Ghostrunners - 387

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

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All right, we're here with Steve Koop. Steve Koop is in the building. Yeah. How do you feel being a podcast? I can't believe I'm here. Because you were on the podcast briefly as a group after Rachel and I got engaged. That's right. But now that's fun.

Is your time to shine. Oh, yeah. And not share the spotlight with anybody. Yeah, Rachel's not censoring you like before. Mm hmm. You really say anything. Glasses already off. Well, I need them to read.

I don't know. I need to go to an eye doctor. I just keep putting it off because I need to wear them all the time. I need bifocals probably. Oh, really? Yeah. Have you always been a glasses guy? No. Wait till you hit your 40s.

And then it hits. I had great eyes. 47. 47. 47. Yep. My back has been hurting me for the last, like, week and a half straight. And I'm like, is this just my life now?

Is my just like, does your back hurt? Yeah, my back hurts every morning, but that's just normal. Yeah. When I left Iowa two weekends ago, you couldn't walk because of your hip. And now I was like, how's your hip? You said I've ran a mile 11 days straight. Well, so all this morning going on. Time is in trouble. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I said to my wife this morning, I don't know what's going on. Timon's in trouble. Yeah, I'm all right. I said to my wife this morning, I'd convinced myself I'm permanently now just a walker. Because I walk, walk, walk, walk. And then until I'm a walker with a walker, it'll be the next step. But I'm running. And I never thought I'd be running again. I ran 2 and 1 1⁄4 this morning, and I don't hurt at all.

Really? I can't believe it. It's like 33 degrees outside. I'm waiting for reality to hit again. But yeah, that hip, that was unbelievable. It hurt so bad. But yeah. Did you get adjusted or anything or you just woke up?

I've never been to a chiropractor. Really? No. A little more, a little more beet juice in the diet. I don't know what it is. Oh yeah. And I've been eating some bad beets. Oh. But Rachel said she'd eat them too. Wait, what are I've been eating some bad beats. Oh,

but Rachel said she'd eat them too. Wait, what are you? Why are they bad beats? Because they're not pickled and no sugar. They're, they're at Costco and they're in a bag. Oh, bad, bad bag. You've got a big beat and you're just like an apple. Oh, is it that consistency? They're terrible. But I'm going to keep eating them. Yeah. You're feeling good. Uh oh, I think this tight beat means that it's going down with some random thoughts and white meat too. Midwest best friends eating fast food on repeat so come along let's have some fun and go ahead get on your feet cause this is a Ghost from the Spot Cam.

Ghost from the Spot Cam. Every Monday morning we're taking round our small sparkies. Go for a vodka. But I think I'm going to grind them up in smoothies or something. Because I'll get you one. OK. I don't know if I'll eat it, but I'll just kidding. That's super food.

You ever heard of something called beet kvass? No. I don't know what it is. I think it's kind of like pickled something juice with beets. She eats that? Catherine's all about it. Yeah. She made her own the other day. I like Catherine. That you got a good wife. You get along. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So I'll bring a bag along sometime. You won't believe it. What? You won't believe it. You won't believe how bad it tastes. If you like good beats like from Bucky's and then you have these like, oh, why would anyone eat these?

But so is Bucky's like the standard of beat? They're so good. Really? I found a couple like just mom pop ones that I like the can jar area of the grocery store, like the Amish one and then you can find some good stuff in there. So I mean, I am so unfamiliar with beats. I feel like most of my beet knowledge is from either you or Dwight Schrute on the office.

I wish I grew beets instead of corn beets. Really? Oh gosh, I'd love to have my own beet farm and beet canning factory. Yeah. It'd be great. Like when I'm eating a beet, am I, like, is that more like, is it soft?

Like pickled beets are pretty soft? They are pretty soft, but this one's a little firmer. These ones from Costco. They'll just shock you when you first eat them. Not expecting that. There it is, the beets. And you just keep eating them. Oh wow.

So the sad thing about this, I'm not making anything of this up. I love beets. Yeah, I know you do. There's a few things that like, since I've known you, you'll say random things like, yeah, I ran a mile, you know, or done this or Jake will talk about doing the turkey trot thing with you guys and how you, you participate in all that. And I'm like, man, he must be really active. And then I learned more about, you know, I'm like, I don't know if he's that active. I think you're just accidentally healthy. I figured out there's good tired and there's bad tired. Okay. Okay. So teaching, I would be bad tired because I, you teach all day, but you're not physical and you're tired.

Yeah. And like, you maybe pissed at that student. Yeah. And you're tired. I should maybe have said that on that podcast. Anyway, you're tired. Edit that out. Yeah.

Mad at that student or, or then you had four hour conferences afterwards and you're just tired. Yes. That's not good tired, but if you're physical, I think when they do those work things, when you're take the little test, when you're in high school, S A T no, like what kind of job you should go into, it should be in there. Do you want a physical job? Do you want to work indoor or outdoor? I don't know if those things are on there, but they should be, man. That's so so true though about like, it feels so good to be tired. To get in bed when you have worked really hard.

That's good. Can a cook go into bed that kind of tired? Yeah, that was a good time. But like if you've just like, there's times where you're just sitting somewhere for a day and you are so tired, but then you get home and it's like, I can't fall asleep because I'm, I don't know. Are you tired or are you just like depleted? I don't know. you know what I mean?

There's a difference. Yeah, mentally tired, which just, yeah. Then you can't get yourself up to go walk a mile. Well, but then if you've been a teacher and a farmer full time, right? Like you've been basically doing two jobs most of your life. Yeah, that's a bad idea. Do one and do it well.

That sounds like you're both kinds of tired. You're good and bad tired. What? Yeah, just in the last year, you had this revelation, right? Where you're like, why did I teach? No, no, I loved having my teaching job. But if I would have known what it's like to be self-employed 20 years ago,

you pick your, you line up in your mind what you're gonna do today and you're your own boss. It's just, you know, you guys are. It's a good deal. Yeah. Give us the origin story of Steve a little bit. Uh-oh. Because I kind of know, but I don't know everything.

I would love to hear your upbringing, and then also what got you into farming, how you decided to do teaching alongside of it. Well, I grew up on a farm. My grandpa moved over here from Germany when he was about 22. He was born in 1902, so it's about 24. Bought a farm by Ackley, which is to the west of us. And then he found this farm just a mile away

from where I live. And then my dad grew up on the farm, and now I'm a farmer and my son is a farmer. And so it's in our... It's in your blood. It's in our my son is a farmer. Yeah. And so it's in our. It's in your blood. It's in our family for quite a while. Had you always been like, I wanna be a farmer. I always knew I wanted to farm some way,

but my folks had this deal where you had to get a college degree before you could rent any ground. Okay. So I was okay at math, so I thought, I think I'll be an engineer. Yeah. So I took engineering classes and physics classes all the way through

But after my first year, I coached some junior high baseball. Okay, boy did I like being around those kids? Yeah, yeah even one time when they were seventh grade was playing the eighth graders were in the bus messing around and I was being the bus driver too I came out of El Dorado the hood flew open and they I couldn't see a darn thing And I pulled over and I chewed him out because I knew they had done that. About two minutes later, we're all laughing on the bus. And I thought this would be a fun career.

Right. And I'd have my summers off. I could do some farming and that's how it worked. Yeah. Yeah. So you had like, I still don't understand all your operation because it's a pretty good amount of farming. So like you have people working for you and so you kind of oversaw them as well

Yeah, I was the only reason I could farm and teach is because I had great help. Okay Yeah, and we've heard about scuzz on the podcast. He doesn't he just doesn't really help. Okay Find jobs for okay, they're kind of helping him out. Yeah. But I mean, he'll get parts in that. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great.

Yeah. No, we have some good help. We always have. Yeah. Yeah. Great help. So, but right now it's mostly just me and Tom and then some part-time. Okay.

Yeah. Fun. That's great. Skuzz. Skuzz. Yikes, I think you said. I hope Skuzz never listens to this. No, he'm good. We love scuzz. It's good. Yeah Your your grandpa came over because isn't like German soil very similar to Iowa. So yeah, they've got like yeah

They were and then they weren't too far from where they're Northern Germany, so they were pushing the sea back and Then farming that and pushing the sea bags. It's really black rich stuff. You just gotta pump the water out all the time. But yeah. And yeah, so now harvest is done. I'm gonna tell you an interesting story about my grandpa though.

Okay, great. So my name's Coop and he went back with my dad to Germany. Yeah. And they looked at my dad's grandpa's grave and my dad's grandpa died two years before my grandpa was born. Your dad's? So I don't think sperm survives that long.

Oh, I see. So then they figured out that the actual father is an Oltmans. So I should be an Oltmans. Oh wow. Cause my dad, that bothered him for a while. I was like, I'm not a coop. I don't even know who my grandpa was in that. And it was like.

You're an Oltman. Coop sounds way better. Yeah. Wow. So yeah, it was an interesting story. And he thinks my grandpa knew it and never told him. Yeah. How could he if he was dead?

Well, my grandpa. Yeah, getting all these grandpa's. It's kind of dangerous to like go back and look at family history stuff. You know, it might be related to somebody or somebody wasn't who you thought they were. Right. Timon, have you heard the song, I'm My Own Grandpa?

I have. Oh, that's a good one. Ray Stevens or something? Yeah, you gotta follow through all that. Have you ever seen that? How do you guys know? You two would know the race. Oh, it is.

I'm not sure why. It's awesome. My cousins or something. You got to try to. Steven's you follow through that hole. I see these diagrams trying to figure it all out. It's funny that you thought to ask time and time and did know what you were talking about.

Time and I are this. We wave like. Oh, yeah. Speaking of that. So I think we talked about the podcast before, like about a year ago, when we first found out that Timon was running and running fast and we couldn't believe he ran a six minute mile.

I'm not surprised at all. I've been scouting him. I watched him play pickleball in Branson. Long legs, you're a runner. Have you ever had a coach? No. See, that six minute mile, you'd blow through that. Really?

Yeah. Oh yeah, you can run. I don't know how much we talk about on the podcast, but off the podcast, Rachel and I were always dreaming of like, let's do a track and field day, whether it's a Ghost Runners event or a private birthday event. Ghost Runners Olympiad.

Okay, yeah, maybe we didn't talk about it. And so one of the events that we'd always talked about was Steve Koop has to finish four laps, no, has to do three laps before a timeman finishes four around the track. So at 1200 versus 1600. I haven't thought about this in six months. Steve Koop walks through my door at 10.30 PM last night

and goes, all right, I've done the math, I can beat time him. I don't even know what he's talking about. He was fired up. Okay, so if you run a four minute mile, you're averaging 15 miles an hour exactly Okay, so six minute miles 10 Ten miles an hour. Yeah, so you're doing a six minute mile, right?

Sure, I did at one point. Yeah, so you got to go ten miles an hour So I don't like running on the treadmill, but I've done a two of these days I've done that and I can run six and a half for a mile. So I know, see I'd have to run seven and a half miles an hour, cause I'd have to run three fourths of your speed. Cause I have to do three fourths of your distance. You did do that.

Right? So the speed at which you have to run. Seven and a half miles an hour average. You've yet to run that. Oh, I can do it. But you haven't done that. But you haven't done that. But I can do six and a half on that treadmill

at two degrees for a mile No problem. And how many times have you done it at seven and a half miles an hour? I Haven't tried it yet, but I we've got a while to go here and I'm gonna get on the track I like not the golf course track the actual track. Yeah track track So yeah, he's not done thinking about this coming after yeah, you're gonna have to run faster than six minutes That's what I'm telling you, which I don't know if I I think after I ran that what it was like Just a second under and 559 under six minutes. I don't think I'm ever doing this again Do you know you have no idea how fast you could run?

You have no idea all the people who run Luis Chavez all those people on our you know You have no idea all the people who run louis chavez and all those people on our you know Fan base were like time when you should like do pursue this more. I remember them saying that So yeah, I thought that was interesting because it's just like I have you know, like uh, like friends who can run faster than me and i'm like I don't think i'm that much of a Out like I don't know, but maybe I mean, it's probably they have coaching and stuff. So I don't know. Yeah, find him a coach I guess. How much did you train for your six minute mile?

Just like a mile a day for quite some time before that and then like occasionally I would just go as fast as I could and I would get down like you know 645, 630, 615. I was like I'll just push myself harder than I ever have. And then went just under six. I'm gonna run a mile on the track. And then I'll update Jake where my mile is. Okay. Yeah.

So someday. Oh, that'll be fun. That's gotta be fun. Oh yeah. Yeah, we should have all sorts of events. Yeah, we can see if I can do two laps before time it does four. Yeah, it's a whole, yeah.

The We Shop SSP5. Wait, you can do two laps before time it does four. Yeah, it's a whole, yeah. Louis Chavez has to do five. Wait, you would do two? Yeah. That means you think I could beat you? I've gotta do three laps. Hey, maybe you're fast. There's no way I could beat you. Okay, maybe you and I go three.

And I see how. Okay, speaking of other elite athletes, talk about growing up, seeing your daughter playing volleyball. Oh, that was fun. How'd you, when, when did you think this girl could be something different? Because like as, as a parent, I mean, did you think about that with Tommy and Tim as well? Or was it like, I don't know. It just worked out because she was pretty tall always, but she had a lot of other tall

classmates. And if she had gone to a different school, she would have been a hitter. Okay. And I don't think she would have been a college hitter. She does. She'd say that same thing. I see. But since she had Brooke and Brianna and Lizzie and they, they could sky and they could hammer the ball and she could put it right to them.

Yeah. And so she's tall and she's a setter and great hands. And Rachel was also, she had a lot of, well, any, she's like the quarterback of the team. So she had to keep everybody happy and all that too. And, and nowhere to put the ball. And that was the other side of it. Not just athletic ability, but she was a good quarterback. She had like the mental aspect of it. So I had no idea, Angie had been talking to her off-season coach and they, they, they could talk to the UNI and gosh, after a freshman year of high school, they called me.

I remember I was in Dumont, Iowa and they said, Rachel got an offer to go to UNI. Like, what do you mean? All right. Like, wow. When she was 15. Yeah. She wasn't even hadn't played varsity hardly at all yet. What was that like emotionally?

I mean, obviously I'm sure that was exciting, but also like she's, she's not going to college. I just couldn't believe it. I was just thinking, man, I would just imagine like she's not, we're not even close to ready to have her think about. Well, and I loved sports and I don't know why, because I played on all bad teams except one. Really? We lost. I lost so many games games you would not believe it And I mean one time we were in playing baseball in Clarksville. I was out there for 25 batters in centerfield they went around and around and Like 45 minutes or an hour what happening and Telling you a lot of my games were like that. We'd get beat like 65 nothing sometimes in football

Oh my gosh, and then you're a ball. You. We'd get beat like 65-nothing sometimes in football. Oh my gosh. And in football, you don't just get beat, you get beat up. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're physically getting beat in football. Yeah. I played on one winning team.

My junior year of basketball, we had a good team. OK. And then we played lots of losing seasons. But I'd do it all over again. Yeah. Yeah, I don't care. Absolutely. Yeah. It was fun.'t care. Absolutely. Yeah, there's something fun Oh, it's it's a special time, but my kids all played on teams that won and I they don't even really know

They don't they lost a few games. Yeah Should we should we do a schmores farming themed? Yes. Yes with Steve. All right, so Had the idea to do just farm equipment. Farm equipment is the schmores topic. I did some thinking about this while I was running. Good for you. I got my one, two and three for sure. Ty, I think you won the last schmores,

technically the one about things you don't want to hear during surgery. So you get to decide the order. OK, I'm going to say myself, Brad, Steve, Jake. OK, it's going clockwise. Yeah. Yeah. And what are we what are we defining as farm equipment? Vague. OK, great.

OK, first pick, the only one that I thought of off the top of my head, Combine. I have to lock it up. Steve gets the point. Good boy. Good boy, Tymon. I have a cousin who are farmers, it's the only one I ever really hear him talk about. Is it the most expensive

type of like machine? Yeah, by far. Why is it called a Combine? No idea. most expensive type of like machine. Yeah, by far. Good job. Why is it called a combine? No idea. I mean, does it combine things? Yes. Okay.

A comb? It combines threshing and separating. So threshing is knocking the seed off the plant. And obviously separating is sorting it from everything else. That's weird that they turned it to a combine when it's a combine. Yeah.

And then I had a farmer friend that calls it a kind combine. My dad would always make fun of him about that. Kind combine. All right, my first pick is gonna be tractor. Yeah. I feel like I don't care who you are. As a kid, everyone wanted to ride on a tractor. I don't care who you are. As a kid, everyone wanted that ride on a tractor. I don't care if you're the biggest farm kid in the world.

I don't care if you're on a high rise in New York City. Everyone wanted to experience that tractor. Big green tractor. Are you guys drawn to your family? We were red growing up, but we're green. Which is what is red? In a case. Well, it was International Harvester and then they went bankrupt. Oh, yeah. Okay. Great. Yes. That's my first pick is going to be. Yeah, those are good. Nice.

So who's next? Jake? Oh, Steve. I will go with a planter. Okay, planter. Corn planter because it's a modern day Rube Goldberg machine. Really? Yeah, absolutely. You just can't believe all the things that happen. I had in physics classes, I had my students make Rube Goldberg machines. And I'd start the lesson by showing them what a planter all did. Oh, that's cool. And I said, this is

why we're, you know, because like the one we have, I'll get a little windy here, but the seed is in a bulk and it blows all the seed to the boxes. And there's a little thing once it gets high enough, then the air can't go through. So it'll quit all the seed to the boxes. And there's a little thing, once it gets high enough, then the air can't go through, so it'll quit blowing the seed, which is pretty cool. Then there's a vacuum that it pulls the seed against these plates. Okay. And as the plates go around, then they go across a little brush

that cuts off the air, and it falls through a tube into the ground, and there's two V-disc discs that cut a little groove and it falls in there and then there's wheels behind it close back up and that's all got a and which is great and there's electronics that tell you what's all going on. Okay. Yeah. I mean, corn planters, the credible machine. Yeah.

Yeah. This is so it's funny to hear you talk about it. Talking farming with my farm buddies here. That's right. Yeah, we're hunters mainly. First and foremost, we're hunters. You see the orange. I didn't grow up on a crop farm,

grew up on a cattle farm, so I'm gonna go with the baler. That's good. This is not the baler like from the office. How do they know it? This is like a giant machine that takes the hay, wraps it together in a little cylinder, and then kind of hoops it out the back, honestly.

Big old machine. Okay, good. So I'm gonna go Baylor, and then I'm gonna go pick up truck. Pick up truck. Gotta have a pick up truck on the farm. You know any farmers who drive sedans around the farm? Me.

Do you? Yeah, for sure. What are you driving? I drove a Subaru. I drove a little Subaru for years. Did you? I think it's 30 miles a gallon, my pickup gets 10. So you do the math, you can ride off the miles in the pickup, but not the car, but I still just hate wasting all that fuel. Right. Yeah. Oh, I've driven, farm first farm truck was a Ford Festiva a 1990 Ford Festiva I look I throw I put the hatchback up put eight bags of seed corn in the back take of the planter Wait, that was my Ford face. Yeah looks like yeah

I still got it time and put that in post if you can remember it. I still you still have this Yes, was it Tommy who got you a shirt for Christmas? There was a Ford Festiva all over the show. There's 36 Festivas on the shirt. Wait, a Ford Festiva's on a truck. That is the tiniest car I've ever seen. I got 40 miles a gallon out of that truck. Mine's blue.

In fact, it's another color of blue we refer to as Festiva blue. Festiva blue, baby. Oh my gosh. I love that so much, Steve. Well, my dad had a big influence on me and he went to Iowa State. And some professor told him that a pickup truck and a machine shed do not pay off on a farm Mmm, I remember him telling me that so I was holding off as long as I could to buy a pickup now

I have a pickup I'd hate to not have a pickup. Isn't it funny though? Like the things that you remember I mean, I'm sure our parents have told us a million words of oh, yeah You remember a select few and I have a machine shed too So I mean I get it but boy they're nice to have. Oh sure. Yeah, well, that's not we were in the machine shed Come on kids go and we're into a pickleball. Yeah, we were kind of dreaming a little bit I mean, it's the perfect Size for this guy's all about the pickleball bar. Well, we build it 18 feet because of the daughter Okay, the dot the volleyball. Yeah, and then The daughter. Set the volleyball. Yeah.

And then, well, the boys like to shoot baskets too, but the problem is it gets dirty in there from equipment and then your gritty hands and shooting a basketball. And that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah, you'd be a better dribbler. Okay, yours, what? The pickup truck.

I had, yeah, Baylor and pickup trucks. Those are good. It's back to you. Gosh. and pickup trucks. Now it's back to you. Gosh. Three that I had are already taken. Do we do three or four?

We do four total. We do four eventually. Oh, I know, sprayer. That's good. Unfortunately, chemicals are involved, but man, what a machine. Yeah, let's talk about Kempnub's kit. This one's like, this one's self- propelled and you sit way up in the air

like you're driving and riding on a giant four wheeler and it's got auto steer. So, you know, you see those program what angle you want to go at and yeah, you go back and forth and you can spray about 100 acres in an hour. Yeah. Wow. It's an amazing machine. I have fond memories of riding with my grandpa in a sprayer. Oh, yeah. It's like it's you're so high up and you like when I first started farming, I had an old tractor without a cab and a sprayer in the back and you're driving along and you're feeling these drops of stuff on your arm. You're like, I am killing myself

off right now. But the one I've got now has a charcoal filter in the cab. And I rarely even smell the chemicals when I'm going. So it's very accurate. It doesn't overlap. It's quite a machine. Steve's next pick is gonna be pesticides. Yeah. Monsanto. I wish I could be organic, but I don't like weeds very much.

All right. Time? You're right. Oh, it's me, I'm sorry. Holy cow. All right. I'm going to go. Field cultivator. Oh, how about that? You like your tillage. What is a field cultivator? I'm a tillage. Yeah. I'm a till guy. Uh, good question. I texted my friend right as we were starting this thing and said, Hey, we're doing schmores of farm equipment. I did the same thing with my cousin Andrew. OK, I'm getting some info.

Yep. So field cultivator, big, big till guy. So I know what it is, but can you explain to Jake real quick? So it's got these sweeps and they go under the ground under the turn, turn the soil over a little bit, mix up the residue and the fertilizer and stuff. Right. Make a nice seedbed. Yeah. Seedbeds. We don't use them very much because we do something different now. But well, that's OK.

That's that's your thing. We're Kansas farmers over here. Oh, thanks for explaining that, Brad. You're welcome. Yeah. I'll have him explain your next for you and maybe time into the next one. All right. I'm going to say semi truck slash trailer. Oh, yeah. Semi is good. Yeah, they do that semi go by is it a thing for like farmers to

Refer to like us what I would call a semi truck or a semi as a truck And then that pickup is it just a pickup because that's what I've like kind of gathered and I'm like I would just consider Yeah, I think of it as a truck and then a semi but I don't know but yeah You had some revelation recently you said you don't drive the semi you ride the semi. I don't know why I think this but I feel like I'm riding on the semi. Like this is this giant horse or something that because they're so long and big and powerful. I just feel like even though I'm in control I feel like I'm riding the semi. Yeah.

Especially when they're full and just like. I mean you're 90,000 pounds going down the road and you're in charge. Yeah, baby. I'm riding this thing. Jake, also, I don't think you said this, a field cultivator, it's also known as a harrow or a digger, depending on your location. A digger.

We don't hear that very often. No, yeah, it's a cool old schoolism. Hey, you want to go hook up the digger? Thanks, Fred. Yeah. Yeah. And then my third will be an auger. Oh, good choice.

And I actually knew what that was before looking anything out. Okay. It's Tim's good buddy. Harb always would talk about augers. He's a funny guy. Our doggers. Yeah. Because isn't it?

