Barn Talk - Farming From The Ground Up w/IowANFarmer

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk. Home grown addition. Today we’re talking Ag with one of Iowa’s own. He recently caused Lake Rathbun to almost overflow from all the tears that were shed over his marriage. He’s off the market folks! He’s a fellow farm YouTuber himself documenting his day to day life as a farmer. His channel  @iowANFarmer   has 55k subscribers. Go Follow Ben! YouTube- https://bit.ly/3jEUo1c Instagram- https://bit.ly/3jEUtC2 TikTok- https://bit.ly/3XifGiR Facebook- https://bit.ly/3I7CSvI Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today's going to be a special episode. Today's going to be a guest episode. It's called Homegrown Edition for a reason. We're having Iowa and Farmer on and we're going to talk about all things ag. We're going to talk about equipment, what he thinks about last harvest, what he thinks about

this upcoming crop, and much, much more. He's a really, really good guy. He's one of the pioneers of YouTube. He got on it relatively early, and he just documents his day-to-day life as a farmer, which is awesome, and he's up to about 57,000 YouTube subscribers, and he's on all other platforms as well. So we're really excited to get into it and really excited to have him on and come. kind of explore, explore what we want to talk about. So, but before we do that, we just ask that you

guys pay the fee. So, uh, give us a rating on Spotify, uh, give us a rating on Apple, leave us a comment, share the show, share it out to your friends. Um, that's, that's the fee we ask. we're gaining we're doing pretty good for for the size of this podcast the number of five-star reviews we have is truly humbling and we couldn't do that without you so just keep doing what you're doing and let's get into it ben ben rocal welcome to barn talk thanks for having me of course we uh we went on a little bit of a farm tour with ben and molly here uh we showed them around the hog farm and show them kind of what we were up to and how we take care of pigs and how I take care of torque and how he beats me and gets me out there to work and do all his do all his

shit for him so you know I don't think anybody anymore can probably believe that I actually beat you I think that's probably been laid to rest he gets the other way around yeah elder abuse it's elder abuse is what it is and this is a cry for help yeah so that video of ben and molly and us going through the whole farm will be on his youtube channel iowan farmer go check it out go follow him go subscribe He's got a lot of great farming content on there. And he's on Instagram. What all are you on? Where can people find you?

Mostly I stick to YouTube right now. I do do some Instagram stuff, but Instagram's a little more family-oriented or funding oriented. I do a little bit on TikTok, but mostly the bread and butter is YouTube. It's what I grew up learning, you know, I guess, cut my teeth on. And that's where I kind of hang out on. So YouTube's where most of the stuff that's worth a darn, is that yeah so go go watch the video but more importantly subscribe and check out of stuff guys it's real good so uh yeah why don't you just give us a little bit of history of just like where you

came from kind of what you're up to kind of how you got into what you're doing today is just like the start of the jaco park yeah start us back and the perception of the twinkle in your dad's eye yeah so um yeah uh i don't know if i've got a little bit of a different story uh i'd kind of call myself maybe most people might call me a second generation farm I'd maybe call myself a first generation squared, but one squared is still one. My dad was a hobby farmer. Worked for a company putting up cell phone towers and stuff like that. Hobby farmed, and so as I grew up, I would go to the farm, and it was more of like a playground for me,

kind of something that I did. I grew up actually a little bit north of here in Cedar Rapids from sixth grade through 12th, graduated from Cedar Rapids Prairie. ended up going to the University of Iowa and farming really wasn't necessarily a career path that I was really considering. I knew I wanted to do something on my own or for myself, not necessarily go into in, I guess you could say, the corporate world. Started a couple of companies with a few friends, stepped away from those after doing a few internships and realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. So then I decided to move back home and start farming. Something that I love to do, you know, I say the dirt got under my fingernails and I couldn't get it out of there and now we're I think I'm

going into my eighth season to farming now and uh sometime along the way started filming it a little bit and posted it on YouTube so and that's just taking me on a little bit of a wild ride since then so what made you what made you pick up a camera so I started my YouTube channel I actually had to look it up on the way up here is like when did I start I started in 2018 I don't know when I started heavily posting on YouTube but there really wasn't a lot of egg stuff on YouTube. I think you could probably say there was a few of like the, I don't know, OG guys on YouTube.

There was one lonely farmer. He was on there. Howe Farms Work was on there. Millennial. Millennial, he just started. I mean, he just started. Brian was on there a little bit and kind of, I'm a little more busy now during the wintertime,

but for a while there, it was really slow during the winter, which I, enjoyed kind of one of the attractions that I thought when I was coming back to farming was like hey work your butt off from basically the end of February through this freeze up which used to be about the first December now it's like the end December you know and it's like hey you know it's kind of like a long spring break but it's a winter break every single year um but I would watch YouTube videos or something like that and I think I offhandedly made a comment to Molly

and said oh I think I could maybe do something like that. that. And I had, I'd actually done a few YouTube videos for coming back. I had to find a way getting back on the farm. And that's maybe something we could talk about later on about the pork deal. Find a way to make it work because I didn't collect a salary basically from my father. It's like got paid a little bit, but sometimes I say I'm better off working at McDonald's type of thing. So I looked at having an outfitter. And I'd done a few videos for that outfitter before and some of them did decently. Issue is with having a deer hunting outfitter and you become a farmer, you realize how much

destruction the deer do and your love for the deer kind of changes a little bit to from love to a hate relationship, you could say. And timing-wise, it wasn't really a great thing. So I knew that I'd had like cameras and stuff and I could do that. But I never thought of like doing it where I just filmed my work. And for my birthday, that point in time, Molly got me at. editing software and just kind of worked out good that I had the winner to kind of like learn editing software because everybody thinks it's like, like, hey, I'll just go pick up a camera

and start, you know, filming. And this will be super easy. It's like, yeah, that's not so hard. It's like telling a coherent story from point A to point B, then you don't know what that story's going to be. And then actually editing that video together, yeah, that's the hard part. So realistically, kind of started YouTube on accident, you know, and. And it really didn't do too much the first year.

I didn't really do a whole lot of it. And then I decided, hey, maybe I'll do like harvest time because harvest, there's usually a lot of action during harvest, you know. Plant in season, if there's no action during planting season, you had a heck of a good planting season. So that can kind of be mundane content. So nothing really big happened there. And then in the summertime, I was haying a little bit and, you know,

spraying that's not really good action, but at least harvest. there's a lot of things happening during harvest. I started that. YouTube basically emailed me and said, hey, we're going to feature you as a creator on the rise, which for the people that don't know that, pretty much YouTube features you on their homepage, landing page, and, like, way expands your audience at that point in time.

And then from ever since then, it just kind of took off. So, and I was all along, I think the, I think the ag industry's YouTube channel, kind of that content has maybe peered off a little bit here in the last few years, maybe because there's a lot of people that have tried to start YouTube channels and there's a lot more of them out there. But I wasn't necessarily one of the first people that kind of pioneered that. I'd leave that to the guys that came before me. But at least I was still in there with the grow-up or whatever you want to say.

You were kind of an OG. You were kind of an original one. Not necessarily, but I would I was the younger age of it. Yeah. So, right. Yeah. I have a question just based off what you're telling us with the history. So like you graduated. You did the internship stuff.

