Barn Talk - The Heartland's Harsh Realities: Why Diversification in Farming Matters w/IowANFarmer

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In this episode, IowANFarmer joins us for a second time to discuss farming life and industry challenges, family values and generational differences. We explore the complexities of agricultural business, including land ownership, market dynamics, and the impact of global events like the Russian-Ukraine war on local farming. We highlight diversification strategies for financial stability, such as expanding his pumpkin patch, venturing into alternative farming, and a direct-to-consumer meat business & much, much more.  Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 Farming challenges led to an entrepreneurial pumpkin patch. 07:30 Considered growing pumpkins, sparked by local interest. 13:50 Step up, create change, give back to the community. 17:09 Raised $2,000 for high school, community projects. 22:36 Overcoming challenges in pursuit of success. 30:34 Increased planting capacity and equipment efficiency benefits. 32:37 New equipment increased productivity and relieved labor. 37:07 Sell grain now or risk low prices. 46:14 Bullish on markets due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. 48:19 People don't consider impact, but it's crucial. 53:16 Economic impact leads to potential retirement auctions. 59:12 Government payments, farming, and community impact discussed. 01:08:22 Balancing work at the farm and pumpkin patch. 01:10:18 Prepare for bad things and focus on improvement. 01:17:40 Engaging children in picking the perfect pumpkin. 01:20:10 Balancing work and chores during good weather. 01:25:34 Prioritizing family and personal time as a parent. ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional bro... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn? Stay's in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a guest episode. We've got a real special guest. This is the first time we've ever had, actually second time we've ever had a reoccurring guest. So this person, you've seen him before, farms in Southern Iowa, got a lot of stuff going. on he's into tylin he's into grain farming he's into the hay business he's got a new venture him and

his wife have been working on and they actually got it up and running and am i missing anything tylin business he's got that too so he's kind of the jack of all trades young hustling trying to make a buck trying to stay into farming trying to grow his operation best he can he's got a youtube channel um and so you guys know the drill before we get into this share it out with who you know the more that you guys do that the more the show grows the more we can get better guests on more episodes we can make feel free to also leave a review on spotify or apple that gives our show more credibility and better guests we can get on if we're more credible last thing you

could do to support the show if you love what we're doing and you get value from it is you can head over to farmergrade dot com and you you can buy some meat from us. We launched a direct-to-consumer meat business last year, and we're going strong, and we'd love to provide your family with some meat, and you can use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your next order.

So without further ado, let's get into it. Iowaan Farmer, aka Ben Ben Rokul, welcome back to Barn Talk. You're flirting with danger. It's like the sequel is rarely ever as good as the original. Oh, I don't know about it. that. Well, the last episode we did with Ben, it went off. The clips, the shorts on YouTube went off. And I think people just like you because it's just real authentic farmer to farmer conversation. I think we're just going to do more of that today. Just talk about what we think

about this upcoming season, how last harvest went for you. You got some new stuff going on on the farm and just shoot the shit, I guess. Yeah, definitely because it was like, well, thank you for that. But like, it was interesting. We talked, we actually toured Farmer Grade before we came here and we were talking about like okay last time we were here basically a year ago now was like both of us kind of had something in the back pocket that neither we neither of us had talked about in public about you know that value ad business for for uh you need to bring back to the farm and we were doing a pumpkin patch we didn't know that it was coming like coming to actually happen because the ground had sold yet that we bought and you guys were doing farmer grade so it's i guess

we got a chance to talk about that and kind of see how things go yeah so before we get into all of where can people find you so iwan farmer on youtube that is the main spot to find me and then there's iwan farmer on every other platform but my brain only really works in youtube uh world so that's where i hang out what about the pumpkin patch i know you guys got so pumpkin patch yeah that was one thing that we learned is that need to basically diversify the audience a little bit so molly uh created an actual youtube channel called patchy later uh for the pumpkin patch for poppo's pumpkin patch we're just We haven't gotten too much out on that yet. So I don't even know if it's broke a thousand subscribers or not yet.

But it will now. It will now. And we'll be kicking out all the pumpkin patch fun stuff on that channel this year for basically kind of a little more personal stuff, a little different editing style than what Iowan Farmer has done for the past five years. So it'll be more a little Molly and I's relationship, family type of stuff. Kind a little more entertainment, I guess you could say. The kindler, gentler. Island Farmer. Yeah, there you go.

More refined. Yeah, the pumpkin holder. There you go. You'll have to hold your beer with one finger out. That's probably true. Yeah, so tell us about the pumpkin patch and anything else that's kind of new and exciting in your neck of the woods. So I don't know where we can start with the pumpkin patch. A whole idea.

Well, you could probably start back is that it's just like the mindset of I started farming in 2014 when things are very similar. to what's happening in 20, 24, 10 years later. Obviously, this would now be my 10th year of farming. Commodity prices were dropping, and, you know, the input prices are still pretty darn high. Profit margins are going tighter. And then for the first six, seven years in my farming career, margins were tight or not even there for growing a row crop. So I've always just kind of always had the idea of my mind of how can I, you know, find other sources of income. or a little bit of entrepreneurship, if you want to say that. And that was bred into me over those six years of you've got to find other ways to bring money into the farm

because you can't just sell your crop and live off of that when things are like they are. So I was always looking for those opportunities. And one year I would always plant what I called the fun plot. And it was like a half an acre right there at my shop. I've done the cover crops, the buzzword stuff, 60 inch corn. all kinds of oddball things. Excuse me. And then one year it was wet in the spring and that didn't happen.

And so we're like, what can we plant in June-ish or even actually it was closer to July that we could grow a crop here? And pumpkins kind of was like, ding, we could plant some pumpkins. I drove around to like all the Walmarts and bought all their pre-growing pumpkin plants because I was like,

that's the only way, we'll ever even get pumpkins to make it. So we went out there. We hilled out the pumpkins and we planted some pumpkins. Some of them lasted. Had no clue what we were really planting. It was a mess, a weedy mess.

Like, oh, man. So anyways, I grew pumpkins. And it was kind of cool because you'd like walk out in there and you'd be like, dang, look at that pumpkin. It's like,

that's a big old pumpkin right there. Yep. Well, the issue is, is that I didn't have anything to do with the pumpkins. So actually Molly posted on Facebook, with the island farmer thing, I just didn't want everybody showing up to my farm

necessarily to grab a pumpkin type of thing. To manage that because I wasn't there. You know, not necessarily now people and viewers show up to the pumpkin patch, which I really enjoy. But I didn't want people there at my shop because people were there at my shop picking the pumpkins when I was harvesting.

Get a pumpkin and a wrench or a toolbox. Yeah, there you go. So that'd be kind of the way it would be. And so Molly posted on Facebook, hey, if you got kids, come on out, pick some pumpkins free of charge just to get rid of them. And then she took some straw bales, set up a couple of displays, you know, made it pretty so that the families could if they wanted to to take their picture there. Yep. Well, that went off. Good.

Light bulb. And people showed up and they grabbed their pumpkins. They took their pictures. They really liked it. Well, that was it. That was done. Well, it did trigger in the back of my mind a little bit about. like this could be another crop maybe I could grow a little bit of some pumpkins to sell some

of these pumpkins never really had the idea of like the whole pumpkin patch necessarily yet well then mollie started to get messages that next spring basically saying are you guys going to grow pumpkins again next year when she'd like be getting her haircut or somebody sear or things along those lines and then it kind of brewed in my mind a little bit more like maybe we could do a pumpkin patch. Well, then you kind of do, you look at, you know, what's your competition in your area? Well, for us, it's 50-minute drive to any other pumpkin patch anywhere around. So it's like, well, we're not saturated here. So we actually have like a marketing opportunity. So let's continue to look at this. Well, we looked at it and the issue is, is that you got to find a piece of

ground to do this on. And I kind of was like, well, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right. which the other aspects of this was Molly and I had not been married yet and Molly has always wanted to own her own business and I wanted to facilitate that dream of having her own and run her own business type of thing. So I'm like Pumpkin Patch works because she was looking at wedding barns, but I mean you throw a stone and you hit a wedding barn down by us. So literally. And so it was like wedding venues don't work, but maybe this is kind of. be something along those lines. It's still event planning. And she's really good at that. So then you're looking at your partner and then also looking at their strengths about what they can do. This like really fits into it. And then for me, I get to continue to grow a crop, you know,

and do something fun. And I always liked interacting with the public. So we start looking for pieces of ground. We found one or two that kind of fit the criteria. Went to go purchase one of the pieces of ground and the guy legitimately wanted probably a $1,200 more an acre than what it would sell at an auction. So it was like, that one's out. So we didn't find any pieces of ground to find, I guess, to purchase that fit the criteria of being next to the population, being good access to a road, being somewhat flat to grow and have that type of stuff. Well, year, speed up later. We were kind of like, well, we need to keep looking for it and actually a piece of ground popped up. And it was like, dang, this is like in the right spot. And May 10th,

2023, we closed on that piece of ground and bought 27 acres and hit the ground run and trying to build a pumpkin patch. You're back at Walmart looking for pumpkin. I was back at pump. Yeah, oh man. Yeah, back at Walmart. trying to buy pumpkins. So, no, which we talk about that it took four months and five days to actually go from an actual bare piece of ground to our opening day. Well, that was. That's pretty crazy.

That's pretty impressive. It is like the actual work to get done. But on the backside of that, you know, it was something that we were gently planning for a year and a half. So, like, I had the building kind of designed and I had bids ready to go. So I knew what that would cost. had financing lined up that was you know kind of contingent on if the ground gets you know bought or whatever so all the pieces were there i just had to assemble the puzzle or we had to assemble

the puzzle so it wasn't like a spur of the moment go deal we did a lot of research we called a lot of people we talked to a lot of people um which is really kind of interesting because it seems like farmers love to chat with each other as long as you aren't just right next to each other yeah You know what I mean? It's like you go to any conference. It's like, man, we can chat about anything you want to talk to chat about because you're two states away. Yeah. That's absolutely right. You know, in Pumpkin Patch world, it's like you can call and chat about anything. You can ask people like, how many pumpkins do you sell a year? Some people, you can kind of gauge them upon, you know, what you're having that conversation about like, can I ask this person what the revenues are? Yeah. Because if you're going to actually do a business, it's like you've got to ask those questions. And then the sample size or who you're actually. survey and you need to try and find ones that would be very much so similar to yours because we're

next to uh i think centerville has 5500 people or so in there so it's not like we're next to you know you're not too far from iowa city that type of stuff where your guys's option to draw on a lot of people yeah is way greater than ours but you also have pumpkin patches that are established around here so our our advantage was is that we don't have any pumpkin patches around us the disadvantage was is that we've got a smaller population. Yep. So, but people from everything that we talked about were willing to travel for pumpkin patches, so we greenlit the project.

And you got an audience. So, I mean, that helps too, you know. So all that being said, has it been a good deal for you guys? Are you happy with how it's gone? Are you feel like it was worth the time and investment? Do you feel like it's good? Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.

Um, what didn't make any money our first year? No, but we've proven our business plan. So that's like from the financial side of it is that it's like it will work out. But the other aspects of it was that there was a lot of like non-monetary awards that came from it. A, building a business with your wife was really fun. It will test your relationship. And if you can make it through, it's like you're going to, especially in your first year of marriage, you know, you know you got a pretty good solid foundation.

The family that was out there and helping, like, man, great way to spend your time. And then on top of that, the community aspect is huge. You know, we always talked about it. We wanted it to be like a community betterment project. If we look at it, you know, kind of your generation is, they're not wanting to really start new businesses.

Right. So it is now our generation's time to where if we want to see changes in our community, it's time for us to step up and do it. So we would like to see that. We want to see more family activities and things that people can get out of the house and actually create some of those core memories.

And it's like if we could provide that to our community, that's going to be great. And then maybe we can provide, you know, other opportunities where we can give back to our community in certain ways. So if we looked at our pump, patch just just what we were able to do on our first year our farm store that we built we probably had like 20% of it was like our wholesale stuff that we purchased that we couldn't like get from local people because the USDA has regulations on a lot of stupid stuff like like we couldn't have somebody

locally just buy it like buy their jam even though it'd be really good safe I'd eat it I feed it to kids anybody. But if that jam wasn't done in a commercial kitchen or a kitchen with the license and didn't have a certain label on it, we couldn't sell it. And we tried to find ways to like kind of package ourselves as a farmer's market. But since we had a roof over us, it doesn't count as a farmer's market. Yeah, they could came set up outside and sold it out of the back of their car and they would have been fine. But if they, if you buy it from them, you can't resell it. And if they put them in, if you put them in your shit. It doesn't qualify either. And it was all consignment agreements with us too. So even that didn't loophole it, which is really pretty crazy because the fact is that, you know, us as English people

compared to the rules that the Amish have are completely different. And it's like the Amish in the in the homemade sector of stuff have a way leg up than on, you know, what the Amish call us English, you know, that type of thing. So that was a little bit of a challenge, but there is one of the ways that we were able to give back. So 80% of the products in our store showcased locally grown and made products from like stores in Centerville. So we had people come from a long distance away to come see our patch and maybe they bought some popcorn from, you know, from a store on the square. Well, next time that was really good popcorn and they drive by and they know where that's at, you know, that type of stuff. So we were able to

showcase other businesses. The other thing that we did, we had a coffee truck, so one of the local coffee stores on the square started their own coffee truck and got them up and off the ground. So there's how we helped out somebody else. We had food trucks every single weekend. So we had different food trucks just to spice up the food that you get. You guys live in small town Iowa too. You can only eat at the family restaurant until you eat and everything on that menu every single time, you know. So it's nice to get something just a little. bit different every now and then. So kind of we brought that entertainment value to them. And then on top of that, we were able to, uh, we gave away money. We gave away quite a few donations to nonprofits.

And then we were able to actually, we haunted our corn mace, which is the most fun you can have with your pants on, uh, scaring people on a corn. Yeah. Right. And we were able to raise about $2,000 for the high school, you know, by doing that. So we were able to, you know, do these community betterment projects through that. And then on top of the, you know, and then on top of the, you know, you know, that to see the response from when people come up to you and everybody says thank so take a farmer and I'm not on the boat that we need to be thanked. I'm just not there because it's our job. It's what we do. It's what we choose to do. So I don't necessarily need to be thanked for that. But when people do walk up to say thank you for, you know, bringing this to the community and they

would be or like say please come back next year or that type of stuff, like that reward is huge. Yeah. So the answer in a long form way of your question was this, was this worth it? We didn't line our pockets this year, but I mean, what we were able to do for Centerville, what we were able to do for Appanese County, the family's there, and all of those non-monetary returns was very much so worth it. More than more than I can expect. And actually, from what I understand, we're actually have been nominated for Appanese County business of the year. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. you, boy, a year and he's just wisdom.

Run, he's a run for mayor. That's a Dalting 101 there. Yeah. Damn. Got married and started a new business. Yeah. So like it sounds like I might have known what I was trying to do. I didn't.

No. It's like you just put your head down and you start going forward until you hit a wall. You take a little bit of a turn. You put your head back down and you keep going forward again. And it's like hopefully you don't hurry at a wall so hard that you knock yourself out. Yeah. You know, so, but it will help out in the future because, again, just like you guys did with Farmer Grade, you got to find those other sources of income to make sure that your farm is

stable, get that diversification in there. And I think that was, you know, going back to starting in 2014, which I'm lucky that I worked for six years for free, you know, that I learned that bad times do come. and it's like can you weather those bad times because if you can weather those bad times good times do come back yeah yeah so that's how i decided to keep my eye open for these little opportunities and sometimes you can just find the one that just is like that bull's eye and for us this agritourism where i was able to stay within what i knew how to do my wife was able to like so great at being able to plan the events and you know manage everything there because it is her

business i'm just the ape out in the pumpkin patch cutting pumpkins and showing kids how to pick out and find pumpkins you know and like cutting the corn maze it's it's super rewarding yeah that's awesome well i mean yeah what we always say it's at this point ag it's like get big get bigger or die or create your own market or do what you're do what you're do you what you're saying like there's a place in well i don't know wellman that's pizza on the farm they got a pizza oven that they make brick house or brickstone pizza and have a concert and there's all these different ways that are coming out that people are able to do ag or tourism and direct to consumer whatever it is but it's like i don't we talked about this last time you're here i have no desire to farm

the world no i want a good chunk of you know i want a good amount of acres and have fun and enjoy doing it Absolutely. But if you don't diversify, you're going to just only do grain farming. And it sounds like you just got to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like we said when Titan was here. It's like there's a hell of a lot of people out there that I enjoy farming. I don't enjoy being the HR director. I don't want to be the CEO. And have eight other people do the farming while I sit in an office. That isn't what I signed up for. That's not what I want to do.