It's like a picture. Just like a long pole type thing. There's like kind of on a spiral in there. Yeah. Yeah. That like, yeah. Whatever it is, grain up to. Yeah. Yeah. Good choice. I thought about Augur. I did, too. But I I was like, it's it's in between Augur and this one. And obviously he chose it.

So it kind of forced my hand. But I'm going to go air cedar. Oh, that's good. Yeah, air cedar for my third pick. Oh, that's good. Which is, you can imagine based off the name, but go ahead and. You ready for me?

Yeah. I have to go with plow. And that probably should have been my number one. Cause we don't use a plow hardly anymore, but to start this whole thing, a plow, a mow board plow, that started this whole thing, turned all the prairie sod over without the plow. You've seen the ones where the one single plow

behind the horse drawn. To break up that prairie soils, you needed a plow. So without the plow, I don't know if any of this would have happened. So I gotta go with the plow. All right. It's like the wheel. You guys are never gonna believe this.

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And- For the porky pigs out there. Porky pigs. Here's what we have to say to you. A beep, a deep, a deep. Go to Good Ranchers, folks. GoodRanchers.com, GRKC, American Meat Delivered. It's the best meat you can think of,

and they'll send it right to your door, and then you can eat it. Yep. However you want. Pre-cut, pre-tread. As much as you want. They won't tell you how much to eat at once. That's the nice part.

So, no, seriously though, it's the best. Please go to GoodRanchers.com, American Meat Delivered, GRKC. My last two picks, once again, just going off of my personal experience, and yours a little bit, I'm gonna go with farm dog. Oh, that's a good one. Gotta have a dog with you.

Yeah, you gotta have a dog. Yeah, that's part of the equipment. Gotta have the dog with you. Long rides in the tractor, whatever. So I'm gonna come back to the shed too. And then lastly, I feel like this is the, maybe the equipment I saw my grandpa use the most with cattle, I'm going to come back to the shed too. And then lastly, I feel like this is the, maybe the equipment I saw my grandpa use the most with cattle, I'm going to go bucket.

Bucket, not the big bucket on. Oh, the pail, oh yeah. Like a five gallon bucket. Yep. You have cattle farm, you are using that bucket. Oh, you do. Constantly. You need a bucket. I mean, that's how the feed is stored.

You know, that's how you're feeding the cows. Cow would get out, you put a little feed in the bucket and that's how you call them back in. That's right up there with the plow. I got, there was a cow that got out at, in town at Canna Cuck one time. We didn't have the cows, but you know, someone else did nearby and it got out

and our property was in the woods. And I went out there, it was just me and one other guy. And so I just put a pea gravel in a bucket. I started shaking it up because it sounds like what their feed sounds like. And I got the cow coming. So don't sleep on the bucket. First time farmer. Good idea. Preview of what's to come. I got a big idea. My friend Greg says that's not equipment. I'm keeping them updated. He doesn't like your dog pick, I don't think. Greg's on the podcast.

It seems like it's a tool though for, you could do things with the dog. Lila is a tool. Yeah. All right, back to you, your last pick. Well, just based on what we do now, this is boring it up as Rachel would say, strip-till machine. Took Brad's.

So he's got his digger and he digs everything. Our strip-till machine just digs a little. And then puts the fertilizer there and then we plant right there. So then you remember the talk about erosion in the wedding. I had erosion in my talk. It's supposed to help on the erosion. I think it does a lot. So the soil there. Greg likes the strip tail machine. He emphasizes it very nice. I like Greg. Now, where's Greg from? He's a Salina area. Kansas farmer. Oh yeah.

We bought a semi or truck or tractor trailer in Salina. We got hosed. Oh brother. I'm sorry. He's out outside of Salina. That guy, we got 50 miles out of town and the turbo went. We got another 50 and the transmission went. Parts were bouncing on the interstate.

Oh my gosh. And so Tom bought this on an auction. I called that guy and said, hey, you just sold it. And he wasn't going to do anything about it. So sorry. They fixed it up. We still use it. Just added about half again to the price of the tractor.

Dang. Yeah. This is my friend. Have you ever seen the, he and his brothers would do these farm music videos where they would sing songs, said if I'm sexy and I know it, it was I'm farming and I grow it.

You ever see those videos or anything? Oh yeah, I have. Yeah, so that's my friend. Oh, that's the Greg, he's got the other channel. Yeah, he's got a YouTube channel and everything. Peterson? Uh-huh, Peterson Farm Bros, very good. Yeah, he's got a yeah YouTube channel and everything. There's some uh-huh. Yeah, it's the farm bros very good Yeah, they were roommates, right? Yeah, they're roommates. He's a groomsman in my wedding. So is he a strip tiller? No, he said we don't have one of those In a previous life he did but he doesn't want to talk about

Alright, my last pick and I have heard of this one swather. Oh, yeah I've never heard of the swather. No, I don't know what that is. I don't know. That's like a mascot Things or how did you come in with swather? I told I texted my friend Greg It's give me some of them give me some days of a hundred pieces of equipment. That would be my hundredth pick It's an amazing it's great. Well, there's a there's a town outside of Wichita, Heston, Kansas. Oh yeah. I think their headquarters, well no, they have Heston. Heston equipment.

Yeah, but their mascot for their school is the Heston Swathers. Oh. Yeah. Wow. Fun fact. Lucky for them. Yeah, exactly.

What's a mascot look like there? I don't know, let's look it up. It's just a guy dressed exactly like Steve Coombe. Yeah. Just a guy in jeans. K-State shirt. Yeah, there are this. I wanted some merch of this, actually. Look at this thing. Glasses are back on.

Sorry. Look at that. Oh, wow. Cool. Oh, it's a tractor with teeth. Oh my gosh. They're actually that's their mascot. Yeah. The swathers. See time. Yeah. Whoa. the swathers. See time? Yeah. Whoa.

Kind of cool. So there you go. Swathers. What's the swather do? It's like, it swaths. Well, these pictures are like cutting the alfalfa or putting it in a windrow. Good catch.

D1. Putting in a swath. So then the baler can come in and. Bail. Bail it. There might have a swath. Yeah. Then the bailer can come in and bail bail. Yeah. There might have a pickup on a machine. Might be. Might be pick up. Combine. Combine. Yeah, there you go. Swat. I kind of want some swather merch. I think it puts it in a windrow.

That's yeah. Well, yeah, it does. If you if you want windrows, we'll do windrows. So, oh, man, Man Heston swathers anyway Tyman you have one more pick here. Yeah, I think since Jake went small farm dog pale whatever. I'm gonna go grain bin. Oh Any crop farm you drive by that's like what you see yeah I think it's it's like the first thing to get blown away when there's like a tornado in a movie about a farm Yeah, the grain bin goes first. Uh-huh. Hey to see it. Didn't you almost dying one? Me? Yeah, didn't you get boy?

Yeah, stuck in water. So that's not a piece of equipment. I wouldn't put on my list called a sweep auger Which is really the time it goes around the bottom and pulls all the corn to a central sump and then it goes out the auger Yeah, right It goes around the bottom and pulls all the corn to a central sump and then it goes out the auger. I was in there by myself and pushing that auger ahead and I pushed it with my foot and my whole body flew right over the top of the auger. And that's how people die. And I got caught. I bounced. Fortunately I bounced. But it cut my knee and then I got out of there. It bothered me for a couple of weeks, just thinking about what just happened to me. That was just a year and a half ago. Oh, wow.

I was recently. Yeah. Well, I was dumb. I had these stupid hokas on that didn't have any tread left. Sliding around and bad ideas. Yeah. We kind of have a rule now that mostly doesn't get violated. When you're using the sweep hogger, someone else needs to be at the door.

And no hulkas. Yeah, no hulkas. Yeah, I love Graham. And his name is Graham. I like I love singing him. I cut whenever they're empty. The perfect like so much musical or a movie or something like a farm kid turned like, you know, high school musical,

but instead of basketball, it was farming. His first love was farming. That was where he started. Yeah. What's the difference between a grain bin and a silo? Silo's are usually a lot taller and they might hold silage, which is like the whole corn plant. Yeah. And a grain bin typically is just the grain. Okay. Yeah. But a lot of people are buying those old little grain bins and then making a little bar or something in their backyard with them. Little rusty old ones. They look pretty cool.