Did your dad, because you said he had a little bit of a hobby farm growing up when you were growing up, you know. Did he like start, was that starting to grow and get bigger to the point where you were like, okay, I could maybe make that into something? No, not necessarily that. my dad would make fun of me a little bit that I always had these wild ideas about how you could make farming work and he you know farming wasn't ever very good it's like luckily back then you could maybe afford to buy some of the land and the challenges were different it's like they still had their challenges but they're different than our challenges in our generation now but he started I want to say he bought his first farm the year I was born so that would have been 92 so that's 30 years ago my dad could quote me different here, but this is just from my recollection. If you really want to know it, I think we did a video on it and where he gave the history.

I think he started farming about five years later than that, so I think my dad's been farming somewhere around 25 years or so. So over that time, I think he ended up farming about 2,500 acres as a hobby farmer. And for the people that know farming acres, 2,500 acres is not a hobby farm anymore. lost his job in 2008 during the recession and became a full-time farmer, which kind of, at that point, he kind of moved down to the farm, didn't buy the house that he lives in now, but lived in the camper pretty much to get the farming done, and then kind of left us because I was, 2008, I would have been a junior, going to start my junior year in high school, and then my sister

would have been a sophomore, and the other one would have been in eighth grade then, I believe. so he didn't really want to pick up the family and move us away from we'll see rapids prairie at the time was actually a pretty sought after high school to be in um so we finished that out and then afterwards after the kids all got out of the house mom moved down home and that's where they're at now so again i didn't really think of it is like that's where i'm going to go and that's what i'm going to do but i guess i matured a little bit so what was your what was your plan? So when you, you got out of college and you did,

you did some intern stuff or you did some other, you had some other things that you tried. But what was your, because your dad was farming. And if I think about like, with my relationship with my dad, if I would have just showed up and said, well, I think I'm just going to farm with you. I think,

the conversation would have been pretty short. So what was your plan or what did you think that you were going to do to try to make enough income to make it work for you to join in that? Or is that how you did it? Did you join in with what he was doing or did you? So right now, like on our farm, I don't technically work for my dad. At that point I was working for him. but I started to farm my own acres too. So that's where I call myself not necessarily a second generation farm.

Somebody needs to find what makes a generation farm. Is it the land that makes it the next generation farm? Is it the operation that you're buying into? And maybe people romanticize a little bit about what the struggles of a first generation farmer is. I think the sixth generation farmer guys have just as much of a struggle of how do they get into that established operation type of thing. So my dad has his own ground that he farms. we farm ground together and then I farm my own ground as well. So I have built my own operation alongside his operation,

which makes it a little bit different. So like if I have to go look at purchasing a tractor, it's not like I have to purchase that tractor where it makes sense to go over my acres. It has to like kind of fold into the whole operation. So I'm not necessarily a second generation farmer where it's like, hey, this is established. I'm just going to buy in over time or then just going to be a hand-downed. it down to me and dad's going to, you know, I'm just working for dad doing what dad says until it's my time. It was like, that's not the way that I roll is that it's like, way I kind of saw it was that

I'm investing my future in this operation. So that was like my, in my opinion, you know, my big buy-in is that it's like, I'm not going to be the, you know, 55-year-old that's still going into the bank with dad and dad's still making all the decisions and I've never made any financial decision. and so I don't know what I was going to do. I mean, I looked at the Outfitter like we just talked about a little bit. Luckily, I had some ground to start farming right away. Lost money right off the bat. You know, dad, there was no handouts on the Van Rokal farm.

I mean, first year I far I far I far, I farmed, I think I lost money. You know, and I didn't farm that many acres. I think I lost $600 the first year I farmed. My dad goes, well, it looks like you're about to lose some money this year farming or whatever and hands me my custom $1,200, you know, combine bill. You know, so there was no love lost on this deal. It's like I didn't get to go back and live at home with dad. It was like they kicked me out right into a camper.

I lived in a camper plugged into one of my dad's grain bins, rent-free. My only expense at that point in time was I paid for a porta potty because I didn't want to have to move out the gray sewer water or whatever. I think I made it all the way up until like November, like 30th. And it got so cold and the heater didn't work in that camper. My dad's like, hey, I'm winterizing this camper because it's going to freeze. And I'm like, I'll see how much longer I can stay in there, right? Got so cold, I couldn't sleep one night, went to town, rented an apartment, slept on that apartment's floor the next day.

And that's kind of the way it is. And I would say that's maybe one thing that I've had going for me or I've tried to, like, focus on as the young guy is having like a really low cost of living. Yep. Which affords me to do a lot of the other things. but how I knew or how I thought I would make it work, and it's like it's still a struggle the day to figure that stuff out is I was just kind of ignorant,

and it was like, we're just going to put my head down and see what can happen. It's like walked into, I bank at Farm Credit Services, and I walked in there and we can go into the hog thing there. It's like walked in to try and get a line of credit for $10,000, which a lot of guys people might not know is that, guess what, you got to borrow money to grow a crop unless you got money in the bank.

Well, I just graduated from college. There ain't no money in the bank. It's like I walk in there, and the first thing they start talking to me about is like, you know what you need to do. You need to put up about five or four or five hog barns. And it's like about half a million dollars a piece right there in like five, seven years, you'll have them paid off. And you'll just be a moneymaker. Well, I live down like Lake Rathans legitimately at the bottom of my hail from my shop. And that supplies the water for 17 counties in between Iowa and Missouri.

So the DNR probably wouldn't be that kind to trying to come up with, like a manure plan and putting up hog barns and stuff like that. So I kind of push that away. And then on top of that is that there are no hog barns basically in our area. So if you start putting up hog barns, it's like, and it smells like money, you're going to, you're going to be enemy number one. Kind of be enemy of the county number one. So I just knew that really wasn't an option, which was also still kind of funny is that you going in, hopefully getting a line of credit to grow some corn for $10,000. And they're sitting, hey, let's line you up with $2 million worth of hog barn. It's like, hey, I'm okay at budgeting, but when the budget's zero, it's not that hard to budget.

It's like, I got to figure out how to get much gas in my car and get back and still get Jimmy Johns on the way home. It's like, you know, it wasn't like the hog barns were just kind of, would I be really well off if I would have done that and would I think that would be a good avenue for guys like you to do? Yeah, absolutely. But it just was not an option down there by us. So could you have maybe found somewhere, somewhere to do it?

Yeah, probably. but it wasn't one that I was considering. You could end up being grumpy and unstable like us. So maybe it's better. You'd have some back pain and some knee pain. So you missed out on that. How about the hay deal? Don't you have a video on your channel?

It says you make millions off raising hay. Yeah. There's one video that's viral as hell on there. Yeah. So people don't know that there is things on YouTube that they call clickbait. basically. We've never done that. Yeah, never done any. I kind of like pledged. You know, maybe it was a stupid thing to do,

but I also try to have a little bit of integrity on my YouTube channel of like, not to do clickbait. Yeah. Like not to do clickbait, which is pretty much you over exaggerate something to get people to click on it. That's why it's called clickbait and it's a really mundane channel or something like that, which I think I literally stay in the title of the video is how to, to make you a million dollars on YouTube, you don't or something like that. And I started out right away. And I just told people about how the small square bail business really kind of helped me out, get me going, which that's actually like evolving and changing right now.

But pretty much what would happen, which helped me out a lot was first year we did some small square bales, had a guy come out and do them. And then dad ended up buying a small square baler, a 338 small square bail, the same one that we run with the accumulator on it, and you can't get much help to put up small square bales. But I was able to basically, instead of going on rent and ground, I could work with neighbors and get a cutting of hay off of their ground, which would be good hay, which would then turn around that I could just basically sell that cutting of hay, and that farmer would be able to walk away with about the same amount of money that they would have otherwise.

