down the interstate.

That's a couple hundred thousand dollars, just short of a couple hundred thousand dollars driving by. Like, I don't, I'm sure some people don't realize how much money it takes just to fill a feed lot and then feed them. Yeah. So in your area, is it predominantly just a lot of cattle, guys like is that so i think we live in kind of an interesting spot we're like the start of the corn belt okay you go 20 miles west of us it becomes so much more pasture it's a little bit more hilly in the

climate and the soil is just kind of where like yeah i don't know if you want to break that and try dirt farming okay so there are quite a bit of cattle around us as you go east it definitely gets a lot more corn and beans rotation. But yeah, I mean, a lot of the stocks around us, they get grazed. It's perfect because, you know, when you think about ranchers in Wyoming, when they're wintering cows, you know, they had to bail that. For us, you know, we kind of took our corn off. And it's almost a free feed. So being able to put cows out on stocks is pretty advantageous. Yeah. So do a lot of guys kind of have it set up the way. you do as far as they do cow calf or is there a lot of guys that finish or is it just like how is it how is it

because around here you know a lot of guys they raise pigs and hog barns contract finished that's how pigs are raised in this county that's what a lot of freaking people do so is it i would say there's not many people that do it all that that cav but also finish okay um it's a lot of times one or the other when i think about the feedlots around us you know that's what they do is feedlot yep and then us we're You know, we do have feedlots, but we don't finish much. We background and probably about a third of our feedlots are filled with our own home-raised cattle. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like there's not many people that do it all.

Cav them and then finish them all the way. They usually, it's just too much work, I think, and too much different equipment. And you can simplify things. Or better for worse, I guess. I just look at those cows and I see how many dogs. Like, you know, pigs die. And I never like losing a pig, but I look at the pig and like, okay, I lost a pig. And it's like, you know, that's $100.

You lose. You finish out cattle. And I mean, I realize it doesn't, you don't lose as many as what you do with pigs. But still, you lose some. I'm like, man, I don't know if I could take that. I think I would just be in a... We got a feedlot friend that says, if they're going to die, they might as well die on the first day.

Yeah. Instead of putting feed in two bucks or three bucks a day and feed. Yeah. Yeah, what is the conversion on feeder cat? Is it six? Is it not that much? Like, feed to gain? Yeah.

I think it's like five and a half, five pounds. per feed per gain or something like that if my memory serves me right. Yeah. Yep. What is it for pigs? Three, a little less than three. And that's another thing, you know, gestational period and just time it takes to finish the hog versus a cow.

Yeah. I mean, you know, when we have a heifer calf and then we want to breed it and then have a calf, it's going to take two years and then, you know, to be able to market that calf is going to take longer. So, yeah. You got a lot of time in some of these things, you know. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, a pig will, you know, gain.

I think it's about 1.8 pounds a day. Something like that. I mean, they grow pretty fast. It's a pretty quick, you can turn your money over. I mean, that's the whole reason why hogs, you know, back in the day got going. My dad always said, like, when you went up, when you went up the Riverside Road, every farmer, every farmer had a few sows because it was that you could turn your money over quick.

Now they might have, they might have had some cows. They might, a lot of people had cows they milked, but a few people might have had cattle that they fed out. But everybody had pigs because you could turn your money over fast. And that's what you use to pay the bills. So it was like the pig thing, because I didn't even realize, like, that you're like in South. Dakota people were doing pigs back in that heyday too.

Yeah. And in fact, one of our, sorry, one of our calving buildings is a hog building that dad used to, uh, he finished in them. Yeah, he finished in that. So it just kind of, it was kind of just a mid, was it just a Midwest thing? Like, it was sprawl. I mean, when you think the Carolinas, yeah, think about David Newman we had on the podcast here a few weeks ago, he, and that's practically down to Arkansas.

