Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-07-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Open phones on all sorts of topics, what about the challenges of farming...at a crisis point? Former State Sen. Herman Baertschiger weighs in on this.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. It's 14 minutes after seven. Let's talk with Dennis. Dennis, you're on the road here. You've got a pebble in your shoe for Tuesday. What's going on?

No, I've got a boulder in my boot, Bill. My problem is we have the city leaders always complaining about climate change and lack of power. but I drive by the poop plant on Turpong Road daily, and I see their flames where they're burning off methane gas. Why don't they produce power out of that methane gas every day? All day, every day. You know, that's a really interesting question. You would think that there be some, at least some ability to do some co-generation of some sort

with that methane gas? Sure, yeah. Well, you think the river's right there, so it wouldn't be hard to get water to put in a steam generator. Uh-huh. Yeah. How big are those flare-offs? How much methane gas is actually coming from all of our, shall we say, effluent? I don't know. Let's say I'm 100 yards away from the flame, and it looks to be 8 or 10 feet tall. Oh, there's some real energy there, isn't there?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's the same thing at the old Jacksonville landfill. They burn off the methane gas there every day. And methane actually is a pretty potent greenhouse gas, so it seems if you're really concerned about that, you would be capturing the methane, burning that off, getting some use out of it, and then, yeah, you'd have a little more CO2 in the air, but so what? It's plant food. Well, they're burning it anyway, so why not use it?

Good point. You know, I don't know why. There may be a perfectly good reason for it, or maybe they've just never thought about it, Maybe it's a permitting aspect of it. But we'll throw the question out there. Dennis, thanks for making it. Okay? 7705-633 on Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday.

Your Drilling customer shares her experience. Who are you? I thought that was interesting, Dennis, bringing up that deal about they burn off natural gas. They just burn it off from the landfills and the sewage treatment plan. Shouldn't they be doing something productive with it? I would agree. Of course, I don't know. Maybe they've done studies.

And the amount of energy created, I thought about this after Dennis hung up, but I think that the, maybe the amount of energy that is created is less than the cost of the equipment to burn it, at least burn it in the way that a, you know, the state of Oregon would permit it because, you know, everything would have to be filtered and DEQ compliant. And I don't know, I'm just kind of spitballing. If there's anybody in the industry that could help me out on this, who maybe knows why they don't burn and get and generate some power from that maybe just let me know maybe it's not a continual or a continual enough supply or a steady enough supply i can't answer that but dennis

i think that was a great question to ask i didn't realize they were flaring it out i don't usually hang out at the sewage treatment plant at nighttime and see see the flaring uh going on but anyway we can talk about it if you want 7705 633 they're going to be asking for your permission in the city of Medford next month to be able to raise the hotel motel tax, the transient lodging tax, TLT. You'll hear that term tossed about a bunch in order for seed funding, seed funding for the creek side development. Now, I know that technically the two are kind of broken up, maybe legally perhaps, but this has been tied essentially to bringing the Eugene Emeralds here in putting up a ball stadium.

Now, I would not mind seeing the ball stadium come in or the team come in. I'm kind of like Fred Herman on this. I like baseball a lot. I'll be the first to admit it. And so that's my only dog in the fight. I actually like baseball. I find it a very social sports, one of the few sports that you don't have to be necessarily ADD. You sit there and you talk with your family and friends and you enjoy life a little bit.

I get that. But Fred Herman, who has forgotten more about running ball teams than I'll ever know on my show last week, said that this is the dumbest idea that he has ever heard, you know, to put the ball stadium in that Hawthorne Park area. Now, I was surprised when I reached out to him before to talk to him because I thought that he would be absolutely in favor of it, but he says that it's all wrong, traffic and everything else. And yet, this is one of the big kingpins or one of the crowning jewels that would be about having this half billion dollar development. So a question for you, are you leaning towards letting the city council have that permission to raise the TLT, the transient lodging tax, in order to put some seed funding into this part of the public-private partnership or not? I'm telling you, the big press is going to be on from the good old boy network. They want that, and they want it really, really hard. Fred has said that Eugene Emeralds could be going down by Harry and David Field

or, you know, the old U.S. cellular, what's Lithia Fields now, I think is what it is. I forget. But you could do it for about one-half to one-third the cost of what they're proposing for a $90-million stadium downtown. It does seem to me like it would be a traffic nightmare, but I could be wrong. What do I know? I'm a talk show host, but I'm happy to take your call. 7705-633.