So that was a way for me to kind of have a job and get some cash flow in. So realistically, I made some mistakes on the things that I bought doing the hay, and I've learned a lot more since going into the hay business, is that it's good for guys. It's an easy way from the get in. So could you, in theory, you know, sometime down my life make millions off of making hay? Yeah, you probably could have. So technically that might not be clickbait, but I need a,

follow that one up in like 10 years if you know you ever make it and become that millionaire's that's that's what got me in the door but now now i think the hay market's actually kind of evolved a little bit and i need to kind of move away from the small square bales uh into the three by three big square bales because the omish down by us really drive a good portion of that market and hayes down by us isn't sold by weight, which sucks. It's sold by the bail. And pretty much the Amish now have started to buy the bigs three by three, which is three foot by three foot, by seven and a half foot, big square bales. And they'll buy three or four of them. They'll bring in their iron wheeled racks, buy three or four of them at an auction, and then they flake that off and that's what they're feeding the horses.

So they aren't really doing the big, the small square bales anymore. And what those big square Bail is now sell for, you have to probably get $10 or so, $8 to $10 out of your small square bail just for the hay into it. And then you're not really getting the money for the smaller packaging. So usually with hay, the smaller and smaller the package gets, the more and more you should be able to charge behind. Because you're paying for the convenience. And it's really not there. So I think the small square bail market, there's always going to be a niche in there. pretty much as long, if I put up good small square bales right now, I can make phone calls to a few people and they're gone. But it's starting to not be worth the money and the time and the effort.

So I've kind of been kicking around the idea of a big square baler, three by three big square baler, easier to haul, easier to the handle. Still got to put them in a shed, you know, and that stuff. But you're going to make probably more money doing that. That's where everything's moved to. Yeah, problem is big square balers, $100,000. Yeah. Yeah. So what was it like the first time that you went looking to rent ground? So luckily, the first ground that I rent, my dad brought in on with me. And then I can't remember what the second farm that I rented was actually the farm that I own now, which was Brockman's, which we became good friends when I lived in that camper. He came back and forth with me and stuff like that. And then he rented that. So,

Pretty much the majority of the ground that we farm, like I've kind of been approached to farm. Well, that's good. So, I haven't really ever gone out and tried to track down ground necessarily. If there's been an opportunity that I know is there, you know, I make it know that I'm interested in it, but I'm not one of those guys that'll go and try and run a piece of ground out. You haven't ran an ad in the paper. No, never ran the ad in the paper. No brown nosing.

No, I think I had, I put it, maybe put something on Craigslist, like right at the beginning because you never know how the heck you're going to get a piece of ground. But like nothing ever came out of that. It was just being there, for me, be in the area, do a good job. People are always watching. If you have a YouTube channel, they're definitely always watching. And that's one thing that I've always kind of said that I wanted to show on the YouTube channel is that once those guys are ready to kind of hand it over, maybe not to be so nervous

and that, hey, the next generation can do it. Some people might think that I can't do it, but at least I'd like to think that I can get it done. Yeah. So, but now I think that the picking up ground is a little more, I don't know if it's necessarily challenging. Down by us, there's a lot of opportunities to be able to get ground. There's a lot of ground that sells, things like that. But I think it's also now changing from you used to rent 40 acres a year, 100 acres in a year or something like that. Some years you rent none. But I think it's changing now where now if you go to rent a farm, that farmer's wanting you rent that entire farm from them. So you're now, you know, average size of a farm 400 acres or something like that.

So there's your struggle is that if you go have to rent that 400 acres, you got to go and go get capital to farm that, which if you want to say you're going to need, $700 an acre. So you're talking you need another $350,000 or something like that to farm that piece of ground. So that means you got to be able to go secure the capital right on top of that. And then they don't make any more days in the year for you to farm. So either you've got to equip yourself or be over equipped, which we kind of are and that's the way we've run to be able to take on that stuff. Or you got to build the infrastructure. Like for us, grain bins and stuff like that storing the crop, you're looking at now taking on farms and it's just not like,

oh, I can pick up that farm and I added another half a day's of work. It's like, oh, I added another four days, five days of work. And now I need another, you know, 30,000 bushels worth of storage. I need to be able to carry this and do that. It's, it's, it's, I would say it's, there's going to be more growing pains for our generation because it's not just a quick pickup. But I'm not as, I wouldn't say I'm as hungry to pick up ground anymore. That's another thing that I would tell young guys, do not get hungry to pick up ground because you'll get into a bad land deal and you'll lose your pants.

That's happened to me. I learned from that. Don't get hungry to do that. You know, if you're going to farm it, try and make a little money farming it. Don't do it for free. It's like you don't need a big, big time guy by any means. Can you talk about that bad experience or you don't want to really talk about it a little bit?

It's not super bad. It's like, it was hay ground, and it was like just too young, rented the piece of ground, away from home. I cut it, raked it, bailed it. The guy, you know, pretty much the hay wasn't there that he said would be there. I mean, and it just wasn't worth my time. And it's like I said, I'd small square bail it, and it was like, we were dry, and he didn't get very, he wasn't very happy with me about, like, small square belt.

Like, he wanted me a small square bail, and I'm like, I'm not going to come lose money on this. It's like you told me that last year this field did like, you know, three bales or something like that off an acre. And it's like average like barely two. I'm like, that's a huge money swing. So it was a bad deal with a kind of the quick deal with the landlord thing. And it's like I had to move the hay fast. So it's like I, you know, I don't think it was necessarily a bad land deal. I mean, I didn't lose a lot of money doing that by any means.

But I got out of it and it just was a big stressor and stuff. and you spent a lot of time, a lot of effort and stress. So it's like, you think that was just because you got a little bit of land hunger. You were just like, I'm going to get going. You know, which you had to. You know, when you're trying to just make things work, it's like any opportunity in that. It's like I did that a lot. Any opportunity to do anything, like you grabbed onto.

It's like when you're trying to become a farmer, you got to work. Yeah. Like, you've got to work. Like, which is hard maybe for some people that are established, it's like, oh, you're not going to make. any money doing that. It's like I might make enough to you know to make a hundred bucks, you know, and that's $100 more than I would have had if I wasn't doing anything. So maybe other guys, they wouldn't, you know, start their pickup truck for $100. But when you're that young, it's like, you'll start your pickup truck for $10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's just kind of the

way it was. So I'm not, not necessarily because I'm more better off on that aspect. It's just, I'm not, I don't want to get into those deals where it's like, it's getting risky right now. Like we are in a time of like there's rewards that can be had, but it's like it's getting stupid, you know, to try and grow an acre of crown. Yeah. It's like, it's getting down, down home, it's hard to explain this, but our crop insurance back home is like I always say we live in the Redhead Stepchild area down there in southern Iowa. our crop insurance does not work. Like it does not work for us. I have to back home

basically be under 100 bushel an acre on corn before I'd ever kick in a payment. And I can tell you this, is that if I'm ever collecting the crop insurance payment, I'm losing so much money by that time that it's not even funny. So now not necessarily that you're making a whole lot more money because you're just bringing in more and you've just took it on more risk.

So now my exposure has gone even wide. Yeah. So maybe that's also cooled me down on, you know, trying to bring on more and more ground. And another thing that I always tell guys is, is like, what is your dream? You know, a lot of guys come into it and think, I want to be Mr. Big Time operator. I want to farm 30,000 acres, you know. It's like, no, you don't. It's like, you ain't ever grown a crop. You ain't never been around that stress or anything like that. And I kind of tell guys, I don't think this will happen. In my lifetime, I know I'm going to have to go above that acre mark. but if I could get to farming, you know, a thousand acres of decent dirt. Yep.

