Barn Talk - Farming Like It's 1850: The Lost Art of Dark-Fired Tobacco

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In this episode, we sit down with Jesse Jordan, Vice President of Jordan Farms out of Nashville, Tennessee. Jesse gives us an inside look at the world of dark fired tobacco, grown and cured using the same tried and true methods from 200 years ago. From starting tobacco in greenhouses, nurturing it in the fields, and mastering the delicate art of curing, Jesse walks us through the hands-on journey that every plant takes. But Jesse’s story is about more than just tobacco. He’s also the owner-operator of a thriving tree service business and shares how he balances entrepreneurship, family farm tradition, and rural life all while being just a half-hour from the heart of Nashville’s country music scene. We talk about living the highs and lows of modern agriculture: the realities of equipment breakdowns, labor struggles, shifting markets, and the satisfaction that comes from a hard day’s work. There’s plenty of laughter, nostalgia, and a few great stories about hunting, barbecuing, and the classic vehicles that make farm life memorable. Whether you’re curious about farming, love old trucks, or just want to hear what it’s like to build a business from the ground up, this is one episode you won’t want to miss! JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.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👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow  ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS    ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4    ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer’s X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler  ● Tork’s X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler       00:00 Growing the podcast community 16:46 Starting plants in February 26:42 Controlling tobacco curing process 37:11 Preparing tobacco for grading 48:13 Early career and farming interests 57:01 Balancing farm work and tree work 01:09:04 Staying ahead in farming business 01:14:58 Starting a cigar business 01:25:03 Expanding into direct sales 01:34:56 Buying and selling Jeeps regularly 01:45:54 Starting a farming side business 01:56:13 Collecting and preparing hickory slabs 02:09:27 Jesse's social media and plans ------------------------------- ⚠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

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. 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 banger. This is going to be a damn good episode. We had dinner with our guests last night.

We tend to do that a lot if we can have somebody come the night before. And I'll tell you what, we're in for a treat. You guys are in for a treat. I think you're going to get a lot of value from this one, a lot of entertainment. This is a really interesting guy. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, all that we ask is you share it out with the people that you know. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. And we found the best way to grow the podcast is through word of mouth and organically through you guys.

We appreciate all of you that do that. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. the more you guys do that, the more credible you make our show, which in turn allows us to have great guests that we're having like today. Come to the barn, have some awesome conversations with us, and it takes two seconds, guys. We love hearing your thoughts overall. The last thing you can do to support us here at Barn Talk is you can go sign up for our weekly newsletter. We're putting together a weekly newsletter all about what's going on in rural America with our thoughts on it. It's completely free.

and we have a goal right now if we get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers on that email list. We want to throw a live event right here at the barn, have some Bushlight, bring on speakers that have been on the podcast, have delivered a lot of value to get to you guys and just have a kick-ass time and get to meet you guys, interact with you guys, all that. How long of a newsletter can you make before people stop reading all the way through it? Because it's hard to pack all that stuff in there. Like, I always feel like there's just more. Like, I always want to add more to it.

I don't know. I think we got a pretty sizable newsletter that's digestible, but it's not too long. I think you don't want to get it too long because people won't read. Yeah, people won't read it. We try to give you guys a mix of farming blue collar trades. We do a trivia word at the end. We do some trivia at the bottom of the newsletter.

So it's, it's, it's, I like it. Anybody that's subscribed to it, I'd love to hear the feedback. And what I also love about it is it gives you guys the chance to interact with us because people can reply to it, which is cool. You can't always, you know, talk a ton on YouTube comments or anything like that. So it's nice to kind of hear people's overall feedback. But I didn't know that it was Gun Show Day here in the barn or I would have wore my wife

theater. I had to match the energy of our guests today. He's a pretty swole individual. we went and got a we got a workout in this morning and so uh i just wanted to i really wanted to just fill this barn with testosterone this morning to just uplift you and and and just match the vibe today well thanks for not calling me yeah because i i didn't figure you would you would want to come and you probably got enough lifting in today with chores so i did i got sick pigs so i got uh i'm been working on my guns uh two pigs at a time so yeah it's a heck of a deal how are you

I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. We got the beans all planted. I don't know how far David is on his. He's over to his place running. If the weather holds, we'll be back here Thursday, back here tomorrow. And we should, if the weather holds out, we should have all our corn planted by the end of the week. So that would be fantastic.

And then, I don't know, then it could warm up. This weather is kind of trash around here. I had to get my vest out this morning. I was soft. Yeah. It was a little chilly this morning. I don't know. Mother Nature just keeps teasing us, it seems like.

It does. Well, our guest today is living a life a lot of young guys would kill for. Jesse Jordan is the vice president of Jordan Farms down in Nashville, Tennessee, where his family runs road crops and grows dark-fired tobacco the same exact way it was done 200 years ago. He also owns and operates Jordan's tree service on the side. We're going to talk about the art of curing tobacco, the reality of modern machinery, collecting old trucks, what it's like balancing

the Nashville country music scene with the grind of the farm. Without any further due, let's get into it. There you go. Now you got it. Do you feel cool? I feel like I look like an idiot.

But it's sweet. It is. They're pretty good. They're not bad. Once you get like a fourth of the way into it, that's when it gets good, in my opinion. That and like the last little bit is good. Except sometimes when it goes out

and I have the last little bit to burn my mustache and like just fucking cringe my mustache. I mean, you have to get, you can get into it now. You can, you're going to have to really just, there you go,

you're getting it now. And that's the thing too with a smaller cigar like that, they're easier to light than one that's like that big around. It takes damn 30 minutes. Is that? No,

you still need to go. You got to have that cherry on the end. You got to have, yeah, you got to get it where you can really burn something. I'm surprised at how sweet that is. It's good. That's what I'm saying.

And that's, hit it again. Hit it. Keep on. Yeah, so you're getting it lit now. And just, once you get it lit,

you can just puff on it here and there and it'll stay lit. So, yeah, you're, you're good, I think. Oh,

oh, shoot. Here, let me, let me, let me, you might have tossed me that lighter. Okay.

Look at that. What's weird about these cigars, too, is they're cramped on the end. so they take the excess leaf. They don't cut it off. They roll it. It's rolled inside there and it covers up the end.

So sometimes you'll have it cut right here and you'll go to light it and you'll have no draw on it. But once it like burns through that initial leaf, it like all comes at once. It's pretty cool. Trish is going to be real proud of us. I have spent a small fortune on cigars. It's honestly quite sad because these are about probably $12 a piece. yeah you've got a pretty good habit going yeah dude it's almost like drugs i mean you gotta cut uh you got you got cut trees till 10 a m just to cut your cigar just that's exactly what's that lighter yeah you just

you just think he's either over there you're probably gonna go out of tower too yeah dude it's it's it's a bad addiction and what's bad as i traded my snuff addiction i'm like yeah i don't want to have no chains all that was way cheaper yeah i know in hindsight it was now that little tin of cigars like 30 bucks and that'll last me like two days. Okay. So if you pace yourself on that. If I paste myself on that, you know, I think I'm good. So initially you got a good or going, but as long as you have a good even burn, that's the thing. Mine wasn't even.

Yeah. And sometimes these, these cheaper cigars, like these $10 cigars won't burn evenly because they're not rolled exactly. Not one's, not everyone's the same. Like a Davido cigar or a Padron, dude, some of them things are. serial number like where they keep up with them and like I smoked one the other day I smoked a drone I think it was a 110 dollar cigar holy and that sucker burnt I was deer hunting when I smoked it too which was a terrible idea and it burnt like perfect everything was perfect about it

it was it's a work of art like really yeah look he's over here dude it's just a it's a big dick thing to do I mean which I people people like oh you only smoke them for show. I'm like, no, dude, I smoke. Like, I'm a smoker. I'm like a pack a day marlite smoker. So when you're, when you're going a day and you've got it, you're practically chewing the end of it by the time you get to the bottom market. Yeah, sometimes I'm spitting brown. Yeah. That's. It's so pretty much I'm chewing and smoking at this point, which is dumb. I got a buddy that quit chewing and he couldn't, he thought he was going to quit, you know, just cold turkey and he couldn't do it. So he started chewing the gum. then he got addicted to the gum and then he went back to chew and I said

why did you go back to chew and he goes I figured out the gum was more expensive than to chew and I was addicted to that so I just went back to chew well that's the thing with the Zins man it's like it's a cleaner alternative and I'm sure there's not as mean

you know side effects it's stain your teeth and stuff but like you're just swapping one addiction for another like exactly that was my thing was like whenever I was dipping I couldn't imagine myself sitting in a duck buying duck hunting and not having a can of snuff in my back pocket. Like I would have freak out.

So I was like, okay, I don't like this feeling. So I got away from it. I'd done lost weight and stuff. And like, then I was good for like two years. And then one day I went to the liquor store. I'm like, I'll get a cigar. And it was all downhill from there. I'm like, if you grow tobacco, you know,

you got to do a little something. Yeah, you got to represent. So it's like me. You got to have a BLT. Yeah. Got to have the bacon. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Well, shit, boys, we're live. So Jesse Jordan, welcome Barn Talk. Good to be here. We are, this is a first for Barn Talk. We have never smoked cigars in this barn, and we've never had a guess bring us cigars, but we're making history today. Yeah, we're pretty smart.

We've got three lit cigars going in a barn, bone dry, full of straw. Well, there's not very much straw left anymore. We have fire extinguishers, too. Yeah. Well, we don't have any ventilation yet. yet, but we have dreamed, dad and I have dreamed about getting a cigar lounge down in the,

down in the bottom half of this barn, because we don't really use the barn for anything anymore. You don't put any animals in it. So we have all this space and we're like, man, it'd be sick to have a cigar lounge or have a poker, you know, have a poker table somewhere or something like that. But then where would you put the two cylinder John Deers that are down there?

So that when you open that door, so that A, we're going to put, we're going to restore it. We're going to put it right up there. Oh, that's, that's solid. That's the one. What's the first one down there, the tricycle one when you first? The one right inside. There's one right inside the door that's a 4010.

Yeah. And next to it is a 60, two-cylinder 60. And then there's a 38 or a 30, I can't remember. I think it's a 38 unstyled A. And that was the first. So the first tractor that we had here was a twin city. a Twin City and then they got rid of that and they had a I think they had a Ferguson and then my grandpa bought that new that unstyled A and they had that forever

and then when my dad came home and started farming there's an 8-N Ford sitting back there and he and he and Wayne Nup and Jack Trotman and Ray Whistler all went to the Ford dealership and they got a package deal. They bought four of them. They bought four eight in fours. And then the 60 he added and then the

4010 and yeah. I bet that was a huge day whenever that 4010 came to the fall. Oh, it was a game changer. People say that's like the best tractor ever made, arguably. You don't think so? What do you think? I think a 4010 is cool. I think a 4020. Yeah. Well, the 4020 was what the 4010 didn't just didn't have quite enough power. That was the thing. And that was the 40-20. They up the power on it. You give me that lighter because I went out. Yeah. I went out. You got to keep poop on. You got to puff on it. You got to puff on it. Party foul. Party foul. All right. Well, let's, so middle, middle of Tennessee used to be the dark fire tobacco capital of the world. Well, it still is. Like Robertson County, which we're in Cheatham.

So we're like kind of south of Robertson County, southwest-ish. And so Robertson County, Tennessee, is the dark fire capital of the world. And then worldwide, like our dark tobacco is called Kentucky Firecure, which there's a lot of dark tobacco grow in Kentucky, which I would probably get some hate for my Kentucky growers from this. But like Robertson County is the dark fire capital of the world. So it's Tennessee, Kentucky Firecure, but it's mainly called Kentucky Firecure.

So you're one of the, but do you feel like you're one of the only young guys still left in this game? There's just some younger ones. We have a neighbor. He's 30. He's got some tobacco. And I'm sure there's some younger guys. but the vast majority is, you know, getting up there.

Yeah, and it's like the old school, old-fashioned way of doing it, right? Yeah, it, dark fire tobacco has not changed much at all since it started, since it started being grown. We're still using some of the same tobacco sticks that are probably 150 or 200 years old. Like, you know, the only difference is, of course, like the labor and the barns and the scaffold wagons and, you know, just some of the ways we do it. but all in all, it's pretty much the same. You know, it's just gotten a little bit easier in some aspects.

Like, you know, the setting. We use a transplanter. You know, we don't use wooden scaffolds anymore. They just set these wooden scaffolds up in a field and cut one area of the field and bring it all to the middle. Now we pull them around with a tractor and not metal gas tubes that's welded and stuff like that. So that makes a lot easier, but it's still all harvested by hand.

You know, and everything's done by hand. Like I was telling you all last night, each plant from start to finish is touched by a human hands like it could be 15 or 16 times and its whole life that's crazy i know and it's it's like i said it's not like grain farming where you you plant it and you spray it and you you're harvesting or you know spread fertilizer on or whatever uh yeah it's very labor intensive okay so because most of this audience doesn't know anything about tobacco yeah let's go all in on tobacco to kick things off okay i'm ready Hey, thanks for sticking with us.

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They hold up to whatever I throw out of them. And that's exactly why I just got a pair, because when dad finds something that actually works and holds up, the kind of abuse we put gear through, you pay attention. What's really cool about Brunt is that it was started by a guy named Eric Girard, who grew up Blue Collar. He was tired of big brands, ignoring the trades, and turning them into fashion brands.