But that's the economics drives it that way. and this is a great way to like spin yourself out of that to where you can still enjoy what you want to do and and also let's face it i mean it's a different it's a different market that may be more resilient than just putting all your eggs in one basket hopefully hopefully so um and like you guys are talking about i think that there be a lot more young guys that are doing this stuff or a lot young couples that are willing to venture out and you guys learned it because is probably getting to the meat business or like a direct consumer or anything where you have to process anything live. The regulations, even with that the pumpkin patch that we ran into

are. It's almost like they don't want you to do it. That is, that's very much so like they don't want you to do it. Yeah. You know, even where we tried to like, like we kind of chatted a little bit about we were trying to have some local meat that we were going to put into a freezer so people could come out there and grab a piece of local meat. Well, you know, we did all our research that we thought, you know, because we were a little naive, I guess you could say, where we were like, okay, well, if we call, you know, the inspectors and say, what do we need to do so that we can do this? And then they tell you, you don't have anything, you know, that you need to do. You just need to be able to make sure. And then when they say, well, no, you have to do this afterwards. So that's hard,

you know, and I think that there's people like that would just give up. And I can't blame them for that, you know, because sometimes you hit that, like I said, you hit that wall. And it's like, there's no way around it. Like for us this year, we were able to, like, we had to pay a lawyer to like look over this deal to find us a way to get, you know, meet into the store. And by the time we got everything done and we got approved for a variant, that basically that was out the door. So, and how hard, how many times can you do that until you say, maybe this just doesn't work.

Yeah. You know, and it's like you guys, I listened to your guys' podcast about all the things that you ran into. It's like, you had to keep chugging through them to get there. Yeah. And again, it goes back to the, just put your head down and keep going. Yeah. You know, refusing to quit.

I mean, that's what it takes. Yeah. Solving problems. uh we had you know we had the secretary ag on here just a couple weeks ago and i feel like that is something that they're very aware of and they're trying to help is make make that whole process for direct-to-consumer and local goods and local but it's government so it moves very slow because like there's a deal that there's a deal on the meat side that this is just a perfect example like what you're talking about so you know there's there's lockers that are state inspected

that sell a product and the state inspection is just as stringent as a USDA inspection but they don't have a USDA no no difference no difference the inspection is the same they have to meet the same standard so if you drive over here from illinois and buy a meat stick that's okay. But if that guy wants to put it on and ship it, can't do it because it's not USDA inspected. Yeah. And there's no difference. Because we chatted with a local meat locker actually, again, we were trying to use as showcases many things from Centerville or Appanese County as possible. And I believe this, I'd have to talk with Molly, but I believe they said, okay, they can sell the meat in their store. Yep. But she's like, I can't give you the meat to sell.

Correct. So it's just, I almost wonder if it's not like a profit protection for like the big packers. And that's maybe something that they just don't want to change. Yeah, we've definitely had that thought. Like, because if they make it, put it this way. If the same principle applies to me as I would go and buy that jam at whatever roadside stand, the guy's got his dusty old pickup truck selling jamming some watermelons and stuff like that, It's like, heck yes, I'll take that home and, you know, eat it.

I don't see why the local meat locker can't do that themselves. Because if that butcher is going to sell something that is below the grade that it should be or maybe not safe to consume, that's their reputation that's gone. And that's their business that's gone. versus, you know, these large packers, it's like if they can get it into a package, that's profit. Yep. So I don't think that the little guys should be regulated, you know, this might be controversial, state in your own opinion here, should be regulated as strictly as the big guys.

Because the difference is, is the big guys, they don't care what their reputation is. Right. The little guy. It matters. It matters tremendously to them. So it's like if there's a steak that, you know, maybe doesn't even look as good as it could be or whatever, they'll throw it into the trim pile and ground it into hamburger. You know, they're going to make sure that the quality of beef, chicken, pork,

or whatever they're trying to push out the door is good because as soon as it's not good, it's going to spread like wildfire. Yep, yep. You're 100% right. But that's the world we live in. Yep, money is power, unfortunately. They got a lot of money than Packers do. So I don't know.

It's all speculation, but we've had the same thought for sure. So let's go, I feel like we touched on the patch. What's the name of the pumpkin patch? Oh, Poppo's Pumpkin Patch. Yeah. So the Poppo's Pumpkin Patch is actually named. So Poppo is Al Clark, who is Molly's grandpa. Okay.

He's 93 years old and like an absolute staple of the community. Cool. So lived in the area. like his whole life like i read his i wish he wrote a little more in his memoirs but like we went on our honeymoon he kind of wrote his journal and stuff like that i mean he was in appanus county when it was like coal towns like little cool towns and sure he'd talk about like he'd lay on his side and chip out coal and then he'd get chunks of coal and like go legitimately sell it into the coal shoots and take it to the people's basements and stuff and it's like man i wish they had youtube back then i'd watch the heck out

yeah yeah and he he legitimately talks about it's it's it's nine-mile miles from Plano to Centerville. And he talks about he'd do that regularly. And I'm like, I think he's lying. I think he's like, there ain't no way he's walking nine miles to centerville to go to a dance. It's like, uh-uh. And then coming home, it's like he must have been hitchhiking somehow. Oh, yeah. But you know what? That's, so my dad talks about when he was a kid and we're only, we're five miles from town. Yeah. But, uh, you know, he'd talk about going to town. And they only, pretty much you only went to town on Sunday unless you really needed something when he was a kid.

But he would just go out and start walking. And everybody knew everybody in the neighborhood. And if somebody was coming by, you just get on and go. And then I'm like, so then what did you do when you need to go home? And he said, well, you just made sure that you didn't stay in town until nobody was around

or else you did have to walk all. all the way home. But it was different times. Yeah, it sounded like they'd go to town about once a month or so because that's when the money would come in. And they'd go to the general store and basically the money would go straight to the general store to pay off everything that they borrowed from the general store

than that last year. And then like reload it back up. Oh, he told a good story in there. And it's like, I don't know if I should tell the story or not. But like they must have like whatever they made soap out of, which was slick. Yeah. One time they slicked up the railroad tracks in front of the post

office. So the train couldn't stop. They, he's like, they bought a whole bunch of like soap slicked up the railroad tracks and the train slid right past the post office. He's 93, so I'm guessing the statute of limitations is probably. Probably. Probably. We can leave that in there. It's like, but yeah, different times would have been pretty cool to see some of that stuff. Totally. Totally. So you got a new planner this, this year, this past year. How'd that go for you? What do you like? What do you dislike? So, um, yeah, Kinsey brought a planter down for me to, to run uh 3605 and uh well it was really supposed to be a lot like simpler than it was and when it showed up it kind of had like everything that i was looking for on a bean planner i was like this

is going to be an issue it's like i'm going to like this planner and this planner is going to stay here and it stayed um dad's planner that he had was a box planner and i mean it planted a pile of acres and stuff and just simply like trying to get some more stuff done and and It really just paid its way in there. Auto roast shut off. On soy beans, I was kind of cautious about if that pay, but like we bought the normal amount of seed that we buy the plant and we saved basically two boxes of beans. So like, we're like, well, there's a payback there. We probably went from planting on a big day to 100 acres to like I could get like 150 acres in.

And then the other one was is that we put the bulk fill on there and legitimately we cut out a guy because we would have a guy. because we would have a guy there filling like the boxes with us, you know, so that we could get going and you'd have to fill your boxes every 35-ish acres, you know. So that was just a step up in production for us on the bean planting side. And makes nice life a little nicer. And then the other thing was, too, is, again, loops back to diversification. We have a 24-row-Kinze planner for corn. We only have one tractor that can pull that.