And have that decent dirt pretty well paid for. And being a spot where the equipment is pretty well paid for. And I've got storage, you know, and I got a nice semi truck that I can haul my grain when I want to haul my grain. It's like you'll make more money off that thousand acres and not be nearly as stressed. And you might become one of those two by two farmers, you know, two weeks in the spring, two weeks in the fall. And you live a pretty darn good life. So it's like, it's maybe an unrealistic goal, but it's like, I don't want to farm the entire county. You know, it's like, am I going to have to grow?

Yeah, because that's just the nature of the beast. But if I could get to that area where it's like, heck, yeah, that'd be the ticket. Well, priorities change too as you go. Like, you know, the world doesn't always look as you get older how you view things change as far as what's important to you. and I'm with you. I'm like, I have no desire to have the stress level that it takes to run an operation at scale like that. I'm like, nope, don't want to do it.

Yeah, and so like Molly's sitting over here, she don't got a mic, but it's basically like she's not married to anybody in the spring and pretty much not married to anybody in the fall. Yeah. It's like, I mean, I wake up early in the morning. I make my lunchbox. I go out the door,

and it's like sometimes I get, home so tired, I take a debate if I'm going to take a shower tonight or if I'm just going to try and go get an extra 30 minutes of sleep. You know, it's like it wears on you, you know, and then it doesn't necessarily just wear on you because you're tired. I mean, you become more irritable. It's like, you know, you can get into a piss match of your father-son relationship. It's like, you know, when you get tired, it's like, you ain't even mad at each other, but it's like, dang it, where the heck's that pin? And it's like, this is your fault, you know, type of thing. You can't ever put the pin back in the egg pin old, you know, whatever. So, just you

don't want that stress on you. It's like, it'll kill you. Yeah, no. It's like, you don't want to. So I'm going to have to deal with the stress because that's the only way that I think I could reach that goal and then pull back, you know, at some point in time or pull myself back. And if we have another generation that comes back to the farm and that's kind of a goal of mine is to, that's why I'm doing it, you know, is to hopefully have generations of farms because it's a good way of life. It's a, it's a great way of life. But then they can deal with the other stuff. Duff and dad can cherry pick himself a few nice pieces of ground and enjoy it. You know, that's my goal. Yep. So. Yeah, I think our generation, and I think farming has become so cool in like with just the promotion of it. And, you know, you got billionaire investors investing in farmland because it's the trendy thing to do. It's just return is such a great value.

And everybody's like, I'm going to farm the world. I'm going to farm the world. I'm going to farm the world. And all the things that you were saying right there when you even are thinking about renting 400 acres, like people just don't even think about the storage, the equipment, everything that goes, the labor, everything that goes into it. It's not like running, I mean, running a business is hard, but like running a farming business is hard

in the fact that there's just so much stuff going on. Like, there's so much more stuff going on. than just like a regular business, I feel like. Well, and it's all labor, everything. It's all so intertwined to your point. It's like it isn't rent that other piece of ground that's so hard. It's, okay, well, what am I going to do with all that grain? Because I don't have the storage.

How am I going to even get it to storage? Because it's this much further than what else I farm. and when the combine is running, I don't have enough semi to make that trip to get it dumped, to get back, even if I had the bin to put it in. Then it's like, okay, is my equipment big enough? It's like we talk about we need a wet bin. We need a wet bin. So build a wet bin.

Well, you build a wet bin and then the next thing you know, it's like, what are we going to do when we get a bigger head on a combine? Because then that wet bin ain't big enough. But do you build the wet bin you need or do you build the wet bin that you want? No, you build what you can afford. That's what I did. I built the wet bin. It's like I don't got no dryer.

It's a wet bin, but I built the wet bin that I could afford you. You know, that's exactly what I did. But it's also intertwined. You know, you change one. piece and then everything else is either too big or too small, usually too small. And the cost of you just create every growing pain that you have is just it creates a new growing pain. Yeah. And now it might not be so true now when house prices have gone through the roof,

but it's like every time you go look at a pick like a tractor, it's like that's a house. Oh yeah. The difference is there ain't no 15 year mortgage on that house. five years pay that back five years you know so it's like every tractor's like you're buying a house basically and having to pay it off in five years and you know that was like one of the struggles for me is that maybe i could have gotten along with the 44 40 you know and the six row planner but it's like well that doesn't help out our farming operation nope so it's like i have to buy an 8110 to improve our planting you know those type of things so it's that's where it's been a little struggle of an odd ball thing like I say I'm not the second generation on is that I don't really have the same

struggles as a first generation farmer because I've got my father to fall back on to help and I've got really good neighbors that I can call and you know it's like I called one of the neighbors down here I got to move some oats and I can't I can't haul 400 bushel oats to the the co-op or the actually the feed mill and I'm like can I borrow your uh borrow your wagon goes anytime you want it's like so luckily I've had a good network to fall back on and help me out when I've not known something, but I'm also, I face some of those struggles, if that makes sense. Here's something I just thought about, because I had this conversation at a farm credit meeting

the other day. There's a whole generation of people that are established that have rolled equipment, rolled equipment, rolled equipment, never worked on, never really worked on a tractor. Maybe they changed their oil, but a lot of them probably didn't even. do that because these equipment values kept working up and you were paying no interest you just financed it so why would you keep you run it you put 2,000 hours on it put 1,600 hours on it you trade it you buy another one trade it buy another one that was all fine dandy till interest is what 8% now if you're going to go uh i i don't know i believe it or not i'm not in the equipment shopping

I'm not sure what the interest would be. It wouldn't surprise me if it's somewhere around that 8 or 8.5%. So I'm really going to be curious to see whether or not these guys that have been doing that, because you're not going to be able to afford to keep doing it. You're going to have to run this equipment longer, which means you're either going to have to get to know your implement mechanic a lot better than you do or else you're going to have to learn how to fix a bunch of stuff yourself. And I think that's going to be interesting to watch because I think there's a lot of guys out there

that have just been able to roll it, roll it, roll it. And this year you might be able to do it because we might have one more year of really good crop prices that all the columns are going to add up right. But we get a year when these commodity prices go back and your interest expense is what it is, I think we're all going to have to get a lot better at fixing our own stuff. So two things on this. Somebody might need to correct me on it. But I always kind of joke with people that I've become a better mechanic every single year. And that's not necessarily a good thing. Shit's breaking. But I think also what those guys were doing is that they would roll their piece of equipment basically before the first payment was due. So then as soon as they rolled it, that would push their payment out a year, push a payment out of year, push a payment out of year. So they'd roll a combine or something like that every year and never make a payment. on that combine. Never pay a dollar for that combine. Yep. But I don't know. Maybe these high prices

have bailed out a few guys, but that's not the game plan I'm playing on. It's like I'd like to get my equipment paid for and farm with some paid for equipment. Well, I mean, yeah, with the line of credit, we've talked about that a hundred times on here too. Yeah, when interest went up. Line of credit, your interest expense is about tripled. We've been playing with cheap interest for decade. Yeah, and actually, so I still farm through through farm credit services. And that's maybe another tip that I give the young guys is have a good banker.

Not necessarily saying farm credit services, you know, is the best bank in the world. It's where I started and I've got a good banker now. It's like he's going to boast on himself right now. I just had my meeting yesterday. So he's going to like that. But anyways, you know, have a good banker. But a lot of guys probably locked in the low interest rate. a year ago when things are starting to look bad, that expires in 30 days.