Are you leaning to that, leaning against it, something else on your mind? Have at it. Hi, this is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, my name's David. Hi, David. I used to work for rogue disposal.

Yeah. And at the Jacksonville dump, they do have a single, turbine, which does make electricity. So they do. They do over at the Jacksonville dump. Okay. Yep, and there's two big ones up at the landfill at Dry Creek. That's good to know. That makes a lot of sense, and, you know, it seems to me rogue disposal was not going to let energy. Do they end up using the energy then to run the dump or the landfill itself? Is that the way that works?

I believe that they do. Mm-hmm. All right. hey well thanks for letting me know appreciate that thank you so rogue disposal does it on the dump maybe we could do it on the sewage treatment plant every penny saved right hi good morning this is bill who's this hey oh steve hi steve i'm here what's going on what's going on yeah i'm just getting ready to pull out of the yard with a dump truck here and we've been installing the rng pipeline that runs up Coker Butte and then up the Dricer Road and then up over the top of the mountain to the landfill up there.

So they're going to be piping that energy back through this pipeline. Now, where it ends up over here, I don't know, but that's what they're doing because they're burning off a lot of those gases up there at the landfill as it is right now. Once this R&G line's complete, where it's going to end up again, I don't know. And that's what I've been working on this project the last couple of months. What is RNG? I know it's natural gas in there, but what does R mean? I wish I knew. Oh, okay.

All right. Maybe it's recycled. Maybe it's a recycled natural gas. Maybe that's the term. That could be. I've come up with different terms in my head driving around, but anyway. Yeah. Well, RNG, you know, it could be like, well, it was really stinky, but it's been deodorized or something.

I don't know. You're coming out of the landfill. Well, you know, that's why they've got three big burners up there, get rid of the smell, I reckon. But here again, I'm sure they're working on a more useful purpose for piping it up over the hill like that. So somebody's got a big plan in mind to make all this work. Where is that going to be connecting on the other side? You said it's over the hill from Dry Creek going down Coker Butte. And so you're headed towards Highway 62 at that point.

Is there an inner tie maybe to a Vista, perhaps, or do we know? Well, I don't know that. Actually, I could probably dig in there and just say, you know, what's going to be the ending result and come up with an answer before weeks end. Well, Steve, could you call me back? I'd appreciate that, okay? No problem, buddy. All right.

Hey, I appreciate the tip on that. I was wondering what that pipe was that was going in there, so now we know. all right yeah yeah exactly all right we'll have a good day hey appreciate the call see i love that you just uh pose a question or two and uh then the answers come back in 770 5 633 you're going to give the city of metford the ability to raise the hotel tax to do the ball uh do the ball stadium and do the creek side development are you leaning to that against it one way or the other it's technically not a direct tax on you but they do need to ask permission to be able to raise it are you ready to do it, ready to pull the trigger, or have you not decided yet? Let me know. This is something

this is going to be an open question all morning if you want, okay? But they're advertising and they're advertising hard. Confused about Medicare Advantage plans, sweeping changes. That's pound two five oh, micro. The Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. New term of the Supreme Court is out right now. Started yesterday, actually. And there was a, well, an Oregon case, that ended up getting turned down for the Supreme Court. And this had to do with Project Veritas, Capital Chronicle, reporting on this one. And Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a long-standing Oregon law. And this Oregon law makes it illegal to have unannounced audio recordings of in-person conversations.

It's like they kind of ban sting videos here in the state of Oregon. You know how Project Veritas has done this in the past ago there, and they had the video going, and, well, you couldn't do that here in Oregon. And as they say, it's crushing a right-wing media's group campaign to strike down some of the nation's strictest restrictions on forms of content. And it leaves in place a January 2025 ruling from the Circuit Court of Appeals, ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and it dismisses the Project Veritas claim, and they do all those sting videos that negatively depict liberal groups and mainstream journalists.