And we've had that tractor shit to bed a couple of times where we can't pull our corn planter. And so now if that really does happen, I can flip that 12 row or that it's a 1223, but I can flip it over to 12 and plant corn. Keep going on something. So it did give us a little bit of a, I guess, cushion there. If the 24 row can't be going, the 12 row can be going. So just trying to get some more stuff done. And, yeah, like I said, it showed up. and when it showed up and I was like this fell in love yeah fell in love it was like love at first

seating yeah what do you pull that with uh the 8110 yeah so so even though it's a even though it's a uh interplant yep it pulls easy enough yes that you can pull it with that versus that 24 yeah um well the 8110 would not pull the right right row planner but it'll see much way more iron out there same number of row units but um the weight and the difference in between the two tractors but uh yeah it it walks all over with it it's fuel efficient and it's like needs uh needs three remotes or so and we've i mean it just fit that's that's kind of the way it was it's like it didn't extend us too much in one way or the other and it just fit and came in and made us more productive and made my dad actually get back into a planner and plant and it's like I'm like

hey, I'm okay with that. It's like because he wasn't out there having to fill boxes and do that. And dad's like, well, I'll go plant again because most of the time I would plant, you know, the majority of our acres. I'd go from corn, but with labor-wise, it's like it took, you know, everybody to stay in front of me and then getting sprayed up. And then I'd flip into the, you know, bean planter because we didn't want to plant 30-inch row beans.

Right. So then we'd stay there. But then dad's like, well, I can kind of start peddling around with this one, fill me up once in the morning. then I can fill up again sometime throughout the afternoon. And it really, it surprisingly made us a lot more efficient. That's what that was what it came down to. Yep. So, okay. So you, uh, you got the planner and you grew, you grew a crop.

So did you, because you built that bin, did you sell your crop or are you, uh, sitting there watching your network just drip, drip, drip like everybody else? Yes. the yes so um i don't know like uh i guess i think we talked about on the podcast of like bad times are going to come and i said the best time would be is when i have not bought any of my inputs and uh had all my grains sold yeah well luckily i didn't really buy a lot of my inputs before things started the work their way down so i got it 50% right but on the one that hurts a little more I have a lot of grain in the bins.

Yep. So, you know, just the way things shook out, it was trying to get harvest done, trying to get it done relatively quickly. I probably would have shipped off more grain in December, realistically. But with, we had a tremendously nice December, so I was pulling a lot of tile, doing every project that we could, pumpkin patch still rocking and rolling. So then the year rolled over. I went on some vacation, and by the time I got back,

back, it's like, ooh, this grain is going the wrong way quickly. I know. I think a lot of people felt like that. And it's funny because, you know, every, everybody that builds grain bins will tell you, oh, you know, there's no better investment than a grain bin because you're going to, you're going to make that carry. You're going to make that carry. This is one of those years where that didn't, that didn't quite work that way. Or it looks like it didn't. Now, it's not, it's, Not yet. Not yet anyways. And it will probably do really good when I ship off that last bushel.

It's like she'll just take on off and it's like, there we go. So luckily, luckily, you know, Farman's risky and I've found as many ways to try and diversify or like manage that risk. And I've paid for the education on trying to learn the commodity brokering type of stuff. Yep. And I don't really speculate in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. So luckily when that crop went into the bins, I put puts on it. So I protected my crop when it went into the bins. Yep.

And so I've been able to at least capture the downside. Now, that does not mean I made any money off of that. It's like, yeah, my puts are worth money. But the value loss in the grain is there. So something that I did to protect myself. So luckily it's not been as big of a bite. and if I was to, this is not trading advice. It's not,

do exactly. It's like, do exactly of what I'm opposite of what I'm going to tell you to do. What I'm scared of, and I'm dumping my grain right now, and we're in a record short position as far as I understand. Yes. I think we're kind of a little oversold,

you know, and we're looking at, I don't know what the local cash bid on grain is, but it's not great. and I'm guessing there's probably guys that have threes now in front of their corn. Luckily, Cargill's really pretty aggressive. So I'm still probably,

I think I'm still over for, and that just shows. Like I haven't even looked at what the price I'm getting for my corn is. I'm shipping it. Like I'm getting rid of it. We got 9% interest rates. Like, let's get that interest rate paid down,

you know, farm with cash type of thing. Get rid of your grain. It's not doing very good. Yeah, you can capture the carry if you want to leave it in your bins, but you're selling it, you know, today. So if you want to capture a few cents, if you need to. But what I'm scared of is that if we don't get a dead cap bounce

or if we don't get some type of market rally, which if that could happen, if we're in this record short, if we get any bullish news, maybe the funds change their position and decide to start, you know, maybe managing their risk. risk and exiting some of those shorts. But if that happens, I feel like the farmer's going to start selling this grain off. And if they do that, I think your basis is going to go horrible. Yep.

So I'm not bullish in that way. The other thing is, too, is say we stay flat. Those grain bins are full. Yep. So what's going to happen? Either your fall harvest price is going to be horrible because guys don't have the storage space because they're holding on to 2023 crop, or they're all going to start dumping their bins and the buyers are going to know that they aren't idiots it's like that's how they make

their money and your basis is going to be horrible so even if you think you could carry it to keep your money out there your interest rates eating that part and then if your basis you know yeah it goes from right now we're flat but say who doesn't say that you know in july you don't see like a negative 20 basis or something like that so it is i'm taking the burden the hand and running it's like I got the input prices right. It's like I didn't get rid of the grain on time, but at least we're, you know, I'm 50% correct. Yeah.

Right. Oh, yeah. Well, the funds all know, I mean, you look out there and you do the math, and they know relatively close how much corn's come to market. But more importantly, they know how much corn is out there that's going to have to be priced at some point. Yeah. And that's part of the reason that they're so short is because they're,

There's a pile of it. And we were just talking to somebody yesterday that there's, oh, no, I was talking to a guy last night. Our local commodity banquet is tonight. We were setting up for it. And his son-in-law works for trucks and works for a guy that's got a bunch of trucks on the road. And they're not hauling squat for corn, for grain. It's just not moving because guys.

And so to your point, it's going to move at some point. It's got to move at some point. I'm no better than you when it comes to marketing. The best marketing plan that I've had in the last five years was, was that two years ago or three years ago when I thought, I thought that we had transferred all the bin. I got a circuit flow. Yeah.

And so it has to transfer like four or five, six times in a season in the last. And then we sell. When we load, we always load out of our big bin. And I thought that I had transferred all the corn. out of the circuit flow. And one day I was just casually walking by in like late July. Yeah, I think it was like two years.

You know, slap the bin. I was like, damn, there's a lot of corn in there. And I went up the ladder. I'm like, damn.

And I opened that hatch. It was clear full. It didn't transfer. And I was like, oh, man, that's good. That's good deal.

Sorry, you should have been shipping out some corn. Yeah, the only problem was the circuit flow was full of corn that had drawn moisture. And we could get to cut a hole in the side of the bin. But, But marketing-wise, it was top-notch. I planned it.

It's a good problem. I planned it that way. Yeah. Marketing is, it's such an emotional deal. And I've tried really hard to take that emotion out of my marketing plan. But in Southern Iowa, insurance does not work for us. Because I don't know if we talked about this on the last podcast. We did.

You just don't have that. You don't have that yield. No, we don't have that yield guarantee. It's like we're insured a little over 100 and some odd bushels of corn to the acre. You know, so we can't use that to forward contract our grain like guys up around here is. I don't know what your guys is, you know, insurance levels are on your corn. But it just doesn't work down there. I've tried to drop my crop insurance, but, you know, to have a line of credit.

They're like, you have to have crop insurance. and I'm like, okay, well, can I just have wind and hail? And they're like, no. It's like, okay. They kind of got you by the. Yeah, they got me a little bit. And it's fine. And it's like, and I completely 100% under, like, if, if the bank's giving you money to grow a crop, it's like, they should be able to stipulate like, hey, you need to insure that crop.