Yep. So now guys are going to be like, I don't want to carry any of the line of, you know, money on my line of credit. Yep. It's like, I'm going to want to try and farm with as much cash as possible. So if that happens, you know, it's like back in the, you know, days of high interest rates, it's like, yeah, they're high now, but they aren't high, you know, we're half, maybe we're not even at half of what they got to, you know. So it's like, that's going to slow some stuff down too because people are going to see how important cash is versus borrowing. It's, it might not be good. We just had a guy on here a couple weeks ago in the hog business and his first operating loan is 21% interest. What year was that? 87? I think so.

80s, late 80s, yep. Something like that. Crazy. Isn't that nuts? People are like. What would that come? down like if you had per you like you would think you would think that you know you can figure out what you pay per day or when you carry your line of credit but i wonder what like if you borrowed a hundred

thousand dollars or you carried fifty thousand dollars on your line of credit what that would cost you per day just to well 100 hundred hundred thousand dollars 21 percent interest is 21 000 annualized annualized so what's 21 molly you got a calculator over there what's 21000 divided by 365. She is. Yeah. Shout out to Molly. Yeah. With the calculator over here. The human calculator. Yeah, 21,000 divided by 365. Yeah, 60 bucks a day. You'd have to pay an interest. Jeez.

Oh, man. Oh, this cup of coffee is $60 today. It's like, ooh. I guarantee you aren't going to spend any time sitting in the shop having a pie, having a slice of pie because you're like, I got to make, I got to make 60 bucks today. just to stay even. Yeah. You know, but I don't know this, and I'm not going to speak for those guys then. Land prices were lower back then.

Yep. And I think there's an argument meant to be made that they had more opportunity than our generation does. Yep. Because if you could go, say it's $1,000 that you had to borrow to get that piece of ground, well, the ground was $300 and you had to pay $700 in interest for that piece of ground, you can write off the interest. Yep. Now we've got these huge payments and your principal is a lot lower.

Well, the way that land deals are structured, you pay a whole bunch of interest and you barely pay down your principal for the first good chunk of that loan. And at least they could get somewhere with that and they would write it off. Now we've got to show the income to make that payment. And then guess what? If you show the income, you got to pay taxes on top of that too. So it's like they might complain about, you know, well, the higher. interest rates and stuff like that, but you can say apples, the apples, I'm not going to say

it was easier, but it maybe might have been easier back then. So it's, and land prices are just stupid. Keep going up. They're just stupid now. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but if you think this is good, you should check out our YouTube channel. This will do farm. Like and subscribe. All right, let's get back to it. What is your, what's your prediction or what do you feel? How do you, feel about next year's crop or I guess this year's crop it's 2023 so back home we had I will say two-thirds of a crop last year um and our ground I think the county APH on corn's like 142 and there's reasons to 142 and like 40 bushels on soy beans we can grow decent crops down home but our ground will fall on its face like it stays wet or two days longer and it shows drought stress 10 days

straight or faster, you know. So it will fall on its face. So we had two-thirds of a crop this last year. Luckily, the prices were good and you kind of get your way out of it this year. It wasn't a ringer like 21, 21 was. You know, we had a fantastic crop in 21. But I think maybe the prices will stay there for this year, you know, who knows what's happening in Ukraine and what's going to kind of happen over there. I think that we're still pretty dry in a lot of parts of the world. We get a little bit of weather scared down south. Maybe that'll help push things up. But I would like to say we got good crop prices for one more year. But what just scares me as the young guy is when is, I don't think we're hearing that this is the new normal now. You know, and they used to say, oh, this is the new normal. What do you always say, man?

We aren't hearing that. We're hearing when's four coming back? when sub four coming back you know and the issue is is that you know you're pulling 14-1500 anthydros ammonia and you're trying to grow that six dollar bushel corn and the next thing you know is we go to four and your break evens closer to that six guess what you're losing to 200 plus bucks an anchor you know and if you have a bad crop oh boy you know hold on to your ankles type of thing yeah it's that's that as a young guy is what scares me is that it's like it might be kind of a let's buckle down for a little bit type of thing and if you buckle down and get yourself in a good spot and things turn south you might be able to make it it's like it's still going to

suck you're going to go backwards there's no doubt about that but you might be able to make it um but if you buckle down and things keep going north and this is the new norm you're still in a good spot you maybe not might be as behind it you might be a little bit behind the other guys that were really risk adverse, but I don't know. I'm scared, I guess you could say. Like I said, you're taking on risk. It's like, I'm okay if the crop prices come back. I might actually like it if the crop prices go back. Um, because again, we'll, we'll whittle ourself out our little profit margin that we get, you know, farmers will last people with their hand in their pocket. We'll whittle that out. But let's take on a little less risk that we got to right now and make

that same amount of money and instead of going after the, this, the, the, the, the, you know, you know, bringing in more money per acre and still taking that little bit. So I'm just worried about when and well, if or when that we go back to more reasonable stuff. Because if it happens before that crops out and you don't want to fork, you know, forward contract your grain, you know, people will talk yes, forward contract stuff, not, you know, back home, I can't forward contract too much because I'm insured to, you know, if I want to grow 200 bushels an acre on a good piece of dirt and I can only shirt to 100 bushels an acre. Guess what? I can only sell half my crop. I got half my crop hanging out

there. And you're you're at risk if you know, do sell that because if something else happens, you got to pay the, you know, whoever you contract car gill or whatever, you got to pay them the difference, you know, if you don't deliver. That's right. So there's, there's risk there too. So there's no real good way out of this. It's like, my hope is, is that the price goes down as soon as I empty that bin and I haven't locked in any of my inputs for the next year. That's my best case scenario, but I mean, there's a lot of stars that are going to have to line for that to happen. Yeah, when you sit down, I mean, input costs, when you sit down and my chemical guy showed

me a program for the bargain basement price of $74 an acre to spray beans. I just had like a deja vu moment. I remember when I first started farming with my dad. And, you know, if we were spending more than like $16 an acre on spraying beans, we thought it was highway robbery. Now, granted, that's been a few years. But you just think, gee, many Christmas. It's, it gets, it eats the margin up pretty fast.

And not much has to go wrong before there ain't much margin left. Yeah, or like last year when the glufosate and glyphosate shortages were crazy. you're buying two chemicals that don't barely even work and they're 50 plus a gallon it's like I kind of read a lot of the forums and stuff and I kind of heard started to heard the mumbles about hey some of these chemicals might be hard to find and you know round up might be one of them hard to find and we called and priced some of those mini totes and stuff like that and it's like holy smokes we're going to spend that money but it's like it's all I got in stock and you buy it yeah

you just buy it to kind of protect yourself and it's some of those chemicals have just gone up too much. And that's an issue, I guess, with farming too, especially conventional farming, is that all these manufacturers, they know what you're making. Yep. You know, and they know that, hey, usually we take 20% for seed. Hey, we usually take 40% for, you know, fertilizer. Yep. We take 30, we know, we take another 20 for chemical, you know, they all know that. So it's like, oh, and Ukraine was just their, they're kind of, I'm going to put the writing on the wall, you know, saying like that's their excuse you know is oh we're just got the shortages coming over here and we're not getting stuff from rush it's like nope that's what disguised them from the lawsuits

yeah that's just cover yeah that's that's what did it you know the the price jacking you know that's all it is so yep it's not fun you know it's not fun no it's not i mean yeah you you'd wish that they would just stay at a price but it's it's got you're exactly right they know exactly what you're making and that's why they ramp it up. Yeah, I think that's the issue. I think they call that like the socialism, communism type of thing. If you do that, then you're not a free market type of guy. So it's, you can't really, you can't really think the, the era that we're in now, the word that really sticks with me is just volatility. Like when I think about in the, when I was just getting started farming, stuff didn't

move much from one from one from one another neither me you know 20 cents in a year on your price like oh boy look at that we're up yeah we're up seven cents today it's like woo it's like and now it's like holy smokes beans move 70 cents today you know or something crazy like and and your products your your inputs are the same way these chemicals move an unbelievable amount and that's the other thing is people today it's another level of what you got to be aware of because it used to be that I never talked to my, I never talked to my chemical guy, but twice a year, you know, you go in there after harvest and be like, well, what do you think, you know, what do you think nitrogen is going to be for next year? Should I book some? Should I not book some?