So we built boots specifically for the guys, doing the real work. In fact, every product they make is named after a real worker in the trades. It's honestly priced, great value gear that's built for guys like us. And they're so confident in these boots, Brun even lets you try them on the job. If you don't love them, just send them back. You can always use code Barn Talk 10 to get $10 off your first purchase today. You won't regret it. Now, let's get back to it. So when you start, are you starting, when you plan it in the field, are you planting it from seed or have you already started it like in a greenhouse? So we started in a greenhouse with foam trays and a float bed.

Okay. So we have a cedar and it comes through and drops the seed in the trays with the dirt. We put it in the float bed and it stays in there from February till, you know, getting right around now first of May. So we mow the plants off and we add a little fertilizer and, you know, spray them for fungus and stuff like that. And then it's transplanted into a field with a, we use like a two-row setter with fingers that come down.

Kind of like a vegetable, how they plant vegetables. kind of the same way. And so that's how it's initially started. So how long is it take to get it ready? Like when do you start your greenhouse and then when do you take it out to actually plant it? Okay, so we start the greenhouse usually the end of, we start our first plants at the end of February.

And usually like this year, we have a 30 by 75 greenhouse. And so we did one bed, which is a fourth of the greenhouse, right at the end of February. and then we did the second bed the next week and then we waited like two or three weeks to do the rest of it because we have a, you know, kind of our early,

so we have options on our plants and then different varieties as well. But so February 24th and then, or I think that's when we said it right around my birthday. And then usually right around Mother's Day is when we first start transplanting and setting. And so what we'll do then is we'll set like, you know, 10 acres and then we'll wait a week or two

because we know it's going to take a week or two. because we know it's going to take a week or two to harvest that 10 acres. And so it's all planned out in that aspect. And of course, weather and stuff has a lot to do with it. But that's kind of how we plan our, from greenhouse to setting is when we'll harvest. But some varieties of tobacco can stay on a hill longer than others. And it just depends on a lot of different factors. Yeah, so let's talk about growing it.

You get it in the field. You're growing it. And then I want to talk about the curing process. too. So you talked about last night, you guys, you guys don't side dress or you do side dress. Okay, so some people side dress. We don't side dress. We put all the fertilizer up front. And so that's kind of what we do because we're aiming, we want the weight at the end result, but we want also the quality. So like I said last night, a lot of snuff growers will go in and put fertilizer up front and then they'll see how their crops doing, you know, on up in the process.

And if they want to add some pounds, they'll throw the fertilizer to it. And, you know, but with us, we want a good steady growth throughout the whole process. So we usually just put all the fertilizer up front. And then worse comes to worse. If something's not right, we can always do that. But so that's what we're shooting for is more of not the biggest, but we just want good, quality, even growth. Because you're, you guys, you guys do.

snuff, right? Yes. But then you also have, are you doing like rolled cigars to like, so like what, what we do is, is we raise the kind of tobacco. It's called wrapper tobacco. It's the same as a snuff plant, but we try to get those top few leaves to be perfect for cigar wrappers and they're sent overseas. And then the rest of the plant is made in the snuff or chewing tobacco or, you know,

whatever. So that's kind of what we aim for. And like I said, a lot of other. growers. There are a lot of other growers don't really raise wrapper. They just want the pounds for snub. So that's mainly where our tobacco goes to. Where is it go to Europe usually overseas? Yeah, Italy. Italy loves. Italians love rippant cigars. Yeah, it's not made to a cigar like we're smoking right now. It's made to like a little shrewd is what it's called. It's like a little kind of like a cigarette, but it's just a cigar. And that's mainly where that goes. And I'm sure

some of it goes to other places, but I think that's the main source of our tobacco goes. Are the Chinese still smoking like fiends? I think they are. Everybody, I think, smoking still like fiends besides us. Yeah, well, the Russians are, but we don't sell them anything because we're not playing nice with them.

We're barred right now. Yeah. Which that, the cigar, there's, our tobacco is, like I said, mainly snuff and chewing tobacco and cigar wrappers. But like, you know,

the Carolinas, they raise the vast majority of the cigarette tobacco. I'm sure there's a lot of cigarette tobacco raised overseas as well. And then there's also, that's a flu. blue cured and then you have an air cured burly and that's what you see in like the kentucky's and

there's some raised there's a lot raised in tennessee as well and then um we raise also a air cured dark variety and i think it's it's blended into snuff and chew in the bucket and then there's also an air cured wrapper which we raise some of that too so which it doesn't make as much as a fire cured because you know there's a lot more to fire cured than is air care just hanging in the barn and just let it go. Yeah. Which a lot of guys, there's some big air care growers have like barns with fans and vents and crazy stuff,

which, you know, usually with us, if we need air, we have fans and stuff. So that's the main thing. So the growing season on tobacco, does tobacco have, is there diseases you have to worry about? Like we worry about gray leaf spot, tar spot. So like on tobacco,

the biggest killer tobacco is a disease called Blatchang. and man, it's the craziest disease. It's a spore in the ground, and it gets in the stalk of the plant and just kills it from the inside out. Okay. There are blackshank resistant varieties, and there's things that can, you know, slow it down.

But the blackshank resistant varieties for us, there's a couple that are good for Rapper, but a lot of the blackshank resistant varieties don't do as good on Rapper, but these big snuff growers will raise that so they have no issue with Blackshank. But usually blackshank doesn't come into the ground on our ground until like the second year. So if you raise a blackshank, one that's not

resistant to blackshank the first year, you want to raise blackshank resistant on the second year. And it seems like hard drought or hard rain activates it. So it's like the ground can have it in there and it doesn't even come out until it's activated, which is a weird. So that's a big one. There's a tomato wilt virus. It's like a rust looking thing that gets on the plant. that's kind of been a thing going on. And then there's, you know, just several different things like, it's called the, I can't remember what it's called, but it makes little bitty spots.

And it's like activated after rain. That's like car spot. Yeah, it's, it's something like what beans or something we get. And so you have to stay on top of your spraying and everything. So are there fungicide? Do you spray fungicide? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All that kind of stuff.

So, you know, you just have to really be on the lookout for that because if you let that stuff go, it can kill a rapper crop I mean, in no time. So we're always on the hunt, looking, watching, and then we raised a variety tobacco called a TND 950,

and it's a great variety. It does good for us. But if it stands on the hill too long, it'll start getting a ripe spot. It's like a brown spot. And for snuff, it's no big deal, but like for rapper it can just totally kill a wrapper crop if you let it stay.

So it's very important when you're harvesting to be on the ball about everything. I mean, you know, you want to cut it at its peak. And what's because, you know, if you say, oh, well, wait a day or two and it sets in rain. And by the time that rain's done and you can't get to it, I mean. Belize look like. Yeah, it looks like, you know, it just has a fish-eye brown spot on it. And it can just totally rid of the wrapper. What about, what about irrigation?

Do you have to, you guys have to. Irrigation, yeah. So we do like overhead irrigation out of, like, ponds and creeks and stuff. So that's another thing. Once, when we irrigate or our strategy to irrigating, it's like if you look at the forecast and it's already dry and say it's Monday and it says,

well, Wednesday it's supposed to rain. We might just, we'll just wait to Wednesday to, you know, irrigate. And like, I'm not kidding you, probably seven out of ten times, it ain't going to rain Wednesday. So you need to be on the ball about that too. because tobacco gets in a stress

and the leaves will poke straight up in the air and it's called foxed up and if it gets to that point and you irrigate it, it'll come out of it but it's not the same as if you hit it before that point so you never wanted to get into a stress you know so that's kind of what we do and then like I said we do the overhead irrigating

and it's like run off a PTO of a tractor to a reel that pulls it back in and we have just a smaller irrigation system so it can do like one gun can do six rows at a time. How wide a rows do you plant your tobacco in? 40 inches. Yeah. So our tractors are all set up to straddle two rows on 80 inch centers.

And then we're on 40 inches and then I think we do, I want to say we do 38. A lot of guys do 40 or 36. I think we do 38. I'm not a thousand percent sure on that. Now like a burly tobacco, you'll do it like half of that. So it'll be like an in-between. So it has more plants per acre. Okay. So, you know, is the art form of dark fire tobacco really on the curing process? Mostly on the curing side.

So what's the difference? Like, what makes dark fire tobacco, like, different? So, and explain the curing process. Like, what I tell people to try to put into perspective is, like, you can have the most beautiful crop out in the field and harvest it and just be perfect. And you can put it in the barn and make it worthless. Like, that's the biggest thing. You can, the main process.

is you know you get it in the barn you build fires under the barn so like what we do is we lay slabs on the floor solid across the floor and then we cover it up with sawdust and it sits there and smoulders you know underneath that sawdust and when that sawdust falls down into the fire it keeps it where it doesn't flame up so and you can control your heat with how much sawdust you use or how much slabs you put in or what variety of wood you put in okay so like if you don't want much heat we'll throw some poplar slabs or something like that. If we want heat, we'll put Northern Red Oak or Hickory or White Oak slabs. So that's kind of how you can control the heat, but we initially start our curing process with the stocks from the prior year. We'll pile them in the

floor. And every, of course, I should side note this, you know, every year's different. So sometimes we'll do less or more of either. So we'll pile the stocks from the year prior in the floor and do like a half a bundle and cover up three quarters of them with sawdust and then light the ends. And we can do every other one in a row, let them burn for a day or two, but you have control because you still have those other ones to light

and you have more control on how much heat and stuff you use. And then tobacco stocks get hot when they burn too, but it's not like wood hot. So you just have more control over the initial start because that's a pretty crucial time. Because if you go in there and lay solid hickory slats, across the floor and cover them up with red oak sawdust and you like that stuff and it starts going if you put too much heat on tobacco it can cure up green like a crunchy green like you see how

your cigars are brown and it's crunch it can cure up a green and like that is the worst thing you can possibly do so that's where i go back to you could have a beautiful crop out in the field but if you don't know what you're doing and you do that and you green the whole bottom one it's not worth and a tobacco buyer walks in there they ain't gonna like that and so but on the flip side you know if you have a wet ear and you don't have the heat when you need it, tobacco can sweat or mold, and that's just as bad, in my opinion. So it's really an art. It is.

And it sounds like it's hard to explain if you're not there looking at it. But like whenever me and my dad like walk in a barn and he's he's been doing it for so long now, he knows like what's going on. He can smell sweat before he even steps in the barn. And you can look at that leaf and, you know, really. tell what it needs, but it was a lot of trial and error to get to that point. Yeah. Of knowing how to do stuff and raising consistently good tobacco.

So, you know, we go through and once it's dried out, or, you know, the stems is starting to get cured up, and the leaf has turned the color. That's what kind of that initial process is called is we're turning the color from green to brown. It goes from green to like a yellow, and then it gets in a stage that a guy called it the other day, one my neighbor sees it. Yep, that's in the ugly duckling stage. It looks terrible there for a second.

It looks like, you know, it could go either way. But, you know, if you keep on firing it for a few days like you should, it'll turn it into a brown, but the stem will still be green. So once you get it to color, you want it, you can go ahead and lay the heat to it and dry, cure the stalk and the stem on out. And then that's called putting finish on tobacco after that point is you're getting it that good black because these tobacco companies nowadays, they want tobacco black. Rich, dark color. dark dark yeah how long's that take typically dude it just depends on the weather or the barn you know it's this is like it's mind boggling it still is to me to this day and i've been around it my whole life like how this barn over here doesn't do as good as this barn over here for some reason so like

like we were getting all of our barns ready the other day and dad's like yeah i'm gonna fill that one up first because it's hard to fire and it's easier to fire when the humidity's up and we'll have we'll go and cure that barn out and then we'll fill up the big barn at the house because we're going to double crop that barn. And so some barns don't do as good as others. And a lot of these old timers, they didn't build fires like we do now. They would do it in rows and they'd build fires every day. And so like, you know, they burn for a day or two. They go back in there and build them in rows. But like our fires we build will last five to seven days and we don't have to touch them. But once you get to that point, like I said, it's you need to make sure you're doing

the right thing because it's going to burn for five or seven days. And there's nothing you can do about it unless you go put them out and do a tear out which and then start over. Yeah and that's just a total like I feel like it's a total waste at that point. I mean you've done paid for the slides and solid dust and the labor to build the fires.

It's just a big deal. So that's basically what you're getting to is to the process where it's dried out you're putting finish on it and when you open the doors and you're looking at the leaves they need to be good. A dark, dark, rich dark is pretty much with all these tobacco companies are looking for now.

Okay, let's go back one step. Yes. So how do you know when the tobacco is ready to harvest? Are you going off days? Are you going off? Like, man, it's not off days because we've had some tobacco stand way longer than it should have. It depends on rain, you know, the weather.

But you can look at a plant and it'll start getting oily looking. Like the leaf will get like an oily, dark looking and that's when you know. And you can kind of base it off your days like, okay, this has been standing for this long. We know it's getting close. And two, you can pop the leaf off. And if the leaf has a lot of moisture in it and it's ready to go, you can tell. And a lot of times when you're cutting the tobacco and you bend the plan over and hit it with a hatchet, it'll just pop, you know. And when it's green, you have to actually cut it. You can tell when tobacco is green. And if you cut the tobacco

too green and put it in the barn, it's a lot more sensitive to the heat. So you can green, green, you can green in the barn when it's more green. when it's ripe. So pretty much every step of the way, you got to do it at the right time. Yes, it's not like one big thing can ruin a tobacco crop. It's like a death by thousand cuts. Yeah. That's kind of how it is.

Okay, so the barns you're using, how big? How big is an average barn that you would? We're, the average barn we have, and they're all different. That's the thing. Like, we have barns ranging from, like, I got one that's a hold an acre and a half, and then we have one that will hold five and a half. Okay.