Just like if you get a car loan, you know, you got to get, you got to get insurance on your car to have a car loan. So I don't argue with that in any way, shape, or form. But it's, it makes my marketing plan. harder, but that's why I guess I've found the avenue of actually using like the calls and the puts, mainly more puts to at least protect the grain. So if like my marketing plan right now is if I get to a point where it's like I'd love to make that cash sale or that HTA for December or something along those lines, but I don't want to take that risk of maybe not growing that crop because I don't know how many like three of the last

four years, it's like June, July, we're not getting any rain. And like, we've been able to grow somewhat of a crop these last couple of years. But I mean, there's been like, man, I don't know what's actually going to be out there. And it's a real fear. And then we catch that little bit of rain and it manages to push us some grain out. That really scares you on selling stuff. Yep. So the worst case scenario is that if you buy a put that you're out, your, you know, initial, you know, cost of buying the put and then you at least did something so that's that's where i've kind of moved my way into yeah i feel like we've i mean we've done the cash flows on this year and we've talked around talked to other farmers in the area it's kind of a batting down the hatches kind of year for farmers

i feel like i don't i don't think it's going to be a batting down the hatches type of year i think it's going to be the next five years to the bat and down the hatches yeah you know it's like We go in cycles here, and I'd like to say maybe in four years we might have good times again. But my guess four to six years is that we'll probably be in very tight margins for the next four to six years. I think the president of the United States change is going to make any help us out at all? No, I have no clue. Like probably not. Yeah.

know like I would like to maybe even think that like right now I'd love to see five dollar gas like that'd be the best thing and like I'm sorry every the rest of the world I'd love to see five dollar gas because a third of our crop goes to ethanol you know and higher gas prices higher energy prices just helps out corn tremendously yeah I mean if if you're looking at it and man I I'm not, I'm not like a studier of the markets in any way, shape, or form. But if like you're looking at stuff on the wall, the cattle herd is the smallest it's ever been. Yep. You know, the pigs, they're producing.

Shrunk. But it's going down. But as soon as the pig market starts to pick back up, you guys are really good at overproducing, just like the corn growers are. Yep. So maybe what we're feeding or feed use isn't there. China's not buying. you know, there's too many things that are saying this isn't the way it should be going. Argentina's and, you know, South America's becoming a heck of a good farmers apparently.

From what I understand, if they ever figure out how to actually ship off their grain, we're in trouble. They ever build the roads. Yeah, if they ever build the roads, we're in trouble. So it's like what I'd love to see, and it's like, I'd love to see the renewable biodiesel. It's actually just renewable diesel actually come online. And I'd love to see like some way of getting ethanol be burned way more often. Yeah. You know, ethanol, we can regrow it every year and we're really darn good at it.

I don't know why we're not burning more than we are. And then on the flip side of it too is this, from what I understood is that if we put every single soybean into renewable bio-diesel, it's like less than a third of what like we burn in diesel fuel in the United States. so like why are we not doing that other than the possibility is like if they do that that's going to eat up 100% of the soybeans and the soybean prices is going to skyrocket and then they'll probably like price themselves out of being able to you know actually be affordable diesel fuel so I really don't see the way out of it right now other than maybe everybody just takes a vacation for a year I go back to this and I don't know nobody nobody seems to have the answer and I sure as hell don't have the answer, but, you know, I was actually pretty bullish about where the markets were going to end up at the beginning of the Russian Ukraine war.

Because I looked at that, and I'm like, you've got two of the heaviest hitters in the whole wheat market, tied up in that mess. Ukraine's not going to have shit for a crop. and I don't know. Nobody seems to have an answer on how much wheat they've actually, how much produce they've actually been able to export. But the Russians, we got all their stuff tied up,

and supposedly it's really difficult for them to move stuff, but they're moving it. But all of this, all this demand for wheat, and wheat is one of the bright spots as far as commodity prices here. It's not as high as it was, but it's still fairly high. But it's like, okay. you're going to buy that, the people that are buying that wheat, they're going to buy it from somewhere. So if the price of wheat is where it's at and corn and beans look like they are,

a lot of this fringe acreage that used to be traditionally wheat, that should all be going back. But it doesn't seem to. It hasn't yet. I mean, I guess, and we probably won't know, but I've just been surprised, like even this year, I really thought that, our grain exports would pick up to the rest of the world, but they haven't, and I don't know. And I think part of that's just because world demand has just been down. The Chinese aren't buying like they have been,

and they got their own problems, and I don't know about everybody else. The whole damn thing's a mess. It's just a mess. It is very, it's something that people do not think about, is that you're from small town, Iowa, but you're participating in 100% of global market. it's it's what people really don't think about is like how how does that affect me i'm i'm here you know

it's like we're and it's the same attitude when people start to have a drought and i suffer from that because down in nappanus wang county we're drought drought our drought prone soils yeah you know we see the drought stress and it can fall on its face so like when we see the drought like we did last year and you're like we're so dry nobody's getting rain how the heck are these markets still going down you know It's like we're just right here. And that's what we don't think about, is that we're just right here when we're the small, little part of the big picture.

And it's really hard to, like, wrap your mind around that. What's happening on your farm doesn't matter. It does not matter comparatively to the rest of the world. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. We appreciate every single one of you guys. Let's keep this ball rolling. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Follow us on YouTube.

pay the fee, share it out with who you know. It all helps, guys. We appreciate every single one of you. We love you. Now, let's get back to the podcast. So you went down to, you went to Louisville, right? For the machinery show. What are some of your hot takes on equipment if you have any?

What do you like? What do you don't like? Is there a piece of equipment you got your eye on that you'd love to have? I don't know. Anything equipment? People love talking equipment. So, yeah, and I'm probably the person not to talk. big equipment with, I would say, because I don't know. I'm not the big tractor dude. I'm not

the, I need this. It just doesn't attract me the big shiny stuff because I've started farming. That's not. I thought, I thought you had the deal you were going to do the, I thought you were doing the comparison demo between the X-9 and the case. I thought they were coming to your place. AS 11. My comparison demo would be, can one of those actually even fit in my field? So what they bring that to me for is like, hey, if you have small fields, our really big combine does actually fit. And I'm like that, that's the only comparison. Can you make it in this field? Yeah, can you actually make it in the field?

Good. Now you got the combine. Get the 50 foot head in. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, and if you mess up, you ditch it. And it's like, that's probably probably a pretty expensive ditch. Okay, I'm sorry. I thought that you had that all lined up. You know, okay, I like looking at the shiny stuff. I mean, it's interesting to look at, but I'm not like drawn into it majorly. Definitely the AF 11 and then the CR 11, which is the case in New Holland.

Those got revealed. I think those were probably just put out there to try and curb the X-9 sales, you know, maybe for people that are looking at stuff. definitely I would say that the attitude towards purchasing stuff has gone from buy everything you can try and buy to like no don't buy anything the show was at least full again and you know people were showing up again um price wise I never priced really anything I just really never do but I like to walk around see the stuff that I might own in 40 years um yeah yeah Just look at that stuff. There's things that I can see that I might be interested in every now and then. But it's really kind of just a reunion, I guess you could say, to go down there and hang out. Probably the coolest thing that I saw would be...

It'd have to be probably those two new combines coming out. Like actually, like, looking at them wise. I'd say that those were probably the show shopper show stopper for Louisville in 2024. What do you think the used equipment market? How well do you think that's going to hold up? Because there is a, I was talking to, I was talking to KDK is our local auction company. And they have a, they've got a 4960 sitting there. He's having a sale, I think the 13th of March.