Yeah. I saw somebody turn one into a pickleball court because it blocked the wind. Oh, yeah. That was the slurry store. So ever see those blue harvest doors? Yeah. They had great big blue ones that held hog manure.

It was all liquid mostly. And then they cleaned that up and they made that pickle ball. That's so cool. You showed me that. I didn't know it was hog manure. That's too bad. Well, you can clean it up. Yeah.

Clean up hog manure. Some people call hog manure honey. Really? Yeah. It's good stuff for growing corn. Anybody have any honorable mentions, Brad, anything that didn't make the list? Yeah, yeah. Good stuff for growing corn. Anybody have any honorable mentions? Brad, anything that didn't make the list?

Oh, plenty. Disc? Oh, disc ripper. Very good. Disc rippers are good. That was my disc ripper. Hey rake? Oh yeah.

Yeah. Manure spreader. Gotta have one. I like that one. Irrigation pivot. Boy, yeah. I hear a lot about those when I film for that one company. I heard that buzzword a lot. Yeah, I hear a lot about those when I film for that one company

Heard that buzzword a lot. Yeah, you TV What you tell you utility vehicle? Yeah TV. Okay a drone Tinder truck grain semi cattle semi feed mixer hay grinder What's left? I'll tell you corn head draper head, draper head, row head, flex head. Draper head's good. I like that. That's it. Anyway. What a list. I had, I had shed. I had shed too. Yeah. We love shed. You got anything? You're over missions. I don't know. You guys have grabbed them all. Is there something like a bucket where it's like, like the small thing that you're like,

I can't live without this thing in my car. On the farm? Yeah. Well, diesel fuel. Diesel fuel. Diesel fuel. I can't do a darn thing out there without diesel fuel. Do you have your own fuel tank out there?

Yeah. I thought so. You just fill up on site. Get a semi-load. That's nice. You realize if you found some, you ever thought about drilling? They have found oil in Iowa.

Really? But it's not, just a little bit, but they are not economically feasible. Dang, they didn't become billionaires overnight. Man, that'd be fun though. Got a lot of coal too, but it's all full of sulfur, so you can't use it. Coal fur. Coal fur.

We just call it coal fur. Tymon, you were just in San Diego last like 48 hours. Yeah. Holy cow. What'd you do? How was it? It was pretty uneventful. Honestly, it was just like...

So Steve. So disc-ripping. I just like flew there. I woke up at like... I went to bed at probably midnight to one the night before Okay, got up at three drove to the airport Yeah, are you an hour away from the airport about like I'd say 50 51 minutes, okay? But yeah, it was like I mean it was my own fault

I just didn't prep enough throughout the day. So I was just like last minute scrambling packing stuff But yeah drove there. What were you doing for San Diego? filming for this like this called the Center for Classical Theology or something just like a very sophisticated theological Event thing that was happening So yeah flew there filmed that night and then kind of just like slept ate left It wasn't anything too crazy, but it was fun. I just, I love seeing the ocean and palm trees.

We're like right on the edge of the coast. So that is cool. I really like San Diego. Yeah. It's nice. Did you, do you have to edit this stuff or are you sending it off to someone else? I'll edit it, so.

Add it to the backlog. Yeah. Add it to the log. Okay, so I can't wait so I forgot to mention this last week when you were recording the podcast, but I came away from Iowa and I had this revelation. And I'm like, oh, this could be a fun idea. Coop likes it so much, he's like,

you shouldn't even say this on the podcast. He's like, someone's gonna steal this and take this. The idea is maybe a YouTube channel, maybe a podcast, maybe both. It's called First Time Farmer. Yeah. And so the whole idea is maybe a YouTube channel, maybe a podcast, maybe both, it's called First Time Farmer. And so the whole idea is like, I don't know if I go and just dream with me. I quit everything I do.

Former stand-up comedian turned farmer. Can I turn a profit on farming in my first year? Something like that. Maybe there's some mission to it or whatever. But basically I would go and just work their farm, learn everything I can, but document everything I'm learning. Come back, all right, this week I learned

just how to start the combine or whatever. And this week we're hoping for rain. I don't even know why exactly. But it's coming back week after week. Here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm doing. And along the way, helping them with their fields. It's like maybe I have a little strip of my own that's like mine.

Like, all right, at the end of this whole eight month journey, I've planted here, I've fertilized here, and now I'm gonna harvest here, and we're gonna see if I can like make money. First time farming. Yeah, cause you're learning all this on the go, but you have somebody you're learning from who's obviously done it successfully for a long time.

And probably most importantly has the equipment. I mean, this would be impossible to do. Oh, it'd for a long time. And probably most importantly, has the equipment. I mean, this would be impossible to do. Oh, it'd be, you know. Yeah, that's that's probably well, that does need to like, I don't know, like play into it, factor in somehow of like, yeah, how, how in the world would somebody actually start farming these days? Because I have how expensive it really is. Like it almost has to be generational, doesn't it?

I mean, can you start farming? You just have to really believe there's some there's some like people that are retiring and don't have any kids and they'll they'll actually advertise for somebody to take over their farm and help them get into it but otherwise yeah it's pretty hard yeah yeah like has to be passed down and the land competition for land rent, even buy land is so tight. I mean, it's. Yeah, I like that. I would do I'd like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just all the funny things that would happen to you. All that you just film everything just like my first, you know, just even like

what my outfit looks like that very first day on the farm, you know, probably not a great farming outfit and just there's so much to learn. Yeah, I feel like farmers would watch it and maybe like also not farmers. Like that'd be the fun. Sure. Like I think I think there is a big farmers like YouTube niche, but like also it could go beyond that. We get we get Laura fall farms involved. I go and you know, trade some sort of, you know, favor for favor.

Yeah. Or farms. What were you gonna say? I don't remember. That's great. I like it. I'd watch it. Yeah. So I don't know. What do you think? What do you think people don't or misunderstand about farmers or is there something like common misconceptions? I don't know. Okay. There's not like, oh, they must think this or I don't know. maybe you're so inundated in just a small town, Iowa, that you don't recognize what other people are thinking about farmers. Something I've heard Rachel say is most people probably don't see farmers

as like entrepreneurs or like savvy, like businessmen. They don't like blue collar, just like hard workers, but it stops there. And I remember telling my students that I have a business and they're like, what's your business? You call her just like hard workers, but it stops there. And not like. I remember telling my students that I have a business and they're like, what's your business? I said, well, I'm a farmer. And they're like, that's not a business. You're like, well, okay.

I mean. My Ford Festiva says otherwise. So. Yeah, cause I'm trying to just like think of other, just like specific things I didn't have nothing to do about. I mean, you're always looking at the price of beans and corn. Yeah. Tell them about that. Well, I mean, it varies. It's kind of low right now.

Beans are under $10, which has been a long time since they've been under $10. Bushel and what's a 60 pounds. What's an average for like the last few years? We've been getting about 13, I suppose. But a lot of it was because of what Russia did to Ukraine. Okay. Ukraine has fantastic soils and they exported a lot of corn and sunflowers and beans, like Kansas sunflowers, right?

Yep. And then Russia, man, they're destroying it. I hate to think about what they're doing, that good black dirt, and they're mining it. And so they turn in some of the combines and everything into big mine sweepers and everything. Oh, really? Yeah. Geez. So when you take that much off the world market, then our prices went up. But the world responds to high prices in a hurry. Meaning? So part of Africa will grow more, South America will expand like crazy and they'll adapt. Gotcha.

I feel like another thing you're constantly doing is buying and selling entire farms or entire plots of land. There's always a- It seems like constantly, but that would be fun. That's a lot of money to constantly buying and selling land. That's a lot of money to constantly buying some land. But yeah, I mean, it's, we're talking about it a lot. I'll say that.

Maybe that's what it is. The last two years. Oh, it's farms for sale. Yeah, always talk to us. Yeah, you're always keeping your eyes open for. I think I just kind of assume like people have their land, they farm it, when they're done farming it, they give it to their son.