And which are are just mid-sized compared to the Robertson County guys, there's guys out there to have like 10-acre barns. But there's always that hazard of a barn can burn down. You know,

something can happen. Yeah. So we always try to build them five acres is like the biggest we would want to build because if you lose a five-acre barn, that's a big loss. Yeah.

And so that's kind of the standard now, which we got a lot of barns a whole two acres, two and a half, three, four. You know, so it's all spread out across from an acre and a half to five and a half acres. But, too, it depends on how the tobacco is.

Usually after we harvest and cut it and it's on the scaffold wagon, we'll let it hang a day or two where it's good and limp. You can fit more in the barn. But we space it out on the tear pole's 12 inches. So some guys will do eight inches, you know, or, you know, or we really actually space out the dartfire eight to 10 inches and then the one sucker or air cured 12 inches. Okay.

So you're hanging them on a pole. Or is they hanging from like rafters? It's called tear poles. Okay. The barn's built a lot. There's cross-tier barns and then there's, you know, normal straight-tier barns. And it's just tiers on top of tiers that are stacked in the barn. And they're kind of staggered for how the roof line is.

And so you get up in that barn and a lot of our barns are like seven tiers tall. So you'll have in a seven-tier barn, you can have three guys in a line and you just hand it up like that. and the tobacco lays staggered tail on top of the top of the next one. Okay. So it's not like, you know, all just packed in there every which way. There's a method to the method. There's a method to it. Yeah.

And you've, side note too, the bottom tier guy is always a stout son of a bitch because he's handing up every single stick. And we always put the little scrawny guy at the very top because he only has to handle a few sticks. So that was our. Which one are you? Dude, I, I've been every one of them. Yeah.

But I hate to say this, and this sounds kind of lazy to me, but I like to get up there in that top tier. And I'm not afraid of height, so that top tier is nice to run because you've got a vent usually right there. You've got a little air. Once it gets about 11 o'clock in August in Middle Tennessee, it's pretty ripe. I can imagine. That top tier is nice.

But I've done it all. I mean, luckily. So your dad, though, is he a first generation? He was first generation. He grew up around some farming, though. His great uncle farmed a little bit off of New Hope Road. And when he was in his 10, 12 years old period, he helped them. And so that's kind of where he got his first start in Tobica.

And then over the years, he's always been interested in it. And then I guess in his mid about my age, he kind of dabbled and growing some. And then we bought a place that was next to, uh, We actually bought it from an old man that raised tobacco. And my dad would have started helping him a little bit. So that's how he learned. Yeah. And man, the guys back then were built different.

They were old school. And that's where my dad initially learned how to raise wrapper tobacco. Because the guys who he did it with the Sharon's, man, they were, they raised a lot of rap for tobacco. And so he can learn from them. And then there's another farmer right the road. He's probably one of the best farmers in our county. my dad learned a lot from him on, you know, more of the scale of firing, more on a larger scale. And so that's kind of how he got started in it.

And then, like I said last night, the buyout happened in 06. And so that consolidated all the tobacco to just, you know, those people. But ours always raised good tobacco. So these companies came to him and said, hey, how many pounds you want? And then it was just from there, you know. But it's pretty much generation. It's a generational thing. I think there's not many people like my dad

that just fell into it like he did. And it definitely is. There's a lot of these big Robertson County growers and just growers in Kentucky that it's been in the family for forever. But that's kind of the biggest thing. I'm fucking loving the cigar right now. Yeah, I know.

Do you need a lighter? Lighter in a second. I've done let mine go out. I knock. Because I've been sitting here poppycocking too much. I don't think I have it. or maybe I do have it you have it I don't have it

no I got it okay I got it he's got a puff on his too um what okay so you hang it in the barn you're getting it that dark color and then do you take it into a room like so what's the end goal

like how do you get to the end goal the tobacco's done you know the fires are done it's the end result it is you know and that's anything in the end result is it is what it is no matter what. You can't hide bad tobacco. I mean, there's no way.

Yeah. So anyways, you have it at the end result. Usually at the end, you take it out of the barn, but you want to wait to you get some humidity in there and that tobacco comes in case is what it's called. But that's what the Carolina people call it is in case. But we always called it in order. I was corrected by a guy from North Carolina the other day about that.

So you get it in order or in case. And you take it out. of the barn on the stick and at the bottom you pull the stick out, stack it on the side, then we pack it on wagons and then we take it to the stripping room, which is down at our shop and then

that's where it's graded and stuff. But if we can't get it in case or in order late in the year when it gets cold, we'll take it down and put it, keep it on the stick and put it on scaffold wagons so we don't damage the least because it's so crunch, you've got to be easy with it. And so then it's in the stripping room

and we take it off the wagon, put it on tables, and that's where all the grading process begins, and then the tying of the wrapper leaves and things like that. So grading, what's the grades? So it depends on the plant. If you're just doing snuff, you'll have three, I think just three grades.

You have a buzzard lug, which is the bottom, like leaves that didn't hardly make anything, or, you know, then you have a regular lug, and then you have leaf, which is a second on rapper terms. And so with our wrapper, we do the bow. Lug, lug, leaf,

which is a second and then wrapper leaf. So what you usually do is go through first guy will strip off the

lugs, second guy will strip off the leaf, and then you have somebody grading that will look at

every single leaf that's left and under light and, you know, judge if it's a wrapper leaf or not.

So they're looking at color, holes, spots, anything like that. So can there be any holes

in the leaves? You can get away with a little bit if it's on the end, like, you know, around the edge. Yeah, you know, you can get away with just a little bit, but not much at all. Yeah. So, yeah. And, and, and so on the rapper grades, there's several different grades and it goes by price. And that's kind of like where they'll grade your rapper. So some guys will pick more, get a lower price, but they're making up for it in pounds. Right. Which, that's a way to do it. Don't get me wrong, but I would rather try to get number one

wrapper top price and you know make as much of that as I can because the wrapper is the premium yeah it's a premium it's significantly higher than snow okay I might be jumping ahead a little bit but so when you when you're due to that you've got to be really careful because the the leaves are dry at that point oh okay I jumped ahead as well at that point when it's on the wagon the leaves will be dry but what we do is we'll take plastic and cover up that or we'll spray it with water cover it up and then it'll come in order. Okay. And that makes it a little more pliable so you can do it.

It makes it pliable. Then when you get it on the table, we have a steamer system that steams it. And then that way, it's like a rubber glove. You can just flip through there and look through all the leaves. So then is that what is that the guys that are actually making cigars, when they buy those leaves,

are they that way or did they get dried out by the time? They get dried out again. Well, they get packaged from ours. So it's like the company that buys the leaf from us, repackages it and sends it to them, and then they do it how they want to do it. And so they're probably steaming them, though, to make them as well to get them how they need it.

And that's a whole art form of itself. Yeah, that's a whole other deal. That, like, thinking about the life of a tobacco leaf, like, it gets touched so many times. It's crazy on the rapper side. So, like, yeah, they'll put them in Palones and flip them Palones and age it for a year or whatever, and then they do it.

So by the time we smoke this cigar, right here, this son of a gun can be three years old. It's no telling, you know. Yeah, yeah. And there's some cigars, like I said earlier, that are way old. What about snuff? Is there much? Snuff, I think it's aged two or three years.

Okay. So it's aged as well. So you might be dipping snuff from two, three, four years ago. But, you know, they have it where it's still good, of course. Yeah. But like if you just let tobacco sit out, it's not going to, it'll get a lot more mild and it just dries out. So how do you go about selling the crop?

So, you know, for us, We have a commodity, right? You know, we got bases here. We can haul it to the, we can haul corn in the river. We can haul them to hog feeders close by. They got a price. We can haul it to the ethanol plant. We can haul it to the corn slither plant.

You guys don't really have a board to go off. So how's that all work? So back in the day, pre-2007, which was the buyout, there was a lot of, there was companies that bought tobacco like U.S. tobacco and American Snuff and, you know, they're the main companies that buy direct from a farmer. And, you know, they bought tobacco from off of your base, which was before the buyout, if you owned a farm, you know,

say if you had 50 acres and it was so much pastures, or so much this, the government would give you three acres base. And back to the barns, that's usually why the barns were built that way. It's because if a farm had three acres of base, they built a three acre barn to hold their base. Okay. So that's why there's little barns and stuff like that. But anyways, so the companies would just come out and say,

all right, yeah, we'll come out and buy this. this and there was buyers that came out. So now, and the loose floors as well, that was like an auction. You just bring it up there and, you know, they just bought it, which was a hit or miss. You know, you're able to do good or bad or whatever. So now all the pounds are contracted through these companies. So after the buyout, like I said, they'll come, they came to us and said, how many pounds can you grow? You know, so it's all controlled by the tobacco companies now. And so it's by the pound. Now, you can raise tobacco uncontracted, but you're taking a major risk when you do that

because, you know, they can be like, well, you know, we'll give you a half of what we usually would because, you know. Because we really don't need it. Yeah, because we don't need it. And so that's mainly where our talets bought is contracted by the pound. We still have buyers that come out and they'll come out and check in, you know, before harvest and look at our tobacco and stuff.

And, you know. You're still paid on your grade. Like they, yes, they want it. It's still, the pay is still. the same way, but just the way, you know, how your outlet is is how it does it. Yeah. So, you know, that's mainly how it is, is by the pound contracted. And usually like, you know, it'll be a rapper snuff contract and you can, it's all integrated and, you know, and rappers always been easier to get rid of than snuff. So if you've got a lot of good rapper, they're going to

mostly buy it, even if it's out of contract. So you don't have to disclose this if you don't want, but if anybody wanted to support you, or as far as like buy the company, buy the snuff product that you grow for, who would they? Well, really, in all honesty, like we sell to, you know, a direct to American snuff,

which is, you know, grizzly, Kodiak, Levi Garrett. But like, we sell to some middleman companies as well. And so really, I think all of our tobacco goes into so many different products, like Stokers and. stuff like that, I would say, really any snuff will be supporting us, which I'm not saying to be dipping or anything like that. It's a nasty habit. I'm probably getting some flack if I said,

yeah, y'all need to start dipping again. Throw them zins in the trash can. No, that's the, that's, it really is just a broad thing. You know, I think some bar of our tobacco goes to like, what is America's best, which was Red Man, Law and Born Timberwolf. I think so. Copenhagen, not. I don't think. We, any of our tobacco, it might, because they'll buy some from a middleman company every now and then, but we don't sell direct to U.S. tobacco. Okay. So I don't know.

We've just never been in with them. So we've always been there. Okay. So tell us a little bit about you growing up on the farm because so you are, you are one of how many kids? Six. Number two. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your child.

childhood and about your, so your dad, your dad bought, like got into raising tobacco before he started a family or during or? Yeah, it was kind of like during. So I guess it was kind of before. We were actually looking at a picture the other day and it was 1998 and it was a picture of him holding my brother and on the picture or whatever, it says, 1998, this is some T.R. Madol, which was the variety of tobacco, and it just said, and Jesse is on the way. Okay. Like, yeah, it was during that. So, like I said, my dad raised tobacco, got in from the late 90s and going up.

So we're all born, like, right at two years apart. So 97, 99, 01, 03. And so in the meantime of raising tobacco, when he wasn't full time, he contracted and built how you know not built houses but did horrible floors and trim and stuff like that and then raised the tobacco crop so he had all of us you know right then within that span and um we were all homeschooled which i always tell everybody that's what makes sense now don't it that's kind of why i'm a weirdo no i would say i'll just tell you right now that your mother must have done a hell of a job because you're one of the most well-adjusted whole nobody you wouldn't i wouldn't think that

you were homeschooled man i had I have my nicks, though, that I'm like, oh, that was such a homeschool thing I just said. But, yeah, no, she, she's a hell of a woman. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like I said earlier, man, if it was me doing it, I'd go crazy. But, yeah, so we were all homeschooled. And like I said, my sister was born in the floorboard of a Chevy Cheyenne truck on the way of the hospital. And so I don't think if that ain't redneck, I don't know what it is.

That's crazy. Yeah, she's born on the United States 24 on the way to the hospital. But yeah, so my dad had a time About every month One of us was going to the hospital To get stitches or something Because we was all running around Just acting of fools all the time

So yeah That's kind of what I was growing up Did you Growing up What did you think that you wanted to do? Man, growing up I was like dead set I wanted to raise the back

Since I was young And Like that's what I wanted to do do. I remember, man, when I was little, we started out with a 140 farm all, one row, and that's like was my dad's first tractor for a long time. That's all we had was a 140. We set tobacco with one row and cultivated one row at a time. But like, I remember my dad started me out, cultivating sweet corn, and I could not even touch the pedals hardly. And he just left me out there in the lowest gear. I just keep on going in circles. And so like, I knew I always wanted to be around

farming and having some equipment. But later on in high school, I went to diesel college, Nashville to Diesel College. And, man, I thought I wanted to maybe work at a case or John Deer dealership or something like that. And then, you know, maybe do some tobacco on the side. And I ended up working for our local electric cooperative for several years. And then working nights. And then I started my tree business, like I said. And then I helped my dad kind of came back and started helping my dad drive a truck, hauling corn and stuff. And whenever he was shelling corn, we're usually harvesting tobacco. So he needed some help. So I took some time off from the tree business and helped him. And it kind of relit my fire on the farm and stuff. And so I don't

work at the Ledgecoop anymore and I still run my tree service and then kind of got my own thing going with raising some tobacco and stuff like that. So how did what what was your, what was the brain child to start your tree service? Man, I always was. good with a chainsaw. And I always, like in the wintertime, I'd cut a ton of firewood. And I like doing it. And I was working at the electric cooperative. And so I was around bucket trucks all the time. And, man, I'm like, man, we need a bucket truck. I can trim a few trees on the side, make me some quick money. And, you know, we can fix all the barns. Of course, my dad's like, yeah, that's a great idea. And so I bought the bucket truck. And, man, I was, I'm, you know, people are naturally good at

things like you know naturally good at football or singing or playing the guitar or whatever i feel like i'm naturally good at cutting trees you know i've always you know had an eye for it and so man it just took off like i i started getting so much business and work and i loved it and i hated to go sit in the shop at night you know inside which it was a great job and i loved it but like at the same time i felt like i was just wasting time you know like i could be doing so much more and so that's kind of where that all. Well, and I mean, you know, you've grown up on the outskirts of Nashville, like in Nashville, Tennessee, but not like when everybody thinks of Nashville now, they think of Broadway. Yeah. But you grew up there your whole life, right? Yeah, yeah. So you've kind of seen the whole boom

of Nashville. Now it's crazy. It's crazy. It is ridiculous. And so a tree service business, I mean, you're, are you just, you probably have so much business. You can't even do it all. It's crazy. I try to keep it to, you know, I don't want to get overrun. So, I try to keep it to a, you know, a good, a good workload. But like the crazy thing is there's like several tree services in Nashville, but like, it's still so much work out there. And, yeah, so it's, it's, how has, how has getting a bucket truck around, uh, the city of Nashville changed since you started?