Now then, I'm talking to them guys every week because you just want to know where it's headed. Should I buy, should I, like, are you trying to buy, are you trying to buy nitrogen for next year in like September of this year. Yeah, I think the best time to buy nitrogen last year was June. Yeah. June. It's like the corn's a foot tall. Hey, you want to be booking some of that nitrogen you're going to pull on after that

crop's out, you know, and you probably got to pay for like to do that. They're like, oh yeah, but you also got to pay the entire month that you want. Let us use your money to buy. Yep. You got to come write us to the check of what you want. That was unheard of. But today, it's just another example that, you know, we're living in a world where volatility is everywhere. Yeah, and I mean, I want to say three years ago,

anhydrismonia was a little under $400 a ton, and it's just an easy one for people to kind gauge. And then I think last year, previous year, I think we got to like $650 or something like that, and we locked in pretty good. And now we're at $1,500 a ton. It's gone up $1,100 a ton in three years. years, sub three years. That's just insane. Yeah, completely. Is there anything that you're trying to do on your farm to maybe help with input costs? Is there anything that you're trying to do different this year or maybe a goal that you have to try to do something different on your operation to help input, even help yield, anything? So one thing that I've been doing is drain tile. Drain tile back home has

had tremendous return for us. There's a lot of, there's a lot of skeptics on if it works down in our area. I just got back from the National Conservation and Drainage Expo, the first one up there in Des Moines. We got some weird soils back home, but I mean, we're seeing when I'm pulling in tile and my spacing's close. I'm 20 foot spacings and my pipe's not very deep because the water doesn't want to filter it down. I mean, I took, I took ground that in that year, if I was the gas with the wet spring and stuff like that, it would have grown 100 bushel corn. And it's like with the good growing, you. year two years ago i i was rolling in 280 bushel corn on that farm you know so it's like the tile

pay in the first year that i've been doing uh i've experimented a little bit with cover crops uh i only experiment with cover crops um as i don't want to use the word fad or anything like that because i think it does work and i think there's a space for them but am i going to be in every acre kind type of guy with the cover crops no um experimented with that a little bit because if landlords or want to be in doing cover crops and they want to be on that side of things, I think they do good things for the ground. I really do. But I think that there's also a risk that I take on in a time deal that I take on as the farmer. So that's going to be a landlord and me as their tenant, like we're going to hold hands on this deal. You know, we're going to be working on this together. So can you feel like I just didn't

want to cut you off there, but like you feel like that's something that you maybe could negotiate with them like as a young guy trying to rent some ground landlords are more inclined to like hey I'll help you out or maybe drop the rent a little bit if you do more cover crop stuff like is that something you've seen? I haven't been in that spot yet. No, I haven't been in that spot and realistically I would rather put terraces and tile and stuff on that farm

because one of the things that they want to say about that ground is that it's like oh you're not going to move the dirt if you have some roots growing out there in the tire you know all the time hey guess what you got good drainage and that water doesn't flow across the top of that piece of ground that dirt ain't going nowhere either you don't do any fault tillage we don't do fall tillage down home um it's like our ground's not going to move and we're in highly erodible ground so and we vertical till before corn goes in so realistically our loose dirt out there's low and we put tons and tons of terraces in it's like i'm pretty sure my dad's got three years worth a terrace building. I've got so many edlets poked around in oddball places waiting for him to build

terraces on them. I'd much rather spend the money. Wise money if you have so much to spend fix your dirt, fix your drainage issues. Don't go spend the money on the cover crop. You know, it's like spend that money on putting in a little bit of pipe, fix this wet spot. Because if you fix that wet spot, that might help this wet spot, you know, and you might not have this little ditch start to cut. That's, that's kind of where I'm at. is that a budget your deal and I would rather put my money into into mechanically fixing the issues. So if that makes sense. Yeah.

But yeah, if it was to come down to that and a landlord wanted to have a cover crop on their ground, I have some government ground that I leased that I have to put a cover crop on, that's that's turned me away from that lease. It's like that lease is coming up. I don't know if I'll be going back after that one or not. I just, it's, like I said, it's good. And if you farm two, 300 acres, yeah, that's probably something that you should look into. If you had cattle, yep, that'd be a good value add there.

But just as the rocroper for me, it's a risk. It's a, at the end of the year, you got to go sling some money out there. Or you got to hire a helicopter or an airplane to sling it out there. And then it might not grow. It's like people will say you have to spend a little less money on chemicals and stuff like that. Yeah, that's true. But if your cover crop gets away from you and you can't get your cash crop in or something oddball on that, one year it screws up. It's you're in trouble.

So, but I'm not going to, I'm not here hating on cover crops whatsoever. I think there's good stuff to be had, but it's just like everything in farming. It's got its place. Yep. It's got to fit your operation. It's got its practice. Yep. So what about manure?

Is that something that? I'd love it. Yeah. So like, I talked, in the video, it's like one of your guys is guest, which was, I listen to that podcast is like if you guys can dehydrate manure it's like when you guys do that put me atop of your phone list because i'm going to probably buy every single load that you guys have yeah um but yeah i get to experiment a little bit hopefully with manure this year uh but pretty much there's no manure sources there's no turkey litter down home there's nothing and that's probably

something else that hurts out our ground is that we don't get to introduce that organic matter kind of like you guys get to do i mean manure's uh fantastic I would say, like I kind of romanticize about dairy farms in a little bit because I think it's the perfect circle of farming. And it's so funny that if you get on to social media, it's like dairy farmers get attacked. Like you guys get attacked as, you know, hog farmers, but dairy farmers get attacked all the time. But they are, they're like perfect. Like they are, they like, if there was like one row model of a farmer, it's a dairy farmer. Because they take a piece of ground and they don't farm a whole bunch of ground.

You know, usually they don't farm a whole bunch of ground. They take that piece of ground and they grow a crop to feed a cattle. And these guys are, what's the technical term if you're like really good with cattle, like the guy that takes care of the cows? Animal husband. Are they a herdsman or something like that? A herdsman. Fantastic herdsman.

I mean, especially with the technology, I'm going to go to a robotic dairy here soon. With that technology, it's like they can tell when the cows probably got a headache. Yep. Yeah, no. It's like, it's crazy how well taken care of these cows are. So they take care of this piece of ground that they raise the crop to feed those cows. And then that cow produces them a product to feed us in exchange for taking care of that cow. Every single day that they can, you know, sell.