But Northeast Iowa. A lot of times. Everything's for sale. Well, farms got so big, so a lot of, there's fewer farmers and then everybody can take on a little more land because they already have the equipment. Yeah. They have like real estate agents for farms?

Like, yeah, this is a cozy, you know, cozy three acre here. Oh yeah. You know, it's charming. I said that to Tom yesterday. Got a lot of upside, you know. We were watching a farm auction yesterday online, and I said the best thing to be in not farming would be the auctioneer.

If they sell a $4 million farm and get 3% commission. Is that right? Wow. That's pretty good. $120,000. Can you do that? Some of them get 7%. You got to talk fast.

They advertise it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it's more expensive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it's more, yeah. Well, they're all competitive now to try to get the land to sell, you know. Oh, I see.

Yeah. That's pretty good business. Well, real estate in general. Sure. Pretty good. Yeah. Hmm. That does sound pretty nice.

One other thing I thought of, not necessarily farming specific, but when I was back there two weeks ago, everyone's, you know, Tommy, Steve, they're all giving me different clothes to wear hunting. And so we're looking at it and, you know, Steve's got three different pairs of jeans for me to look at.

And as I'm looking at them, Rachel goes, let me see those. And she's like, let me try them on, be kind of funny. These are my jeans. Rachel comes out and his farming jeans, I mean, they got oil stains on them, they're ripped or whatever. And they look amazing on Rachel.

I mean, it looks like women's jeans. They're the original 501 blues. Button fly? I'm gonna have to look at that. Oh yeah. They're old, those jeans are 25 years old. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they fit her great. Yeah. It was a they fit her great. Yeah. It was, it was a confusing five minutes for me, but it was like, are you guys both, you guys both just wear the same exact pair of jeans? And I think so. So we found out right then and there they were the exact same though now.

Oh yeah. Okay. Well these days, yeah, like the women's fit are more like loose jeans and stuff. They're really kind of looser These weren't these were not on her or like yeah like straight like ten years ago style jeans They must flex a lot because my body doesn't curve like that. I Was like how could I wear those jeans that I've told you it made no sense it was confusing I mean Rachel came out of the garage and I was like, I don't know how to feel. Why does she look like that?

Those are his jeans. Steve, put the jeans back on. I don't know what I feel right now. It was so funny. And so anyway, Rachel took the jeans. I think she wore them to school this week. Like she's like teaching in those jeans. Oh, that's great.

And you've made a good find with that denim shirt. She loves that. Oh yeah, Steve had a whole GMC envoy full of clothes and I found a lot of stuff for myself, a lot of unused car heart stuff and there found a denim shirt that Rachel loved. Yeah, you had so many clothes, Steve. That was wild.

Well. Did we talk about that last week on the podcast? Yeah, we did, I don't think so. I have a little bit of hoarder in me. I'm gonna take most of that to goodwill. The car he's talking about. I bought the car from my buddy because it was overflowing. It's full of clothes.

Yeah, it's going to Goodwill. Okay. And the vehicle is going to get sold. Okay. Yeah. Oh, I mean, Jake was like, I have a whole like what the conversation was like me telling Steve, I'm going to get some new hunting clothes. Oh, you don't need to do that.

I have an equinox full of them. And then there's a video of Jake just like panning through the equinox. I mean, it's like, you can't use the rear view mirror because this clothes are all the way up there. Some of it's my dad's stuff. I just haven't gotten rid of it yet, but I will. Have you seen the pictures of Isaac with his overalls on?

Oh, I would like to see that. I told Jake he can keep those. Isaac took a liking to them. He looked great in them. They were all trying to figure out about the patch. Yeah. Well, I took them to school because I wanted to wear them for homecoming

and then the whole rear end was ripped out of them and I had a kid in home patch them for me for 10 bucks. So maybe that's why it didn't look great. There's Isaac laying down the patch up. Yes, so that GMC Envoy, this is just, I think you should, I don't know how much you wanna talk about it, but I feel like this just shows the character of Steve Koop.

I mean, we've talked about you when you were on the cruise in Honduras and you gave every single person there a donation, basically. Sucker written across my forehead. No, not sucker, it's generosity. And then the Bass Pro timeshare, you know. Oh, that's gonna be a good deal. Sounds like it.

We're gonna have fun down there. I've been wanting to go there anyway. So do you have history giving into like pushy salesman though? Because it sounds like, well, we've been to we've did this. And I did this one time when went to Las Vegas and went to the two, two hours spiel. If you can do it in Vegas, I feel like we turned it down and we said, we're never doing that again. And then two weeks ago, I'm trying it again. Out of the two of you who has a harder time saying no. Oh me. Yeah. Yeah.

Angie could do it all day. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't want to waste her time, but she'll probably go along with me. She says, we're not, I don't, I have no interest in a timeshare though. You should say that she is, she's got kind of like, I mean, she's blonde. Like you say she's your German wife that doesn't speak English. So she just sits there the whole time. Don't even talk to her.

Yeah, maybe get her a little accent, like a few words and. Thank you, thank you. Danke. Anyway, this is just another, I've heard so many examples over the years. I mean, you've had hired hands, total your trucks or farm equipment and you just say, well,

don't do it again. Or I back to combine into a green cart and it was seventy five thousand dollars in about ten seconds. You did? Well, that's a different example. That was like two hours after Rachel came out. She was playing at UNI and she had two hours on a Saturday. She wrote with me said, you know, these combines should have backup cameras. And I go, I don't think we need that. Did they have an hour later? I backed it into the green car and smashed the whole back. We had insurance, but pretty good deductible.

Okay. So that's a good example of probably why you are more gracious. I don't even know where we were going with that. I'm just trying to set you up to talk about this. Oh, this on. I don't even know where we were going with that. I'm just trying to set you up to talk about this. Oh, this on. Well, I have a friend and he his car. I don't think it was going as bad as the mechanic told him.

Said it was rusting out enough that it was going to do one of these. What happened to Isaac's truck where the frame just falls. So his actually did do that. Yeah. Okay. So I had an old Subaru. the one I was talking about. I gave him my Subaru and then I bought him, bought his envoy from him for a thousand bucks. Okay.

Then he could use that thousand bucks to fix up the Subaru. And now I have the envoy. I was cleaning out my office. They thought I need room. So I stuck all that clothes in that homeboy, packed it in there. Yeah. And now I'm going gonna sell the envoy. That's the whole boring story.

No, that's great. Well, you left out the deeds. I mean, he's gonna have to fix it up, do all this stuff. And then he's like, he's gonna sell it for like half of what he bought it for. Like he's just constantly doing stuff like this. No, no, please. I don't want anybody to know any of this stuff.

Well, too late. All right. Sorry. My buddy Greg has a few questions for you if you don't mind. Oh, yeah. These are farming questions. How much is ground worth per acre in your county? Good ground is selling 15, $17,000. It depends on the CSR to CSR to. I would say on average, 12. All right. He asked, how did your family farm end up in Iowa? That's because of your grandpa. His uncle, his uncle. Yeah. My grandpa, his uncle was already in Iowa and then he came over. Yeah. Average corn and soybean yield. Oh, beans. First of all, I, before you say that, I wouldn't have any idea how

to answer this question. What's the unit of measurement? Are you saying a number? Are you saying, oh yeah, I mean, we're like on the scale. We're probably like an A plus. You know? We're orange is red. Like, is this a poundage? Is this a ratio? Is this a bushel?

First time farmer will learn this. Bushel per acre? Bushel per acre. He already knows the answer to. Yeah, bushel per acre. Okay. So corn probably went about 225. And let's guess, beans are probably 140.

You said 225, you mean 225, not 2.25. Beans, 65. Overshot it. We're thinking 140. We got really dry August, September. Oh, great. We had potential to go much higher, but we don't have irrigation.

That sets me up for my last question here, which is average rainfall. Oh gosh, I think it's 34 inches in the whole precipitation, the whole year, something like that. Oh, per year. What do you think, is that? Oh, we got about 20 this year. Is that around?

25, we were way down. How different is do you think? Is that? Oh, we got about 20 this year. Is that around? 25. We were way down. How different is Iowa and Kansas with all that stuff? Iowa's not as hot, right? And it's a lot deeper soils. So we got usually black dirt and then clay under it. And that'll that'll hold a lot of water. It'll hold 12 inches of water in the soil, probably. So is that why there's more crops in?