Dude, I started in 2021 or something, right around 2020 or 2020 or 2021 or whatever. and it's pretty nuts, man. You get around East Nashville and stuff, it's like, golly, this is tight. And these tall and skinnys are going up and they're building houses and they'll just leave a giant walnut tree hanging right over it,

and they'll be like, yeah, when you get this tree cut down? Like, you could have done that before you built this tall and skinny. It's honestly, like, changed so much. And, you know, I graduated high school in 2017 and there for a while I was hell on wheels, of course. And, like, Broadway has changed so much since then.

It is crazy. like it's honestly unbelievable how much has changed. It does have its advantages. So you're 27. Yes. Yeah. Like you talk about being in the right place and the right time. You know, like I said, like I told him, I'm like, you're kind of screwed because you know.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. Last night at dinner, we were talking. And I was like, man, I'm not going to lie. I'm a little jealous because you get to enjoy the country life, being a farmer. Yeah. But then shit. How far is downtown Nashville? I can hop in my GMC

and be on Broadway in like 31 and a half minutes. That is crazy. Depending on traffic. That's a good thing. And at times it can be a bad thing. Back in the day it was a bad thing. Now I have a lot going on. So I'm not too nuts down there.

But if you are a single male and you're around Nashville, you are in a good place. That's all I got to say about that. You know. So, so, you don't just do, your, your, your guys' operation, your farming operation. You're not just tobacco, right? Yeah. You guys have some road crop going on.

Yeah, we have. Talk about the whole operation. So we have like, this year I think we're going to raise over 50 acres of tobacco. And then we run probably right around 400 acres-ish of row crop. And like I said earlier, you know, we have that lease grass. and our tenants needed money out of it, of course. And so that's where we started doing the row crop. And then we have control over our rotation

and where we put our tobacco and beans and stuff like that. And it's just, it's a good thing too. You know, tobacco you get paid at the end of the year, just like any other farm. And so November, December, January. And it's nice to shell wheat in June, get a little cash from that. And you shell corn and, you know, September,

first week of September up, get a little cash from that, you know, to keep you going. So, and then, you know, we have beans and stuff, but that's kind of the thing is we just have a small little road crop operation, two semis, no bins. We just haul it straight to the thing and get rid of it usually, which I think they'll hold it for a month for free, which is cool. But that's kind of how we do it. But the combine, of course, and the planar is just the bane of our existence of like breakdowns or crazy. And the bad part is like our stuff's not even junk.

It's just like we have the most random breakdowns ever. Yeah. I'm sure that's with everybody. but my dad thinks it's just with him. Like, it's just me that does. So I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure like, everybody has these right downs. Yeah.

And it's always at the worst time. Yeah. You know. What? So you're working for that electrical company. Did you always kind of know that you wanted to work for yourself and kind of be an entrepreneur?

Because, I mean, essentially you're an entrepreneur and a farmer. Essentially, yeah. I mean, like, I didn't know, but I, it's like I knew, but I didn't.

Like, every job I ever had, I was never fulfilled. I could work there for a year and be like, I cannot do this any longer. And, you know, so it's like my, that was myself telling myself, hey, I don't think this is for you. And I always just had like an uncomfortable feeling after a year of like, I need to do something different or, you know,

and I've always been, I've always tried to hustle ever since I was young, you know, whenever shoot, whenever I was 10, we have a huge big thicket beside our house. And I would go and just pick, gallons of wild blackberries and sell them so i've always done things like that to make money and i i never like to be broke so you know that was kind of a big factor in that and so i i kind of knew but i just didn't know what i wanted to do and the tree service started and it kind of just took off so

that's what i went with and and i love it i love the adrenaline of cutting trees and you know doing all this work like that and the challenge and it keeps me going yeah and so i haven't got sick of it yet so So I know this is where I'm supposed to be. Yeah, it's pretty. I mean, it's awesome, man. I mean, I just admire the hustle from all the things you've told us. And, you know, we talked about it last night a little bit. It's just getting harder and harder to farm, you know, no matter if you're in Tennessee or if you're in Iowa.

Yeah. It's kind of, it seems like it's a bad, the state of agriculture is just tough right now. Oh, yeah. To sustain, you know, two generations just on a farming operation, you got to do stuff. You got to diversify. That's what I'm saying. And really what the tree service did. was free me to have more time to work on the farm.

Because for me, I genuinely enjoy it. I love it. I love, after a long day during harvest, when we're cutting tobacco and your sun burnt, you take a shower at night, you just know I've done everything I can do. That's a good feeling to me. And so I genuinely enjoy it. And I like putting out the fires and stuff like that. And so what that did was free me to have more free time to help on the farm and help my dad.

Because I'm really the only one of the six kids that still is on the farm that can help. So, and, you know, he got to where he needed some help. And I'm like, yeah, well, I'll help him a little bit. And that's kind of when I started getting back into it. How do you, how do you balance the two? Because, you know, that for us, like, we're doing this media thing. We got the hogs, row crop. You know, we got stuff going on.

Sometimes it's hard to get it all done. Yeah. So what I usually do is like, you know, when we're setting the back and stuff, we can set it. And then, you know, there's a period where we don't have to do much to it. So I'll try to just work in my tree work and knock a bunch of stuff out when I can do that on those dead periods. Or, you know, if it rains and the guys can't, we all can't, or I can't get in the field to do nothing. You know, I can go cut trees or do this or do that. So I just kind of work around kind of the rain and the schedule of grown.

But pretty much like August, September when we're cutting, I kind of take a little break. It's like my vacation from tree work, but it's not a vacation at all. And so that's kind of how I balance that. And then we get into the wintertime once everything's harvest. It seems like my business, like business jumps a lot from like October 15th to Thanksgiving. So I'll do a ton of work through then.

And then usually from Thanksgiving to December 15th, I'll just go ahead and shut down until probably the end of January. And then I waste all my time duck hunting. So that's how we do that. It's all about priorities. Yeah, the priorities are really there, as you can see. Yeah. And like I said last night,

if I would just like quit hunting so much and actually work on some of my equipment, I'd probably be way farther ahead. But, you know, that's, that's kind of not. So ducks, yeah. You deer hunt also? Oh, yeah. Or is deer hunting, is it hunting, or is it just pest control?

It's a little bit of both. I like to kill a big buck every year, but deer hunting is leisurely to me, so it's not like go, go, go. So I like to kill a big buck every year, and then we definitely have to do some pest control because our fields, like I said last night, are not like y'all's fields where there's 100 acres.

We're farming 20 acres here, 10 acres here, and around that 10 acres is woods, and the deer just come out of there. And you think, their salad bar. Yeah, 10 or 15 deer, like a herd of cows, just going through beans and stuff. So, yeah, we have to take several every year.

And we got a lot of families that, you know, we donate them to or whatever, and then what we don't eat. And then we actually make, like, deer breakfast sausage out of them and a smokehouse. That's super good. And so nothing goes to waste, of course. But yeah, we definitely have to have some crazy pest controls.

So you shoot, you're killing deer, duck hunting, turkeys? Turkey hunting big time. Big turkey hunting. Yeah, well, I'm big in the turkey hunting for like the first two weeks. I kind of'm like, okay, shit's ramping up. Like, we need to get busy. Yeah. So, like, this year I killed a turkey and took some of my friends and they killed some of our places.

And then usually it's all gas, no breaks until September 1st. dove season. We always have some really good dove hunts, which that's probably honestly my favorite because the camaraderie of all my friends and neighbors come. We cook out and grill out and stuff like that. So the dove hunt is like one of my favorite things. So we'll have, usually have two dove hunts. That's, that's something you just made me think when you talked about. Staples Preferred Business Membership built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples Preferred, get free delivery.

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So around here, when I grew up, the average farm around here was probably 240 to 400 acres. So if you drove up the road here, you know, there was a farmstead every so often. And the bus was full with kids going to school. And today, if you go up that road, there's not very many kids out here. It's pretty. And that community is, I won't say it's gone, but it's a lot different. Like, the group of farmers that I would say are in our community is not very big,

and you have to go a pretty big area to have that. And how is it down there as far as people involved in ag? Like, what would you say where you are average size as far as a row crop? Ro crop. Crop, man, it's, dude, it's hard to say. I mean, I feel like we're pretty average on three or 400 acres. Now, there's some guys that have a bunch of lease ground north of us in Kentucky and stuff like that. There's some bigger farms out that way, you know, Robberson County and stuff. But like in our general Cheatham County area, man, it's probably about the same, three or 400 acres. And some guys have a

little bit less and they work a job, you know, and just do that on the side. But yeah, there's that's pretty much it now like on a tobacco operation i mean man i'd say the average is probably about we're probably close to average maybe a little bit above average in our area now there's some guys in robinson county and like i said in kentucky that raise a lot more dark tobacco but that's kind of around us now like the biggest farmer in our area probably raises 80 or 90 acres of tobacco okay so you know it's kind of right in there but the row crop there's not really many people that race thousands of of acres around us.

Yeah. Yeah. So what's the, what's the mood as far as when you talk to your neighbors, what's the outlook? Did they feel like it's getting better, getting harder? It's definitely like, it's not like, oh, you know, it's not too down. Yeah. But like everybody knows it's getting harder. So you just have to be more strategic and cut more cost and do whatever you need to do

to save money is the biggest thing. Is the, like in your situation, having a side hustle, having an off farm, is that pretty common? Yeah, yeah, it's common. One of my good buddies, he works a full-time job and he still raises 22 acres to tobacco. Now, it works him to death every year. I mean, he works all the time. But, yeah, it's fairly common, not as common as it used to be, like I said. You know, with tobacco, you need to have quite a bit to be able to have a crew to keep a crew busy.

And so it's kind of hard to do it like that, like it used to be now. Back in the day, when everybody had their base, say, your neighbor down here had three acres, you have four or five acres. And, you know, it could be five different farms with a combined 50 acres. And everybody just helped everybody out. And that's how it used to be. And I caught the very tail end of that when I was little. You know, I didn't get to work in it.

But like, you know, I remembered those days whenever I was really little. So it's kind of hard now to raise tobacco and still keep a job. I got to tell you, this is that you talk about nostalgia. Right now, this smells like walking in to freshwater's feeding grain in Washington, Iowa. So if Kim Robertson is listening, this, this is like, all I need is Delmer Romine to come around the corner with a cigar hanging out of his mouth because it's taking me back. I know. I probably, that's what one of my buddies, I had that jar of moonshine yesterday and he goes, dude, you look like you just come straight out of Hazard County. Like, dude's a hazard. I'm like,

dude, I just wear overalls like, get over it, you know. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's awesome. That's your look, man. That's your look. I hate to have plumbers crack, so I never have that. Yeah, that's one thing you can say. You're covered. You're good. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But yeah, this, this is pretty nostalgia. Dude, this place is awesome. Like, I want to build this in my backyard. Well, thank you. Yeah, we appreciate it, man. It's, it's come a long ways. Talk about labor. You know, you had crews. So you got, you probably have a crew for the tree service business, right? And separate entity. Yeah. And crew for the farm. Yeah. So we have H2A labor that comes in every year. And we've had them for 13. This will be of 13 or 14 years now.

And man, our guys are top notch. Like, they're awesome. Like zero complaints. They, you know our head guy Ricardo man he is into it he's the one that grades they have two graders and so he is like he is so smart too like he'll we'll have all the tobacco loaded up

and he'll say this is 14,000 pounds of tobacco here and it'll be 1,300 930 like it'll be so close he's just we have some really good help and if it wasn't for that we could not do what we do yeah like hiring help just normal is not the days of that are over.

Everybody in ag, I mean, that's probably one of the biggest struggles is getting good quality labor. And I mean, there's, the guys I mean, there's a farmer over in our neck of the woods that, I mean, he farms a lot of acres, has hogs, all the things. He's got a lot of South Africans, same, you know,

same thing. On H2A deal. Yep. Yeah. And because they're just, they're hustling, man, and you got to. Yeah, it's, man, in my lifetime since we've been raising tobacco, you know, I caught the tail end of the school boys, the high school boys working in it. Yep.