They either keep their calves or they sell their calves so they get a yearly cash off of a calf. And then the next thing that they do is that when that cow naturally dies or, well, it doesn't naturally die, but is going to maybe naturally die, becomes a McDonald's hamburger or something along those lines. Right. You know, so it's like very good. You know, that cow lives a good life, provides for us, ebb and flow. And then they take them newer. From all the stuff that they fed and they feed it right back to the ground.

Yep. Like that is the perfect circle of farming. Now, would any part of me want to be a dairy farmer? Growing up, I had a friend, his name's Redd. It's if he ever listens to this. I remember going to his dairy farmer as a kid. And I mean, you get that picture of milk after the milking. You put that in with some fruit loops.

I mean, that's the best bowl of cereal we've ever had. Yep. But no part of me would want to be a dairy farmer. Like, I mean, if you think a farmer works hard, it's like roadcroppers sit down. Yeah, dairy farmers stand up. Yeah. It's like, dairy farmers got it. But with these robotic dairies, it's like, that's starting to get more feasible for guys.

Yep. Mm-hmm. But I think it's still a lot. Yeah. Still a lot. Definitely. 100% best tractor what's the best tractor dream tractor dream tractor best green tractor so I bought my dad and I bought the john deer 810 together um I don't know what the best green tractor is I am not a tractor geek no not not a tractor geek by any way shape or form

I wouldn't say that I'm colorblind completely um but I'm pretty I would be kind of of colorblind. I think they all got their own fit and I am I will tell people this is that say you're we'll just say you're all red right and you're a diehard red guy but for instance shout out to kensie you know like they they make a heck of a planner right but you don't want to run that planner because it's blue all we're doing is hurting ourselves because if we continue to consolidate you know and go to one of these you know if there's no spice we're losing. You know, if we don't have options, we lose. So pretty much I look for what I think the best tractor is to fit.

When I go shopping for a tractor, I typically like to try and find a one-owner tractor, pre-deaf, pretty much, lower hours, which is also what apparently everybody else looks for. 100%. Yeah. So when I bought the 8110 to become our bean planting tractor, I saw 52 tractor sell. I think it was 42 or 52 tractor cell. So I really researched what I think the value of those tractors would be. I went to Central Illinois and bought that tractor, 3,200 hours or something like that.

But I also research like the kind of the history of those tractors. And those ought tractors and 10 series tractors had just have fantastic track record. So that's when I went. That's why I was like, that's why I went green on that one. And then I went and, you know, the last tractor I bought was the, 535 quad track same thing one owner had been on that farm the entire life it was two pairs of them it's like wish dad would have bought the other one you know kind of hinted at him a little bit hey get that one bought you know it's like but um same thing low hours pre-deaf so it's like if you

ask me what's the better track tractor it's going to be the red one you know row crop tract tract tractors probably going to lean towards green you know what do i think the best combine is I really kind of like them yellow ones. I really kind of like the yellow ones. Chore tractors, I will say that if you're a cattle guy and that tractor's going to die on your farm, Cabota, you know. But if you're a tractor roller, you know, and you're going to be one of those guys that wants to keep selling the stuff,

you probably need green paint. You probably need green paint. That's what it is. It's like the best thing the green paint's got, it's parts industry, it's parts network, and dealer network. And it's supposedly resale value. but it's like you're going to spend a whole bunch more or you know it's like you're just

up in that a little bit you know so it is what it is not colorblind but I'm not necessarily brand loyal either so if that makes sense yeah that uh you know in our area well I think pretty well cross the Midwest there's more to life than finding the perfect car but finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off-road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at ototrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like

playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Deer, for everything they did wrong, the one thing they did that has probably made them more money than anything that they've brought to the market, any tractor line they've come out with, The one thing they did was they kept all their dealers.

When the farm crisis came through and you lost so many, so many, well, I mean, that was the undoing of Case and IH and Massey and all of them. I mean, like we, Washington, Iowa, hell, everybody in their dog had a Massey 750 or 850. Everybody ran Massey. there was one dealer here in town and he he got pushed out today i don't even know where you'd go i think there's one in morning sun and there's one clear up north somewhere i mean there just isn't there's a john deer dealership every i mean they're everywhere yep that's the one thing they did and you can you can say whatever else but that made them what they are today because so many people bought deer because they knew they could get parts for it. They knew they could get it

worked on. That, I mean, that drove what they are today, 100%. And they do have great resale value. The only problem is, I can speak of this firsthand, is I'm always amazed when I go to trade a piece of equipment and they tell me what they'll give me for it. I'm like, damn, that's practically what I paid for it. But then they tell you what the thing you're going to buy to replace that with. And it's double what that thing was. So when you're doubling every so often, it's easy to have great resale on that piece of you're trading. Yeah, that's kind of their gimmick.

Is that like artificial inflation or something like that? As long as they keep up in their replacement cost, then it's like, well, that makes yours worth more valuable. More value. 100%. As long as we keep jacking up that next one, jacking up that next one. It's like when it's a million dollars for a combine,

And it's like, how much higher can you go? I think they've kind of hit, well, I don't know whether they have or not. We're going to find out. But I feel like the ceiling is, I feel like there's a lot of this equipment that we're all bouncing our head off of. But maybe not. I guess time will tell. Well, and if it gets automated, you know, we always say if it automation comes into play, maybe it gets smaller. Maybe these tractors get smaller.

And you've got three little tractors running. Combine, that's a little harder. I don't know how you're going to automate all that. But tractors planning. I'm pretty excited about that big. bud going back in production. Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, one of them might not be such a bad thing to be showing up on the farm,

bud. It's like, I'm kind of liking that, you know. Yeah, I think that's a good thing. Yeah, that's a good thing.

It'll be interesting to see, like I read their spec sheet or something like that, like the side wall, their deals like one and a half inch, like steel or whatever. It's like cat parts, easy the source. There's a guy on TikTok that I watch Edison Motors.

Um, you guys are Edison? Yeah, Edison Motors. He's building electronic logging trucks. Oh, yes. I've seen it. I haven't watched any of his stuff all the way through, but I've seen his shorts. And it's like, and I'm, you know, I guess I'm just a cheerleader for that. You can say is that? Yeah, he has a, I'm like, let's go. You know, like, let's kind of, let's kind of bring this stuff back a little bit to, like, he, he has a saying on there. I watched a clip of him and he, they were talking about how fast they've been able to do. this and he said i will take seven good mechanics over two engineers absolutely any day of the week yeah where you become an engineer it should be in like a three-year apprenticeship as a mechanic yep you know and what mollie and i got jimmy johns on the way up here and uh she goes they got like

what's 10 things 15 things that it took me to learn 50 years to learn or something like that she goes what's your favorite one and uh it said something along the lines of of it took one what an amateur built the arc and professionals built the Titanic yes and I'm like that's pretty good that's good that is good that is good uh what's your advice for people looking to get into social media tips and tactics oh geez you don't have to go crazy in depth with it but if there's somebody out there that's listened to you're like shit he just bit the bullet guy editing software and he kind of did youtube on accident maybe i could give it a try it's a lot it's a lot harder than you expect um you just got to be kind of who you are

um find your you can say find your own niche it's hard like it's just hard and it's just you're it's going to be a hit or miss know who your audience is it's not necessarily chase viewers if you like you want a bunch of subscribers get on tictock you know get on ticto do the ticto dance or something like that um but It's not easy. It's not easy. I didn't start it as a business. It's like, like very much so. Genuinely, we started, I started it for basically fun and it's turned into a job. And if you really want to do this, it is a job. It's a job. So don't think that you're going to be an overnight, whatever success. God, damn it, I'm out. Get off. Be realistic, you know. Or are you? can just go with my business plan when I went farming. It's like just be bullheaded and put your head

down and start doing something. You know, it's like just try it. It's like you'll figure out if it's for you or not really darn quick, really darn quick, you know. And if you can't, if you can't be consistent at it, then you're, you're in trouble. Yeah, that is. You know, it's like I took them, what? I took a pretty much. So Molly and I just got back from the honeymoon. We went to Dallas for a wedding and I was gone for 14 days. Tried to do an end of the year like wrap up video. That was way hard to do.