I mean, is there are there more crops in Iowa? And more water, like corn takes a lot of water. And so corn is the most valuable crop for us to grow. Okay. So that's why, I mean, you'd want to grow corn more. It takes a lot of water to grow corn. Does Kansas have black dirt? Some. Yeah. That's nice. Oh yeah. But I mean, some places is shallow soil and I think there's some rock under it. I mean, but I'm sure Kansas has some excellent soils too. Thank you.

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Good boy, beans. Good boy, Bobob. It's a non-farming question, but how excited are you to go to Bucky's later today? Oh, I can't wait. I love Bucky's What's on the shopping list? I'm gonna get at least ten jars of their beets I'm gonna get maybe five jars of the pickled asparagus The the barbecue sandwiches, oh yeah for sure Your chopped brisket. what do you go with?

I think chopped brisket today. I like the barbecue sauce too. I might get some Bucky's barbecue sauce. Oh really, okay. And then Rachel likes, she calls them beaver teeth, but they're. I think it, because you initially called them beaver teeth. She called them that first and I liked it.

But wait. Beaver nuggets. Beaver nuggets. Oh, the beaver nuggets. Oh, it's like a favorite, yeah. And I'm thinking about doing like your Uncle John. What's that? Parking at the fuel pumps.

Oh yeah, you're obsessed with this. Even though I'm not getting fuel. You can't believe that. Steve Triplett told me John always parks at the fuel pumps. Of course he does. Even if he's not coach. Yeah, I know my coach. That's what my coach does.

I don't know anyone that does that. It doesn't surprise me from John. It doesn't surprise me that Steve's given him a hard time. Yeah. You said if you live somewhere else, you'd get a part time job at Buc-E's. Oh, that'd be fun. You know, I don't know what what job I would do, though. I don't think I'd want to work in meat all the time.

All right. Don't work in me. No. You're saying that. What job at Buc-E's would you do? Lo loading the aisles up with jars of the fudge guy? Oh, no, no, no, no. Have you seen him making the tortillas? Oh, the machine. Have you seen that? I know. Oh, that's great. You stand there and watch it's a Rube Goldberg machine. Yeah. It's like a planner. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I feel like Buc-E's would be a fun place to work because no one there is like in a hurry. Like you don't go to Buc-E's for a quick stop in. Like everyone's willing to wait in line.

Pretty happy to be there. You know, I've only been to one Buc-E's, just the one down by Stratford. It's the best one. It's a good one. Yeah. And they're making they're having one in Bay up by Liberty. Oh, really? There's one coming to Legends. one. Yeah. And they're making, they're having one in Bay up by Liberty. Oh, really? There's one coming to Legends.

Legends. Yeah. Yeah. Is that that area or not? Liberty is not that area, but close enough. This whole area is North. You know, I'm up at home, North, South, East, West. So easy for me.

I am so confused in Kansas City. Really? Oh gosh. I don't know what it is. Big grid. It's big. It's a big, I don't know if you is. It's a big grid. It's big. It's big. I don't know if you know this. It's huge.

It's huge here. Sprawling. Yeah. Do you get an intimidated driving here? If Angie's navigating, I'm fine. I like to be in the driver, but I just, oh man, it's just sprawling. That's good. Trying to think of anything else. Worst weather you've ever had on the farm.

Like you ever had your crops blow away, tornado, frozen? You had a tornado? Tornado followed by a flood two weeks later. We had a mile wide tornado come through. We weren't home. We were in Pella, southern Iowa. Oh, good windows. Good accountants.

Yeah. And we got word that the houses were gone south of us. We were like, what do you mean gone? So the tornado went through. It was a mile wide. It took out like half of the town of Parkersburg. And it took, then it came over just north of New Hartford and took probably another 50 houses.

And it took, so after you harvest, there's corn stalks still there. And we just no-till. So you harvest, there's corn stalks still there. And we just no till so we plant right in the corn stalks. After that tornado went through it was bare ground. It took like the the route with it. Wow. It was a EF five. Wow. Geez. The monster. So does your insurance cover like acts of God like that? Uh, yeah, I have. I don't have very good crop insurance.

Why would you? Well, I just do the bare minimum just for like a catastrophic. So it's based on how many bushels I have at the end of the year. Gotcha. So yeah, it's not good. I don't plan on being a farmer, maybe, but I am a dad. Do you have any advice or

things you look back on? You're like, I'm glad I did this with my family or I it's that that's the more fun question. Or if you have any things of like, man, I wish I would have done this or anything that as you look back, you have more perspective on. I think anybody that says they don't have regrets is sure lying. Sure. I think every time I've seen you watch home videos, you have regrets. Oh, there's the sure. I feel like every time I've seen you watch home videos, you have regrets. Oh, there's the first one right there.

Like what? I should have kept my mouth shut during videoing, because then it's embarrassing. What the things I'm saying are so stupid and annoying, and everybody knows it. And they laugh, they think it's so funny, but when you're the one, yeah, when you're doing videos, like, yeah, just let them be and just, let's see.

There's an old home video, I'll let you think a little bit of, I think Tim, I don't know how old he was, six years old or whatever, but he had the door open in the summertime. And yeah, there's a home video of him just going, Tim, enter out, enter out. And they love saying that back at him.

Cause he's like, why did I care about that? That's not important. Why did I care about the air conditioning? You're training. No, you're training your son. I went through the uptight years. Being uptight about stuff like that is just stupid. Just, okay.

Angie always said, make big things big and little things big and she's right on on that. Sure. Just like, and I wish I would have, well, I wanted to farm. I didn't miss any of the kids' events, but I was gone a lot of evenings out in the fields. I'd just say back off a little bit on the workload because your kids are only little for a little while, very

short time. How old is your oldest? Seven. So in 11 years, you should be going to college. You know, just think of that. You know, and once they hit junior high, I know, wait to see how fast the time goes. But yeah, I would say don't be uptight and just spend as much time with them as you can. Really. I spent a lot of time with my kids. I really did. But boy, now that they're gone, I would have spent more time with them. What's like some of your favorite vacations or memories or anything like that?

You got any like- All the ones that Angie planned. They wanted me to plan some vacations and nobody liked them. Cause I spent way too much time in the Redwoods cause I liked the Redwoods. So hey, they're gonna like the Redwoods too. Is it true that on Rachel's birthday,

you took her to St. Louis for a Cardinals game? Yeah, they still, so each of them got a senior trip. Rachel wanted to go to Hawaii, and I'm like, I don't know if we're going to Hawaii. Then now she's gotten to Hawaii with you, but so I said, well, I'm gonna go to St. Louis. The Hawaii of the Midwest. So we did the arch, and Tim's the one

that got to take a friend along, which they laugh about. Yeah. So we went to- Tim got to go to a baseball game with a friend on Rachel's birthday. They didn't even remember that I took them to the, is it Worlds of Fun or is that in Kansas City? Oh, Six Flags.

Six Flags. They didn't remember that I took them to Six Flags. That's how much they didn't like the trip. Yeah, we went to Six Flags. And it was right about that time all that stuff was going on in Ferguson. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh gosh. We were driving.

So great time to move to like take, yeah, go through St. Louis. We had every one of the off ramps. You know what? People are talking about St. Louis a lot these days. Let's go see what the fuss is all about. And we went to the brewery. Well, they don't drink much. I liked the brewery myself.

They don't drink much. Were they in high school? Yeah. My kids were good in high school. That's great. Yeah. I bet they were. Yeah. Which is why you probably shouldn't take them to the brewery. Oh my gosh. That's great. Going to St. Louis. What about like, yeah. One time I took Tim down here to, we've gone to a lot of the big 12

basketball tournaments. Okay. And I said, let's get some of that good What about like, yeah. One time I took Tim down here to we've gone to a lot of the big 12 basketball tournaments and I said, let's get some of that good Kansas city barbecue. Yeah. And for some reason I saw this food truck by the stadium. Let's try that. That'll be off that'll be good. Tastes like diesel fuel. I mean, I say that, I say that figuratively, but I mean, this one

really tasted like diesel fuel. I don't know when they were cooking the meat, what the source of the heat was. Oh my gosh. That was disappointing. But I think Iowa State won. So that was all right. Was it? Yeah.