and to this day, Prestage, they finish all their pigs in Iowa, but they ferre all them down in, in what, Arkansas, Mississippi? And they were, so I mean, hogs, that was an animal that just about every small farmer

raised to some degree. And then, you know, the market, changed. The biggest thing I, really, I feel like the thing that changed it more than anything else was the disease pressure price, but when I was a kid, and I remember asked my dad about this, you know, you would, you'd have a pen of 30 sows and you'd turn two boars in there, and 29 of them would end up pregnant. I mean, you didn't worry about, conception rate. And today, there's so many things that affect them. And starting in the late 80s

and into the 90s, the disease pressure, it just changed to where you couldn't get Sal's bread. And then, you know, when you ferrored them, when I was a kid, the pigs we raised, we had a bottle of BP 48 in the fridge. That was the only, that was the only thing we had was penicillin. And you'd grab that bottle. And I remember being a kid, and that was my job, walk through the finishing building. We had a 600 head finisher. You walk through there. And if you heard a pig coffin somewhere, you'd find that pig. And you might give, you might give one or two shots. That was it. I mean, it's a whole different deal today. But just so much changed. You know, the price went to pot, but at the same time, there was just so

much disease pressure and people not being able to keep not being able to keep pigs growing and getting them the conception rate went to pot and i don't know it just it all changed so not the same everybody started specializing that's that's how is there a big is there a hog feeder out in the dakotas that's uterites big yeah there's a few colonies around that have pretty big set-ups but yeah have they invited you over to spend the night, maybe get a sample, trying to thin the bloodline down. They're always looking for new genetics. We're not talking about the hog sign either.

Yeah, I realize that. No, I actually was at a colony, though, during harvest, I had tired of something sticking into it. And so there's a colony right by where we were harvesting and landlords, good friends with them. And so pulled in there and had about six guys, fix me up real quick. and so it's incredible the stuff they have and a lot of it's handmade. They make everything.

Like, well, this is even like 15 years ago, Dad was selling bowls to one of our local colonies. 15 years ago they had a homemade computerized plasma cutter that they built. Like the things that these people can do is incredible. Yeah. No, they are. It's amazing.

Yeah, because you have Amish that around here that built some of your buildings or something like that? Yeah. So there's a lot of, there's a, there's a big group of them from down by Bloomfield. I mean, there's a lot of Amish around Colonna, but they're not, they're not into that the way the ones down in Bloomfield is. So like, you go down there and that's a, that's a group where they own a lumber yard, they own a steel mill where they roll steel, they have a place, somebody that makes those,

what those forever footings you know the the poles at the bottom of them is some kind of synthetic concrete or whatever not do that there's a trust factory I mean that's kind of their whole thing but there's a group of them that for years and years they had crews that built frame buildings for us when I was selling and they still do they still do well they did the roof on this but a lot of that is dictated by the bifference ship as to what they can, like, how modern they can be. And we've gotten into that before, like, so. Yeah, every clip we put out.

Yeah. These aren't true Amish? Yeah. That's a telehandler. Well, the guy running the telehandler isn't Amish. Every crew has a guy that's not Amish. Okay. And then the driver parish, they lease the telehandler.

And they have a guy that's not Amish that runs it. So they can lease it because it's for the betterment of the kid. community, but none of their people run it. And like, they run air tools, but they run them off a gas power generator. And now then the bishops decided that if you have a gas power generator that's charging electric tools, that's okay too. Before, before they, this is no shit. It used to be that they had, they had electric tools.

Well, somebody had electric tools, probably the guy that was the driver, telehandler. and if they were working on your stuff, if we had temporary power there, those guys would be all about it. They'd bring out all these cordless tools and they would charge them there, but they couldn't, they weren't supposed to use them if they were charged off anything other than a gas power generator.

So there's a lot of loopholes. They work them, man. Oh, man, they do. They work it for all it's worth. But hey. I wouldn't want him. I wouldn't want to be honest. Got bills to pay and mouths to feed.

That's right. I like deodorant. Huh? I like deodorant. Yeah. It's true. Okay, well, I think that's going to wrap it up, guys. I think we got all our words out.

Cole, really appreciate you coming on the show, man, making the trip all the way from South Dakota. If you guys want to buy some homegrown sunny farms beef, go to farmergrade.com. It's going to go fast. There's a limited amount. Cole, we brought 12 heifers down. So when it's gone, it's gone. So if you want a rib-eye, you want a T-bone, you want a strip, you want some ground beef, get it while you can.

We appreciate all your guys support. Share the show. If you got any value, leave a review on Spotify or Apple, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode.