Barn Talk - The $1M Farm Diversification Escape: How One Iowa Farm Stays Viable w/Matt Kroul

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk. Today, we’re excited to bring you a conversation that truly celebrates the grit, diversity, and heart of Iowa agriculture. Our guest is Matt Kroul—an Iowa farm kid turned University of Iowa football standout, NFL lineman, and now a passionate advocate for the future of the family farm. Matt sits down with Tork and Sawyer to share his incredible journey—from growing up surrounded by livestock, sports, and hard work, to the highs and grind of college and professional football, and ultimately, returning home to join the next generation guiding his family’s operation. But this isn’t your typical row crop farm—Kroul Farms is a model of real diversification: from 1200 acres of pastures, row crops, greenhouses, vegetables, and pumpkins, to retail firewood, a CSA program, and direct-to-consumer beef. We’ll dive into the creative, sometimes chaotic realities of running a truly diversified farm, the challenges and rewards of working with family, and what it means to build a legacy while raising young kids with strong values. Matt speaks candidly about transition planning, the pressures facing small farmers, and the mindset shifts needed to keep agriculture thriving for the next generation. Plus, we’ll get honest about balancing relentless work, family time, and what really keeps a rural community strong. Whether you’re passionate about AG, family businesses, or just love a good comeback story, this episode is packed with laughs, hard-earned wisdom, and memorable moments. Get ready to meet one of Iowa’s most down-to-earth and forward-thinking farmers—you’ll definitely want to check out everything the Kroul family is doing. Let’s get started! Shop Farmer Grade 👇🏻 https://farmergrade.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 "Authentic Agricultural Storytelling" 09:33 Joining Rex's Team as Free Agent 14:53 "Doyle's Impact on Player Development" 16:19 Football's Mental and Physical Grind 22:30 Streamlining Family Farm Operations 29:55 "Featured on Farms of America" 33:55 "Creative Competitive Restaurant Sourcing" 36:58 Farm Equipment Upgrade Journey 44:50 "Cattle and Pumpkins Enhance Agritourism" 49:14 Egg Price Complaints and Nutritional Value 53:51 "Farm Staff and H2A Program" 01:00:16 Plan Future: Have Tough Conversations 01:06:58 Transition Challenges in Family Farming 01:11:32 Coaching: Balancing Life and Leadership 01:13:56 "Summer Routine Shift" 01:21:45 Competing Land Prices Challenge Farmers 01:25:47 Competitive Spirit and Community Impact 01:32:10 "Mentorship and Family Work Ethic" 01:36:48 Guiding Kids in Peer Pressure 01:42:15 Smartphone Addiction: Modern-Day Drug 01:46:59 "Check Out Matt's Ventures" ------------------------------- ⚠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 on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is no... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens that 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 hell of a good guest episode. We got a great farm kid that grew up here in Iowa doing some awesome things on their operation. And we're going to get into all the nitty gritty of stuff that's going on and on his operations. and more.

But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, all that we ask is that you share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show can grow. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. And there's a lot of ways that you can get value. If we made you laugh, if you're related to us on something, if you'll learn something new, just share it.

That's all that we ask. It's the best way we found to grow the podcast. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is, is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. The more that you guys do that, the more credibility it gives to our show so we can have more guests like we're having on today, come to the barn and have a great conversation with us.

Last thing you can do to help us out here at BarnTalk is support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade, farmergrade.com. You can always use code BarnTalk to save 10% off your order. And I just want to say we rolled out a new subscription offer on Farmergrade.com for our subscription boxes. it's 50% off the first box, 15% off all future boxes for the life of your subscription,

free ground B for life, and free shipping. So we wanted to make it a really great offer and cost-effective offer for our customers because we know that everybody, it's tight everywhere. Everyone's pinching pennies trying to get by. So anything we can do to make things easier for our customer, we're trying to find ways to do it. So I just want to let you guys know,

that. And I'm just, I'm pumped for today's show. It's going to be a damn good one. This guy is a stand-up dude, so it is going to be good. And I'll just tell you, in our, in ag, people like to throw around the idea of diversity. And you hear people talk about how so-and-so runs a diversified farm. And the tag with that diversified part is, oh, we grow corn, soybeans, raise some hogs, maybe we do some hay. No. These guys, it's crazy,

the level of diversity that they have managed to evolve their farm into. So our guest today, Farm Kid, grew up not very far from us, play the University of Iowa, linemen in the NFL, came back to the farm, and he is, he and he and his wife raising a family and uh transition in that farm from one generation

another and they're doing some incredible stuff um yeah super excited to get into this so without any further ado let's get started well we're live so no cool i i figured we were i'm matt crow welcome to barn talk and we appreciate you making the trip down we uh i've heard good things about all that you're doing. I've heard your name a few times of all the awesome stuff you guys are doing on your operation. And then when we were at the governor steer show, that's where we met you. And we were like, well, shit, we got to have you come down and I saw the name. And I was like, man, you guys pop up in my Facebook feed. I click on you guys once. And now it's, you know, every night. I got to see your faces every night.

But, uh, I'm sorry for that. I saw you on the list for the governor's charity show. And, uh, yeah, I just went and said hi and you've had a couple of my buddies on here and I feel like guys do a great job of, you know, just being authentic and being original and just speaking what egg is. And that's part of what we do at our place. You know, we very diversified in what we do. We're about 1,200 acres, but that's half pasture timber and half road crop alpha ground. And then all the pumpkins, produce, sweet corn, all the above is kind of the other acres encompasses that. And yeah, I told you guys, any time I can kind of get in front of a mic or camera and just tell the backstory of ag and be an open book to the general public. You know, we'll do that.

So that's kind of our goal. Yeah. Well, before we get too far into it, how do people find out about your farm and you, what you're doing? How's the best way to get a touch. Yeah, we got a website. My wife does a great job with that. It's cruelfarms.com. So anything's on there.

and that I'll kind of list our seasonal things that are being offered in hours and join our newsletter and all the above. And she does a pretty good job. She'll tell you she can do better with Facebook and some of the social media. But, you know, and you kind of find us anywhere. It's just Crowell, K-R-O-U-L. Awesome. Sweet. Thank you.

She shouldn't feel bad because if she, it's like a moving target. I mean, we thought we were pretty good at it. And then you run into somebody and you're like, damn. Yeah, we should do that. Social media is a never-changing. It's just always evolving. Algorithms change. Platforms change.

It's... What grabs, you know, what gets attention, what doesn't, and, you know... It's a pain in the buzz sometimes. You don't want to be too edgy as far as topics go because you want to keep it and, you know, I can see you guys the way you do it and you want to keep it, you know, normal and not trying to cause controversy, right? You know, I mean, that's the media in the day and age that we live in. And, you know, I think podcasting has grew to what it is. And it's because people like the originality of it and just hearing a story, you know,

and you'll get hooked on those. So, yeah, anyway. Yeah. So give us a little history. You're not only were a farmer, but you were a football player for a long time. So give us the background of growing up as a farm kid, playing football, and then where you're at now. Yeah, many, many moons ago. football.

Yeah. No, my childhood, right? It wasn't a, I wouldn't call it typical farm kid. Like, I wasn't getting them at 5 a.m. and doing chores. And we have livestock. We had a beef cows. So, like, there's always livestock. We raised open furrowed hogs out in the pasture with the eight by eight huts. And I literally, my job was to go in and get the babies crawl up on top. Mom would castrate them, teat them. So I got like a penny a piece or something for that. But looking back, it's like, I was literally crawling inside of this, eight by eight. close thing with a mad mom's out and grab, you know, so child labor laws back then. But, but I digress, you know, my childhood, you know, sports were a big part of, part of my life,

you know, even middle school, you know, high school. So my dad and mom, you know, let me put my time and energy into that, you know, school and athletics. So I just get up and work out and do all that and had some success early on in high school. And the University of Iowa offered me after my sophomore more year. So I just didn't see a better spot, you know, being 15, 20 minutes away from the University of Iowa and having a chance for my parents to be that close to watch and get down there for game days. And that was probably 2001, 2002. And I was just coach was just kind of turned in that program into what it is and it has been for 25 years. That was their orange ball year when I think played USC if I remember right. So I verbally committed. Never really

look back, not that I was a huge recruit, but kind of bypassed the whole recruiting process, and Iowa is it. So then you sign and that whole deal and redshirted and then started four years straight, 50 games straight. You know, very lucky in that regard as far as being able, they had no one else to put in freshman year. So they put in some chunky little guy. You know, you could tell that story more flattering than what you do there. Seriously, that D-Line before me, maybe some of your viewers will recognize these names. John Babineau, he probably played 10 years. Tyro Lucie was a West High graduate, just super strong dude,

played D-Tackle. Derek Robinson just passed a couple weeks ago, unfortunately. He played four or five years in the league, and then you had Matt Roth. So you all remember that name. So those are my guys that I looked after, but they were all seniors. They graduated. I came in a pretty slow linebacker at 235 pounds, And Coach Parker, Norm back then was like, hey, Matt, you ever thought about putting your hand down?

And I'm like, you just tell me what to do. I'll start eating. I know how to gain weight. And, yeah, started playing at 260 my first year. And then, you know, left there about 285, 290. And then went to the next level. Undrafted to the Jets. You know, we had Hard Knocks back in the day when Hard Knocks was like super popular.

Yeah, the Jets, we had that. My rookie year, I think. That was Rex Ryan, right? Yeah, so Coach Rex. So, you know, as a free agent, you know, obviously you want to be drafted. But a free agent kind of gives you a little mobility if teams call you to kind of evaluate the situation right. And that situation was Coach Ryan, Rex, his first year.

And then they had a new general manager coming in the same year. So everyone has an agent. You know, his advice was go somewhere where it's fresh, where they don't have their guys lined up. And that gives you the best opportunity. So went there, like three years. years, four camps. I went to four camps with them and then I was cut about 12 times with the same team. So I was up, so basically that's, I'm up between the practice squad are active, you know,

and that's weekly. So it was an interesting life. One, being in New Jersey, New York area, growing up here, eastern Iowa, it's just a different kind of speed of life. And people are fine, but they, I tell people all the time, they just don't understand please and thank you. And like, normal cordial activity like opening a door i remember the first time i was there i don't know shopping for groceries she just saw i'm going to open a door for an old date and she kind of like looked at me like i was going to like grab something out of i'm like and she literally goes shoot out from around here are you i said no i'm from iowa blah blah and you know shot the crap for her for a little bit but yeah i had the great opportunity and no regrets there um you know four camps and uh yeah it was a

good experience being out there. So that's my story. Yeah, that was a 2012 was last time playing and then had some opportunities to go playing Canada and I was just like, my wife wanted to start a career, we're going to start a family and just kind of made a decision of jumping full till back home for me farming. And then she's got a communications background, worked at some corporate jobs. And then two years ago, she stepped away from that. Her dad passed three years ago now. I guess it's been three. So three years ago, when her dad passed, she put in her two weeks.

Because we were in that time of we had two or three kids, we had all four kids then, you know, both working full time. Both of us get home at 5, 515, we're out the door to go to T-ball. Yeah. And we look at each other and spend $20, $25,000 on child care.