At the Sprint Center? Yeah. I might've gone. I mean, they won so many years. This would have been, he was maybe a senior in high school. It was quite a while ago, but they've won. They've done pretty well in the tournament. Yeah.

Iowa State. Yeah. All right. So instead of the bad vacations, one last one is on favorite vacation or trip. Oh gosh. With the family. Man, we had a lot of good vacations. I'm trying to think of what, I always liked going to Red Rock,

it's just a lake in Iowa, and we'd be there for four or five days and a lot of boating and camping stuff. And yeah, yeah, I'm not, we went like Orlando and that, that's okay. Yeah. But amusement parks aren't all that big of a deal. Slower time. Yeah. Boating, we always liked a lot of boating. Yeah. Tim always liked to go to games. So if we were in Chicago, we'd go to Cubs game, wherever we were, we'd try to hit a game. Yeah. You knew always liked to go to games. So if we were in Chicago, we'd go to Cubs game, wherever we were, we'd try to hit a game. Yeah, you knew pretty quick that Tommy was gonna be the

farmer and Tim was gonna not be farmer. Yeah. Yeah. And that sounds fine. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. All right. Good stuff.

Any, any final words to the ghosties? Last chance. Yeah. What do you think about all this stuff? Oh, I think this is incredible. Isn't it? That thing at Branson was awesome. Yeah. All of your events about all this? Oh, I think this is incredible. And that thing at Branson was awesome. Yeah. All of your events.

And when you meet the ghosties, they're great people. They're fun to talk to. And I said, Jake, I said, you want to have a ghosty thing at the farm pond sometime. And if an Iowa meet up in Iowa, yeah. He's ready to host. Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be awesome.

My kids, I mean, Hattie especially, but now Bo too, because we went to the Field of Dreams, just have the greatest impression of Iowa. They just want to, cause you know, Hattie going to the wedding, she had so much fun. Like we got to come back sometime soon. So yeah. Well, you can come up pheasant hunting too.

That's right. Yeah. You got any pheasant hunting? We do. Yeah, a lot of pheasants around. You got some good stories? I've gone probably two times a year for 50 years. And I think I've gotten one pheasant with a gun and one I got last winter with my car. And I ate it. You're not supposed to. That's not

legal. Whatever. But I had it in a crock pot with some cream of rice and stuff. And it was very good. But I thought, you know, the coyote doesn't get this one. I get this one. And the worst thing was a hen. But I hit it with my car. How would you know? Put it in the Subaru, went to church, came home, went to church, cleaned the pheasant.

Do you know why we shoot the roosters instead of the hens, obviously? Right. Yeah. Because they are the ones making more babies. Yeah. And you only need about one rooster for 10 hens. Yeah. I've always heard like shooting a hen is like shooting 50 roosters. Yeah. But the rooster spent too much time fighting instead of fertilizing. Instead of fertilizing. So you wanna have the ratio like 10 to one.

You've only shot a few pheasants ever and James shot like a million. I carry my gun, I'm too slow, and I just see him fly up, maybe point a little bit, and then watch the dog run around. So fun. My dog's no good either. She's a great dog, but she's good for like 10 minutes.

And then she'll be right at your heels. And you're walking, you feel your heel hit the bottom of her head, and they're just about tripping you. And like, get back. You just won't. It's a great hunting dog. Yeah. You need to tell her, is it a girl?

Yeah, Lila. Good girl. She smells so bad right now. Good girl, Lila. Good girl. She smells so bad right now. Good girl, Lila. Smells so bad. Stinks to high heaven. She goes running with me and she found something dead and I cannot get that off her.

It smells horrible. Got some sort of scum on her, you said. All right, we'll end it there. I don't know. Sorry, I boringed it up for the whole. Oh, he was gonna love it. Stop, yeah. He's gonna love it.'ll end it there. I don't know. I'm sorry I've borne it up for the whole. Oh, stop. Yeah. I love it.

Boring it up. No, I love hearing perspectives and different. I mean, it's so fun to just know why Rachel is the way she is. It's obviously because of you. So no, it's. She got all my bad qualities and all of my good qualities. It's fun to add to the just the scope of people behind the podcast. We've had a rapper, we've had a golfer, now we got a farmer, you know, so just keep adding to it.

That's right. So thanks for being on. Well, thank you. That was fun. Yeah. Let's do farms. Let Steve know every everything you loved about this episode because he's the man. I got some more ideas about the first time farmer. All right. Off the pod. Can't wait. Yeah. Awesome. All right. We good here, Jake? You want to do comments of the week, or you want to just end it here? I know we're on a little bit of a time crunch. Oh, yeah.

Let's just do our, let's do everyone do a win of the week real quick. Oh, I forgot about that. Thank you, Brad. Tyman, what's your win of the week? I was just about to find what I had written down. Anyone else have one in the meantime? My win of the week is I'm making up my own narrative here. All right.

It's not officially true, but my one of the week is that Ben Rector and Forrest Frank are ghosties because they both have songs that are talking about being a rich man. And we talked about being filthy rich and things that matter one time. So I bet that's why they both wrote songs about being rich. Yeah.

So Ben Rector's got a really great new song out. It's really sweet. And for us, Frank did one like a couple of months ago. And we talked about it right before all that. So, and if you scroll down, I think in the credits of the song, it says like, it says Jacob, right? We're in there writers, not like, right.

I mean, listen, who knows guys, there's not officially anything, but Ben or for us, if you want to comment and just confirm it, youtube.com, letrunner's podcast. That'd be great. I think my one of the week has got to just be the pheasant hunt still. I mean, just by far the most fulfilling,

laugh, joy-filled weekend I've had a long time. Oh, it was so good. Just laughed so much. You know it's a great trip when you're like thinking about it a lot, like multiple days later. Yes. You know what I mean?

I can't stop. I know. I know, dude. It was awesome. It was great. I thought I might find something more interesting in my notes, but the one thing I think of is this is like a fun, more of like a tidbit thing. But on the flight home from San Diego, when they're asking you what drinks you want,

I was like, I'll get a Dr. Pepper. And can you put like as little ice as you're allowed to in it? And then he came back and it was like two little ice cubes It's like that's not way more to fill it up. They do good for you man. You know what next time ask for the can. Oh Some airlines have started giving the can some airlines give it which makes me think they'll all give it if you Will I'm not one to ask but if they say would, would you like the can? I say, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Sounds awesome. What airline were you on?

Southwest. Yeah, I think American gives the can. Interesting. I think so. Ameri- American. Southwest, it's not in there. Not in there.

American. That's how you remember it, mnemonic device. Steve, you got a win of the week? I'm just glad I can run again. I never, I thought I was just gonna be walking for the, yeah, and I'm running, I'm just thrilled about it. Yeah, you're doing two, three miles every day. Yeah, and it doesn't hurt.

No problems. Can't figure it out. I'm waiting for something to drop here. It's the beats. The beats. Drop the beat drop. The beats. Yeah, fish oil, see, like you're, you're like accidentally doing all these things are very healthy for you.

Yeah, but I do so many unhealthy things. I love sugar. He does love M&Ms and I put more ketchup on than fries on fries. That's great. All right. Hey, thanks, Steve. As always, great to see you, man. You too. It's fun to have you. Glad we all got in the room together. Yeah, good time. All right. Hey, thanks, Steve. As always, great to see you, man. You too.

Fun to have you guys. Glad we all got in the room together. Yeah. Good time. Great. All right. We'll see you guys on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving out there to everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. That's right. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Go cyclones. Clone them. Go cyclones. Go two strings. This is Swathers. Target. Go Swathers. Swathem. This is a swathers and target go swathers swatham grkc 20 at robeck.com We're not wearing it, but somebody out there. Imagine it. Oh robeck joggers. Good job. Thank you Good good jugs We love you guys. We'll see you next week Every Monday morning we're taking Grandma to the spa, yeah