Maybe that's why we have this law, because there would be so many corruptico liberals that might get exposed if you had a, well, less protection on recording in-person speech. But anyway, Project Veritas argued that the law restricted the First Amendment and free speech protections and secured a brief victory from a smaller panel of circuit judges. But anyway, Oregon is a handful of, it was one of a handful of states in the entire country to outlaw recording in-person conversations if they are not specifically informed that they're being recorded. So secret recordings. Now, the law does have exceptions for recordings involving situations such as life-threatening felonies or on-duty law enforcement. It does not apply to the visual part.

So you can videotape someone or, you know, you can take their pick. picture or have the video rolling without their consent, but then technically you couldn't share it, you couldn't share the sound, that sort of thing. Now, it does not apply to phone calls. Phone calls require only one party consent. Only one side has to agree. In fact, I used to have an app on my cell phone that would record every single phone call I ever got because there are times that I'd be on the road and you'd hear it, you could

barely understand what someone's saying, then you go back and listen to it. So that's perfectly legal. You can do that. And I could technically play them on the air, you know, if I wanted to. I know this situation really, really well. I don't know if I ever told you this story, but I want to say it was about 30 years ago when I was on this very station. And back then, it was KZZE, it was a rock station, 1063 KZZE. And I was doing a rock morning show with my partner Murphy at that time.

and we had the bright idea of going into the office. I think it may have been LaDalls back at that time, which was a strip club in downtown Medford, still there, by the way. And so we had the bright idea of taking our mobile microphone with us and going in there. And then we ended up sharing some of the conversations on the show the next day.

Oh, that did not go well. That did not go well. Well, the people involved ended up calling my boss at that time. I think that was about five owners ago. And I learned, oh, no, okay, no, you can air all the phone calls that you want. But whatever you do, whatever you do, no, you don't go out in person. And we're talking about the people who are all getting drunk and, you know, they're sticking the dollars in the G-string and everything else.

Hey, baby, you know. And, no, that did not go over real well. I've had other people that would say, hey, Bill, you know, I have this recording of such and such and such and such and saying something and yada, yada, yada, and you got to put it on the air. No, no, no, it doesn't work that way here in the state of Oregon. I don't know. Do you think we should have that law? Is that a good law to have? Everybody else is able to have the sting videos, but Oregon, we're protecting your privacy, except for your license plates, and except for your phone calls and the surveillance and,

course, you know, we take pictures of you everywhere you go, I guess. But, well, your private thoughts are your own for the time being. At least your private thoughts, you know, inside your head. So you don't say anything. Don't think it too loud. Don't think it too loud. I'm sure that Leon's, Leon's, no, Elon, rather, Elon Musk's neuralink will at some point translate for the state. It's 735. This is KMED. Even the Roe Gardner faces challenges. What's a good thing what isn't a good thing. It can be hard to distinguish. My frustration this year in my gardening was with the birds. That's why I'm talking about birds. All the stuff that they did starting with the first crop of peas. And I mean, it has just been constant. And yet they did some good things.

Talk about it with Rogue Gardner. Saturdays 10 to noon, Sunday morning encore at 9 on KMED, sponsored by Grange Co-op. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, and I'm with Cherise from No Wires Now. You're for Dish Premier local retailer. It's time to switch to DISH. If you have DirecTV or cable TV, call me today to see how I can save you money. Plus, I'll lower your internet and cell phone bills. And those offers in the mail from DISH,

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Visit milletconstruction.com. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office who's warning the public about a disturbing scam where criminals try to extort money from families with missing children. In one case, the mother of a runaway juvenile was sent a terrifying AI-created video showing her child restrained in a chair and demanded a $1,500 ransom. The Sheriff's Office was able to confirm the child was saved, but they warn scammers are using missing person flyers on social media to target family members.

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Former state senator Herman Barrettiger back on the program. Morning, Herman. Good to have you back on. Welcome. Hey, how are you doing today? I'm doing okay. Notice that Project Veritas, I'd mention this to you when you first called in. Project Veritas lost its appeal. Supreme Court chose not to take it, and they were suing Oregon over its consent law. It's, you know, because they wanted to do those bust videos, those sting videos. And, boy, they would have had a lot of, how do you put it this way, Herman? They can have a lot of fun going after Democrats in this state with those sting videos, don't you think? Yeah.