In my lifetime, we've had a lot of school boys come in and last one day and never come back. Yep. But there has been, I think three, my friend Michael, he hung with us for two summers when he was in high school. And he was as thin as a rail, but dude, he hung in there. He would drink two Cokes at break time and be good. And then there's two other boys, Bradley and Tyler Round. They helped us for several years, but they had their own 10 acres of tobacco. So what we would do is when we were caught up on ours, we would just go help them.

So they were already weathered for it. And they were good help. Other than that, any other buddy else that come in usually last one or two days, and they'd be gone. They never come back. Our society has gotten very soft. I mean, there's just not. There's just not.

And there's so many jobs. There's just jobs that people, they don't want to do stuff like that. And I had a conversation last night when we were, dinner, the restaurant we were at with the owner of that restaurant, and she was telling me that basically they just started being open for dinner, open at night. Traditionally, they've been open for lunch, but they're struggling because they can't keep labor. And I told her this story. When I was working, when I was working off farm on the hog side, the company that I worked with, we had a signing bonus for anybody that we hired to work in the sal units.

And I can't remember exactly what it was. I want to say it was like, if you started working there and you made it 90 days, I think we paid, it was either a $1,500 or a $3,000 bonus. We never paid that one time. Really? Nope.

We never had anybody. And so, I mean, just about all their workforce is H2A. Yeah. And if they didn't have that, they couldn't operate. Yeah. Because they had plenty of people that would come apply and literally it was the same way. They'd work there two days.

They'd work there a week. They'd work there two weeks. Yep. Done. And that's the thing too. Like people say, well, you're probably slave driving. No. We're very in amadement.

Like, you need a break. Go get you some water. It's hot. We know it's hot. But, dude, it's just hard, grimy work. But I've always. always said this like if you can make it in a harvest of tobacco you're you're a grown-ass man yeah it's it's some hard work yeah i can imagine and i still try to do as much as i can because you'll be in the

best shape of your life after you get done with that man and that's that's the crazy thing it's like how it used to be with these everybody would just help everybody and that's just how it was and now you know it's just hard to get anybody to do anything so you know by by being around the farm and operation seeing your dad kind of start that from scratch and being in the business and helping him and then starting your own business, you know, you've probably learned some lessons along the way in business. What are some of the top lessons that you've learned being a business owner and managing employees and doing what you're doing? Yeah.

Well, staying ahead of the game is the biggest thing I've learned in farming and owning your own business. If you know a problem is arising, whether that be with equipment or, you know, anything, try to nip it in the bud and don't let it go on. That's one of the biggest things. And then just trying to show up when you say you're going to show up. And that's some things I struggle because, you know, I get busy and forget. Like if I got to go bid a job or something like that, I thought, oh, shoot, I forgot to go see so-and-so or I forgot to text so-and-so back. But trying to do what you say you're going to do to the fullest extent is a big thing. Your word is all you have at the end of the day.

So, you know, showing up when you're supposed to. And if not, letting people know what's going on in communication. That's the biggest thing in business. But in ag, man, just having faith, like, that's the biggest thing. If you don't have faith and you're a farmer, you're in a bad shape, buddy, because I've done you, you're putting a plant in the ground and you're hoping that it's going to rain and you're hoping the fertilizer is going to work and you're hoping you don't get a hailstorm that beats the leaves off the plants.

And so a lot of faith and a lot of prayer is the biggest thing. And that's with anything. but especially ag and y'all know how that is yeah uh you know they're in sometimes it's just not if it doesn't rain it's just not god's will i mean there's been a many of times and i it's i don't know if god is just taunting us sometime or like what's going on but we'll be irrigating it'll be late and afternoon at night and you'll see a huge thunderstorm blowing up and it'll just go right north of the south of you're like golly why couldn't that just come right through here so we don't have to do this anymore you know yeah but having faith and just showing up when you're saying

you're going to show up and just trying to stay ahead of problem is the biggest. Yeah. That makes it sense. No, that makes it 100%. Putting out fires and staying true to your word, your word's all you got. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Surrendering to God's path. I mean, God's got a plan, man. You know, and not getting, trying to keep your temper down is the biggest thing. I'm sure you all have to deal with that too. But, you know, when stuff breaks and things go wrong, you know, you just have to try to, which I struggle with that, you know, I just have to try to keep your cool at all times.

Sores thing that he struggles with is elder abuse. Elder abuse. physical or, uh, oh, mostly mental, but physical too. Yeah, sometimes I just got to get my words out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Knock three times. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, something that we learned last night is you're a pretty well-connected guy. You know, you got a lot of good, you know a lot of good people, uh, in Nashville. What, what do they, do a lot of them understand what you do? Yeah, so like some of my friends, man, I got a lot of like writer, writer friends. And some of my best friends are songwriters and stuff.

And so like, man, they come out to the dove hunts and stuff like that. And we hang out the coffee shop and things. Like they think it's so cool that like, you know, a lot of them aren't from around here. And some of them are from a farming background, but, you know, didn't farm. So they think it's cool. Like they'll come hang out at the farm and stuff like that. And while we're working on trucks or hunting and stuff. So, yeah, they all think it's cool.

And like I said, whenever they all have, you know, riders rounds or something, I'll show up and come. They think it's just cool that like I just show up wearing overalls. And like, I think that's hilarious. Yeah. But yeah. So, and then, you know, if they ever need any tree work, I've gotten a ton of business for them because, of course,

they know somebody in Nashville that needs this or that. So yeah, that's the biggest thing. That's awesome, man. It's pretty sweet. I mean, I'm super, I'm overly blessed in every aspect of life. Like with my friends, family, how I grew up. You know, and back in the day, when I was growing up, I didn't think nothing of it, but now I'm like, man, I am way in good shape. Grounded. Grounded, very grounded. Yeah. Yeah, that's the right word. And you've, you know, you've built quite a following on TikTok and Instagram. And that's how we discovered you, you know, is through that. Because showing, showing the process of the tobacco is so freaking cool. And it's just, it's an art form. And just watching the videos you make, you can just kind of, you just can see it and sense that.

What prompted you to like pick up the camera and do that? Man, it was, I guess it was last year. I was dating a girl and I was being good and I'd come home, but I'd get bored at night. So like I wouldn't go out or do anything crazy, which I still don't do nothing crazy. But now I'm like, man, I'm going to film like us building fires in a barn and try to like chop it up and, you know, just for fun because I was bored. And man, I made that video and I think it's up to almost like two million views. and it just blew up. And I was scared at first.

I'm like, dang, what's my dad going to think about this? And he's seen it. And my mom said, your dad just seen your TikTok. I was like, oh,

shoot, he goes, he thinks it's awesome. I'm like, hell yeah. So, man, I made that first video,

and then I just started kind of making them, but I was just off the hip making them. Yeah. And so, like, yeah, I guess I've gained kind of a following

in the tobacco industry on, on that, which a lot of people that dip snuff don't even know where their tobacco comes from. Right.

smoke cigars and don't even know how it's done. So I think it's cool to educate people on that. I have gotten a ton of hate though. Like, why would you grow this cancer or stuff like that? You know, why don't you grow something else or like, you know. But other than that, it's been great. It's cool. I like, you know, educating people on where stuff comes from.

Yeah, man, it's badass. I'll just tell you. It's badass. And you're going to have haters no matter what. I mean, shit, we raise hogs. We get hate all the time about how we raise hogs. Podcasts, you know, whatever. So just I say keep going with it, man, because it's awesome.

And last night we talked about this too. I mean, and you know, you've kind of, you brought this up, but you're well-connected guy in Nashville. You're building this following. When the hell are we going to get a direct-to-consumer cigar? So, like that's kind of in the works like we talked about last night. And it's just really horrible government regulation to just, you know, make a cigar. You can't just make cigars and sell them. So we've experimented with that.

in the past and I think, you know, here in the next few years, definitely that's something I would love to pursue. It's just very time-consuming and very tedious on how you have to do it to make it right, you know. But yeah, definitely here before too long, I would like to get something going with that. We've already kind of started that process and, you know, made some cigars just for us and kind of experimenting with that. So hopefully in the next two, three years or something like that, we can get something going. I think it'd be great. It would be badass, and it would be the official cigar of Barn Tock. I can tell you that right now.

Definitely. Well, and you can eliminate all your haters because my understanding is if you make them, they'll be organic. Yeah. So I mean, that's something we've dabbled with us. If it's organic, I mean, that's basically like being blessed by a rabbi. You won't get it. There's no carcinogens in it at that point. Zero carcinogens.

Yeah, I mean, it's pure, pure, right? It's like rubbing down. It's like when we go in there and we rub them. those pigs down with butter. Yeah. You know, same thing. It just washes away the sin.

Yeah, it does. Absolutely. And everybody gets fined it. Well, I'll tell you this. Last year, we had a tobacco patch

that was close to the road. We were irrigating it, and we pulled the irrigation gun out. And I was standing there looking at it. And I'm like, man, heck yeah, this is going good. And this lady just drives by.

She just yells me, F tobacco, you cancer girl. Like, right on this road. I'm like, man, golly. I'm just sitting here looking at my irrigation system. She might need to stop.

and get a donut. She sounds like she needs a cigarette. That's what she sounds fun. Okay. What is that comedian's name that you have probably seen this clip, and I feel terrible because I can remember what his name is, but he does such an excellent job. He's a little older than you guys,

but he talks about how that this generation really, really need cigarettes. And his example was, he's like, you know, when I was growing up, if you pulled up to the gas station and there was a guy standing outside just smoking a cigarette, one after another, just pacing, that was therapy. That was therapy.

He was working some shit out. Today we don't have that. And he had so many good examples of, you know, like going to a family reunion and rather than people getting in a fight, there'd be two separate people standing at a, opposite corners of porch, just smoking cigarettes one after another, because they're doing that rather than saying what they really thought about the other person. Yeah, I mean, I don't know

if I have 1,000% agree with that, but hey, man, that probably eliminated a lot of problems. It's a great bit. I can't remember who the guy is, but it's so good. Yeah, man. And, you know, I don't know. It's funny because you said this last night, and it's so true, you said that, you know, Cigarettes aren't cool, but certain people smoking, they're cool. Cigarettes are not cool, but people that smoke are cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, it's just like, um, cigarettes have gotten a bad rap, but you, a cigar lounge, somebody smoke a cigar.

No one bad tonight. That's classy. Yeah. It is. And, you know, and that's my thing. I never was a huge cigarette fan. Of course, everybody does this. Well, a lot of people do this.

You've had nine or ten beers. You're going to smoke Marlboro light. Everybody craze that. But, like, I never could just smoke cigarettes. I used to dip tobacco. And like I told you, I quit dipping tobacco. I dipped for five or six, seven years or whatever. Ever since I was like 16, I have a funny story about that, too.

I need you to tell. But so I quit for two years. And I walked in the liquor store one day. I'm like, no, try a cigar. And ever since then, I got pretty hooked on cigars. So now, unfortunately, like I said, I smoked like six or seven cigars a day. So I've just traded one habit for another. Yep.

You know, but I started dipping, you know, whenever I was 14, 15 years old. And I would hide it from my mom and dad. And so I had some like a skull mint and it's a U.S. tobacco product. Yep. And so my mom found it one morning. She's like, I'm going to let your dad handle this. I'm like, oh shit, I'm screwed. So dad's always

This was in the spring So dad's always like Hey come help me move this tractor To this farmer He said come with me We're gonna go pick up this tractor I'm like oh my God This is bad

So we have a long driveway And we get He didn't say a word We get to the driveway He got off the 50 He goes Skoll Are you kidding me?

I'm like I look at him like this And he's like If you're gonna dip something You at least need to dip something We sell to He said I better not catch you With Skoll again

And I'm like Oh my God dude, this is crazy. So we went through the summer and I took his advice, which I'm not condoning, dipping at a young age at all. I was a dumb ass.

But so I started dipping Grizzly straight and my mom caught me again. She goes, yep, I'm gonna let your dad handle it again. And we're down at the shop. He's like, man, you really shouldn't be dipping, but at least you're dipping something we made. Yeah, at least you got good taste. I told my friends about that.

My friends thought that was the coolest, like I was the coolest guy ever, whatever happened. Yeah. Do you mind throw me the lighter? Hang on, let me hit it one more time. Yeah, we got to keep these things lit. I wanted to ask you since we're on the Nashville topic,

what is, you got a good Nashville story of going out that was memorable or cool or somebody you met that was worth sharing? Man, not right offhand, man, because every Nashville story, unfortunately, just about ends the same. you go down to town, you spend too much money, you drink too much, and you stay out too late.

That's kind of the cycle. Man, I'll tell you, one of my favorite Nashville stories, though, is it was a Thursday, and there's a Luke Casey store, like the boots,

you know, the high-end boots. Larry Fleet was playing down there. I don't know if y'all knew who Larry Fleet is. I'm a big Larry Fleet fan. He sings the Where I Found God song, great song,

awesome guy. So, like, I'm like, I got some of my buddies together. I'm like, we need to go down there. Like, it's going to be so much, so cool. And dude, we were like from me to UA, and this was back probably five, six years ago. And I wasn't hanging out with too many songwriter people.

So I was like starstruck. I was like, oh my gosh, it's Larry Fleet. We got a picture with him and stuff. But like that ended at like five o'clock. So we were just so high in life. We just went on a tear and went on every bar in Nashville. So like that was one of the probably the most memorable moments. It was pretty cool.

Yeah, absolutely. That was that was a good one. but that ended at like 1 o'clock in the morning and started at 4.4 p.m. Yeah. And I don't have been nights like that anymore, but sometimes it's sometimes it happens. So.

Well, you know, that's, it's different when that's kind of your hometown. Yeah. You kind of get, I guess, numb to it. Yeah. Like you don't, I bet you don't really get starstruck anymore. No.