Yeah. And we're looking at each other like, man, you know, he passed really, 64, about three months away from his retirement. Yeah. And, you know, what are we doing? We're running so hard, so fast, you know, let's enjoy this young time period. If we could do it financially, you know, let's enjoy this time with them.

So, yeah, three years ago, actually yesterday, the 26th was the three-year anniversary of his passing, Neil. So, yeah, that's kind of our story. So, you know, she did the corporate thing for a long time and kind of jumped full till now to help me with a lot of the customer relation and social media and emails and website and everything like that. So that's our story. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's good. Well, go back a little. bit. So, like, when you were playing, when you were playing in high school, you committed Iowa, you said when you were like a sophomore? After my sophomore year, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So at what point

were you playing as a high school kid and you had the thought, you know, I'm pretty good at this. Yeah. I was, and I think everyone has their like a way of motivating himself, right, Tork? Like, I always thought someone was better to me. Like, yeah. Someone was working harder. Someone was better. You know, I never, I tried to never have that mentality like, oh, I'm, I'm pretty good, you know. But Coach Morgan was a recruiter for Iowa back then, Reese Morgan. You know, I think his story he tells us, I went to a camp, and they had some big time guys in there.

And this kid that was 20 minutes away that played in Mount Vernon, Iowa was beating him supposedly. So I don't remember that story, but, you know, I never, I guess the answer question, never really had that feeling of like. But then you got to target. on your back when you're committed to Iowa after when you're 15 or whatever. Right. But so you just got to uphold that standard. And yeah, that's kind of how I motivated myself was always, someone's working harder than me.

Someone's doing something better and everything like that. Training camp. What about, well, what were you going to say? No, I was just going to ask, like, Iowa is notoriously good at preparing people that go to the NFL. Was that your experience when you, went. Did you feel like you were well prepared for what you got into? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that standard set by the previous, even coach got there in 99, but those five years that he was sending guys to NFL prior to me, I guess, sorry, eight years

prior to me, there was a certain standard, right? And I remember vividly at first training camp with the Jets in a meeting room, pole team room, and he kind of put me on the spot. Coach Patton was our D coordinator. Hey, Kroll, blah, blah, blah. I answered this. question and answered it. He goes, Iowa guy, you know. So right there, it's like kind of clicks like, oh, Iowa's known for some. They're prepared. They study. They've got the crap together. You know, they can, they can examine the situation, heard to say. So yeah, no, coaching the staff did a great job of just running that sort of ship to that five years you're there. Yeah. So yeah, that was kind of the standard set. Were you there? Was Doyle there when you were there? Yeah, Doyle was a huge part,

a huge part. I'm sure Marshall Yonda said the same thing. Like Doyle was, you know, I was kind of grabbing for his attention even in junior, senior, in high school, you know, trying to get it. So, you know, he does a great job. Just, you know, just this whole mindset, right, of preparing people and developing players. You know, I came in there, you know, 6-1, 225, 2.30, and left at 285 and didn't get any slower, you know, and, you know, O.G, everyone who was, that went through there would tell you it was a huge part of their success to Coach Doyle too.

So, yeah. Yeah, so training camp, you went through four of them, right? What is the word, everybody says training camp's a pain in the ass. It's hard. What makes it so hard? What, what is the grind, the grit of it? You know, obviously the game's changed. You know, and this, I've been out 15 years.

But, you know, it's just a 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. you know that three four week period and when you're a lower 10 or lower half of the team like you could cut any hour any second you know so it's just more mental like yeah physicality's different because all these guys are huge humans that are put on the planet to do it seems like to do one thing you know play football so yeah one the physicality of it you know the speed of it changes each level they go up high school college pro but i think it's more anything it's just a mental grind of if you're learning a new playbook or you got a new coaching staff or, you know, am I going to get sent home tomorrow?

Then what the heck am I going to do? You know, I'm 23 years old. Like, you know, that whole thing in the back of your head. So I think it's just more mental grind of make sure you're on every hour of the day, physically and mentally for that time period is kind of a long thing. Yeah. I think the stat is if you play for like seven years, you spent like a full year in training camp,

which is crazy to think about like. Yeah, you put your life in this in this timeline. You know, that's crazy to think about it. Did you always know that you wanted to, you know, be a farmer when you got done with your football career? Was that always just like, this is what I'm going to do? I think, yes. I mean, when you grow up around it and you see what your parents had developed then, because we started diversify early 90s, you know, right after we started growing some sweet corn,

tomatoes, and a few pumpkins. So by time I came back in 2013, like we had, you know, grown some different businesses within that, too. So yes and no is, I guess is my answer. Like, yeah, there's always opportunities. The network you build at the University of Iowa and the network you build at New York and things like that, there were definitely opportunities that sometimes were financially better than the farming world.

But when it's in your blood, it's in your blood. And my wife grew up on a row crop farm too in Kalamaz, Iowa. So she came from a farming, small community. And, you know, we both wanted to raise our kids that way, too, in that mindset of egg as well. So did you meet your wife at Iowa? Yeah, second year at Iowa. Nice.

Her first year, my second year, somehow, I don't know how this works. We had the closest, my roommate and I had the closest room to the girls hallway. Oh, there you got. Yeah, last week we get to choose our room. So lo and behold, my wife was a few doors down the down the, down the, hallway so yeah yeah life and timing like we're talking about just uh so met there and uh yeah rest is history yeah four kids later mm-hmm that's awesome um when you so when you left the NFL and you came back like is that a culture shock coming from the east coast or did you come

back quite a bit. Was it was it a big change to move back home? So you had um every off season, I would still train at Iowa like Doyle was there. So a lot of most NFL guys would come back and train. So you had your two or three months in the summer. So you were, I was back and forth quite a bit. I don't know how many times I made that 13 half hour drive from Jersey to eastern Iowa. But yeah, so it wasn't, it wasn't a huge deal. And you're like it's not like I was gone. Yeah. Five, 10 years, you know, it's three years with a couple times you're back between OTAs and, uh, camp. So not a huge culture shock, but yeah, we need to get the kids back out there. I haven't been back since 2012, and I'm sure that place has changed as well. But I think it'd be fun to see what old

dad worked at for a few years in his life. But we'll see if that trip happens. But no, I don't think it was a huge culture shock just because you had still, I got back. And I always made myself Bail Straar or Bail, hey, Square Bail Strower, hey, prior to training camp, just so in my head, once again, like a mental thing, like, hey, if it's 95 degrees, 100% humidity, yeah, just a helmet in full pads, I would rather be a helmet in full pads than choking on dust in 95 degree weather. So make sure I still got some farm work in as well. Yeah, absolutely. Did you have any rookie hazing? Me? That was right where they were cracking down on it. Like, we had something. We just did a skit, like made fun of some of the players and coaches. So it was pretty lax and pretty

simple. Yeah, there wasn't any major. Unless you got on the vets bad side, which I made sure I did not do. There wasn't much hazy and for me anyway. Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good. It's softened up a little bit there. That's good because, yeah, I don't remember what Yonda said, but there was some, he got stuck with one hell of a bill. Oh, yeah. He was a draft restaurant. Everyone knew I was just some poor kid that was a free agent. So Yonda was third round. So he had a little vacuum. Yeah. Yeah. But you hear that a lot, right? going out to eat with the with the group and yeah all of a sudden it's whatever it is you know depends what they're doing it's a dozy yeah especially in new york it's a it's a different world

yeah so you're full-fledged farming now so you talked about it briefly but what are all the stuff that you guys are doing and how do you make it all go i mean you got four kids you got all this stuff going on on the farm yeah break it down yeah that's a very loaded question yeah yeah I know. It is. I'm going to go get a pat of paper. Yeah, no crap. Organized chaos. That's what I call it. Every day. Seems like. No, kind of run through our life cycle. We fire up our greenhouses late February, early March. We've got five grower units that we start our vegetable starts, flowers. You know, so we get them fired up. I start calvin March 15th. I've got like a 90-day calving window in there that I pretty much manage all the calving. My mom is still full-fledged. That's kind of her base. is the greenhouse yet even at 65 but uh we'll get in that topic i'm sure of transitioning uh life and farm and things like that but then we always open up the retail space a couple weeks for mother's day and then we're open usually to about mid-december we start doing some christmas trees but filled in there is is everything farming you know getting the i just have about 550 acres

of road crop so i do all the planting um my brother does tillage and spraying um yeah and then uh that kind of kind of gets us into our CSA season. It starts in June. So CSA, our community support agriculture. This year, I think we're supporting, or they're supporting us, I should say, 214 families that we deliver a box of vegetables to their doorstep every week, or they pick it up on farm. So that's June through September.

We got a couple weeks left of that. And sweet corn season usually is right around 4th July. So, yeah, it's all, it's kind of, you know, I tell my dad and mom, it's all like in their head, right? And how do we grow or how do we expand delegation or like writing this stuff down or implementing software and other things, you know, apps, whatever we can do to make this stuff from their crazy brains, get it on to, you know, digital or something that we can delegate and pass through to people. So yeah, yeah, that's kind of what my wife and I have tried to implement as much as the older generation fights you on it. They've been great at being understandable what we're trying to do and knowing that, and he alluded to it on the Farms of America show, you know, it's hard to kind of step away.

And he said, I think his line was at 40 years, it's hard just to give it away. And that's not what he's doing. But give away responsibility, you know, disconnect. How do you step away or how do you slowly start to disconnect a little bit? You know, farmers never totally disconnect. But. And then, yeah, we just started picking pumpkins. yesterday. So luckily it's 75 degrees, not 95 like it normally is end of August. So I didn't mind

picking a few yesterday. So high vs, we do a lot of business with high vs in the fairways in the area. We get some down to Washington, HyVee here in your area. They want them Labor Day weekend. So we'll start delivering tomorrow through Halloween. We officially open up for the fall season, September 14th or 15th or 13th, whenever that Saturday is. And that's kind of our biggest attraction as far as people coming to the farm. So we kind of, we try to ride the fine line between a mini amusement park and a farm. We leave it kind of like a farm.

Like we'll have our 95 head of feeders that we'll wean here next week right there for people to like look at. And by October 31st, you can literally touch them or feed them. You know, by the end of that, having a few thousand people walk by them. Chickens, we have some egg layers for chickens so they get to see that.

We just got a little miniature pony that people like to look at. I think we had a couple of pot-belly pigs, you know, down there. So, you know, farm cats are running around. So we just try and keep it as close to the farm as we can. And they'll see during harvest. There's tractors rolling in. You know, it could be Saturday morning at 10 a.m.

And there's 500 people that are ready. But you can harvest, so we're harvesting. You know, and we have little corn maize, a little haybell maze. So there's stuff for the kids to do, but we try not to jump into that. No bouncy houses. Yeah, the bounce house. And I like the business model. Like, don't get me wrong.

Like, we don't charge admission. You know, we just want families to come and enjoy the farm and see it and see what a diversified Iowa farm is. And then, you know, buy a few pumpkins right there. But, yeah, that's kind of our story. Firewood. Yeah, sorry. That's one thing I was just about, yeah, just about to get to.