A lot of things could happen. Let's leave it at that. Yeah, yeah. You are involved, I guess, with some of the crafting of those laws. Oregon has very, very strong protections against your speech being broadcast. It's like, anybody can call me, you can broadcast anything that comes in on a telephone because that is to only one party consent. Only one side has to consent to it, and that would be me as an example.

But if you have video and you go on the street and you're secretly recording people, that doesn't necessarily protect you. The video is protected, apparently, but the actual audio, the speech is not protected if you're doing it secretly. But if you're holding your phone out there, then I guess it's not secret at that point. Kind of interesting how the laws work here. Yeah, it's a little complicated, and that was a long time ago. I would just have to read this back here to get to the only comment on it. I'll tell you, but the Supreme Court didn't take the case, so it's not going to be looked at at least this time.

Hey, Herman, you and I were going to talk about the danger in Oregon when it comes to agriculture and farms. Now, you're kind of in that business even right now, aren't you? Oh, I've been in it all my life. My family's been in it for hundreds of years ever since they immigrated from Norway and Germany. What are you seeing then as the real bones of contention with agriculture in southern Oregon, maybe the state of Oregon in general, the economic conditions involving being a farmer? Well, there's some big problems, huge, massive problems for American agriculture that hasn't really been talked about. It's starting to give some publicity, but it is big.

And let's start out with this. The average age of a farmer in the United States is 66 years old. That's the average. Wow. So there's a lot of farmers that are older than 66. that are working. That's it. The second problem is the commodity markets have actually been over the last few decades

when you, you know, taking consideration, inflation, and stuff like that has been going down. So, and the input, what it takes the farmer to put, to plant the fields and stuff, has been going up. One of the reasons for that, Bill, is that, for, a long time, you know, U.S. agriculture was always on a cutting edge. Well, that cutting edge is spread across the world now. So we're competing with all these other markets in these other countries, and their input costs can be less, especially when it comes to labor. Yeah, yeah. When you talk about input costs, you're talking about the fuel, the fertilizer, the seed, the cost of equipment, that sort of thing, right?

Right. And then also to pile on that is we've just piled on regulation. for farmers every year, you know, more of this, more of that. And I'll give you an example. You know, a combine in the United States is going to cost you $600,000, $700,000 where you go to another country, there'll be less. And the reason for that is there's a lot of things that are not required in these other companies, and I'll give you a real simple is death. So you know what death is that diesel emissions fluid.

Yeah, yeah, the death, yeah. Sure. Yeah, so they don't have all of that kind of stuff. Plus, you know, this last year, I happened to visit a couple huge farming operations in Hoopstadt, South Africa, and had some good conversations with farmers there. And their labor costs are about a quarter of ours. Are you serious? A quarter.

One fourth, so, boy, when it comes time to harvest or tended or. weed whack or whatever the case might be on the farm, you're able to do it for a lot less money overseas? And the machinery is cheaper. And they don't have all these crazy regulations. And so that has really put our farmers in a bad, bad spot. So let me throw some statistics out for you. The commodities have really took a dump after 2020, and they continue.

So in 2021, you look at farm credit services, which does a lot of the banking for the farmers. 40% of their farmers were in the red. 2022, that number has risen to 50, and then this last year was 70%. Now, they can't keep doing it. Yeah, 70% of the farmers essentially are not making enough money on their crops to be able to keep going, well, keep as a going concern. Is that what you're saying? Honestly? That's right.

And even at 4. Right now, it's about 370 for corn. I use corn because there's 94 million acres planted in corn, so it's one of the bigger commodities. And, you know, you might break even at 4 if you own the land, like my family in South West Minnesota, that land was basically, you know, they homesteaded back in 1870s. They were the first ones there. So that land has been in the family for years after years.

basically paid for, but they're not making any money. They're not losing a lot, but they're not making any. And, you know, some people say, well, Trump's tariffs. Well, that's not helping, but don't, you know, don't be persuaded. It's Trump's fault because this started, you know, a long time ago, and it really amassed, it really got worse starting about 20, 21. Now, if you don't mind me asking here, when it does come to the Trump tariffs, is that it's not necessarily that Trump is tariffing agricultural goods or is it that as an example

of well the one that comes to mind here as the biggest bone of contention in ag right now has to do with soybeans used to be the China would import just tons and tons and tons and just millions of tons of our soybeans there from the from the United States soybean farmers and I don't think they've sent any right isn't that the case hasn't China went and found some other outside sources? They're playing that game, but also remember other countries, Brazil is kind of kicking our butts right now, to be honest with you. You know, they've put so much land in production in the Mardi Grasso area of Brazil and