Because it's just part of- Nashville. It's just you never know who you're going to see, you know. Yeah. You can be at losers or see Theo Vaughn or Johnny Manzell or somebody walk by you know and it's just like oh that's that's them and you know they're just normal people too yeah I mean just like me which I'm a little bit not normal I'm sitting there in losers wearing

overalls so yeah that's the kind of thing but being around Nashville too is like if you want to hang out you figure out the places you want to go and not like where just the tourist attractions are yeah you don't go to you don't go to all the country's music star bars like once every three months we'll get on a tear and go downtown but like uh I like I told you all the the Nashville Palace is cool. They have all that lion dance and stuff, which I cannot dance to save my life. I'm more of a people watcher kind of guy.

Yep. So that, you know, losers is cool because that's where all my friends usually hang out and stuff like that. And then skinny Dennis, it's like an old-timey, you know,

country, like a dive bar that like they play old school, 90s country and old stuff, which it's taken over by the East National hippies most of the time. So you got to deal with them. Yeah. But like, you know, it's a cool place. So not as much Broadway anymore.

I'm more on that skirts as where I'm going out. Well, let me ask you something about, you know, you're a young guy. You think you'll find a woman hanging out in Nashville that wants to raise six kids and homeschool them for you out there in the country? Probably not. Probably need to find a minonite to help me out of that or something like. What's going back now, I tell my mom was hounding me that day. She's like, you need to have kids.

She's, I'm getting old. And I'm like, Mom, I do not want. six kids. Like that is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but like I said, growing up, it was just like, it wasn't nothing to do it to me. I was like, yeah, I got a big family. And I just know that I knew that the kids with just, you know, a four person family, they were

getting an Xbox and stuff. I'm like, I don't have no X. We don't even have a TV. Yeah. You know, they're getting Legos and stuff. And I'm at a yard sale picking through a Lego bucket. You know, that was kind of the only difference that I was jealous of having, you know, I was jealous of them for that. but in hindsight, I'm very glad that it ends up like it did, you know. So what's next?

What's next? What are you working? Like, what, where's this end? Man, that's my thing. I have a big problem with being content. And I'm sure that just comes with young age. So like I would just love to keep my tree business how it's going. I love doing the work.

And of course, you know, I would like to scale the tobacco operation. And I know that the snuff, and the mainstream tobacco business is not what it used to be. You know, you have the zins and the vaping and stuff like that. But like I just love it. Like every aspect, especially the curing process, man, it's just a different kind of feel. And anything in agriculture, people don't realize unless you do it,

when you grow a plant from a seed that's the second smallest seed in the world to a finished product and you're sitting there selling it at the company, it's a great feeling, especially when you have a good successful year. So I would like to keep on growing and maybe, you know, my dad's getting older. I'd like to take over some of his operation and, you know, just maybe upgrade that.

And then, like I said, I would love to maybe do something on my own or direct to consumer kind of thing. I know that's going to be a totally different ballgame. It's going to take a ton of work. So I would like to slowly get into that and not just jump head first into it. So that's kind of where I'm at. And, you know. Keep the social media thing going too.

Yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah, you just keep, you just keep lighting those fires and showing that dog off. I got two. I got a Nova Scotia duck tongue retriever and a boikin spaniel. The boikin was bad, so I sent him to training. But the little dog, man, yeah, they love it.

But yeah, that's kind of the thing. I want to keep my social media going and maybe do better videos and stuff like that. That's kind of a bigger goal with that. I don't care about making money on social media right now. Like, I haven't made anything. Yeah. But I just thoroughly enjoy making the videos

and just growing a cool following, you know, that likes the things I do. Yeah. That's kind of my goal with that right now. Everybody's saying, do YouTube, man, it's, that's something I don't know if I'm into or not. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about machinery a little bit because you like old trucks, you like old tractors, all the things. Essentially, I'm a hoarder.

Yeah. The cost of, you know, the cost of new equipment is just unbelievable. And service is one of those things. Yeah. that all farmers feel like is getting worse and worse as time goes on. I mean, what's been your experience when you got to call the guy out to fix something? So, like, that is last result.

And sometimes, though, like, I went through Diesel College, so I have a good understanding of how things work. And, you know, sometimes you need to just swallow your pride and, like, call a case dealership. Because a lot of times you'll get into something trying to fix it and screw up three other things trying to fix the one thing. That's what we get into. But with these older tractors, we have, you know,

we have like a 2150 John Deere, a little 50 horsepower that we cultivate with. And like the other day, it was smoking and running like hell. And man, I just tested the injectors on it, needed an injector, popped an injector in there.

That was it, you know. But these newer ones, man, it's like cutting teeth trying to get my dad to call somebody out there to fix something. So, like, he's like, what do you think? I'm like, I don't know.

And you can spend a whole day mess on that stuff and still not fix it, especially these newer tractors, which we have a 150 maximum. I think it's a 2017 model. And then we have a newer 90C, a 75C, and then a 70A, which I absolutely despise. I hate that tractor.

But so I think it's good when it's under warranty. You know, you spend the money and, you know, they've come out and fix it, of course, but it's just a ton. So once it gets out of warranty is when it gets to a gray area. of like what do we need to do with it.

But yeah, like I said the other day, we were trying to plant and the planner wouldn't spin around and we mess with it for a little bit. And then these two boys come up there from the tractor or from the dealership and they just grenade the inside. I was like, oh my God, this thing's never going to run again. But they did. They got it fixed.

I was impressed, man. But I had little faith, but they got it fixed. But, man, and that's the service thing is the biggest thing. We deal mostly with K stuff. We have some older John Deer's stuff. but most of our stuff's red. And man, they treat us pretty good up there at our dealership. We have a salesman Terry Barton.

He's great. And of course he's great. He's always trying to sell us stuff. But, you know, and their service is good. Like I told you all last night, we have a 2377 case combine. It's clean as a whip. And there's a guy that comes out and works out from the dealership that knows it inside and out.

He's great, Marvin. So, you know, it's kind of a pick-your-poison thing. I looked at all of our equipment is cabota. I looked at some cabota tractors the other day that were pretty nice. I'm not going to lie. So I hate them our old little bedheaded stepchild 70A. And I'm like, Dad, maybe we should like go for a cabota next. But then we'll have a rainbow of tractors.

And I'm like, I think that's though the more norm. Yeah, it is. I think the number of people that are 100% brand loyal, I think that number is getting fewer because. part of his cost, part of it is, you know, what can I buy horsepower for? In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system.

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and that has probably it isn't as good as it used to be and so you have and we're also in the time where mobile service is a lot you know a lot more common than it used to be to where it's

if you're going to have somebody come to you then it doesn't really matter how far they're coming and if the service is better and the price is better yeah jump on it yeah that's how man we were like

die hard international Chevrolet trucks for forever. Now, I got two fordons. We got two or three John Deere's. We got some red tractors and everything. And for me too, I'm always about what's the best deal.

And that's in like the used thing. But mainly, like I said, our case dealership treats us good. And I'm not saying the John Deer guys are bad. We've just always had a relationship with them. And they've worked with us when we needed help and stuff like that. But I think you're right, man. It's so hard now.

Well, your margins, you know, the farmer's margin is the one getting squeezed. So it really comes down to, at the end of the day, what's that cost? What, what's that cost ownership and what's it cost per acre to get across that field? And whoever fits that bill may be the route, you got to go. Yep. Well, that's like, like, I think too, I think, you know, older equipment might be good for you, depending on how nifty you are at fixing it yourself. that's a big thing.

If you're a person that has a lot of mechanical knowledge and you can run old equipment, I'd say run the hell out of that old 40, 55 John Deere. That's what we got one of those and, you know, or something older. But if you don't have that knowledge, you might want to run a newer tractor that stays under warranty.

And, you know, if you can afford to trade and stuff like that, which we've always, we have a mixture of both. So, but here lately, man, I like running an older tractor. I don't know.

My dad is just absolutely pro-cab. He goes, man, a cab tractor is the way to go, you know. And with us, we don't have no giant huge quad tracks or nothing like that. So, but which like when we started, we had that 140 farmall. We had a, we upgraded to a super C, which it had cultivators on it. We could do two rows at a time. So we were sitting in high cotton then. And then our first setter rig, what we pulled our setter to plant the tobacco,

was that we had an M-Farmall, and we pulled that two-row setter, and my dad made these row markers because it was a tricycle, and you could follow that row marker, and I mean, it was like checker-boarded straight. That was the setting rig, and it was cool because at the end of the row,

you could turn so sharp and get right back in the row easy. Yep. So he grew up, or we started out, I act like it's so long ago. I mean, this wasn't not that long ago. Like 07, all the way up to about 2008, we set with an M-Farmol. Okay.

And so, you know, He was in that area. So now he's gotten into a cab, and he's like, man, I love that. I'm not buying another tractor without a cab on it, blah, blah, blah. So, but like me, I like to, I like to see what's going on and be not obstructed. Yeah. And I say that, but then if I'm bush hog and I'm like, yeah, hook it to that cab tractor. Right.

Square body trucks. So dad's got a square body truck. Yeah, I was out there gawking over your truck, by the way. Yeah. I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. What, what, you got a couple square bodies?

Yeah, I'm a, like I said, I'm a hoarder. I buy and sell a lot of them. It's kind of a side. It's not really a side hustle. What it is is... It's only a side hustle because if you didn't say it was a side hustle, it'd be an addiction. That's a fact. So instead it's a side hustle.

And I actually make money on them most of the time. So for a long time now, I've probably had collectively over like 200 vehicles and I've just bought and sold them. And so like here recently, I had a 97, extended cab Chevrolet, clean as a pin. I just got rid of that, Don't so long ago. It was a sad day. But like,

I have a 70 C-10. I've had it since I was 14. And, uh, but like, I haven't bought too many this year, but last year, man, I was flipping through the trucks.

I had a 65 GMC. I went down to Huntsville, or not Huntsville, uh, shoot, right on the line. I think Florida or right over the line of Tennessee line. I had got that truck. And what I'll do is I'll drive them around for a little bit

until I get sick of them and sell them. So, and usually, the market in Nashville is so much better than like a rural area so you can go buy something in a rural area and bring it here and then make a little bit of money on it and have fun driving them around

and so yeah I've had a ton of square body trucks and usually about once a year and I haven't had this problem this year I'll like get the hanker in to buy like a Jeep and ride it around then I realized this Jeep sucks and they get rid of it and so like last year I bought a 70-7 or 78 golden the Eagle, but it had the 304 V8 in it with the three speed. And that thing felt like he was on a

roller skate with a small block Chevy. Like it was cool. I'm like, I drove it for a little bit. I'm like, yep, I need get rid of this for something happens. And that's usually how it is. I'll keep a Jeep for a little bit and then get rid of it. Everybody should have a Jeep at least once. And then I succumb. I always wanted one. And I bought a 2021. I bought a gladiator. Oh, yeah. And the funnest thing about that was building it. Yeah. All the shit I put on it.

Loved it. We drove it down to Jeep Beach down in Daytona. Oh, nice. And that was awesome. Yeah. And the transmission went out of it with 4,000 miles on it. And then the engine garneted when it had 34,000 miles on. COVID truck.

What were you doing with that? Nothing. It was just, I mean, it was just the ECU went out of it. I mean, it was. It was nothing but... It was a COVID truck. Yeah, it was a COVID truck. All the new trucks, man.

You got a reject, man. That's rough. But then, you know, then I realized it was like... That's the thing about a Jeep is... The funnest part is building it. Like, getting it, customizing it, doing all the shit to it. And then, you know, you take it and you look at it, oh, that's badass. But the actual day-to-day driving around...

No. And then all the... I mean, nothing stays tight on it. It's just rough and... Yeah, it's... It sounds like you're in an airplane, a small airplane when you're driving. Well, yours probably wasn't like that. All mine are poverty wagons. So, like, they weren't that tight like yours probably were.

It still was pretty. I bugged my wife that it was a perfect, it was perfect for married couples because she could talk the entire time and I couldn't hear anything she was saying. I've had that experience. I had a 02 T.J or whatever. It was a five speeds, B6. and me and my big friend Ryan, he's like 6'4, 300 pounds, just to bricks you a house. We decided like, yeah, let's drive it down to Florida with no top and no doors. And I had like a little luggage rack and we just had a pyramid of coolers on the back. So his girlfriend at the time and one of her friends rode in their forerunner and we drove that Jeep down there. When we took off at 3 o'clock in the morning and I was wearing overalls with no shirt and I drove that Jeep all the way down.

So I get down to the beach and I'm just roasted before my feet even touch the sand. Dude, it's so bad. And back then I was like 300 pounds. I was a lot bigger. So my man boobs would stick out the side of my overall. So I had like a half sunburn across my nipples, dude. Oh, gosh. It was terrible.

I'd get lathered up with aloe right off the rip. You probably should have thought that through just a little bit. No, no critical thinking was there at that time. My frontal lobe was not existing at the time. It was so bad. And we, like, what was funny is we got behind the semi on one of them back roads in Alabama. And we went to pass it. And, you know, we got coolers.

I'm 300 pounds. He's a brick shit house. We got stuff in the back. Well, I got to go past this truck. Dude, there's a car coming. And he's like, come on, go. I said, I got her to the four. Do we barely pass this truck, dude.

A lot of wind resistance there. And dude, it was bad. So then, like, I don't remember. I took the Jeep to Florida twice because I was dumb enough to do. that. And then the second time we took it, we come back through and stopped in at Talladega. And so I had the Jeep at Talladega. And it was fun. It's fun to have a Jeep at the beach with the top off. But it is not worth the drive down there. If I ever get rich one day and have a beach house, I'm just going to buy a Jeep and just throw it down there and leave. I think that's a good plan.