We sold firewood for 40, 50 years. Just kind of the nature of the beast of where our farm sits. Right next to Cedar River, like I mentioned, half of that's timber pasture. So a lot of trees and a lot of managing timber, the falling trees or, you know, things like oak will, Nash-Bore and everything that comes through naturally that wipes some of these species out. But so we've been doing that forever. Just kind of upped it recently. We do a lot of the shrink wrap bundles and then we'll deliver to restaurants,

barbecue spots that need hickory or oak or cherry. We'll do that. And the wood fire pizza craze, which is still kind of going. Yep. We do a few of those in the area. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just a... Damn.

That's our life. That's easy, right? There's nothing to it. Holy shit. Well, last thing, we always have the conversation on here that, you know, the reality of ag today is it's like get big or die or off a farm job and... Or off a farm job and make that happen or create your own market. And I mean, big kudos to you guys and your parents for being so...

I give them the props to be... Forward-thinking. ...op entrepreneurial spirit and to take a risk and put up a random greenhouse over our old hog, you know, drainage shed that we used to use. And that was our first greenhouse and now, you know, there's six on the property. But, yeah, I don't know. It's evolved into what it is. And we just try and maximize every acre that we can. If that's with more cows and managing our pasture better or, you know, putting up a new facility to try and feed better.

we're starting to finish up. We just started selling our own beef this last six months. So just always trying to direct, whatever we can direct to the consumer, try and do it. You know, we still got corn and beans, which you ride that market and what it is. But if I have more cows and I can feed more of it, like in the hog world, like you guys do, you know, we'll do it. And I always tell people, I grow the best corn after pumpkins, which I've stumped a lot of agronomists, but my main agronomans said they're a legume, so they must be fixating. some nitrogen or something.

They must be. Because literally we have 45 acres of pumpkins this year. And corn will be on that 45. And you can see to the line. And we're not huge corn, you know, bushels per se where I'm at. But it'll go to $2,300 on a good year on that pumpkin ground

and it'll be 210, you know, in that same field where pumpkins weren't. So it's kind of crazy because you take so many tons of product off that. You think you wouldn't have much left. But I need to grow more pumpkins. It's something different. I need 300 acres of pumpkins. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. That would be a lot of picking. Well, there's no, yeah, that's my next comment. There's no machine that can go get it. Keep a stem on the pumpkin and make it look beautiful and for people to have on their front steps. So unless robots come around that I can pick pumpkins.

Well, I don't know. I've been, you know, I talk to Elon a lot. One way, I talk and he doesn't reply. You got a lot of Twitter DMs. You tweet them on X. But, you know, I'm like, Sawyer is of no help. My master plan was that I was going to hand off all the pig chorin to Sawyer. Yeah.

And then he was your robot. Right. Exactly right. And then he just trumped me and started all this other stuff. So I'm still, I'm still chorin. And I'm like, I want to try out that Tesla bot and see whether he can drag out a 280 pound. Yeah, you've got to have your routine. Yeah.

Or pick six pumpkins at a time. I need six arms during October and September, but I don't have. I've gotten no. No reply on that. Yeah, he's coming. It's coming. I loved your dad's, uh, his understatement of things. There's a lot of those.

There's a lot of those in that. When the fire, I love the firewood deal when they asked him how he got the firewood deal started. And he's like, well, I didn't have any money and I needed beer money. So I figured it was a good way to get, we could get 50 bucks a week. Because that was the, because the way of year was, I mean, he graduated in 77. So it was 18 drinking age. Yeah.

Right around there. something so he always tells that story but nickel draws or whatever yeah yeah and now you go to new earth you're paying for 14 dollars for a bush light yeah yeah yeah times have changed but tell them uh what video we're we're talking about so matt sent us a video about their farm and so if you guys want to check it out it's a pretty pretty very well done it's a really well done video about all the shit you guys got going on so yeah so tell that story um approached probably three years ago now that episode which just aired on RFD TV a couple months ago on cowboy TV, Cowboy Channel. It's called Farms of America. And so we were approached just they found us on Facebook or word of mouth,

a production company from New York, had two or three interviews and, you know, kind of just had that vetting process. And they ended up liking us and liking the family what we did. And I think the diversification was one thing that they wanted to show an egg. So ours, They came to our place. This is two years ago in the fall, and literally a camera crew and people followed you around for 12 hours a day and five days straight and shot that.

And they put together that episode. We were eventually the pilot episode. And then they went and took it to a couple of people, however that works in that world. And they liked it. So they shot 11 more farms all across America. So it's called Farms of America. And I think there's 12 episodes,

which just wrapped up last week. But like you said, all beautifully done. Like I'll tell a story of either what the family's doing. They've covered crawfish farm to cranberry farm to a big rancher down New Mexico, 37,000 acres to us, which you've heard everything we do. So, yeah, I would urge people to just check it out because it kind of gives you a, and they try and educate, right? I mean, in our episode, our percent income of beef is 10 and our row crop, you know,

is smaller in this world of 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 acre guys, but still it makes up 38% of we do of gross income because it's high risk, low reward right now. Yeah. But, you know, it costs some money to put a crop in the ground. Circulating the money supply. Yes, it just recycled itself. But yeah, no, Outerous People, Farms of America.

It's still on Cowboy Channel. It's a free show to watch. And I think the word is they want to do a season two. I don't know if it'll be us, but there'll be more farms. And it just gives people a glimpse into all different sorts of egg and all different sorts of sectors and things they go through with Mother Nature and risk that they do.

And a lot of it hits on transition. You know, how do we transition this next generation to grow all this food if it's crawfish or cranberries or vegetables? You know, who's going to take it over and who's going to do it? And that's kind of a main theme of each episode is how is this going to transition or what's going to happen. You know, so it's interesting. We'll link it in the description.

If you're watching on Spotify or listening or you're on YouTube, we'll just link it in the description because I, yeah, it was an awesome. Usually when we do research, you know, we researched you, but, you know, like. I thought that would help. That was like, oh, this is great. Because they did a good job kind of going through that full life cycle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the percentage, that, the way they played that out with those percentages,

I bet people found that really interesting. Yeah, they did a good job with that. Let me ask you this. if you were to do and you feel whatever feel however you want to answer this but if you were to row crop like what we what we hear a lot from people what we see is like for us anyways if all we did was row crop there is no way in hell we'd make any of this to work yeah and if i wanted to ask you if you guys all you guys did was row crop and you didn't have all that other stuff going on and let's say you took some of the some of the ground that you're using for this or that you used it for did road crop do you think

you'd be able to sustain no two generations No, I mean, there's, our brother's full-time on there. Mom and Dad are still pseudo full-time. And then my, like I mentioned, my wife stepped away from corporate world. So there's three families on that. And if you're going to do 550 acres of road crop, like, that's just not there, you know. And I just think it's important for people to hear what you guys are doing because it's like, I feel like a lot of people think that's impossible.

Like, oh, we're stuck. We're only going to do road crop. But it's like, you can make it work. Yeah. You just got to think outside the box. I think outside the box and then show up with a good product and compete with price and, you know, hopefully it works. So, I mean, that's how a lot of people click the easy button, right? Any restaurant back end can just click the button on Cisco food service or whoever they're using for their food service.

But it's just you try and have an engaging conversation with the lead chef in the back and, hey, let's do a special on Friday night for sweet corn or something like that. Yeah. winter squash or something. And it might just be 5% of what they do, but it's still 5% and still getting a local product that's grown five miles away into their restaurant. That's just one example. And then, you know, the produce managers of every high V can just click a button from the warehouse. But hey, let me tell you, like, I can give you four bins of pumpkins biweekly.

So you're not getting a whole semi-low. You don't have a waste. I compete with price. You know, would you be open to? trying it or doing it. So it's just a direct, that's B to B, but, you know, it's still, to the consumer. Yeah, our margin, eventually to the consumer, but our margins just better, you know, our, what we can grow, what's our gross income per acre is just so much more on pumpkins, produce, sweet corn, as opposed to 50 or $100 an acre you're trying to make

or whatever this, this year in corn and beans, depending on your yield. So, or how you market it. But, yeah, that whole game. But yeah, No, there's no way. There's, I mean, it's horrible to say. And you guys on the show a lot have gone down the line of equipment, too. Like, we've got three 4430s around that place doing chores or haying or round bailing. And a lot of those are becoming antiques. A lot of them are getting a restored, you know, from the late 70s.

So my wife gives me crap all the time. But I'm like, hey, they run. They do their job. They pull what they need to pull. Yeah. Like a lot of our businesses runs through hay rack. like five hay racks by me are most used implement on the on the farm just with pumpkins you know small squares and and things like that so i don't know yeah it's uh you can't you can't spell

margin with sexy you know that's the thing it's like i'm right down down i'll make a t-shirt well i mean it just is it's like i i love new equipment i think it's great but there's it's just like that it's like does that make you does it make you money to have that well no i don't care and you can do the math. There are some situations people can do the math and make it work. If you're running big acres or you're using, if you've got a piece of equipment, you're using it every single day and that's an income generator. You're putting your thousand or twelve hundred hours and you've got your books in order that you know this tractor's costing me $100 an hour to run and you fact that in your budget and you can do it. Yeah, completely. I understand that.

And let's face it. Every farmer can do fuzzy math well enough to justify the purchase of a new piece of equipment. I was going to use that same word. We can just it as farmer. As farmer, and my dad and I are notorious, we can justify anything in our heads. Yeah, that's right. You run into your bookkeeper or your banker or whatever. You start writing it down. But yeah, no, it's interesting. You guys say that.

And, you know, we literally just got our first front wheel sis probably six years ago because I was sick of middle of the night trying to plan, trying to see my line on my planner with my little six row and my 4430 looking at my blinking lights with my Dickie John. Yep. And I'm like trying to write. the contour of some of these hills I'm farming and I'm like man we got to do something like I'm gonna go crazy live with these lights blinking in front of me so you know implemented some technology

and and you know found maybe 120 more acres of road crop ground that I could justify a 150 horse yeah you know front wheel cysts that we can actually somewhat stick to these hills and and make work but yeah it's just a a slow build I guess is what you know we've tried to do and and if it's a few more roll crop acres that I can justify some larger nicer equipment you know we do it but it's still small in our equipment in the grand scheme of things but but yeah okay i i got a question that the uh the newly the newly uh fiscally conservative me because i'm trying really hard to get my financial house in order and anybody that's a listener of the show has heard me talk about all the stuff that you know we're trying to do in our operation when i saw it's so interesting because i've

driven by your place so many times never knew who it was uh back in my hog building days but i always like damn they got a lot i drive by there i'd be like they got a lot of shit going on there stuff to stuff to see coming down the hill going 60 mile an hour to kind of see everything that's Yeah. But yeah. But from a, from a farm accounting viewpoint, like how do you, does every enterprise, do you have every enterprise broke out to where you know what the profitability of one versus the other? That is something that I'm trying to nail down more.

Because we're getting at the point, you've heard our life cycle, like, there's only so many hours in a day. Yeah. Got four kids. parents are transitioning out. Unfortunately, my brother's had some health issues as of late. So you got all those factors coming to play. And we're to the point now where, yes, we like the cash flow of every season that kind of just continuously goes through the 12 months.