they can, you know, do back-to-back corn, soybeans, and as long as their weather cooperates, they can produce a product and ship it far cheaper than we can. so in another example is wheat you can grow wheat all over the world now um we used to not be able to do that because of the genetics like corn you know we used always say knee high by the fourth of july well the genetics are so good it's five foot high by the fourth of july well what you're describing them when it actually comes to you know human ability to eat certainly sounds good but you're concerned about the actual business model and if the business model can't stay alive, well, then will the humans stay alive, I guess?

Well, it goes back to, you know, economics 101. Whoever can build the best widget at the lowest price gets the sale. And that's what's going on across the world right now. And so, you know, I was looking at, we used to always say, you know, when the farmers weren't doing very good, the farm bill would kick in and supplement and we'd call it the farmers who are farming the mailbox, okay? Yeah. I remember that.

Last year it was $9 billion went into that to help supplement farmers this year. They're anticipating $42 billion. Now, let me ask you, though, is that actually what we think of as the traditional American farm, or is this, you know, an ADM kind of mega farm, you know, an Archer, Daniels, Midland, you know, you know, four billion acres over in Iowa, you know, someplace kind of farm. Some of those, but still today, it's still, you know, the single family farm, you know, they have to farm more acres, you know, they can't make it on 160 acres anymore. They've got to have, you know, a lot more than 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 acres to make it.

But so the other, there's, like I said, this is a really complicated question, because there's all these, there's all these variables. Look at machinery costs. Man, when you look at machinery costs, so when you get into these bigger farms, you know, you've got to buy a $600,000 tractor and $600,000 combine. And by the way, in the United States, when you buy a John Deere or any other major manufacturer,

you don't just buy the machinery. You have to buy the service contract, too, because everything within it is software. It's a computer that happens to be connected to a motor, right? And so... You can't work on it anymore. No. You can't have the dealer work on it.

And that's a big... There's been some laws now drafted that, you know, you can buy the software and the computers to work on it yourself. But now you're not a farmer anymore. You're a computer expert. So there's all of these things... I was looking at the price of a cotton picker. Take a guess. Two million.

A million. Okay, I was close. I was double-bidden. There's only one company in the world that makes cotton pickers anymore, and that's John Deere. So if John Deere is the only one making a cotton picker, guess what John Deer gets to do? Pickett's Price. Exactly. Pickets Price, indeed.

Ultimately. There's that part of it. But going back to how we started this conversation with the average age of a farmer being 66, this is another big problem because we can't get young people. people involved in farming because it's such a capital-intent investment. They simply can't raise the money. Now, the Trump administration has, you know, they've changed in that big, beautiful bill, they changed inheritance tax because what was happening is, you know, dad, the farmer passes away.

He goes to give it to the kids. There's so much inheritance tax. Yeah, you'd have to sell the farm. You'd have to sell the farm instead of working the farm in order to keep the farm. farm, right? Right. So that's kind of helped a little bit. But to get young people involved, hey, who wants to go and do this big capital investment,

all this stress, all this work, and, you know, I'm not bragging about farmers, but they do put a lot of hours in, and they're not making any money. So there's a big problem. I mean, it is going to be a massive problem here in just the next few years. It's knocking at the door. This problem is literally knocking at the door right now. Now, is there a possibility here, Herman? Now, you haven't been in the farming world here for a long time.

Former State Senator Herman Berchiger with me right now. Is there a possibility that the bloom being off the college education rose? And you know how I was going? Ted Kulengoski used to come on my. show years ago was talking about everyone's got to go to college you got to go to college there's nothing else you need to do don't talk about going into the trades or anything else is there a possibility that this this pivoting back to the physical and doing the trades might possibly help farming long term even though we do have some pretty darn old farmers right

now what do you think not if we don't create some new markets because if you're not making money who wants to go work that hard and not make any money You know, the cattlemen are doing really good right now because the national herd numbers are so low. They're doing good. I think this is going to be short-lived, though. I don't think it's, I think that the terrorists are actually helping that. Yeah, well, the solution to high prices is high prices, just like the solution to low prices is low prices, right? Always.