4960 has 5,000 like 5,800 original hours on it he's pretty excited about it and I'm like you should be because I'll bet you that brings well if that sale was six months ago but I'm really curious to see like what that brings because how much has this sediment started to like even affect the used market

so I'll answer that by asking a question what do you think's going to happen with the farmers that are at retirement age in the next three years. It's going to make that decision. Like, why fight it? Yeah. It's going to speed it up. I think that a lot of the guys that weren't quite there for retirement last time,

they ate into their equity over the, you know, say 2014 through 2020, they ate into their equity and they probably maybe got to a spot where it was like, man, maybe I can't retire. now they've been able to maybe flip that script and they might say, I really don't want to do this again. Maybe it's time to, you know, walk away from it. So I think used equipment will hold strong because if there's guys that need stuff, that's going to be what they can afford. But on the flip side of that too is that I feel like there's going to be a lot more like retirement auctions and actual retirement auctions, not like retirement auction. And it's like, man, that's a lot of new stuff for retirement auction. You know, it's like that guy, yeah, no, I must be in the contract. Hey, we'll sell

your stuff at the bankruptcy sale, but we'll call it a retirement auction, you know, that type of thing. But I feel like there's going to be a lot more actual retirement auctions coming up. And I think it will probably stay stronger on the stuff that's affordable. And I think the stuff that's not necessarily so affordable will be a lot softer. Hit a lot harder. Yeah. Yeah, you bring up an interesting point because that is exactly the same thing as what the hog business is going through because you look at the guys out there that have either,

you know, they either owned their own sows or they started out owning a sally unit. I mean, I know quite a few guys that started out when that whole sally unit thing got going, and they own shares with like eight other people. Yep. And then the next thing you know, they had six people, and each one of those guys built another 12 or two more 12s. And then there was four people.

And then it got to where you were the single guy left in the sow unit and you bought everybody else out or there's two guys. And you've been through this mess. And I'm 50, I'm 50. I think you're 54. 53. 53. Yeah.

So yeah, it's already starting to go. Oh, it's been. Not that long ago. I had somebody call me and asked me how old I was and I said like 26. And then I hung up the phone and I go, oh boy, that is not good. It's like, I better call them back and say, hey, I lied to you on accident. But we're off by a few years. Yeah, I should be for me.

It's easy for me. It's easy for me because whatever the year is, that's my age. So 20, I was born 2000. So 24, turned 20. 24 this month actually. Yeah. So hopefully I can remember that in my elderly years. Yeah, somebody's got to.

Somebody's got to keep it straight. But those guys are looking at the exact same thing. Like they have burned through so much equity. Yep. And they're looking at this thing now coming back and they're like, why? Am I going to stay in this until I'm 70? Probably not.

And I think you're going to see more and more and more on the hog side. And you've already seen it, the cattle. I mean, there's a lot of guys that are just giving up on that deal. And that's part of the reason why your cow herd has shrunk so much. So, like, there's probably an outlier there that, like, you got to look at. I don't know what the national average age for a farmer is, but I think 63 is kind of what I'm, like, off the top of my head, it's around 63. So they're two years away from what they probably should retire.

at and it's like that's the majority of the people that are farmers so if you want to look at the like used equipment market that's there possibly could bring it down and then obviously people need to cash for it but then you got the younger guys like me if you still want to you know category me with the younger guys because I'm 32 now you know and I did start farming at what the be 22 so basically that's when I started farming so I don't know if you can still categorize me as the young, young guy, but there's also what's going to happen with the ground in the next, you know, five or 10 years. There's going to be opportunities. And, you know, I'd like to think that it's like, I think the government's going to want to go

after ground in the form of CRP pretty hard. But I think it's going to come down to, like, who's going to save the family farms and stuff? And it's going to be the landowners. And it's going to be the landowners that need to make that conscious decision about who they're actually renting their ground to or selling it to or selling it to like don't sell it to black rock yeah you know so it's like are you are you trying to support you know uh like keep family farms alive and by you do that I wish that I've always wanted to do a video about how the money that comes in through a farm really affects the small communities. You talk about this all time.

So it's like I am not a fan of CRP in any way, shape, or form. I shouldn't say that. Like I think what the CRP program does is good, but how it's ran, I am not a fan of in any way, shape, or form. Because if you look at that, it's the government paying a landlord to grow supposedly grass, but it usually turns into cedar trees and nasty weeds and stuff like that. but it's supposed to be a set aside to actually help support the crop prices.

That's what it's supposed to do. But that does not help out the small communities because a lot of the people that own the CRP ground are basically investors from not in the community. They're absentee landlords. So that means that the government's paying somebody in a different state, you know, that money. So then their money gets put into that area. But if you rent that ground to a farmer, you know, that farmer puts all those inputs into that ground and just think about the money that gets actually shoved into the actual community by farming that piece of ground. Yep.

And the jobs that that supports. Like, I wanted to do a video like that, but I can't even wrap my head around it because it just expands exponentially so quickly. Versus like the CRP is it goes straight to the government, to the landlord, to the landlord. and yeah, maybe the guy that they hire to come mow it or burn it off makes a little bit of money. But that doesn't happen. And where, again, coming back to that is, is that the landlords that need to be conscious about who maybe they're renting their ground to is the fact that maybe corporation farms are going to really try and kick up in the next few years. And if they do that, then that money is getting shipped off again. so there's a lot of things it could be a very interesting next 10 years nag yeah it could be a very

interesting next 10 years i think we say that about every 10 years yeah every 10 years it's a very interesting 10 years it's a very interesting 10 years it's scary to think about i mean you people talk about china buying united states farm ground black corporations like black rock and vanguard and because everybody wants ground it's great store of value My worry too is development. How much ground are we just going to keep selling off and turn into development? I mean, or turn into city or turn into urban areas. I mean, you look at just north of us.

Like my girlfriend, she was, or my fiance now, I got to get used to saying that. Ex-girlfriend. Yeah. She lived, she grew up in North Liberty right north of Iowa City. And when she started there, it was all farm ground, all farm ground. Highways, a couple highways. It's no, barely any farm ground left now. It just keeps moving south.

And it's just like, how much are we just going to keep? Like, there's got to be a point where we're like, all right, we got to have, we got to keep some agriculture around here, you know. Well, maybe not yet. Look what we've been able to do. We're like our ending stocks are massive. So we haven't reached that point. Yeah.

You know, we haven't reached that point yet. I personally, I don't think like the sprawl of the urban area is our, our big Oh, yeah, I don't. I think, though, for like me, I don't know, do you think in like 50 years that's going to be a problem? Like, how much developments came your way since you've been alive? Our way since you've been alive. There's like 20, what is there, 29 houses that have come? I mean, you know, we got a housing development right south of us that I used to crop rent that.

Yeah, yeah. That, though, houses probably is the best use for that ground because it wasn't worth of shit before. Yeah, I just think about, for. me like long long term like yeah the foreign in foreign countries large corporations urban sprawl all something to be mindful of for sure and again that loops back to where we just started is like you got to have the diversification yep to be able to like weather those storms yep because what president said that you know farm and like the worst business in the world yeah it's like the only person that buys everything at retail so prices and sells everything and wholesale prices

farming at its core is a great life if you can manage it. It's rewarding, you know. There's really not a lot of things like that they can do it. Horrible business. Horrible business. It's like risk, unbelievable risk, low profit margins a lot of the times. Capital intensive. Yeah. Mother nature.

Mother nature, you know, can just ruin your day really quickly. But you got to love it to do it. Yeah. But it's, you know, you got to get a, you got to get a, some diversification out there because if you're a corn and soybean grower and that's all you do or even if you're just hog producers it's scale you can't you can't put all your eggs on one basket at all because it's like that table's getting wobbly yeah yeah yeah and you talk it is it's a risky business and then on top of it you know it's it's hard enough and then you got to like fight

addictions. And I, I, this isn't a, did you lock the door? This isn't like an intervention. I don't think, because I don't know enough, but do you have a, do you have a problem when it comes to like earth moving equipment? Yeah, I do. Like, it seems to, yeah, it seems to be like you, I see all this, I see all this old, like, do you just have, do you have a, a little twinge that you want to be in a, an, an antique dirt mover? I don't know. Like, I would, like, if I was not farming, I'd probably be moving dirt.

I mean, taking a farm that's been, you know, neglected over the years. Yep. And fixing it up and making it look pretty, just like itches that tickle. You know, it just really does. It's like solving a problem. I mean, I really do enjoy that. Some people would say that's creating a problem. but yeah so what do you so do you have your own do you have your own uh dozer and so i have a

i have like a 1950s d6 dozer um that i got from a landlord uh that there's videos on like getting started and stuff and i really didn't think that i could ever actually push dirt with it and i did um i tried to buy an actual dozer a little bit this fall uh but didn't get it done Yeah. So I don't have a dozer. My dad has a dozer. Bought an excavator because my dad's what I was using was getting worn out. So I've, yeah, I can about do it all.