And I was like I wasn't, I'm done with this. And so like my video schedule, I try and at least put out one video a week. And I went a month without a video during holiday times, traveling, honeymoon, that stuff. And it's just amazing like how many people have sent me emails or Facebook messages. Are you okay?

Are you okay? Are you alive? Did you fall on a hole? Yeah. It's like, dude, it's like, I'm breathing a little bit without a camera, bud. Yeah. So it's a responsibility. Like, there's been times that I've gone home and I feel this weird pressure to get something done.

And it's like, I'll get home at 10 o'clock at night and be like, I haven't had a video in three days. It's like, I've got to go downstairs, spend four hours downstairs. Molly sacrifices for that because, you know, she's upstairs and reading a book. book or doing something like that. It's time that we're not spending together. But, you know, you can't sugar code it either. Like YouTube has afforded me a lot of opportunities, a lot of cool opportunities, not necessarily money-making opportunities. But like, I get to go and chat with companies as a now 31-year-old farmer that, again, lived in a camper next to a grain bin, tried to get a $10,000 loan, you know, to start farming. 100%. And now, you know, you know,

this year I got to go up and hang out with the kinsen balls during harvest. Yep. Talk about cool like that. And you get to work with companies and they listen to you, you know, and what you're thinking, you know, which is really, really smart. Yep. And those companies that do listen to these next generations are going to be ahead because they're the 60-year-old guys and stuff like that, you know, my dad, he's, he's not a

lifer. There are guys that are going to farm until they physically can't anymore. but someday they will not physically can't and it's like if they're listening to them right now and they don't have us young guys yep or gals on their radar they're they're in trouble you know if they don't have younger tech guys or you know younger engineers screwing shit up needless to say you know um they're going to be in trouble so realistically it's been a really cool opportunity like here we're sitting in a barn you know i probably wouldn't ever met you guys never walked around and your pig barns learn from you.

So it's been it's been a kind of a fun ride. You know, I don't know where it's going to take me. Don't know how long they'll keep going. But, yeah, if you want to do it, try it. But do not sugarcoat it. It ain't easy.

It ain't easy. And it's a crap load of work. Yeah. I guess we're going to wrap it up here. I mean, you got most what you want to talk about out of the way. One thing I really wanted to ask you, I mean, you say you're a first generation farmer kind of squared. What drives you?

Is it, you mentioned before, because you do a lot of shit. You tile, you do the hay, you do the YouTube, you do the road crop. I mean, you're busting your ass. What is, what drives you? Is it the legacy of getting a farm and passing it on? Or what is it? That is a goal, you know, to do that. That is a goal.

I also really get satisfaction. from the work that I do. And I am always trying to better myself. I'm always trying to learn and better myself. And with farming, when you wake up and you start for the day, especially doing field work or something like that, at the end of the day, you can look back and say, I did that today.

You know, I did that today. And then I evaluate myself. You know, the technology is like, okay, I planted this many acres an hour. But I'm not trying to get, you know, super many acres of an hour. I planted this many acres an hour today. And I did really good. And it's like,

selected a good hybrid for that farm this year, you know, and we got our spraying done correctly. And, you know, I'm always chasing, how Matthew Econahey had a really good, like, I think it wasn't an acceptance speech or like a graduation speech is that he's always chasing future him. And it's like, and I always feel like I'm chasing future Ben, you know, and I'm always trying to get better. And I guess the day that I stopped trying to learn and the day I stopped trying to get better. It's the day I retire, you know, and then I'll start trying to get good at, I don't know, golf, which I'm okay at now, but I ain't no Tiger Woods yet. So. Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, I feel like that's a, that's a trend. I mean, I feel that way.

You feel that way. My whole life, you've been that way. And I feel like that's kind of, I think most farmers are that way, you know. We do get a lot of satisfaction out of our work, and all of us are really legacy oriented and I think all of us try to make a better crop than we did last year. Yeah, we're all optimists. You have to try to be an opt-you know. You got to be. You could say legacy oriented but if I think if you try and groom, you know, and my dad never had any pressure for me to come back to farm. If anything, he, he didn't ever say don't come back, but he sure shit didn't make it easy. He didn't paint it in a positive life. No, you know, and it's like so I don't think you could do that like saying, hey, this is going to be easy and just hand stuff over.

which in a roundabout way is that if you hand something over, I think you're going to really screw up that next generation. They're going to lose it. Yep. So if you don't make it hard on them, which is also, excuse me, hold on, I need a little. Beer check.

Hell yeah. I think you also, as a young guy, an old guy, you know, younger generation and older generation is that I think it's a responsibility for that older generation. to really help out younger generation. And if you don't make it hard on them in some way, shape, or form, and they make it to that age and they're not making decisions, you just did a huge injustice for that person, you know?

And then on the flip side of it, if you're a young guy and you just kind of pin your ears back and you don't speak up for what you think, you're also, you know, screwing yourself over. Because you're investing your future. And it's like times, you know, people will say, oh, what's your most valuable asset? Oh, it's the land or it's these tractors I got. It's like, uh-uh, it's your time.

And it's like, and as a young guy, if you're giving somebody your time, you're giving them something that's, you know, you go ask an 80-year-old if, hey, you got a million dollars in your bank. Tell you what, you give me that million dollars and you turn back to 30. How many of them do you think you're going to give me that million dollars?

So it's like you're 30, given the 80-year-old, you know, or your 70-year-old person, your time, you're giving them a million bucks. That's an investment. You got to say. And that's just my opinion. You know, and I agree. Young guys should understand it. Now there's a difference. There's a big difference in between, you know, being a young punk and, you know, being whatever you want to say, a participant. Yeah. Don't be a bystander. Don't be a bystander.

Yeah. Well, that was, that was really good. I think you dropped a lot of wisdom on people. and I think we just had a real good all-around farm talk. That was really nice. We better end it there because I'm running out of the wisdom. But no. Yeah, I was a really good episode. And I really appreciate you coming on. It was, we've been trying to get you on for so freaking long.

And we finally got you on. I'm glad we did because it was damn good. Yeah, thanks for everyone. You want to have the caveat of telling Molly's or a little getting tackled by a pig story? No, she don't want to tell that? We tried to get Molly to ride a pig. I got a little saddle on the whole night. Yara's, but she was having none of it.

She had a flashback to her fair days. Yeah, she had a bad experience. Bad experience. I actually had a bad experience when I was little, too. It was back here where these old barns were and they're torn down now. But first day that dad got me, I don't know if I was like four or six years old. And he put me in a pen full of pigs and one of them little bastards bit me and I never wanted to go back in a barn.

But look what happened. It just takes time. You just got to get around them enough and you'll flip the switch. Yeah. Oh no, it was an accident. Where do you go? Yeah, so no, thank you guys so much for coming down. It was awesome. It was awesome. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

So go follow Ben guys. Follow him at Iowa and Farmer. He's putting out really good stuff. Check out what he's up to. And pay the fee, share the show, and leave your view on Spotify or Apple. And we'll see you guys back here for another episode next week.