Yeah, and farming has always been risky. It's like my grandpa used to always take. He says, you know, you have a great crop. so does everybody else, and the prices are low. And he says, when the prices are high, that's because nobody has a good crop, including yourself. So, you know, that's just the nature of the beast.

But it is at a critical mass right now in America agriculture simply because we don't have the markets. The big corporations control the markets. Just a handful of huge corporations control the market. You look at our packing. houses. There's really three, maybe four big packing houses in the entire United States, and I think two of them are foreign-owned. And I remember Jackson County Local Action Committee, the old

defunct activist group a number of years ago, was doing their best when they brought Joel Salathan in there, and they were hoping to try to find a way to get money to open up the crater packing plant and try to get that because there's no place, there are very few places you can take. cattle, you know, to get properly slaughtered here. U.S. USDA inspection, yeah, the few places you can take, you've got to take a number. I mean, you're going to call them a couple months of vans and say, hey, I'm going to have 20 heads. What if you had, I'm going to do a what if here, Senator.

Would it help then if we just changed the laws and got rid of this idea that everything has to be USDA? Because, let's face it, if a cows, if, you know, filet mignon grown here in southern Oregon is only sold here in Oregon. it's intrastate rather than interstate. Why should it have to always be USDA? What do you think about that? Well, it's because of the disease issues and people getting sick and stuff like that. Well, we still have the diseases with USDA. I know, but I still agree that they need to be inspected.

But we used to do that. We had a USDA inspection. You know, we had a kill floor here in Josephine County. A lot of counties had their own private kill floors. And so we had all of these different markets then, Bill. There was, you know, so many places to take your commodity. And that has been narrowed down to these huge corporations control in the market. How long do you think we had before Oregon potentially could be in crisis mode over agriculture?

Because remember, state land use control was ostensibly done to preserve the farmland, Herman. You know, I think we're at critical mass. And I do know that the Trump administration is very well aware of it. But to be honest with you, after my visit last, you know, I visited wheat fields in Australia before I visited agriculture in Europe. Europe is all supplemented. Okay. That's just all supplemented by the government. You go to Switzerland and the, in the, and the, in the, and the.

big, beautiful cows, you know, that are up on the mountains and the Alps, that's all paid for by the government. They pay the farmers to do that. So it gives it the Swiss look. We're not quite to that point yet. But we're getting close is what you're thinking, that ultimately agriculture will be a full public-private partnership, as they say about that project in Medford, right? That kind of thing.

Hmm. Exactly. you know and i look at you know in australia and western australia if they have a good wheat crop every three years they're making money if our farmers have a good wheat crop every year they may not be making money and we got a we got to we got to figure out how to get more young people involved that's number one number two we've got to get government out of the regulations and and we've got to create more markets that's what we have to do, Bill? If we don't start doing that,

agriculture is going to really, really get hurt. And, you know, another thing my grandfather used to always say, history repeats itself. Well, in the crash of 29, you know, of course,

agriculture took a hit because there were limited markets. People couldn't afford to buy the commodity. But then the dust bowls hit. Everybody forgets that. And that hit in 30. and it lasted for several years clear up into Minnesota where my family my grandfather said in 30 they hardly had a crop

and 31 you couldn't grow a crop and in 32 you couldn't grow a garden so um they had all these foreclosures and that is one thing that extended the uh the great depression yeah yeah because all the you know one side of my family, they lost the farm. They said, you know, hogs went to a nickel, so we thought we would hang on to them. Then they went to nothing. They wound up digging a hole and shooting them. So, you know, the other side of the family hung on. The Norwegians seemed to, they seem to hang on to things, and they're still farming those lands today. But it's a big warning. It's out

there and it'll affect every citizen in this country. There's only about two percent of the population farming anymore in this country, Bill. Used to be a lot more, but things have changed. In 1776, 80 percent of the people in the colonies were farmers. Yeah. Well, that was a lot of work, though, as we know, no mechanizing or very little mechanization at that time. Herman, I appreciate the, you know, the warning Bill, given your connection to this industry, okay? You'd be well, have a good week in spite of all the

craziness. We'll have you back, okay? Thank you very much. All right, Bill. You take care. Former State Senator Baird-Sigger. KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.