But the same time, we need to evaluate those businesses harder and be like, hey, this just isn't. It's not making up the money to justify how many hours we're putting into it. So that is, I don't have it all broken down. I have like my crop input for a produce, for a pumpkin, for my row crop operation. But we're at the point now where I need to start developing those LLCs and kind of splitting off for a couple reasons. One, tracking your books better. And two, we miss out on a lot of like grand opportunities.

Like we're a small farm. Yep. But when it comes to gross income, sometimes we don't qualify because it factors corn and soybeans. It factors the cattle. Factors everything into that. So it's kind of a not trying to play. system but like we're still small in the produce world like we just we have three acres of a garden and 15 acres of sweet corn yeah so we don't qualify for a lot of the funding or grants that are out there so

it's one reason why we're kind of looking into to fine tune in that whole thing but it's a it's an animal to try and get your hands well yeah you see i i i this is my new thing i ask everybody this uh not to uh not to try to guilt you yeah i'm just hoping that i find somebody that when i ask that question, they go, yep, absolutely. And this is what we use. And this is how we do it. Because at that point, I'm like, okay. Because like I wish I had an answer for that. I'm sorry. Yeah, but it's. Well, because I feel like, so my hog operation, the social media is, that's totally separate, broke out. And that's easy to track because there's very little commingling other than a few utilities that you have to say, okay, well, this percentage goes to that or whatever.

but like the hog operation to the row crop I don't even have that split out and part of the reason that I don't I think is because I just know that it'll it'll just show that much more that the only thing that makes money is the hog operation and the crops are just you know that much more of a drag but it needs to be broke out and what I was your operation

it was funny to me because the beginning of that that clip that you sent us they said that you run a diversified farming operation and I just thought that was so funny because typically in Iowa on WHO or Farm Journal they talk about somebody and they're like

yeah they have a diversified farming operation corn, soybeans and hogs some sort of animal and they got three and a half acres of erronea berries or some you know Something like that. No, yours, that's like such an understatement of what you guys are doing. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's awesome. I think it's freaking awesome. And I think you guys are positioned really well for the future of ag because you've taken back your own destiny a little bit. You know, that's what it's about is not being a price taker. Yeah, trying to control it. And it's still hard to have those conversations.

You know, we talk about inflation. We talk about pricing our product and. Even the flowers, for example, like we're still on the low end. I like to think we have a really good product because we have people to hand water and, you know, nothing against high school kids, but it's not some high school kid at Culvers or Walmart water in the back 100 plants and missing 10 of them, you know. We try and do a pretty good job there. But it's a tough thing for my parents' generation of swallow too. Like, no, we can't go up $1 on our $4 per pot.

And I'm like, well, Calvers and high Vs, they're at eight. and we're only at 650s. So it's, I don't think we ever need to be above that, but it's trying to progress and take the right steps to make sure our margin is there and to make sure, you know, we're not running a greenhouse for three months out of the year and not making the money that needs to be experienced.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a interesting topic. I'm glad you brought it up, but I appreciate you, Sawyer saying that. Yeah. Hopefully we're setting ourselves up. Some days I wonder when I've pencil and stuff out

or I look at some of my inputs or operating lines. I think road crop guys are looking around, like we said, if we didn't have the hogs and we weren't doing all this, there's no freaking way we'd be able to keep farming. The inputs of road crop and the equipment costs, I mean, you just get and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze more and more. I wanted to ask you this really quick. Hold your thought.

But dad, you know, mentioned the hogs are like our bread and butter, right? We didn't have the hogs. We'd be screwed. what is it, I'd be curious to know on your operation, what is the thing that you're like, this is kind of a rock? Is it road crop or is it like a different one of these entities? I wouldn't say it's road crop, but I would say pumpkins and the cattle. Like having, I've got about three paddocks of pasture. They range from like 80 to 160 acres. So we rotate rotational gray is pretty heavy with that herd.

But that's the, that's the base, I think. You know, we've got that. I usually sell our feeders January, February, just down at Oxford. We sell our coal clouds at coal bowls at Kelowna. So that's kind of our foundation. Obviously, the beef market riding high right now. So you kind of ride that wave a little bit. But that's just, yeah, that's a tough question. But it's pumpkins just from a gross income standpoint.

And then, you know, just having that agritourism aspect, I think, is the pumpkins. And then everything else kind of feeds off it, you know, with the CSA. program. We've been doing that, I think, 12 years. So that's something that I kind of kind of babyed when I first came back. It was just another way to expand on that produce, produce market. But cattle and cat on pumpkins, I would say, like, yeah, the raw crops are a necessary thing. One, to justify some larger equipment to feed on the pumpkins and the produce. And then, you know, we chop about 20 acres of corn silage a year, which is minimal. But, um, I don't know, I feed her own corn or top dress our corn.

But yeah, I would say, no, real crop, unfortunately, is not, and that's what you think of as an Iowa farmer. Like, it's, you know, I sell for Beck's hybrid. So a lot of my customers and friends, you know, that's their deal, you know. And when I come to the farm gate and the retail price on some of these corn hybrids is what it is, you know, I'm like, hey, I get it. Like, I'm in your same, I'm a farmer and I feel the same. tension and and things like that

when it's trying to pencil that stuff out. So anyway. Yeah. Are the cows, are the unruly cows nervous because they know how high the cattle market is? Like, you know, you got that one cow that's just near irritation. So here's my story.

Here's my story, right? I got a replacement heifers. We usually keep about 20 replacement heifers. I just pulled the bowl from them last week. And they're at a pasture where I don't have the best facilities, rented pasture out of neighbors. and a heifer is pink eye, right? And just your viewers maybe don't know.

Like, pink eye just happens or a disease happens in the hog barn or whatever. And so I'm trying to catch her. But it happens to be, and my cows are always pretty tame. Like, let's we breed for docility. And if we got a wild one, like, yeah, she's the nervous one. Hey, sorry, you know, we're not going to put up with that. So this one, I've been trying every morning for about an hour every morning. I'm getting really irritated because strike one, she's a heifer.

So heifers are just dumb. when it comes to falling in line and do what they're supposed to do. Two, she got pink eye, which is horrible. Now three, she's learned how to jump gates, which is not something we put up with, period. So literally yesterday morning, took the corn in the bunk, all 16, 17 others came in, and who's standing 10 feet outside the gate is that one.

So she needs to be nervous because she's on the list. And she's driving nuts. So we need to get her treated and take care of her. but I don't know. I don't know if that one's going to make the cut, especially when 1,800 or 2 grand for a call cow these days. It gets a lot of the old boys thinking, I think, in the livestock world of, hey, I'm ready to do this.

And you guys hit on that in this show of, you know, building the herd back. Like, a lot of these guys are seeing these dollars, I think, as older farmers. And like, hey, I'm ready. I'm just ready to be done. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, you know, obviously there's deeper storylines of tariffs and imports and exports, Mexico, you know, and all that stuff in the cattle world. But I don't know this USA herd.

What is the timeline going to be on building the back or if it ever does? I don't know. You know, I don't think it's going to say this high forever. I'm not saying that. Well, yeah, I think it was a perfect storm. I mean, her numbers are down. But then I feel like people like the American consumer, have we just, just got into the point where they're just like, I don't give a shit. Beef's beef. I look at it as

it's the best, superior. I'm buying it at whatever price it is. Because it's like, people are still buying beef. I know. And I don't know if it's because the economy, we went, you know, we've gone through this time where everything went up. And so the beef price just went up and nobody asked any questions because, well, everything's gone up. So shit, I'm going to, I'm not going to not get a steak, because everything went up. Yeah. And they just don't realize. You know what I mean? mean. They just have the perception that everything's going up. So shit. Well, it's like you walk into a Quickstar or something and I walk in and get a bubbler for 279 and a protein bar for 389. All of a sudden I'm spending six, seven bucks with like nothing

in my hands. Right. And I've got people to get mad that we raised our price of eggs per dozen to like 550, you know, and I'm like, man, you get from a nutrition standpoint, you get substantially more nutrition from this dozen of eggs than you do walking in. But I, yeah, I, yeah. are we dulled a little bit as a society? I don't know, man. It's, I mean, I, we, like I said, we started a package and not packaging us, but our own label in our store with our own beef, and we ran out of ribby. It's like, well, I kind of won a ribeye last weekend. So I was at fairway dropping off some sweet corn. Yep. I'm not going to go get one or two. My mother-in-law was in town. I'm like, I'll get my mother-in-law one and shoot, it was $19.95.

$43 for two. I was like, okay, well, I'm going to. I'm going to keep wishing our own beef. But yeah, I don't know what the answer is Sawyer, if we're just dulled or we're just now have accepted it. But, yeah, it's tough to keep up with. Yeah. How much wood can a crawl chuck? Can a crawl chuck?

Yeah. I mean, if people throw that on you? No, that's a good one. I saw that machine you guys got. I imagine you can chuck a lot. Yeah, no, that's been definitely an upgrade. because I remember in high school, we would go out, this is our ritual, we go out Thanksgiving morning,

and we split a load of firewood by hand and delivered to a customer on Thanksgiving, which very odd. But whatever, that's what we did. But from going from that from high school, for hand splitting a load in 40 minutes to being able to process, you know, a cord and a half or more every hour, you know, six, eight cords a day if we're really humping it with that machine.

And that was a blockbuster down on Mount Pleasant. You know, we did some research, and, you know, East Coast has a lot of different, companies out there, but Blockbuster's been great. They recently got bought out by Bazooka. And then obviously that's owned by Stutzman's or whatever. But, no, they've been great to work with. And dad was just asking me yesterday, he goes, starting a nickel and dymus.

I'm like, man, it just got paid off. Can we get two more years? You know, can he hold together? You know, so who knows? We don't go any bigger, but it's just nice. We're used to with that machine. And, yeah, we can definitely get ahead of it sometimes. Pyle gets a little low come October.

November, but when we settle back in our groove, December, January, and spit some wood. Is that business steady, or is that one of those deals that? No, honestly, Tork, like, we almost sell more wood in the summer, spring, summer, and fall than we do winter, you know, because. Recreational is more than... I'm a hypocrite. I don't have a wood burner in my house. Yeah. Like, just how the house that we bought, but very few people heat solely with wood.

I guess more of just a ambiance or set in the mood with your significant other. something with the fire but the bear rug under the fire you got to get a bear skin run a lot of it's just backyard patios and fire pits and uh camping you know a few parks next to us which we supply with the bundled firewood yeah yeah honestly it's almost just as much as in the summer than it is wintertime so it's pretty consistent which i don't think dad thought that 40 years ago when he was trying to get beer money that it was going to turn into a pretty consistent and there's not many competitors in the wood business because it is specialized. Yeah, you touch that piece of wood five times by the time you gets to its end deal, you know,

cutting a tree down, loading it, loading on the processor, goes through the processor, put it inside and then load it on a truck and we'll stack it sometimes at people's places too. And yeah, maybe that's one of those businesses. I don't know. It's a free resource if you want to call it that. You know, we try to do it. Because you got the location to have the supply.

Yeah. And we try and do a good job of making sure we're managing our forest dry away and our timbers dry away with the local forester. We'll walk every couple of years. It's just kind of, hey, are we doing this right? You know, and get some recommendations from him. But, yeah. How many people, I mean, you got a lot of shit going.

So how many people, how many employees do you have? Part time, high school? Like, what's that look like? Yeah, so we're all part time, pretty much, which is kind of. kind of just goes by the season. So I would say all together, if I would add it up and look at it, it was probably 30, to be honest, but that's about five or six people rotate on the front counter, you know, checking out, and that involves some like water and flowers or water and product. But basically just restock in the store, that's about six, seven people that

rotate through that schedule. And that's just through an app. We use when I work. It's just an app to kind of organize, you know, shifts and get that figured out. There's about four people. people on the CSA staff will call it, the garden staff every day. So they're packing those CSAs, picking in the garden, weeding in the garden, whatever needs to be done. And then myself, my mom and dad are still around and my wife handles kind of getting things organized from a staff standpoint and training staff, you know, on pricing and goods. And then we jumped in the H-2A program probably five years ago now. Father's son come up April 15, November 15th, so they've been, you know, definitely a needed thing. I mean, they're great dudes

that show up every day, smile on their face, and just are happy to work and happy to have a team to work with and eat a meal, eat lunch every day with them. And, you know, they're instrumental in some of the growth and some of those daily tasks that require time that, as you guys know, some us don't have. Or if you're trying to grow your business, you don't have the time to split wood for six hours a day, but those guys, you know, I don't get them splitting wood for six hours, but hey, they'll split wood for two, we'll pit pumpkins for three, and help me with this project, you know, retinning a side of a barn or something, you know, so they've been instrumental in some of that. So, but yeah, it rotates.

A couple of retired guys drive pumpkins for me, September, October, you know, just looking for something to do in three or four hours a day, and they can go still play golf later that day. So it's also kind of an animal to organize sometimes, but, you know, it works. It works. We're at the point now with mom and dad being 66, 67, how do we start implementing some full-time employees

and how do we keep them busy in our Iowa winters and things like that? You know, so we're working through that as we speak with a young gentleman. So, yeah. Yeah. So your retail store, it's set up to sell produce. Do you sell pumpkins?

You sell your own beef in there. And that's open all the time. Yeah, so Monday through Thursday, 10 to 6, Friday through Sunday, 9 to 4. Nice. And that's pretty much. Sell everything there. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, I would say 90% of our own product.

Do we have some, like, honey from a local guy. Dan and Debbie's creamery is a creamery, another family-owned business that kind of were in the dairy industry and did the same thing. Like, hey, we need to, this isn't working. The new generation is coming on board. So they bought a place in the town of Ely, and they distribute wholesale. and retail to us and do that for them. So yeah, it's everything. You know, it's right now.

It's eggs, it's produce. Sweet corn's still going. And like said, picked our first pumpkin yesterday. So August 26th. So they'll start being some pumpkins and fall to court, man. Pumpkin lattes and everything else are right around the corner, torch. Why not? Do you sell coffee?

Do you sell lattes there? That would be good. That's another thing. Don't. Stop giving my wife ideas. but, you know, you see some other farms doing it. You know, the apple turnovers or cider or things like that. We just get a couple of food trucks on the busy weekends in September and October.

That's kind of how we're handling it right now as far as facilities go. Lynn County sometimes can be hard with health inspection and building things to code. And it's funny, like I, you know, in Washington, you can probably have people into this barn, right, that was built, I don't know what year this is, you know, mid-50s or whatever earlier, much earlier maybe. And, yeah, it just doesn't fly, like, you know, which is, that could be a whole conversation with us, just of living in Leonard Johnson or trying to operate an ag business in Leonard Johnson or like Des Moines or Polk County or something, has a little different set of rules. Yeah. Depending on what group of supervisors in the, in the helm, you know, how they operate with

ag, so, yeah. It's kind of like the USDA inspectors. I've heard. heard that they're, they're, there's lenient guys and gals that you can, they're all right. If you have an honest conversation with them and say, hey, no, I have my customers best interest as well. Like, I'm not trying to cut corners, but. And then you got the ones that are like, buy the book. That doesn't make sense to me. You know, I mean, like, I question it a little bit, you know, and we could, I could go into some stories and USDA's great, but some stuff with the equipped program and what do you mean? I can't tear down this barn that's over 50 years old. Like, that's where I want to put my new cattle bill.

building. Well, no, your barn's over 50 years old. You can't do that. I'm like, it doesn't make any sense. It's starting to fall down. Grandpa built it in 1950 from the previous barn boards. So the boards are 120 years old, you know, so. Hmm. Just sometimes common sense isn't, you know, it just hasn't worked that way. But sometimes there's just, there's just a place for what I call casual smoking. Whoops. Darn. Yeah. That's what I said. I said, well, let's pretend you didn't see it then.

It's an accident. Yeah. We have, we have aerial imaging, they said, I said, I. get it. I understand. Yeah. I'm just asking. I'm asking for a friend. Yeah. What happens? Yep. Start smoking, tort.

So how, how are you handling or, or do you have any advice or people that are in that situation where they are trying to figure out their transition plan? Sawyer is trying to figure out a transition plan. So that's funny you say that because, you know, we were blessed that grandma lived to be 95, right? My brother, my father had four other siblings all off farm. And luckily, she lived to be that old, sane of mine to kind of get it figured out. But he was 60. You know, he bought the farm right out of high school.

They went south a couple months. You know, they kind of handled life that way. That's how they did it. Like, hey, John, take it. you know, pay us that lump sum for the ground and the equipment at 90%, 17% interest and did it and took that risk and did it. But luckily, estate planning, she lived that long to be able to do it, right? And now I'm 39, 40 trying to push them to do it when they just got theirs figured out. It's a tough conversation, but my advice would be, you know, see so many farm families that wait

and don't have anything on the books or anything in writing to have it planned out. And I just feel like you got to have those tough conversations. As much as I hate it, my wife would tell you like I don't like confrontation with anything. But you have to have those conversations now. One, for your peace of mind, of your financial future. You know, how's my next 20, 25 years go? Or in our realm, what business do I shift my attention to to make sense for my family? you know, my family of six, my wife, my four kids,

you're not trying to look out for yourself, but you are at the same time. But it's tough for that older generation, and he mentions it in the Farms of America, like tough to give it away. And that's not what it is at all. I mean, I got a brother there too that's older. I came back kind of after I came back.

So it's a lot of dynamics that play in our personal situation. But my advice is just have those conversations earlier, you know, as much as this stinks or as much as, Sawyer asked you some and you're like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm not even thinking about that, but you have to, I think. So you end up like a lot of family farms that are fighting and they don't talk to each other and things end badly or it ends up just getting sold to the next big farmer or something like that too. So it's tough. I think one of the, I think one of the pitfalls for older generations and I'm,

working my way into becoming the older generation. You're calling yourself that, all right? Working your way. I get it. This is a popular theme, but I ask people my, so I'm 54, right? I think. I think that's right. Usually what happens is, when I have a birthday, I go six or eight months telling people the wrong age because I forget that I got a year older or whatever.

I'm not losing it yet. I turn 40 this year. I'll get to that. Yeah. But mine's easy. I was born in 2000, so if I ever become senile, I just got to look at the year and be like, oh yeah. I can still do subtraction. Yeah, I can do basic math.

Yeah. But one, I always ask people my age, it's like, do you think it's odd that now you're at the age where people look at you and you're supposed to have wisdom? Yeah, you're supposed to. Like you just get to an age and people just assume that you should know things. Which I feel like I know nothing still at 39. Well, I'd like to tell you it gets a lot better, but it doesn't like people call you from the church and want to know, oh, hey, will you be. be on this governing body or this or hey you know you should be on the bank board or you should be on this which i know nothing about yeah and you're like yeah i'm not any smarter than i was when i was his age

that's one thing but the other thing that i and i see myself and this is the problem that my dad had i know is and i can see it in your dad when he when he said that about giving it away it's the identity. Yes. As much as it is anything, because like for me, I don't know, I feel like it's an, I always ask people,

I wonder if plumbers feel like this or people that build family businesses and I'm sure they do a little bit, but there is a connection to all the things on that farm. And like here, there's enough stuff here that I walk the same path, that my dad walked, that his dad walked, that his dad walked.

Change is hard. Change is definitely hard. And you just get in this that it isn't, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. But the stuff, the land, the buildings, the tools, the things that you use to make your living, like they become to where it's your identity. And the idea of not being in charge of that identity, Like giving up control of that.

That's what's hard. Yeah. No. So I don't know what the answer is. I wish transition was easy and I wish there was simple answer or there was this one way they need to do it and structure it. But every situation is different. And my advice is just try and have those conversations as much as you hate to have them because you just want to farm. Like you just want to show up.

And we do that. I mean, that's why things get put off. It's like, hey, what do we got today? Oh, we need to go try and catch that stupid heifer, number one. And then two, we got to pick two racks of pumpkins. We got two loads of wood going out, blah, blah, blah. So you just get stuck in that perpetual daily farm. That's what we want to do.

We just want to make this place better. We want to make it financially feasible and survive. And then, you know, we don't want to talk about this trust or this estate planning or this LLC needs to be created for the land. And, you know, we don't want to talk about that. But you have to, unfortunately. Having time to think about the business is. really important not being so yeah working in the business is what we all want to do because it's

what you it's in your blood but thinking about the whole thing as as a whole and having the having the time to really think about that it's really hard when you're going going going going going but you're right it's so important you mentioned that I mean this old generation and generation before was like how many hours can you work yeah and you mentioned on this podcast like that was that's how it's equated like how many hours do you work, that's your, that is who you are. That's who you build yourself and that's what you stand behind. And now in this day and age of the tight margins and the, you know, just the things that you face in agriculture, like you have to evaluate it. And I don't, I personally, I can admit it.

I don't do a good enough job someday. It's just because I'm trying to call a high V produce manager, call people back that maybe called the day before and you just get caught. And then all of a sudden it's 5 p.m. And we got third and fourth grade flight football practice from 5 to 7.30. And and dinner and then kids in bed at 8.45 and you're like, man, I know I need to go in that office until 10, 30, 11, but I really kind of want to stay in shape and get to the gym sometimes, too. You know, it's just, it's life, but we're in that grind, at least my wife and I are, and everyone is like, you know, everyone's like, you guys do a lot of things out there. I'm like, it's all relative. Like, you work hard too, Mr. Whoever, like Mrs. Whatever, like,

Mrs. Whatever. Gosh, yeah, yeah, work hard too. You know, everyone's got their thing. You know what I mean? If you're a driven person and you have ambition to, like I said, make that place better or whatever your job is, make that place better. Like, you never feel like you're doing enough. But at the same time, you got to sit back and kind of evaluate and do what you can. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I think what you said about, you know, what's also hard about the transition plan is like you got to think about, like, the hardest part is a farmer.

Like, I don't know how it's hard doing this just as anybody that's going off. leaving the nest from your family, you know, and starting your own life with you, your wife, and your kids. But I feel like it's really hard when it's a family business and a family farming operation because it's like you work with your family, you work with your mom and dad, like you want the best for them and you want what's best for the whole family farm and small business. But at the same time, like you said, you do have to think. Yeah, and it's not, this is the wrong word. But you got to think about what your core is.

like what your core is and how you move forward and maybe someday I can retire. I think the old man Larson, you know, they pop up my thing. He's like, yeah, I used to think that I would work until I was dead. But now he's like, maybe I want to go to sunny Florida or something like that. So like at age 40, you know, what does our retirement look like? Or is there a retirement? I don't know. Or how do we plan for that financially to make something happen?

But yeah. It's very easy, like as a young person, like it's very easy to focus on. the farm like i feel like that's something that i've struggled with is like since i've came back it's all been about how the farm the farm the farm the farm the farm and then you're like shit i'm 25 yeah i'm gonna have to have kids i'm gonna have to start having kids i'm gonna have to have my own family unit i can't necessarily just be thinking about growth growth growth growth growth growth you know your time gets pulled in other direction i'm starting to kind of get there where it's like okay

I got to maybe not be so balls to the wall, gas pedal all the way to the floor for... What's smart? What's the right play? Yeah. I got to be thinking about... Yeah, I think I had my first kid at 26. So yeah, you're getting... Yeah.

You're getting there, Sawyer. Yeah. So anyway... It might have been a good idea. This is just from the outside looking in. I'm scared of this comment. It might have been a good idea for you to have those thoughts before you started three other entities. Yeah.

Besides the two that we had going. Yeah. I was doing a little research on the farmer grade and things. That's, you know, it's, we're always kind of looking for other things that are still related to egg, but not blood, sweat and tears. You know, what is that? You know, what does that look like? I don't know.

Yeah, well, hey, you said you're starting to sell beef direct consumer. I did. I looked at the website last night. I saw some of the farms. Well, shit, maybe we can do something together. But yeah. Yeah. I'll just, I'll just say this.

In, in ag, you know, there's things that we put up with in the farming world that we think to ourselves, people that we deal with, suppliers, equipment, quality of equipment, service on equipment, and you say to yourself, why do we put up with this? And you think to yourself, only an ag would it be this jacked up? Go start a meat business, and that'll make you feel good about the farming because you'll be like, these people are all pricks, and the surface sucks, and everybody's trying to screw you over. you're like, huh, this is just like farming. All business is like this.

Yeah. It's cut. I mean, it can be cut through no matter what business you're in. I mean, it's how it is. But yeah. Nice guy's finished last and I like think of myself as a nice guy, but same time. Yeah. Yeah, it'll callus you a little bit.

You got to self-advocate, I guess. You do have to. You know, we learned that. We've learned that my wife and I in our early years. You've got to not overspeak your mind, but you've got to stand up for yourself a little bit or you're just going to get. steamrolled. Yeah, I ran over.

Yeah. Question I had for you because, and you kind of alluded to it earlier, you know, you got so much stuff going on. You got four kids. You got a wife. What do you do for how do you, what do you do in your daily life to be the leader you need to be? And to be the best version that you got to be because I know, you know, this is something I struggle with now with everything we got going on.

balancing it all. If you're not at your best, shit's going to fall apart. You got to be at your best. And so you got to take some time to be at your best. So I was just curious, what's your day look like to handle your kids, have a relationship with your wife,

get everything going? I mean, what do you do for yourself to set yourself up to be a good leader? Yeah. I mean, it's leading by example, and that's kind of a cliche thing to say. but at the same time, I coach a lot of my kids' sports,

and I feel like that's, you know, as a past athlete, a lot of the parents in the community look at you like, you should be the coach, but sometimes I'm like, I kind of just want to let someone else do it. But I view it as another couple hours I get to spend with and a kid individually, if that's the right home from practice, or the right to or at practice, you know, using athletics to kind of teach life a little bit.

But, yeah, you just got to learn sometimes. There's always going to be work the next day, the next hour, I mean, just a simple story this last weekend. It was like 3.30. My wife was out of town for some. My mother-in-law was helping me kind of watching the kids on a weekend just because get in the fall, like, it's six, seven days a week now. And I picked one up from her birthday party.

Got back home about 3.30. I'd been mowing hay previous to that. And got back at the house like 3.34 o'clock. And mother-in-law made a comment in front of the kids like, hey, Matt, I got this. You can go back to work. And it was Saturday at like four. I'm like, man, I go, don't take this wrong, but I don't really feel like it. Like, it's Saturday night, you know, if all four kids are home, you're here, I don't get to see your mother-in-law that much.

You know, I'm like, I'm just going to stay put because I know if I go back out there, I'm going to have to finish that field, and it's going to be 8 p.m. Yeah. You know, so it's one of those deals where even my daughter said it. She, my old says 10. So, hey, why don't you go, why don't you go back to the farm? I was like, you know, you have those conversation. I think it's just conversation. how do you lead and how do you set the example.

It's like I said, no, honey, like I just want to have dinner and hang out and try not to blow my knee out on the trampoline, but I'll jump on the trampoline with you guys and do whatever. So that doesn't happen. I mean, I wish it happened more like I could be like, yeah, because like you, you're just going to keep going or get to work early or stay later. But I think my kids are getting at that age of athletics where that's a time to teach and be around them.

but at the same time, not every hour needs to be driving a tractor, picking a pumpkin, or, you know, doing something out there. So little things like that, I think it'll pop up more to those conscious decisions to spend an extra hour or two here or there. Yeah. Do you have any rules for yourself? Like, is it like you want to try to aim to be done with work by 5 p.m.? Are you trying to get up early?

Are you planning your days? When are you going to the gym? Summer was different. Like, I was getting out of the house kind of before the house. started growing, which is fine because I know you get stuck there if you stay to like 715, 7.30 and the kids start getting out of bed. But summer's different. So we just started school this week. So I see them off off to school. And normally there's a practice at like 530. So I mean, that's kind of 730 to 5 is a normal work day. But then fall and spring, like I'll do some night shifts.

Yeah. And that's all bets are off. Being able to upgrade equipment, I can run my egg leader, you know, at night and not to worry about staring at a line with my marker. And then just, you know, we do a lot of, not a lot. We do about 250 acres of cover crops. So I'll seed some cover crop at night, you know, after my brother gets soybeans out or whatever, we chop something. Yeah. So you have that.

Like, I'll put them to bed and I'll go back until 1 a.m. or some, which trust me, it's not eight months out of the year. It's a couple months out of the year. So I don't know. Yeah, you aim. I mean, your life just kind of structures itself. Now they're back on a schedule in school and practice. practices five nights a week out of the seven.

Holy cow. Your time's just kind of scheduled in its own. But, you know, you work done. You just got to put a lecture time in at night sometime. You know, I just sitting here, I think I've got your retirement plan figured out. Yeah, because we met these young ladies like, what, three years ago. And you see the similarity Sawyer. He's got three daughters and a son and he's got a pumpkin patch.

Mm-hmm. I think Southeast Iowa farm girls and brother. You know the New York, have you ever heard of the New York Farm Girls? No. So they've kind of... I live under a rock. Well, so they're, obviously, they're from New York.

And I mean, they've kind of, they've kind of shelved. Well, I don't keep up with them because they're your age. Well, yeah, they, for a long time, they were on Instagram and Facebook and all that and TikTok and their dad started a pumpkin patch way back. His name's Tim. And they've kind of turned that into a brew barn. So they got a brew barn. They're doing act tourism heavy.

Events, the pumpkin patch. They've like really gone all in on it because the girls, I think, really wanted to be a part of it. They're a big dairy farm out there. So they had dairy cattle. They did social media. Their dad had this pumpkin patch,

but they've gone, as they got older, they went really all in on the pumpkin patch. They said, dad, just get out of it. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's really, I mean, I think they really have made a damn good pumpkin patch like creme de creme of pumpkin patches because they just bought into it.

But they actually have kind of taken a backseat on the social media because the thing about having daughters on social media is there's some fucking wackos out there. And so they've kind of like got off social media a little bit because I think they've had some problems. They're older. I mean, they're all, the youngest one would be, would she still be college age? Oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah. But the other two have graduated.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. That old time. But they felt, they leveraged that just their day to day lives, you know, doing all the work and all that. You hear it all the time. I mean, between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, like, everyone has that dream to be out of the country, have some round bails in the background, get married, you know, perfect, perfect setting.

And yeah, trust me, we'd be lying if we didn't talk about it. When you know some of these barns are booked out three or four years in advance at whatever the rental rate is, five to 10 grand for one night or something stupid. But yeah, I'd be lying if we didn't do it. We should get you, we should get you ordained. We could marry him right here at the bar. There you go. There you go.

It might be a slightly different clientele. Well, it would be 10 people. You have close family in here, but just hang out at the wheel and somebody's like, we should get married. You'd be like, come on out. Let's get it done. Hey, whatever we've got to do. Live with girlfriend?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. That's been a few years. It's been a few years. Yep. All right, man.

Yeah, we're getting there. Okay. I won't grill you. Yeah. I sound like my father right now. Yeah. Shit or get up the pot. I think of his exact words to me.

Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. I won't grill you. Yeah. Yeah, but you're getting to that point of your life. Yeah. Well, your time's going to start getting pulled some directions.

How do you prioritize that? How do you manage it? Like, yeah, there's no freaking. There's no playbook. Your life kind of runs itself, I guess, is the right thing to say. I've seen some people got some, a quote saying, you don't get a do-over or being a good dad or a good dad or a good husband. Yeah.

You only get one shot at that. Business, you get, you can have multiple opportunities to make a business of business, but it comes to being a good dad, a good husband. Yeah. Got one shot. What are they, what's a stat like? From the ages of one to 10, that's 80% of your time with your kids. Yeah.

Because then as they start driving or they get in high school, that's less and less. And then obviously college or their next adventure in life, like you see them one percent of the time. the rest of that 50 years that you're alive or 40. So that kind of puts things perspective when my oldest is 10, almost 11, and that just people say it goes fast. I mean, yeah, Dubai, and now my youngest just started preschool today. So, yeah, we'll see what these daughters come up with, man.

I don't know what they'll come up with, but hopefully some. And who knows? You know, if they choose you something else, whatever. But if they want to pour their passion into what this place, what our place is, you know, see what they come up with. And I try and I tell my wife, all the time. Like, we got to take notes about our parents what we feel we're not happy with some days or we don't like the way they reacted to a situation or whatever. But I go, let's just

remember this. When we're 50 to 65, like, how do we want to react or how do we want to be seen by our four kids? Like, shit, you don't have a list, do you? Oh, it's, it's down. It's to three pages long now. Dang it. You know what I mean, though? Not. You know what I mean, though. to get too serious, but like, you know, you got stuff that bothers you. Obviously, they're your parents, but, you know, large or small. Like, how do we hold those relationships with four kids, you know, through their life and want to be someone that you want to hang out with, you know? I want to be the fun, cool dad.

Yeah, yeah. You know, so. Yeah. And hopefully live enough to see grandkids and all that, jazz. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We get deep up here. You get. We get deep. Yeah. We don't like surface level bullshit. I hear you. Yeah. So I guess what do you think is the biggest challenge for your guys' operation moving forward if you had to look and think about it?

This transition right now is challenging. I'll shoot you straight. Like, you know, I mentioned brother had some health problems, like I had a heart attack, April heart attack and then had a stroke a few days later. So, you know, kind of dealing with that, he actually came back and mowed the yard. yesterday so he's able to start doing stuff his right side was kind of shut down so he's been like kind of my row crop guy like he does all the combining kind of manages that that realm with another cousin and things um so where is that going to lead you know parents being 66 67 how do we kind of fine tune this transition to dictate how this thing gets carried on or bought or or moved on between our brother and i

and wife and and yeah i think that's that's definitely a challenge And I think that's, I keep throwing these random stats out. But I think like 45% of Iowa's farmland will change hands the next 10 to 15 years. Something stupid, like crazy number. Who's that go-to? You know, we battle just recreational people in our area. Like, hey, I want a 40 to go hunting on. And they're going to pay there's, you know, a doctor or something in town that obviously is making a little more than Mr. Matt, the farmer.

So they're paying 12, 15,000 an acre to go hunting on or build a house. or whatever, you know, how do we compete with that and make our, make our businesses work trying to grow a zucchini or a pumpkin, you know, it's just a, that's the other challenge, I think would say it was just competing land prices. And as our population grows and everyone's dream is owned 10 or 40 acres out in the country, how do we compete with that, you know, from a money standpoint. So two part. Yeah, I think just the world we live in and the quick inflation that we talked about and land prices and then the transitioning of your family farm and acres, you know? Or there's opportunities that come up next to you to buy, you know, what can you

spend? What can you do? You know, obviously your ideas to always grow it, but if it doesn't make, I mean, if you're going to break yourself over, it doesn't make sense, you know, don't do it. So, I don't know. What's the biggest opportunity? Like, what are you most excited about looking forward? Oh, what am I most excited about? just seeing where these go. Like that firewood business started with dad's splitting, his buddy's putting one load of wood a week, and now we deliver 15 or 20 cord, you know, some week.

So, yeah, just interested to see, you know, and I think you hit on it earlier about, hey, are all your finances split up? No, not as well as I would like him to be, but evaluate some of these businesses and get excited about, you know, I think the beef ones, if I can continue to find processing,

my wife's like, well, let's just get her own process. nobody wants to cut me up. Trust me. Yes, I know you're in this realm right now. Yes. That's a lot. People, like that's a dream.

A lot of people say, oh, yeah, let's just build a, like a process. Let's just get a box car that is all encompassing, you know,

processing center. Yeah, it's, it's hard. But I'm excited about that. Like, that's the one thing that we can continue to try and direct the consumer and control

rather than just take them to Oxford. And we always do great and kudos of them, you know, do well at the sale. but how do we control that? You know, I don't think this beef market's going to ride this high because right now, as you know, you know, I'm probably making two or $300 less

going through all the processing and all the packaging and taking time to put it in my store when I could take a fat cattle and make $300 more right now in this time. So my timing's not the best to get into the retail sales of beef, but I think that'll stay if this market does come down. So just controlling that. I mean, I didn't give you, really straight to answer torque on on what excites me but growth just growth and uh opportunity you know

opportunity of growth and and uh continue to have our mission always be to educate people to you know every every every october we probably have 40 50 uh elementary kids every day doing a tour right and so we'll show them the chickens you know what do we get out of chicken chicken nuggets you know no these are egg layers yeah you know i mean so you know this is a steer this is a heifer you know there's our grain bin that we put, you know, so it's not a good way to always make money just to be an educational thing, but for the same time. It's important though. Yes. And I think we've got to keep people grounded and connected and realized, especially in Iowa and Midwest and all, the whole nation, you know, everyone's got their piece of egg that we provide to the food chain,

keep them educated on what it takes and some of the challenges that we do go through. And we, a large, very large percentage of farmers have the, you know, the land in mind. Like we're not trying to ruin what provides our living. So I think that's just being educational from that standpoint. Yeah. And so do you feel like your North Star, like what you do it all for? Is it for, is it for, I want to pass this farm on to the next generation? Is that kind of the thing that you think about the most?

Or is it you just love, you just love the work? Do you love the game of, man, we're building something for ourselves? and we're growing it and that you just love it. I think the competitive aspect of the background of for me of athletics and always trying to get better and, you know, cliche again to say leave this place better than you had it, but, you know, we can clear this past year from these freaking locust trees or mall far rows.

And, you know, 50 years ago, that's all it was, was that. You know, we're doing something and, you know, leaving this place better. I don't know if legacy's coming to my mind yet. My boy's nine and my oldest daughter's 10 and 7. and four. I don't know if I'm quite there yet, but I think in a few years, obviously, when they get later high school college, you know, what are they gravitating towards? You know, that might come into play more. But I think it's just the competitive nature of how much can we get done

during a day and in our local community, who can we affect or get to try out some local produce or drive five miles and get sweet corn rather than go into the grocery store and things like that. So, yeah. What do you do for yourself to stay sane? Like, is it the gym? Is it the gym? gym is it is it coaching i see whiskey or no yeah yeah like because i you know that's something that when you're doing so much you can get you can just get to this point where it feels like all you do is work yeah and sometimes i think like for me it's the gym you know that's where i can just like take a take a breath a little bit this morning i try and go twice a week to just a local gym just kind of get out it's 5 a m class so you go 5 to 6 i try and do that twice a week

And then I bought a cold tub here a couple years ago. So like do that trying three, four times a week. And that was my past life, like playing your cold tub, your sauna, hot tub. And I kind of didn't do that for 15 years. I'm like, man, and it was a fad, but bought one and enjoy it. You know, it kind of resets you or that's the four minutes that I sit in it, that you can kind of just not think about something. And then we're finishing our basement and there's literally a sauna in a box in my garage

that I'll put downstairs as well. also have a little retreat slash wellness area, I guess, for me to, when my kids are yelling, run around naked, that I can just go hide down there for maybe 15 minutes. But that's kind of my. I mean, I enjoyed football, obviously, and I enjoyed wrestling and I enjoyed all the sports I did. But I enjoyed the training aspect of it,

more lifting, working out. And as I push 40, trying to stay in shape. So I think my dad lasted until about a sophomore year in the wrestling room. So my goal is to, if Brady wrestles, you know, last maybe till his whole high school, stay in shape enough that I can at least give him a go for 30 seconds. But, yeah. Yeah, we'll see. I think that's it.

So, I mean, if I can disconnect twice a week and go work out for an hour and just halfway sweat, you know, not bailing hay or bailing straw, I'll go run around a gym. But, yeah, that's my way. I love to hunt more. That doesn't happen right now in the fall and things. If I make it out twice, that's kind of a win for me, you know. Did you grow up hunting or is it something you kind of? Not really.

My dad's buddies all still come back. They do the normal like deer camp first season shotgun and they have a great time. They've been doing it 50 years. But now it's more just a social thing rather than hunting. That's how I kind of grew up was that way. But I like, I like bow hunting if I can get out there in a stand for two or three hours during right after Halloween when things aren't slowing down, but slowing down for us. Are you a yuker or a pepper? Uker.

Oh, there you go. Buck Buck, Uker. Yeah, Ukur, not much Uker down here. No. Pepper. You ever played pepper?

I've heard of it and I've played it once, but I wouldn't do it. Oh. Similar though. It's very similar. It's, I personally like it better. Really, 50 minutes away,

like it's that big a difference. It is. It's pepper. It's pepper. Yeah. And it's, I personally like it because I played Uker. I have never played Uker and I played it

was guys that grew up north of here. And Pepper's just higher, it's just higher pace. It's like, yeah. It's, I'm probably not smart enough for Pepper. No, you'd love it.

Well, it's interesting because my wife's family, her mom's side, well, her dad's side too, grew up Morning Sun area, and they all play pitch. Yeah, I've heard of it, yeah. Pitch. And then you get in this area and towards Kyoto, it's Pepper and you go north, it's Ugar. For your list, I'm 50 minutes north, basically.

So yeah, weird. Yeah. You ever played SWIC? No. Never heard of it. It looks even more simple. so you guys probably wouldn't like it if you like Pepper, but same sort of idea.

Yeah, gotcha. How do we get on card games? I don't know. I don't know. Who had the, who do you feel like it's had the biggest impact on your life? Dang. Yeah.

We're going back to deep. My wife provides a great perspective sometimes. Like you want to marry up. Like she's definitely smarter than me. And she can kind of step back sometimes in business and in life and kind of evaluate. things. From a consumer side in our business, like she can step back and kind of see that or what will work and what won't. So and then obviously just the way she kind of is our rock and

kind of leads us and things like that. But, uh, Coach Doyle is one that always pops into my brain as a dude that, as a guy that, you know, he's changed a lot of young guys' lives. And unfortunately, what happened happened. Um, and his legacy is kind of tarnished from that standpoint. But, you know, he was everything to a lot of guys that came through during that time period. So he's one that, you know, gave you that hype up speech about every lifting session. And you're like, yeah, like you would run through that wooden wall. Like, we're blue, you know, you're blue collar. They need us.

This world needs us. Like, you need to do this. Got to do this. And it's like 105 in this bubble and we're doing fat camp, slideboards. And we're like, no, this is the worst thing ever. But somehow he would initiate your brain to think that it was necessary to play football, you know. And that's a powerful thing when it comes to that grind in that five-year period that a lot of guys go through. So he's one that's always been, you know, kind of instrumental in setting that foundation how you lead your life.

Yeah. You know. Yeah, every Iowa player you talk to that live that era. I mean, that's, they'll, there's nobody that speaks badly of him. I mean, he's hard on you. But if he wasn't hard on you. Universal asshole, I think he even called himself. You know, a lot of guys.

If he wasn't getting on your ass, he didn't care. No. So if he got on your ass, he cared about you. He mentioned that. He goes, I had sometimes a higher vision for their athletic careers than the players themselves. And that's how he kind of handled himself. So yeah, yeah, he's won. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't say my wife. And then obviously my parents, like I'm not, you know, not going to say that. Like, they still work their tails off for 10, 12 hours a day or more. And that farms their life. Mom was a postal carrier, rural carrier for 34 years. So like to watch her 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. do 100 miles a day in the car delivering mail and then come home and castrate pigs or teeth pigs and, you know, to watch them kind of grind through those years. Yeah, you know, that generation, there's a guy not too far north of where you grew up.

And I won't say their name, but I sold it. a hog building and they farmed like they farmed like 1,800 acres and just nonchalantly because the mom, I think she might have been a male carrier too but we were talking and just off the cuff she said

yeah we've never combined an acre of corn or planted an acre of corn in daylight because the husband worked at a welding shop in Tipton I think and she had a job and they farmed 1,800 acres and raised three boys, and they did it all from...

They didn't sleep. Yeah. They didn't sleep for three months, four months out of there. That's that, you know, that's how they did it. I get it. That's how they did it. And we... I like my sleep.

I don't get me wrong. Like, I was like eight, them back in the day. I'm playing. You got to get eight, nine hours. And now, you know, if I get six, I feel really good. But, you know. I'll just, I'll say this. And it sticks in my mind in the conversation that we're having.

I think it was a year. ago I went to a deal down in Kansas City that, what's their name? Van Trump puts on, I think it's called FarmCon. And he was speaking the first day, and I wrote this down, I have it on my desk. And it says, don't let the opportunities that you pray for become what you complain about. And we talk about that a lot here when we get going about, you know, complaining about this or that, just be thankful that we actually have opportunity.

Because if I think about, like, if I was stuck, if we wouldn't have started what we started and we were just like row cropping and we didn't have anything. I think the feeling of not knowing what the hell you're going to do would be a lot worse than having too much to do and just trying to decide.

Like, how do we make this all worse? What's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again? expecting different results like that's farming a lot of times you know but you know how do you get out of that cycle yeah no that's that's glad you said that uh being a being a dad in today's world raising young kids in today's world i feel like it's kind of a scary i don't know we had this conversation we i tried to bring this up with anybody that's a dad you know it's it's weird time that we're in raising kids in today's world what how do you feel about the the world your kids

your kids are growing up in and is there anything that you are trying to keep your kids away from or what what what's your just thought process on all that oh man you ask these tough ones so you know we live in the world of screens screen time you know we can get into the whole scientific of dopamine and then all that stuff with you know i see it when she's 10 like she has her she's a big kate and Clark fever plan like she's basketball through and through right now that game will be on but then she's staring at a like somehow got my wife's phone is like looking at I'm like Leighton hey just either watch the game like put that down so like that's minor what we're talking about of the whole picture but like you grow up with they're growing up with screens and I'm not trying to stop

them like I don't think I'm maybe that parent to be like no we're not having a PlayStation we're not doing this but how do you limit it and how do you control it you know all her friends are getting phones in fifth grade and I'm like no no no I think you'll be 12 and it'll be 6th grade so next october and yeah it'll just be you'll just be able to call like you won't be able to get on internet and all that stuff and I'm sure I'll get brashed for it for not letting or do whatever yeah how do you control that realm and then how do you you know how do you put a good head on the shoulders and make sure they're leaders instead of followers and all that it's just more conversation like don't fall into the kids man they fall into peer pressure and you know like brady

how's the first day of school do you get in trouble well we were kicking some balls after they blew the whistle i'm like well you know and there's some boys in that class like they're boys their boys or nine-year-old boys or rambux and i'm like just be careful like i'm not telling you who you can or can't hang out with but like you know you know right from wrong right you know having that conversation right i mean they're old enough to know that so how do you raise them and continue to evolve i don't know Sawyer, but I think control, we can control and have those couple hours at a time that we discussed to kind of put things perspective for them, you know, because money is a huge weird thing that I think some parents do it right and some parents, these kids have no idea,

you know, stolen that we grew up in is getting pretty affluent. Like there's some money in that town and, you know, some of these, my kids friends, you know, do well, but our kids kind of grow up in a different world sometimes. Like, you might have to break out. that small square bailer again. It's there. We just did it. I'd have to say kids. Here we go.

They say, this is hard, Dad. It's a very good point. Like, I don't want to go. I'm like, no,

you're going to carry sweet corn bags out for these customers and you're going to carry to the car. You're going to talk to them. Yeah. And you're going to engage and you're going to look them in the eye

and shake their hand and don't look down at the ground and have a firm handshake. And it's so cool. I'll tell you what, things like that in the coming for that generation, It's going to be a game changer because so many kids can't.

It's just this. Hey, text message, how are you doing? You know, it's not an open conversation of, although my name is blah, blah, blah, you know, confidence. If you can communicate, that's. It's still a business, you know, I think, you know, and I don't do a good enough job sometimes. I get caught up and I don't slow down and say thanks

or, you know, things like that too for some of our customers. But, yeah, yeah, I think just teaching those little things, little things add up to a lot and, you know, treat people how you want to be treated. That's the golden rule, but it's sometimes tough to do, especially in the keyboard world that we live in, you know, and some of the stuff you see of utopia on social media. Yeah. Like, no, it's not the case. Yeah, for sure. I'm starting to get those questions like, do we have money or I'm like? It's the me. I don't know. Do I? I don't know some days. I don't know. Yeah. You know, so you have this. Family guy,

me, are we white trash? Yeah. Pretty much. Well, I was born in a, like, mobile, like, mobile home trailer. I just thought I was born in a trailer, you know, but, you know, it wasn't. It was, but it wasn't, you know, and we've been fortunate to have a couple new houses in this most recent one, five years ago, older, built in the 80s. With little did I know in the 80s, they just built houses with your drywall, a little bit insulation, this two, this one inch core board, and then the siding, there's no like wrap or like OSB or anything. Yeah. So like the front of my, I don't know how I got on this, but the front of my house is just like a wind tunnel. just going through.

You know, just first world problems, you know, and that's what I try to explain to those kids. Like, you know, yeah, we're fine. I go and be thankful. Like, you're talking about be thankful. We got a roof right of her head, and I can have a cold tub in my basement to sit in for 16 minutes a week.

You know, it's like, what are we doing some days? Yeah. Yeah. I heard a really good thing from Kylie Kelsey, actually. She put a clip out that was like, she's going old school with her kids where they're going to have a phone. but it's going to be like a house phone

and it's going to be a cell phone but they can only use it in the kitchen and their friends have to... So you can hear the conversation. Well, yeah, they can't take it to her bedroom but it's like a house phone where if their friends want to hang out with them or whatever they got to call that phone

and whoever answers they have to say yeah, this is so okay. That's what she's doing. She said she's going old school with it and that's how she's going to do it and I thought it's interesting to watch people like that especially in professional sports or even the social media age where these influences are making millions of dollars at age 16 through 24 and they start raising families.

It would be interesting to look at their person, like Kylie and Jason, like, you know, he's making more money now than he did when he played. He made a lot of money when he played. How are they going to raise kids or how do they control the situation that these kids don't feel entitled is an interesting time. Yeah. I kind of like that, though.

Well, I think that's awesome because, I think it's just like, I just, I think adults struggle with it and kids struggle with it. It's that dopamine, man. I mean, it's, how are you supposed to, how are you supposed to enjoy the little things of life when you sat on your phone for four hours and you doomed scrolled and you looked at a sad video, a funny video, a happy video? I'm guilty. I mean, it's like.

Those kids get to bed now at 845 and I turn on the shower and I stare at my phone for a second. All of a sudden the water's been on for five minutes because I'm like, what am I? Yeah. Recheck yourself. What am I doing? Yeah. It's these phones, man. I think there's a lot of people that they walk around.

They say, well, I feel numb. You know, I feel numb. Well, why do you feel numb? Well, probably because your dopamine receptors are maxed out every single day. Yeah, we're stimulated. You're looking at your phone 20 minutes before you even get out of bed. I think Rogan showed something. This artist or this digital artist would take pictures on the street or,

in a common area or like an elevator and they would remove the phone from the person's hand and rogan was like if you would have told us 15 20 years ago there was a drug that made you stare at your hand for five hours a day you'd think we're all crazy but we're all doing it like when you look at your screen time you're at three or four hours and i'm sure some of these people are a lot more and it's just interesting to see in there pictures on a subway or pictures on the elevator or you know you get that feeling when you're standing there like i need to check my phone like what time is it I used to have an email come through. But that was interesting to look at some of those photos and hear that.

That is kind of a cool concept. Yeah. If someone created a drug that you said you would stare at your hand for five hours a day, you think everyone's crazy. But we're all. We're all doing it. Halfway doing it. Yeah.

You can't have a moment of no, no stimulation. No. Like nobody sits in silence anymore for, for 20 minutes. I would like to with four kids. Yeah. You know, it's like it's got to be. Well, you're going to get here. because your kids are going to get to that point before you know it.

But I'll never forget the first time that Sawyer's older brother had a boy girl party at our house. And I remember boy girl parties when I was a kid. And so we're upstairs and they're in the basement. And it gets, it's like dead silent. Dead silence is bad. That's real bad. And so I'm like, I go out, I go out the house and go around

and we have a walkout basement. I go to the patio door. No way. I stare in there. And I fully expect that I'm going to have to open the door and be like, you know, and check or whatever. Break it up. No, there's like eight kids there or ten kids there.

There's a movie on. They're dead silent. They're all looking at their phones, not watching the movie. And then once every so many minutes, because they're all texting each other and sending memes to each other. All of them go, and they all look up. And then they look back down. And I go upstairs and Trish is like, is everything all right? And I remember I said, you know, I don't really know.

I don't know. They're not playing spin the bottle or anything like that, like 40 years ago. Yeah. Man. But it was just so weird that that's how it changed. I know. I'm not ready for that boyfriend stage in my life. I don't know how I'm ready.

You'll be all right. You know, just get yourself, just pick your favorite shotgun and always have it ready to be cleaning. When somebody comes over to pick up what are your daughters? Just sit down here, son. Have his talk, man. Yeah. Yeah.

I was there once. What are your intentions? I know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Or he's got to go back. He's got to go pick a few pumpkins before he can take her out. That's right.

Yeah. Hey, see what his work ethic is like. Hey, let's go out here and see if we get some calluses going on on the hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. There go.

Well, shit. I think that's all I got. You got all your words out? You got all your words out? I don't think I ever even looked at the outline. I know. It flowed so well. I never picked it up.

Those are the best kind of. You guys have an outline? Oh, yeah. It's kind of our guard rails to keep us on track. But that's the beautiful part about podcast. You know, talking about playing card games and fatherhood.

Hey, that's what we love. You guys need to come up to Suttloff. You ever heard of Soutlev? Tavern on the Cedar River. Uh-uh. Where is it from your place? It's just a mile,

mile and a half away. Is it west? East East. East. Right? My geographically impaired. Southeast from us. Okay.

Lisbon area. Sellef is a small little town. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's, they play SWIC. I think every Saturday at 4 o'clock in the winter. So you guys come down and play SWIC and my dad will probably be there. I probably won't be.

But if you guys are there, I'll stop in. It's a cool little place. Yeah. Fried food. I grew up on it, man. It's fried food. Chicken strips and cheese balls and. Yeah.

cash only and beer only and yeah it's good Saturday night I think so nice yeah no but I appreciate you guys having me and yeah well thanks for coming on it was awesome conversation I'd love to come up to the farm sometime yes no if you guys are available come here September late September October just kind of see the place in its glory I guess when we set up all the little cutouts and corn mazes go on and oh we can get a picture in the cutouts there you got a picture you got to be in the little bo-peep outfit though okay I'll be the guy in the bibs all right you'll be the Gary Crow Skeleton. There we go.

Gotcha. No, thank you. I appreciate it. It's good to meet you guys and hopefully give you guys something to take away. For sure, man. I think people got value for sure. If you got value, guys, go check out what Matt and his family are up to. We'll have that video in the description.

Go check out their website, all the stuff that they got going on. Share the show. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We appreciate the hell out of you guys. We love you. We'll see you back here next week for another episode.