That's a good point. I'm getting to the age. I'm more refined. I think the next, the next old vehicle that I'm looking to buy is like a 65 to 69. Link Incontinental with the suicide doors. I'm into that. I really want one of them bad. I've been wanting a big car like that for a while and then put like some long horns on the hood. Oh yeah.

So it sits in the garage. You drive like three times a year. That would be me. I think that would be sweet. Yep. Because most of them have like a pretty hot motor in them. Sure. But they ride like a dream to a friend of mine had one.

And we took it to, he just bought it. We took it to Nashville or whatever. And now I was looking through the glove box and there's old John Michael Montgomery cassette. We popped that bad boy in, dude. It was awesome. I think I had like 30,000 miles on it. You know, when I was younger, I graduated in 89. And so me and all my buddies, or well, four of my, four of my buddies, we were motorheads. And I had a, I have a, I had a 73 Camaro. And my one buddy had a 72 charger. Oh, yeah. And my other one had a 67 Chevelle. And then,

another guy had a GTO. And a lot of fun, love those cars and all that. But honestly, we got the bright idea. Well, two of my friends got the bright idea. They didn't want to drive those cars in the winter. So they went to the Ford dealership, and they bought a 70-74 Ford... Oh, what the heck was it?

Their big boat car of the 70s. I can't remember what it was. Like an LTD? Yeah. Yeah. And we honestly had more fun in that damn thing. That's what I'm saying. You could put four people, four wide front and back, and you didn't care what, you know, our thing was, oh, you didn't want to go down this road.

You didn't want to get a rock chip. You didn't want to do this. That thing, we took it off the end of a gravel road on a T. We didn't realize where we were. And we thought our lives, you know, flashed before our eyes. Oh, yeah. and once we cleaned out her pants, she started right up, and we thought we got out of that okay. And then the next Saturday, we decided we should change the oil.

And we went to take the drain plug out, and the bottom of the oil pan was smashed. And instead of holding five quarts, it only held four. But it made, you know, it made it. And I think they bought that for maybe like $800. And for two winters or three winners, we drove that. And man, that was more fun than those muscle cars. I've had a lot of trucks like that, or vehicles. I had a 89 four-runner, and it was just a two-wheel drive.

But, dude, that thing went anywhere. It was so much fun. There was a big terrace in one of our fields. Man, I can get enough speed and get like five foot of air. Yeah. And everybody says this, but I, like, really mean it. If, you know, seven or eight years ago I had cameras around me at all times, I would be like, it would be like jackass, like or something like that.

I mean, like jumping stuff or, you know, if I had a crew like that, I would be like famous. Like for all the crazy stuff we did. Be either famous or in jail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having a nice car is awesome, but having something that you just don't care about. Man, you've got to have a beater.

Yeah, you've got to have a beater. Which, like right now, I think I, in, I think I literally have like seven or eight vehicles sitting at the house right now. And I got two new GMCs, a gas and a diesel, which they're both regular cash. Caps for, because for some odd reason, I'm obsessed with regular cab trucks. I don't like extended cab or crew cab trucks. And, but, like, you know, those two trucks just sit at the house, and I got a 2015 F350, I beat around in. And then, you know, I got another older F350 that I just run around in.

And, like, I'd rather drive those trucks than my new ones. And, too, it's keeping the miles off the new ones, you know. I'm like, man, I don't want to drive this thing out here. I might put miles on it, you know. So, I think it's fun to have a bunch of vehicles. but I just looked at my insurance bill not too long ago I'm like dang I need to get rid of some of these things like yolly so yeah let's let's switch gears a little bit when you look at the future of ag yeah as a young guy as a farmer what what worries you the most or what's your biggest concern is it land prices is it input costs is it fine and labor you know what do you think man it's really I think it's all those combined like it's a death by a thousand and cuts thing, like all that combined, but like now it just takes a special kind of person to be able to do it. So like I said earlier with the equipment, you had to be a nifty

person to be able to work on your own equipment stuff. And, you know, I think all those above are just a combined problem, you know, and like, like I said, I didn't grow up in the 80s. My dad didn't farm in the 80s. So we haven't seen the bad. But I keep on thinking to myself, you know, we just weather the storm eventually it's going to get better. You know, they can't, we can't keep on going like this for forever. Yeah. Especially, you know, with grain. The grain is what's really struggling the most, you know.

And our tobacco, of course, it's, you know, not like it used to be. But it's still profitable if you can manage like you should. And like I said, cut cost and just not really cut costs, but just be as frugal as you can and not live beyond your means. That's the biggest thing. What about, you know, your dad was, he's a first generation farmer. You know, we get the question all the time on here from guys that might not be farmers. Grew up, grew up on a farm family back in the day, want to get back into the farming,

or somebody that wants to aspire to be a farmer. Yeah. I mean, do you have any advice out there for guys, young hustlers that want to become farmers? Like, what would you do? Man, if I wanted to farm today and I didn't have any connections, Man, I definitely would not quit my day job, of course. And, man, I would try to figure out some kind of niche, like a directed consumer thing, like with vegetables or something like that.

I think that's something I would like to get into eventually is maybe doing some more produce or something like that. I think that would be cool. How big are farmers markets in Nashville? Big. There's a big farmer's market deal. Because, you know, everybody from Nashville is usually that lives in Nashville, is not from Nashville.

So they're all about fresh produce and stuff like that. So I think that's a big thing. around us i think people can do on a small scale that kind of thing but like uh if you have some connections to ag and you know a farmer man try to learn from somebody who you want to be like i think that's a big thing so like that's kind of how my dad got going is he learned from somebody that's done at their whole lives and you know he gathered that information looked at another you know hung out with some other bigger farmers that were more modern and just kind of mixed the two and uh and like Like I think too, you know, farming's in the gutter right now.

Don't get me wrong. But if a young farmer was nifty and could buy equipment cheap and had some ground that they could lease at a decent price and not just astronomically through the roof and could weather the storm of how it is now, I think it's not a bad time to get into it. Now, an older person might tell you different, but, you know, around us. And like I said, you might not make just a killing living off of rowcropping around us, but it's a good little side business, you know.

And there's several people, you know, that work a job, then have a side business, it would be a good side business. If you genuinely enjoy it as well, it doesn't feel like a side business. And with us too, with row crop, a lot of people with just that amount of acre, just don't do their own spraying and stuff. So you can get like the local co-op to come out and spray it. And that takes a lot of the weight off of, you know, your workload as well. So, you know, we don't have a sprayer.

We just contract out our spraying. We'll spray the initial burn down, you know, and stuff like that on no two ground. But like, so the cop does the spray in. stuff like that. Yeah. And so, you know, and really you think you can go buy a planner. They're cheap right now. You can buy a decent tractor cheap. You can buy a 1680 international cheap. And if you're nifty and know how to work on that stuff, you can farm. I mean, I don't see why you couldn't. And you can buy a grain truck cheap. I mean, you know. I mean, the nice thing about being young in ag is all this, all this ground is going to have to change hands. You know,

what, what is the average age of a farmer's, what, 56 years old or something? about my... Yeah, something like that. You know, this ground's going to have to change hands. Yeah. If it doesn't get sold, it's going to change hands. I mean, that's the biggest thing. And that's kind of what we're struggling with right now.

It's hard for somebody to keep ground when it's worth so much money, especially around our area, you know, in Nashville and stuff. You know, these farms are 90, 100 acres getting turned into a subdivision and people are making all kinds of money. Why would they keep on letting you rent it for, you know, whatever? and that's the biggest enemy right now of farming in our area, which, and I get it, you know, there's farmers that are old and want to retire, and that's how they retire. They sell their place and sell their equipment.

They're set for life. And so I get it. You know, it just sucks. It has to be like that. But, you know, it's me being as young as I am and, you know, farming and still running a business, I would, in the future, in the near future, I want to buy, you know, land and stuff like that. And I feel like farming can, you know, help me financially on the land part, you know,

paying for some of it and stuff like that. But still, I'll definitely still have to run my own business to keep, you know, bills paid and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. What about, what about livestock? Is there guys that raise cattle in your area? Yeah. With tobacco farming, especially, like I said, we raise 50 acres to back and have like 400 acres of road crop or whatever.

it's normally somebody doesn't just have 50 acres or 60 acres of tobacco usually they have something else so like you know a lot of guys have cows around us you know black angus beef or whatever and that's what they do with farming as well to kind of help rotate their ground too they're sitting pretty good right now they're all sitting good yeah like I said I wish I had a bunch of cows right now but at the same time with my luck I'd probably buy the most wildest cows in the country and they'd be it'd be a rodeo yeah they'd be out we'd be that's what dad did say I asked him one time I was like, why don't we have any cows? He goes, because we'll be out here cutting tobacco trying to get shit done

and we'll be chasing cows around in the neighborhood, you know. So that's just a whole other thing to deal with too. I kind of like on the row crop and the tobacco aspect of like in the wintertime, you don't have to mess with it. You're just doing, you know, which it never stopped, of course, but you're fixing breakdowns that you're putting off. Or what we do in the winter is we hauled us and slabs for our barns then. That's a whole undertaking in its own, you know, just getting all the stuff hauled.

And that's another thing with cutting costs is we used to hire somebody to haul our slabs and dust, but it's pretty expensive. So now I do that in the wintertime, you know, and when nothing's going on, and after I'm done duck, of course. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about hunting. What's your, what's a memorable hunt you got? You know, is there a memorable hunting story you got that sticks with you?

Dude, man, like the next one. Yeah, always chasing that. man. I think my first deer I killed, man, was a big deal to me. Like, I don't know why, man. I guess I was just an emotional kid, man. I would get, I missed a deer and I was so mad at myself. But like, in 07, there was a bad drought. And all the deer got a blue tongue disease is what's called. And it killed. Like, we went from, like, in one field being 25 deer to like, all we seen all year was a button buck, a mama, and a fawn. Like, that was it. and so like I was pretty young then still so I killed my first year when I was eight the next year and we had been hunting all morning and I did not see a damn thing we hadn't seen nothing and dad's like well we need to go through here and get a load of the back out of the barn for the guys I keep on stripping so we were driving through the field and man we crested this ridge and I looked behind us in these three does right there I'm like dag at the gun like so we got out of the truck

and slipped around the woods and slipped through there. And, man, I was a bad shot because I got so nervous because there wasn't no deer. So when I seen a deer, I was like, oh, my gosh, you know. And, man, I had a 243 short mag, a browning abel. And, man, I leaned it on a fork of a tree. And I just knew, like, I had a, I just knew I was going to miss. I was like, I can't miss, you know. And, man, I shot that deer and hit it right in the neck and dropped it dead.

And, dude, you would have thought I killed a 190-inch deer with a boat. Like, I was flipping out. And, man, I don't think I've ever been more excited than that. And then that following spring, probably 100 yards away from that, I killed my first turkey. So, like, my first year and first turkey within 100 yards of each other. It's your lucky spot. It's my lucky spot, man. It's in this little draw and a perfect spot.

And since then, I've killed a bunch of deer at that area. Yeah. And so, you know, that's kind of probably one of the most memorable hunts I've had. What do you enjoy the most? Is it duck hunting? Is it turkey hunting? Man, I flip back and forth. The dove hunts a big deal.

like I have the most enjoyment of that because of the camaraderie and stuff. But actually hunting, like, I think deer hunting is the most enjoyable. Like, it's enjoyable and relaxing. And, you know, I like chasing a trophy. And I'm, of course, you know, we eat the meat and stuff. You can't eat the horns. But like, usually what I'll do is I'll be around and I'll see a deer. I'll be like, now I'm going to hunt that deer.

And so I go after just one deer. Now, if another one that's similar slips up, he might get it. But, you know, I like to hunt a single deer and have the chase usually. And so I kind of flip thought from that and duck hunting. Duck hunting is a lot of fun when you're killing ducks. But the last two duck seasons have been pretty rough. But I duck on a lot in Arkansas. So when I go duck hunting, it's like it's an endeavor.

It's not like I can just like, I think I'm going to go deer hunting this afternoon. It's like, no, you're going to be gone for two or three days. Yeah. So we duck hunt in the timber in Arkansas a lot. It's a good time. It's fun because of the camaraderie and stuff. It's just so damn cold all the time. Yeah.

So I don't know. What about, what about barbecuing? Do you, is barbecueing, we haven't even talked about that. Yeah. So you, do you, so, you know, you got all these guys that you're kind of in the south. So like, do you have an offset? Do you, do you use a Traeger? Are you a barbecue guy?

Like, do you smoke meat? Dude, here's what we do. Okay. And this is a, I just did it the other day. is man, we have this pit and it's big enough we could put two whole hogs on and it's split down the middle

so usually I just cook off from one side because a whole hog is cool and all don't get me wrong, the nostalgia of it but it's a lot of work and a lot of work. Like, you know, so what I like to do is I'll do you know,

ribs. I like, my favorite thing here lately has been like little chicken wings like normal ones and smoking those that's probably my favorite thing to do because it doesn't take long.

It's easy. Yeah. Like when we have our big dove hunts, man, we'll have a spread of just stuff like that. And like a couple weeks ago, whatever, we killed some turkeys. And I sliced wild turkey up and barbecue or, you know, smoked it for two or three hours. But mostly ribs and chickens is what I like to do. And, you know, shoulders and stuff is cool. But I'm not a huge just pork eater anymore like it used to be.

like something a little bit more lean. Yeah. And I like doing that. And then I buy a half a cow every six months or so. And so I like to throw ribbyes on that smoker and smoke ribbys. That's good too. Oh, yeah. That's really good.