Just need a really, I need a little dozer, then I need a medium dozer, and then I need a really big dozer. Right. So those are the next three steps, I think. It's kind of fun. And that is kind of addictive. Oh, yeah. Because I know a fair number of people that had a neighbor that did a lot of dirt work for them.

And then surprisingly, it seems like building a hog building is kind of like the trigger for that because they would build one building and then so-and-so is doing all the dirt work. And then the next thing you know, they build another hog building. And then they're there with the neighbor and they're like, well, I'm going to backfill it myself. because I got this dozer that was like his used dozer. And then it doesn't take very long. And then they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm just going to do this myself. I bought this ho at a Richie Brothers auction and, you know, replaced every hydraulic line. And the next thing you know, they're like, they're hooked.

So, so, yeah, you can say that that's the addiction part. And I like doing it. And again, you got to like doing stuff. But again, to lower the risk of like that ground is putting the problem. is putting the proper drainage under it, you know, removing the trees that shouldn't be there. I'm not a kill every tree type of dude by any way, shape, or form. But like getting things cleaned up where that ground can produce a crop that it should produce every single year, that lowers the risk of farming.

So the way I looked at moving into drainage and fixing up farms and doing those things was just another risk management deal of fix this up. I can farm it and I feel better about putting that investment into that crop. Yeah. Because, again, we don't have the crop insurance to back it up. So it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean I don't pattern tile out the whole thing and put terraces where every terrorist needs to be. And there ain't no tree that, you know, is going to rob the nutrients of it. And a man, I've somehow got rid of all the deer.

Yeah. Which I haven't been able to do. And then Mother Nature doesn't show up with a big old hail storm and absolutely wipe me out. But you can only do so much and control the things you can. control and don't worry about the things you can't and pick some wet spots and, you know, stopping the goalie washers, which is a thing that people like really view is like runoff as horrible for, you know, farming. It's like control all that stuff.

It's like it's kind of like it's almost your responsibility as the manager of that land because you don't own it. You're just renting it from the next generation. Yeah. So like leave it in a better shape than you took on to it, you know, and having the ability to do that. It's really what you should do. It is what you should do. Yeah. You're a big tile guy. Are you still tuned tile for people? Uh, yeah, I would rather do it for myself. Yeah. So I will do it for other people, but I, you know, I would rather do it for myself. And this year I didn't get nearly as much in as I

normally would try to get in with the pumpkin patch. I was really kind of worried about how we're going to get harvest and everything else done because I, uh, I don't know. I, I was only harvesting Monday through Thursday and I was at the pumpkin patch Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So like we basically three out of the seven days, I was, I wasn't there at the farm. So it was, I was a little worried about how much we were going to be able to get done. But we, we still were able to knock it out. So, and then I think I pulled Tile again for the third year in a row on Christmas Eve. So it's like, I've got a hard deadline that I'm supposed to be done pulling Tile by new.

on Christmas Eve. So, she's shaking her head, yes. Yeah, so, and that's happened the last three years, which it really

realistically shouldn't happen. No, it shouldn't, but that's, that's the crazy world we live in right now, it seems like. Yes.

And you can't, yeah, you can't go off the calendar because you just never know. No, it's, yeah, it's just,

I think we're setting up for probably, probably a pretty lean 2023, or 2024. for and hopefully some things change we'll see what happens after the election i guess um i can't say once i getting in or the other would help us out in any way shape or form um i don't know if it'd even hurt us one way or the other realistically yeah so i i just want to

see people you know maybe start burning more ethanol it's like that's that's what i'd like to see So what's your, what is your, what's your focus for this year? What's the one thing that is top priority? What excites you the most about what you got going? Looking forward to another year at the pumpkin patch. So like that's pretty high up there. Improve on the things that we've gotten feedback for. On top of that, just really kind of button down the hatches and get set up for,

if bad things do happen because, you know, if bad things do happen and you're prepared for it, you've got a chance. If bad things, if you prepare for bad things and they don't happen, you're going to be doing fine. You might not be doing as good as the person that continue to risk things. Focus on the things that I'm doing good at and manage my time as as efficiently as I can. It feels like I'm trying to use 25 hours out of the day. So, try and try and focus on the things that are giving me the return and uh and just keep farming in 2025 i guess that's that's that's realistically that's that's that's that's my goal for 24 is to be able to farm in 2025 that is a good goal any any interest in raising livestock ever

uh we talked about a little bit before yeah i would i would be again we talk about time wise someday I'd like to be able to start walking some of the products that I raise off the farm which means feed them feed them the corn, feed them the hay that I produce. How I do that yet I have not completely figured it out. I don't think I can get into mama cows. Not really looking at the hog barns

because of reasons that we've talked about previously besides the time requirement for the hog barns. You know, there's all. always the option that you look at like goats or sheep or something on those lines too. But for right now, it's, uh, we'll see what happens. That might be the next diversification is actually getting into some livestock. Farmer grades got your back. Yeah. So, but we're right now we're just kind of sitting on our hands. Let's see what happens with this cattle market. I would say it's

probably not time to be trying to buy into the cattle market. So, everything ebbs and flows we'll we'll see what happens here after a little while see if uh i can find a way to you know venture out into whatever the next aspects is but maybe uh maybe instead of hogs or uh cattle or something along those lines i might be looking at like apple trees yep you know i looked at christmas trees a little bit it's like i'm going to stay away from christmas trees but you know maybe apple trees you know that type of stuff yeah So side note, hog manure grows massive pumpkins, massive pumpkins. We'll just start shipping some down. I need three acres worth. I need three acres worth.

So yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking at, you know, stay with the recipe that's working. Yep. And stay within your means, you know, look at, look at where your expenses are at, where you can, you know, maybe cut. some of those things and the big ones probably like what people don't want to cut is like your family living you know like something that you know I've been blessed with I guess was like my cost of living as I try and keep that as low as humanly possible yeah like um for say is that we love the TikTok everybody thought I had the golden spoon and the last one in your comments sections or whatever I guess they never actually listened to the whole podcast oh that happens a lot Trust me. You know, for me, like a big saving grace is that low cost of living. So like we, my dad bought a farm and it had was jillopated and stuff. So I invested money into like renovating it. So it's like my house payments not there. Yeah. So like try and focus on those things. It's like don't be going and buying yourself a new pickup truck. Don't be, you know, doing all that stuff. It's just try and be. Be. Be. Be. Be.

ready for those opportunities. And that might mean that you drive the beat up pickup truck for another. Keep your powder dry. Yep. Yep. Yep. Is that a good way of saying that? That's a great way to say that.

Yeah. I wish I could say, hey, I've got a lot of exciting, you know, fancy things that I'm going to do. It's like, might be a hard year of YouTube and where it's like, yeah, I didn't do anything this year. Yeah. Well, come along, kids. Go along. This year, this year the goal is to pay down debt. Yeah.

You know, that is the goal this year is to pay down debt. Yeah. We're going to load everybody up and we're going to cruise the byways of Apennuos County and see how many cans we can get. Yeah. Come along. That ain't a bad idea. Yeah.

It's like, so. Reality, though, that's the reality of how things are. So, no, I think it's crazy. You're doing YouTube. Guys are doing the pumpkin patch. You're farming. You're doing hay. You're tyling.

Yep. How do you keep it all straight and what keeps you to, What drives you to just keep going? So, payments. Payments is what drives you to keep going. But, yeah, so I would, luckily, everything that you just talked about is that I can intertwine it all. So I haven't gotten so far outside of a box to where what I'm doing doesn't work with each other, which is if I looked at like that in terms of diversification is not great,

but in terms of being able to manage all those irons in the fire, they all kind of weave in and out. So if you talk about the YouTube channel, obviously I can do that while I'm at work. And then it does make money, you know, when I started, didn't really know that it would make money. But that's a blessing, you know, because I can work on it whenever I want to work on it.

At night, like, might edit a video and the car ride home, you know, those type of things. So, like, that is, that's time management. It does slow things down. Farming, obviously, that is pretty much priority number one. It is priority number one. Because the farm is what feeds everything else. So that's what you have to put first. And it is your security.