Yeah. So that's kind of what we do. But my dad and then we've been barbecue forever. But that pit, it has a door you open up. And I have hickory coals and cook with hickory, you know, off a burn barrel and feed it colds. That's what I do. I think that's my favorite. Okay.

So you're shoveling, you're shoveling, you pre-burning it basically in that barrel. Getting it down to a coal. And then putting that in the firebox of your pit. It's not really a firebox, though. It's like the meats up here on the grate, and it's underneath. And you're just... And I got a thermometer. We put a piece of cardboard over the top of it, and I got a thermometer, you know,

cook it 275, 300, you know, somewhere around there, depending on how long I have. And so I just sprinkle them across the bottom and just keep it. it at that temperature. And then Hickory Coals, man, it does good. That's what I like to do. God damn. Usually like once a month, we have a piece of property that goes down to our Sycamore Creek, which is, it's pretty big. So we have a rope swing and stuff, and we'll have some get-togethers down there. And that's where the pits's at right now. So about once a month, usually I'll have a big cookout and all my friends will come over and we'll swim in the creek

or, you know, do whatever. So that's what we usually do. That's like the summer fun right there. Old school tobacco and old school barbecue. Yeah, and usually what we'll do is I'll poach some hickory slabs that are down on these slab piles. And like I said, I'm spoiled in a lot of aspects. So I have all the equipment. I'll just throw one of them in my dump trailer and go dump it out down there and cut them in the small pieces of the chainsaw.

And use that for you. And use that because the slabs are good because it's not like a full piece of wood. So it kind of burns. It makes a coal quicker than if you just had split hickory wood. Sure. Yeah. So that's a big thing.

And 4th of July, some neighbors up the road, man. They have like a three-day barbecue fest, dude. I'll have one year, man, I ate so much meat. I literally had the meat sweats. Like, yeah. Like, 4th of July, I shut down for a few days. I'm like, okay, yeah. Our big thing, too, is my dad, when he was in high school,

worked for a fish place. And so, man, we have fish fries, too. That's a big thing we have. So, like, my brother, whenever his baby shower, this is thinking about now this is pretty damn redneck but like his baby shower for when my first my oldest brother was born was they had a big fish fry so my older brother just had a had a child last year and for her baby shower that we had a huge fish fry and so all right so what do you what do you fry it you got croppy cropy cropy's the best i think what do you fry in them in lard uh or peanut

oil batter it and then put it in oil is what we do my dad is the the fish fry guy and he makes like the best hush puppies of all time. Like, they are so good. I can sit there. It's like a Texas roadhouse roll. You can just sit there and just gorge yourself with them. So that's a big thing

he likes doing is fish fries. And one of my friends, he's big into crappie fishing. He catches so many croppy that he doesn't know what to do with them. So he'll just give them to us. And we just have big fish fries. Nice.

So that's another big, big party thing we do is barbecue and fish fries. Was your mom a good cook? She's a pretty good cook. You know, it's hard to cook for, I think she burned herself out on cooking. She's more of a baker. So when we were younger, man, she used to cook all kinds of bread and would make it from scratch. And that was her little side business there for a while

was she was making bread. She makes some banging pumpkin muffins. Like, they're so good. I try to get her to make them all the time. She doesn't do it. But pumpkin muffins, bread, she makes like a raisin cinnamon bread that's so good. But she makes it off from scratch. So that's kind of her claim to fame is that. You're really, I think it probably is a challenge for you to stay swelled. Yes, it definitely is, dude, because, you know, fish fries, barbecue, all this stuff. I have to, like, the in-between time I have to damn near starve myself to be able to do all that kind of stuff. Well, cigars are the only way to stunt your appetite.

That's right, these cigars and four shots of espresso over ice. That's the only way. So that, and then, you know, I quit drinking beer. That was one of my big problems with it. What was your, what did you drink? What beer were you doing? I was a Miller-Light guy. I know y'all are big Bush people. Well, Iowa, Bush Light is the official beer of Iowa. I mean, I get it. And I like Bush Light. I actually drank Bush Light before it was cool there for a little bit.

And then I graduated to Miller Light. But I hate to say it, well, I love a Corona premiere with a line. Oh, yeah. They're good. They are good. I do like that. That's honestly like what I would drink now if I was drinking beer. Well, I mean, I think, you know, there's beer that you drink if you're going to drink the whole box.

Yes. And then there's beer that you're going to have when you're walking around a party talking to people. That's true. And there's a difference. There's a difference. Yep. My party beer is definitely middle-a-light,

but I just hate the feeling. Because with me, it's all or nothing. Like, I'm not just going to drink one or two beers. I'm going to sit there and, like, cook a whole thing of barbecue and drink 12 beers. Yep. So the after-effect of beer is what I do not like. And I'm going to sound like a girl saying this.

I like the high noon. Oh, I'm a big news. I like high-moon. I like high-dunes, too. I like high dunes. There's this one drink. It's called Southside, and it's a gin, like a gin high noon, but they're 10% alcohol. So you got to be careful with them things.

You can drink four of them, but it's like drinking eight high noons or beers. So, you know, I try not to, try to stay with them, but tequila, soda water, lime and lemon is just, that's my go-to. That's your go-to. That's my go-to. I think it's refreshing. Don't get too hung over. Tequila's probably the best alcohol for you, which none of it's good. So that's kind of my thing.

I never was a big whiskey drinker. I never could get into it. Like your old fashions, man, I can't do that. No. Whiskey was an occupational hazard of being in the sales world. I mean, it just... I can see that. That's how I developed that.

I know. And of course, everybody has their story about Fireball. I mean, you know... Yeah, I don't even get me started about Fireball. Just thinking about it just makes me quiver, man. I can... That and black velvet. I have a buddy that just loved Black Velvet.

It's terrible. Oh, boy. I honestly, UV blue back in, oh, God. That was the unity drink. Like our boss at the end of the night, a trade show, we'd go out and when we're all ready to go home, he'd be like, all, you know, UV and vodka, UV and blue and vodka. And we would, you know, I'd have five of those. Oh, God. But in that, in that LTD in the glove box when I was a kid, we, Southern Comfort.

and to this day, I'm not kidding you to this day, if I smell Southern comfort, I will all start to get, I'll just be like, I know, that's how I'm a fireball. Bad experience. Dude, like, I just cannot even, anything sitting in there for a while, just like I could not even get around.

It was so bad. Which the first time I drank fireball, I drank fireball in like nine natural lights, so that was probably a mixture of the two. Not a good combination. Those are all lessons you have to learn. Yeah, dude. I come from the school,

knocks on that deal. There you go. In a lot of aspects. And that's like the first time I dipped. I dipped like skull cherry. And man, it was the worst. Like, and I still to this day, if I smell anything like that, I'm like, oh, my God. It's bad, man.

Let's go, let's go rapid fire here because we're getting to the end. Yeah. So what's the, what do you think the best cigar you ever smoked in your life? Dude, I, I, first thing that comes to mind is a crowned heads, Belgian blue. It's a box press cigar. man, it's great. It's not sweet like the ones we're smoking now. We're smoking sweet James right now. It's not sweet, but it's not too bitter. Like it's, it's just a really good cigar, but they do like limited runs every year, I think, or something like that. That's good.

And I like anything to have at all cigars are probably the two of my favorites. But the best one, I love a Belgian blue. Yeah. What's the most dangerous tree you've ever had to take down? Dude, to me they're all dangerous you know tree i think that's one of the most dangerous things uh dude i cut one the only reason i cut it the way i did was because it was at my friend's house but i cut a maple tree that was literally curved over the roof and it was probably probably 25 inches at the base and i hooked a rope to the top a block and then hooked it to my bucket truck and pulled it over and there's i have a video of it somewhere but dude it literally got like four foot from the roof line

and just laid right over. I'll say, oh, my gosh. But that's the rush I chase all the time. I love that. Yeah, that's probably the most dangerous. What's one piece of advice you would give to a 20-year-old who wants to start farming or getting no business today, small business? You better have faith and be ready to work like a mule.

I mean, that's pretty much it. And don't quit your day job. That's what I would do. And, you know, like I said, just try to be as nifty as you can. and if you can, get around a good successful farmer and learn from that. Because most guys will teach you stuff. I mean, that's kind of, like I said, that's how my dad started, and that's probably what I would give somebody.

And if you're not crafty working on equipment or not used to right down, you better get used to it because that's 50% of the work, I feel like. Yeah. What's the worst childhood chore that you had to do? Dude. Worst childhood chore. What's the thing that when your dad came the house and said, boys, we're gonna, do you go off?

Dude, they all sucked, like in hindsight. So it wasn't that bad. I'm gonna tell you the worst thing I ever did was more, you know what a morning glory is, right? One year, we had a, it was like nine acres to tobacco. And something happened to our pre-emergent, and it didn't work. It didn't work.

Dude, we had morning glories on every single plant going around the stock. We had to hand. Pull them off. pull every one of them, that sucked. That was probably one of the worst. I always hated picking up rocks. I had to do that for forever. Like, you'll go around

every field of ours and just see huge rock piles. But in hindsight, that wasn't that bad. I mean, I really didn't think any of it was, it all sucks, so it was equally bad. Yeah. But I think the morning glory thing sucked. And oil and tobacco for suckers is not my

most favorite thing. Yeah. I think those are the two worst. but in that one experience, the morning glories were the bane of my existence at that time. And like, I was like, I hate my dad. Like, this sucks. Why can you get this pre-emergent right? But it was only like three acres, but it took us, it took us two or three days all day to do that. Yeah.

So that was the worst. That sounds not fun. Dude, it was not fun. It pretty much like think of pulling morning glories off of corn stalks, but you can't break any leaves. Right. That's how you got to be careful. Yeah. And I'm like, why can't we get the guys? There's nothing a kid hates worse.

than having to be careful. Yeah. Oh, man. And we, it was me, my friend Michael, I think it was just us too out there. And I was so mad.

If I didn't have a can of grizzly winter green in my pocket, I'd be way more mad. It's like 17 at the time, whatever. So yeah, those are, that was the worst. We got a,

we got a, we got a segment on here. It's a tradition at Barn Talk called tip of the hat. Yeah. So who's somebody in your life? What's a brand that you use every day? What's a piece of equipment or something that you want to tip your hat to and say, this is a hell of a good person, good thing that I use that you want to give your

flowers to and why. Okay. And you can give them multiple answer to. Okay. Well, my boy Devlin has this brand called Club Country. He gave me a bunch of hats. So shout out to him. He's cool. Man, I don't, write off a topic, man, that's hard. I'll tell you something I use my tree business every day as Huscavarnia. Like, their saws are awesome. And I think that's one thing as a tip of a hat. And right off hand, man, I don't really think, I don't think nothing's too good.

My Indian guy at the liquor store that gives me lighters all the time. That's a tip of the hat kind of guy? Yep. Yeah. And really, my mom and dad for not, you know, going crazy on us six kids homeschooling us all. That's a big tip of the hat right there.

Yeah. Yeah. So I would say those few things right there. Yeah. There's kind of a shotgun blast. Nothing too too meaningful. But dude to the liquor store that gives me a bit of a hit. me lighters when I buy cigars is a huge G.

Yeah. That's a good man right there. Big thing right there. Yeah. Yeah. And ghost energy drinks, of course. And force Osper Special Over Ice to keep you going. Yeah. I love it, man. I love it. I was just thinking what's one lesson or thing that your dad's taught you that is just stuck with you for your life? Man, kind of how I said, always try to stay ahead of things. So like when I was talking about the irrigation, you know, don't let things get so bad where whenever you actually do fix them, it could be better if you're done in the week go. Stay ahead of things all the time. And I think especially in the tobacco farming, when you're firing tobacco and when you're in any aspect, you don't need to wait. Oh, I'll do it tomorrow. No,

you need to go ahead and do it. And, you know, because one day can make a big difference. So I think just staying ahead of things. He's always taught me that. And pretty much never quit. I mean, we've had some really hard times and my dad bitches and bones sometimes about gosh I'm about sick of this but at the end of the day he gets it done one way or another or we get it done so that's the biggest thing it's just trying to not get down and out and want to quit or give up

because you know that is that's probably the worst thing you can but staying if you stay ahead of things I feel like that is the best advice he's giving me is you know don't wait till tomorrow let's get it done even if it's late in the afternoon you want to go home just knock it out and it's done and what i always told myself is when i'm in a terrible situation or doing something i really don't want to do i just tell myself hey it's just time you're not going to die at the end of the day you're going to be laying in the bed and sleep and tomorrow's going to come so that's what i have to tell myself sometimes whenever you get in those

jobs they're like there's no end in sight you know time is eventually going to end and run out for the day so you know you'll get through it one way or another yeah yeah well jessey man it was an absolute pleasure to have you. Where can people find you if they want to follow you and see your journey? Probably on Instagram. It's my name Jesse Jordan, but it's J-E-S-S-S-E because somebody already stole my name. Or on TikTok, I think it's just Jesse Jordan 99.

I probably need to make like a farm page and actually get on that a little bit better, but I've been slacking. So I guess I'm too busy taking pictures with my dogs and stuff. So I need to switch the content over. But, you know, it's been a little bit slow through the winter. So, you know, we're about to start setting. I think it's raining at home right now. So as soon as this rain lets up, we're going to be planting.

So, yeah, we'll get back ramped up on the Instagram and TikTok as long as they don't flag my videos. Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, we appreciate you making the trip. Guys, if you got any value, go follow Jesse. Share the show with the people that you know. Leave your review on Spotify or Apple. We love you guys.

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