So those two, they tie in well together. The pumpkin patch, the pumpkin patch was bring on some extra labor. And then on the flip side of it, it's only open for six weekends, six, seven weekends we're doing now. We're going to do eight weekends this year. So we're going to open on September 1st this year because we're going to grow some zinias, some flowers, and we might plant apple trees, but they won't be ready for five years. So we're going to open that up a little bit. We're going to revamp how I was there on Fridays. Most likely I won't be there on Fridays unless we're doing field trips.

Really fun. I mean, to be able to talk to young kids about egg and like we didn't talk about this, but one of the really fun things about being out there in the pumpkin patch, I was out there literally the one cutting the pumpkins for the kids. And when they walk down this path, the first pumpkin they see that is the one that they want. you know it's like okay my goal is like I'm gonna bring you out there and like actually like look at it so then you ask them I'm like so what do you want looking for in a pumpkin and they say big it's like okay yeah they're all going to say basically big and then you just start asking them like do you like the round ones or do you like the oval shaped ones well do you like ones with the deeper ribs or the smoother looking ones do you want ones to have bumps on it and then they at some point in time they go I don't know and I said well why don't I go show you one of these and then they wander out there And then they just, it's like once they stepped off that path into the unknown,

they, they conquer a little fear and then they're after it. So going back to that. So the pumpkin patch, I'll probably only be there on Saturdays and Sundays this year unless we have field trips. So we're going to time manage that. And then again, Molly does run the pumpkin patch. So that's kind of her gig. so it's not as time demanding on me other than planting the pumpkins and taking care of them,

but that's not horrible by any means. And then if you talk about Thailand, Thailand's, you know, right there at the end of the year, I try and get as much of that done as possible because of all the benefits of it. But that is the icing on the cake, if that makes sense. So that's how I'm able to juggle all those things. Did you have hay in there too? Yeah, well, hay's, hay's in there. That's the summertime, you know.

Some, that works because usually we're spraying and haying at the same time. You can manage those two things. And then, you know, you haul the hay in the winter when that, so when you're not doing any other farming, it's like the wintertime seems to go by faster and faster every year. You're at conferences here, conferences there, farm show here, farm show there, get chipped off to this meeting there. So it seems to eat away faster and faster. And then, you know, this year trying to sell all that corn before it goes to $2.

That's like a get up at 5 o'clock in the morning to try and haul, you know, haul grain. It is the little things that you can do to make yourself more efficient. Like I'm still trying to work full days right now because the weather's good outside. But I'll wake up, haul two loads of corn, which it's a two and a half hour round trip for us to do that. So I'll work five hours before, usually before 10 o'clock or so, but then I can still kick in a full day. Maybe I don't take two loads and I just get one load out and then I'm back and ready to go to work at eight o'clock. So, you know, just trying to find ways to sneak in those little projects to get things done. Well, it's not easy. It is not easy, but it's not easy.

sometimes things do suffer for it, but we can still get it done. Worth it for the long run. Well, if idle hands are the devil's play thing, he has no, he can't even, he can't even catch you. He's the holiest man around then. Pure as the wind-driven snow. Yeah. What about kids? If I can find my day to be lazy on the couch, I try and do that, but I can go for, yeah, it's like, like, they go, what do you want to do for vacation?

like nothing nothing like nothing like i don't even want my cell phone on me like absolutely nothing like if i woke up today and it's like i found a you know a show that i wanted to watch or football on tv or something like that and i could spend a whole day just doing that it's like that is my little vacation gosh you two could call each other i know i mean that's truth it is though and you're just it's the truth it's i we don't go and do much either and that's the reason you're just so done you're working all those hours and doing all that stuff you just get to the point where you're like man just chilling not having to worry about anything that's that's a good piece of mind and like and you need that too yeah something that like really surprised me that I was worried about was okay

harvest this year and having the pumpkin patch right now granted I said I was there for three days and probably going to be two this year um it was like like I was more productive those four days that I was back by taking two or three days off. Now, I was still working, but like taking the mental break from harvest a little bit, almost like I was energized and ready to go back on Monday to hit it hard. So I feel like I was more productive in the four days that I was farming by actually taking a weekend. Yeah.

Then being like, we're going to grind for every day until we're done. We underestimate the importance of rest. Yep. You really do. You're just being able to step away and like do that stuff. Yeah. That was a pleasant surprise. Like, yeah.

Moods are better. Everybody's in, you know, everything's going smooth. You know, two cranky dudes sitting next to each other that haven't slept that much. and, you know, two weeks. It's like, that's a recipe for just success. So it's like, realistically, it's like, oh, believe it or not, if you're having issues, take a weekend. Yeah.

Take a weekend. Even then it ain't raining and just take a weekend and you'll just be like, oh, life's. Life's good. Life's good. Yeah. You can keep going. What about kids? You got a lot going, but I know next generation's important to you.

Yeah. That's, we're, that's something that we'd like to bring in. So it's like, now that would be the next thing that on top of it. And it's, I've always been kind of worried about, you know, the time for kids. And people say like, oh, someday you'll know when you're ready for kids and like doing that and stuff. What do you got to say about that? No, you don't. That's somebody that is just telling you what you want to hear.

Yeah. You're never, you're never ready. well actually i would argue i argue differently than that definitely like being able to like at the pumpkin patch like i'm ready i'm ready for kids well that's what i was you know what you talking about it's it's like it did it finally clicked like i know a lot of people to say is that it's like you's like you just got to put your head down and you know figure your way through it and something did click and it was like yeah i like this maybe kind to you know bring on the the monsters.

Yeah, there you go. But then every now and then we get to go hang out with my nieces and nephews and it's like, oh boy. Wow, it's nice. We get to go home now. But, you know, it's like the sea, the sea that, you know, the rest of our family has started families to be able to see like the reward that the love that the kids have for their parents and just how that's changed their life. it clicked. Like they might have been saying that as a saying,

but, you know, it's like, yeah, I guess I'm ready. I'm not as worried about it as I was in the past. Or then I will, the one thing that I'm worried about is being able to make sure that I do everything that I can to, like, make sure that I'm there for all the important things. Yeah, I think, yep.

So, like, that is, that's what I'm going to really, really want to do as a parent. And maybe it was one of the things that I was worried about in the younger years is like, I need to be able to be here and focus on this. But maybe if we're at a point where it's like, okay, I can take the evening off the night to go see a basketball game and like do that stuff and be able to prioritize those things. And yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's the one thing that worries me about kids is just the world we live in.

today it's crazy it gets crazier and crazier and so showing up for your kids and being there and how to protect them from the craziness it's kind of the two big things i think about yeah and so one thing i also learned is that uh so we did a santa claus at the patch or whatever and uh how un in touch i am with the current lingo of the younger generation yeah it ain't gonna get any better yeah because I was like Santa or whatever and it's like I had no clue what any of the toys were that there I wasn't Santa that was a real Santa okay yeah I had no clue what the like the toys were of the day and stuff like that and it's like ooh buddy so and then I also learned that people are way too comfortable giving like fresh babies to a Santa Claus and like I've always been like really like like people like

oh, do you want to hold the baby? And it's like, no. Like, like, like, no, I don't. Like, no. It's like, because I'm like, I'll be so nervous the entire time. The kid's going to cry. And I'm like, no satisfaction out of holding the baby's going to happen. I'm like, I'm perfectly good, like, hanging out with them and seeing them.

I'm the same way. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, here comes, you know, this fresh. And I'm just holding a fresh baby. And it's like, it's on my, you know, real beard. I can't look up because then I'm going to have like, you know, the whole beard halfway pulled down the face. So, but yeah, it was, it was a great experience.

All right, well, I think I got everything off my chest. Did you get everything off yours? I did. I feel, I feel like that was a good, that was a good conversation. I do too. I think we shot the shit pretty good. How do you feel? How do you feel?

I feel good. Good, good. Got all your words out. Most of them. Yeah, good. Yeah, I stumble over a whole bunch of them. They land on the floor. Well, if we don't stop now, we'll start talking about feelings.

so I don't want any of that. So we better end. Well, we're going to wrap it up. So, guys, if you've got any value from the show, go follow Ben, go follow the pumpkin patch, support them, guys. I think what they're doing is awesome. Obviously, you guys heard it.

Pretty sweet. Go follow them, share the show, leave a review. Go to farmergrade.com if you want some meat, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode.