Episode 11: Equipment Prices, Organic Fertilizer, and Thoughts on Christmas
Transcript
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of an Earful podcast about farming and country life. Zach, what’s going on today?
Speaker 2: (00:09)
Well, it’s cold as all get out out. It is December 19th and we got us a skiff of snow yesterday and it was pretty crappy weather.
Speaker 1: (00:20)
Yeah. Um, I had to go up to Columbus yesterday and it was, uh, kind of blustery going up the freeway. Not gonna lie. The snow kinda blown sideways.
Speaker 2: (00:32)
Yeah. I drove all over God’s creation yesterday and seemed like about every, uh, 30 minutes or so there was white out conditions, and then it cleared up and then it was white out conditions and cleared up. It was a mess.
Speaker 1: (00:44)
Yeah. I wouldn’t We wanna be one of those guys that’s still got, uh, corn standing right now.
Speaker 2: (00:50)
No, I don’t think there’s very many of those guys actually driving around. Uh, which you didn’t really have an excuse this year. We were dry. The ground conditions were very favorable all fall Really. So, yeah. Not a lot of late crops left standing like I’ve seen in years past, so.
Speaker 1: (01:10)
Yeah, I know. Um, which is a good thing. It makes everybody enjoy Christmas a little bit
Speaker 2: (01:14)
More. Oh yeah. Nobody wants to have corn out and corn or beans. I’ve seen beans out late like that too, around here. But, uh, yeah, nobody wants to have a crop standing here, especially as we get to the first of the year. Nobody wants to take that 23 crop in 24.
Speaker 1: (01:29)
No, no. It’s cheap storage though, if it’ll stand.
Speaker 2: (01:31)
Yeah. Theoretically.
Speaker 1: (01:33)
I don’t know the basis level’s, the way they are here at the ethanol plant. That’s, that’s a mess. They said 20 under for February. Usually February is when they start getting a little bit more aggressive, wanting some stuff, but when you got, what, 20 or 2.6 million in piles, you gotta burn through first.
Speaker 2: (01:51)
Yeah. They definitely set themselves up strangely this year. Um, obviously just to be more effective in the fall to hold, you know, to take more capacity. And from what I understand, at least in our area, there wasn’t any crazy wait times this fall. It wasn’t anything like that. But I do think over the last several years, guys have gotten a little bit more wise to how, uh, to better manage taking a crop out of a field, whether that be grain bins or just planting better hybrids to do take ’em off earlier or what, what, whatever it may have been. You definitely don’t see the lines through the middle of town to get to the elevator anymore. It’s definitely a more effective,
Speaker 1: (02:28)
Yeah. I don’t know what, um, what changed. I know Cargill did a big upgrade over there. Um, it’s better than it was, I suppose. I don’t
Speaker 2: (02:37)
Truck corn. I don’t know, man. I ain’t been down there since the renovation, but I understand they, their dumping capacities better. Uh, so I think that helps. And, uh, and then I don’t know if they took those guys to school and said, Hey, let’s, uh, let’s maybe not cram everybody on the lot at the same time.
Speaker 1: (02:55)
Right. Yeah. It’s, uh, it was a mess down there for a while. I mean, you couldn’t get a load of corn for every four hours and we’re five miles
Speaker 2: (03:03)
Away. Oh man. Yeah. The last year that I actually hauled heavy, we, you know, I don’t remember why I just didn’t have help or whatever the situation was. I got stuck in a truck there for about a month and, um, yeah. I mean, if you were, if you were in and out in about two hours, you were doing really good.
Speaker 1: (03:21)
Yeah. Take a book with you for
Speaker 2: (03:23)
Sure. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. That was, uh, it’s interesting you get like that, but farmers are for the most part a patient bunch, so it didn’t too, you know, too crazy, uh, down there most of the time, uh, the worst thing you’re gonna see is an old farmer napping across the steering wheel, and that’s about it.
Speaker 1: (03:42)
As long as they have a cup of coffee and they get out and talk to their buddy that’s in line in front of ’em and, you
Speaker 2: (03:47)
Know. Yeah. Good way to make friends. Especially if you’re a, you know, a social, social creature. Right,
Speaker 1: (03:52)
Right. So, no, um, everybody’s glad to be done with Harvest. Our Harvest is gonna look a little bit different next year, which is exciting. Got a, uh, combine bought in the auction there last week.
Speaker 2: (04:05)
Yeah. Yeah. They, I think really excited about it. They got a combine. We got one on tracks and I think that’s really cool.
Speaker 1: (04:13)
And that was almost an accident. Um, the one we wanted was on tires, but, uh, it went too high. This one sold after it, it went kind of where we wanted it to go. And cha-ching, it’s gonna be in our barn.
Speaker 2: (04:27)
Yeah. And it’s, you know, that was wild that that sale now I don’t know how it is across the rest of the country. You know, we have a skewed view of how things are because we only see, you know, with binders onto our general vicinity, our area, our state, whatever it may be. But I mean, you watch Ag Pro unload all this equipment in that sale had
Speaker 1: (04:52)
A huge
Speaker 2: (04:52)
Loss at a huge loss.
Speaker 1: (04:54)
I don’t
Speaker 2: (04:54)
Understand that. What are we doing? What do we do? I don’t, I can’t quite wrap my brain around how all that works. Um, obviously we’re not in the equipment business. We’re on the wrong end of the equipment business of anything. We’re on the one that’s writing the check, not cashing the check, but interesting to see, you know, they’re out here auctioning off machines and, you know, late model machines.
Speaker 1: (05:18)
Most of ’em were 20, 20 twos.
Speaker 2: (05:19)
Exactly. That’s, and
Speaker 1: (05:21)
Really nothing later or earlier than a 2020. What
Speaker 2: (05:24)
Are we doing? That’s what’s killing me. It’s like, I get it. We have an auction. Every whip stitch, you know, a dealership will throw an auction on, Hey, we’ve got a big used inventory, it’s not moving. Let’s get an auction going. Let’s get it outta here. I get that. I get that for sure. But they’re out here with these late model machines, just, just absolutely getting ripped up on ’em.
Speaker 1: (05:46)
And they’ve got another one planned for what, April. I mean, it’s, they’re planned auctions. It’s not like they’re like, oh crap, we need to move some inventory. It’s, oh yeah, we’ll do it again in a couple months.
Speaker 2: (05:56)
Yeah. And I, I, I’ve had a lot of thoughts in my brain, like, why are they doing this and how are they making this work? I mean, they’ve got good salespeople. Why are we not letting the salespeople do the job of what the auction’s doing?
Speaker 1: (06:08)
I wonder if they’re compensating their salespeople for what’s in the auction, or if those people are just taking a bath and not having anything to sell.
Speaker 2: (06:16)
Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, that’s a question for, you know, an Ag Pro representative, but I do feel for the salesman, especially if they’re not getting anything from this. ’cause I mean we’re, ’cause the salespeople have to be making decent money off of selling late model, you know, two, three, 4-year-old machines. Yeah. I mean, that’s a huge, I mean, that’s what you see around here. Yes, there’s new machines, but for the most part, growers our size are, maybe it’s hair smaller, hair bigger, whatever. I mean, that’s kinda machines you’re running. I mean, you’re running two, three, 4-year-old machines and they’re just killing
Speaker 1: (06:47)
It. Yeah. I don’t, uh, I don’t understand, uh, their methodology behind it, but, you know, as a farmer it works out pretty good for us. I’ve usually been kind of gun shy at trying to buy things with engines at auctions.
Speaker 2: (07:02)
Oh
Speaker 1: (07:02)
Yeah. ’cause you never know what you’re gonna get into. Or a complex machine, you know, if I wanna buy a, a piece of tillage equipment or a bush hog or something that’s relatively simple. Mm-Hmm. , that’s one thing. We’ve bought semis at auctions, whatever. But you get into a combine, there’s a lot of parts. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong. But when you’ve got a combine that, you know, they’re just dumping, it’s got 500 separator hours on it, yes, there could be some things wrong with it, but the chances of having a lot of major things wrong with it. Oh,
Speaker 2: (07:29)
For sure. At that age a lot better. Yeah. And I don’t know. It, it is, it is wild. And that is something you gotta watch these auctions. All these auctions have been crazy to me. I mean, from what I’ve seen, you know, we just recently had a, there was a, you know, whatever they call this, the con equipment, consignment,
Speaker 1: (07:47)
It’s, its equipment exchange by the WIN group. Shout out to our friends there.
Speaker 2: (07:50)
Oh yeah. They’re good guys, honestly. But now watching all that go, there’s no deals to be had. I mean, it used to be, Hey, you get up there on the auction, I’m hunting, you know, whatever it may be. Yep. I’m doing that to, you know, to find a value or what have you. Right. But there’s really wasn’t any values to be had. I didn’t see it.
Speaker 1: (08:11)
That auction went very well for the seller.
Speaker 2: (08:14)
Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s, that’s part of it too. I don’t mind to see that sale go very good as it’s just farmers on the other end of it.
Speaker 1: (08:22)
Right. But, you know, AG Pro Sale, I did not think went that spectacular. I mean, as far as the machines went for what I think they should have went for not what the dealership’s been charging. Oh. So I don’t think, uh, I don’t know. I guess this equipment market, the used equipment market needs to adjust a little bit because these guys must be in good cash positions and are buying new stuff.
Speaker 2: (08:50)
I mean Yeah, that’s
Speaker 1: (08:51)
Possible. I, I don’t know. There’s gonna have to be some kind of, um, what do I wanna say? Adjustment to where either your new guys are keeping their machines longer, or the used guys are turning things faster because there’s going to be a gap there. You know, we had our last combine for 10 years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (09:11)
If everybody did that, you got 10 years worth of combines that are just kind of sitting out there. If you’ve got the guys that trade every year for every two years Mm-Hmm. . And then you’ve got the guys that keep ’em 10 years, what are you doing with these things that are, you know, 3, 4, 5 years old. Yeah. So there’s gotta be some kind of adjustment in how this stuff is taken care of, because it doesn’t make any sense to have, you know, a 2022 machine going to auction and going for a price that is actually reasonable rather than, you know, uh, outland just like they were asking at the dealership before it went on the block.
Speaker 2: (09:45)
Right. And so then at that point, if, if, you know, the majority of the machines in that sale went at a good price, how many guys are gonna hold back on maybe going and signing papers to the dealership and hold off to the next auction?
Speaker 1: (09:58)
I just Ag press’s a huge dealer, you know, 80, they’re probably over a hundred locations now. I know they had 80 some a while back. Um, John Deere has to take John Deere and Company has to take notice of what’s going on.
Speaker 2: (10:12)
Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think their whole model is, you know, wanting to have, you know, as few a dealers as possible. They are then able to have a better control of the market. So Yeah. I mean they, I, I don’t think like these auctions that are going on and there’s values on combines or whatever it may be, that they don’t have a hand in it somehow.
Speaker 1: (10:34)
Right. Um, interesting. I just got back from vacation and was sitting by the pool with a guy and I had a John Deere shirt on. God forbid I wear a farming shirt out in public. But, uh, I do it so I can talk to people. My wife hates it because I talk to people. But Guy sat down beside me and he was a deer mechanic from Arkansas. And, uh, he was working on cotton pickers and uh, rice combines most of the time. But, uh, he works for a dealership. Said they had I think 40 locations, you know, I think back three years ago, five years ago, I don’t know when it happened. Um, when we had JD Equipment, you know, they had five or six locations and we thought they were huge.
Speaker 2: (11:20)
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And now you realize that was just a, almost like a peon. I mean, it was a small, small set of locations as to what we’re dealing with. Now we’re dealing with an entire conglomerate.
Speaker 1: (11:29)
Right. So if agriculture’s going that way, I know construction’s kind of that way anyways. Well,
Speaker 2: (11:36)
Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, just take a step back and look at everything. I mean, everything you do, I mean, the very few companies own a lot of the brands and the things that we use every single day. And agriculture’s getting to be no exception. I mean, you look at these huge mergers that are going on out there when you’re talking about seed chemistry. And same applies when you start talking about agriculture. I mean, what’s, you know, how much, how many companies does agco own?
Speaker 1: (12:07)
Uh, most of them. Right?
Speaker 2: (12:09)
I mean, but I mean, that is kind of what it is. You have these major huge companies that are just buying up all these smaller companies as it becomes available or whatever the situation may be. But I mean, agriculture’s just gonna monopolize like every single other consumer product in the world.
Speaker 1: (12:29)
Yeah. It’s, it’s weird. Um, but when we talk about dealerships, I mean, if I, if construction’s pretty much that way, agriculture’s going that way. ’cause I know Red is going the same way. Oh yeah. We got Bain Wilker that’s close to us and they’re eating up everybody. Yep. Um, do we see car dealerships go that way?
Speaker 2: (12:50)
Yeah. I see. I mean, you see that now. I mean, if I can drive 50 miles and see the same name over hanging over
Speaker 1: (12:59)
Four dealership, you’re, I didn’t think about that. But you’re right.
Speaker 2: (13:01)
Now, maybe that’s in the grand scheme of things, that’s not huge. But I mean, to me it is. If I can go to the same car dealership, you know, 50 to a hundred miles away in the same state, has the same name hanging over the, you know,
Speaker 1: (13:16)
Volume wise, that’s intense. Because you think about how many people buy combines versus how many people buy cars and pickup trucks. Mm-Hmm. . Uh, that’s a big number difference. Those guys are moving volume rather than, you know, maybe dollars wise pretty close, but
Speaker 2: (13:30)
They’re . Well, man, you look at the price of these vehicles now, I guess you’re right. You, uh, what, what you can go out and buy what now? If you want to buy a top of the line, three quarter ton pickup truck or whatever, you’re over,
Speaker 1: (13:42)
You gotta be right at a hundred.
Speaker 2: (13:43)
You’re six figure. What do you do? What do we do? It’s ridiculous. I mean, comparatively to, you know, even talking about 20 years ago, it’s
Speaker 1: (13:52)
A tax write off. Well,
Speaker 2: (13:53)
It’s a hell of a tax write off.
Speaker 1: (13:55)
Mind you, we don’t have any, oh, we have one 2009, three quarter ton pickup truck and the rest of ’em are half tons.
Speaker 2: (14:02)
Yeah, but you live within your means. I mean, it is what it is. It’s just like anything else. You don’t, what do we have the use of a hundred thousand dollars high country pickup truck around here? We don’t just to destroy it. We
Speaker 1: (14:14)
Use to go buy things at Deere or Home Depot or whatever. We’re not pulling anhydrous tanks. Yeah. We’re not pulling hay wagons. We don’t live in our pickup trucks very often. Like we don’t travel very far. Yeah. As far as a farm. So it’s not as big a deal to us as some of these guys that got farms 50 miles away or pulling anhydrous tanks all spring and fall or, you know, moving hay off all or all summer. Um, so it just depends on what you’re trying to do. It’s kind of like semis. Our semis aren’t top of the line, but we’re also not hauling a hundred miles from home.
Speaker 2: (14:46)
Yeah. And it’s just all within work, you know, all working within your means or whatever. And that, you know, that you just brought up the semi thing and I’d just seen on machinery, Pete, where there was a farm auction and they sold a, a pre emission pre-electronic log day cab Peterbilt, very nice looking truck. You throw me a number, throw me a crazy number. What are you It went,
Speaker 1: (15:12)
I don’t even know what a good semi go for. Um, between 75 and 80,
Speaker 2: (15:19)
It went for $350,000.
Speaker 1: (15:23)
What?
Speaker 2: (15:24)
I don’t know why it’s all over the place though. It’s within the last few days.
Speaker 1: (15:28)
350,000.
Speaker 2: (15:30)
Don’t know why. I mean, clearly you could see like pictures from the auction and things like, it was, it was just a specific grower auction I believe. I don’t think it was like an equipment exchange Right. Situation. It wasn’t a consignment sale. This was, uh, you know, whether it was a grower either getting rid of excess equipment or he was retiring. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember specifically saying $350,000 on a day cab semi like that now. And it’s all about what it’s worth to the right person. And this is obviously the case, right? I mean, this is just somebody’s big tax write off. I don’t know if another grower brought that or if it was a trucking company or if it was a, you know, whatever. But, but I mean, it is like that. I mean, you go out like these pre emission, pre emission, you know, pre-electronic things that have gained so much value. Yeah. And you look at all these, I mean like that semi, I mean just it that is, it’s, it’s amazing to look at what’s, you know, 20-year-old trucks or almost 20-year-old trucks that are going for the same price as what you could buy a 2-year-old truck for.
Speaker 1: (16:37)
What’s a brand new, I mean, I guess a brand new day cab strip down semi cost.
Speaker 2: (16:43)
I bet it’s not $350,000. No,
Speaker 1: (16:46)
I was thinking you could buy ’em for 150. I have no idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (16:49)
I’m pretty sure there’s a grower up the road here that we know who purchased a brand new Kenworth ride outta the factory. I don’t know how dressed up it was or anything like that, but I do believe it was under two. Yeah. And that’s excessive for around here. It’s just funny. I mean, you go down there to Cargill and you know, whether you’re driving a $350,000 semi or you’re driving a $15,000 semi, they are still paying you the same for a bushel of
Speaker 1: (17:14)
Corn. Right. Right.
Speaker 2: (17:16)
Um, so that kind of stuff boggles my mind now. You know, one thing you have, you own a trucking company, you’re gonna be, you know, running that thing all day, night, whatever it may be. Then you have more justification to give ’em purchase a, you know, higher end truck. But here on, you know, farming, we need ’em, we have to, unfortunately we live in the, the world we live in now as farmers, we almost have to have a semi to operate. And, uh, it’s just, it’s just crazy. It’s just priorities to everybody is different. You know, we’re enough to not have to travel a great deal to get to an elevator and, uh, so we don’t have to have the utmost quality of semi, but then you just go down there and just take a look at all the dollars sitting there, all the brand new generation trailers and all this and that and the other. It’s wild man. It really is.
Speaker 1: (18:06)
If you think about that 350, let’s say that we can get four 50 out of our corn right now. Say we’re blessed, we can get four 50 out of our corn right now. The $350,000 divided by four 50, you have to haul 77 loads to the elevator to pay for that semi. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 2: (18:30)
Hey, it’s all, it’s all what you’re into.
Speaker 1: (18:31)
It’s all in perspective too. I mean, we just bought a combine for that.
Speaker 2: (18:36)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (18:37)
But I don’t know. It’s all in perspective. If you’re using the semi every day, you’re probably a better investment than my combine. ’cause I’m gonna use that combine for hopefully less than two months and be done with it. That’s
Speaker 2: (18:46)
What’s so wild, isn’t it? All these dollars get thrown around all this equipment that sits
Speaker 1: (18:51)
Yes.
Speaker 2: (18:52)
Most of the year.
Speaker 1: (18:53)
But we had a hundred thousand dollars combine. We’ve ran for 10 years. Yep. And it sat for what, four days this fall total? I mean, like, yes, we had to work on it more than that, but, you know, we had days that we couldn’t get parts and stuff. It maybe sat for four days and that is just completely unacceptable. Yeah. And we, we couldn’t live with that. So now we’re buying something new, like it just, oh yeah. It’s just such a fast-paced world that we live in. Oh yeah. In agriculture. I mean, we’ve all got high-speed planters. You know, we got 60 or 90 foot high-speed planters that we’re running eight 10 mile an hour through the field, guys, come on. That’s insane.
Speaker 2: (19:33)
Yeah. Then you got these guys that are taking those planters on an eight to 10 miles an hour that never shut ’em down or run 24 hour shifts. Right. So those guys are planting hellacious acres and a 24 hour span. But, um, I mean, I guess, I mean we, I mean we put speed tube on our planer in order to speed it up a little bit in the spring. But we also, and we’ve changed a lot of things just to work with the weather we’ve gotten. I mean we’ve, we, we have changed a lot of things even just on our, in our operation just to account for a planning window that seems to get narrower and narrower every year.
Speaker 1: (20:09)
And I think, I think that brings up another good point. Uh, we’ve talked about strip till in the past. That was a complete fundamental change that we did this fall as we went to fall strip till. Yeah. To try to heat up that zone in the spring and try to get it dried out. Like we’re not tillage fans. We’re not good at tillage by any means. No. Um, probably because we don’t have any good tillage equipment. We had a 12 foot chisel plow and a 20 foot field cultivator that’s, you know, older than Zach and I put together. Probably, probably. Um, we don’t like doing tillage because of what it does to the, to the microbes in the soil, to the, to the macro arthropods. We don’t want to tear up, you know, earthworms for no reason.
Speaker 2: (20:51)
We’re throwing out some vocabulary today.
Speaker 1: (20:53)
Hey, you gotta hit the key words, man. Uh, and that’s Dr. Elaine’s favorite word is macro arthropods. Um, I
Speaker 2: (20:58)
Don’t even think I could, I don’t even think I could spell
Speaker 1: (21:00)
It. Neither can I, I have trouble spelling my name sometimes. That’s true. Um, but no, when we, we look at tillage, we’re just trying to heat up that zone so we can get, you know, maybe an extra day in the field. Mm-Hmm. . Uh, because the springs are tight. Oh man. We’re plant, plant with a 40 foot planter. You know, we’re not like some of these guys that got big ones, but we’re not covering the acres that some of these guys are either. That’s, I don’t know. You’re, your planting and harvest windows seem to be, well, I guess harvest doesn’t, harvest seems to be getting wider past two years.
Speaker 2: (21:31)
Yeah, I know. And you get these, you get all this wet, you know, all these precipitation events in the spring. I mean, that’s just how it always is, right? I mean, you’re gonna have, you know, you’re gonna get spring rains, you know, you’re gonna be, you know, you gotta go when it, when you can. But these harvest the past couple years have been so dry. I’ve heard, you know, a lot of combine fires. I mean, you’re talking that dry weather that that’s a concern.
Speaker 1: (21:59)
Eventually it’s gonna get us in trouble because if we don’t keep getting rain this winter, you go in next spring and you’re as dry as what you were last fall, you get a little bit of dry weather in June, your, your crops don’t gonna have anything to drink.
Speaker 2: (22:15)
No. And I, you know, I, a good representation of that is we just recently had some, uh, well work done up here rerouting some water lines and things of that nature. But anyways, he dug up a trench, you know, four foot deep and uh, you go, you know, we’ve been getting a little bit of precipitation here and there a little bit, you know, a little bit slick on top. Maybe it gets a little too wet to run in the field to do field operations. But you go look in that four foot hole and you realize the moisture’s only a few inches deep.
Speaker 1: (22:44)
It’s powder. Yeah. There’s, we need, we need some pretty serious wintertime moisture.
Speaker 2: (22:48)
And the trouble is it’s, you know, as opposed to years past where we start getting that moisture in November and we’re, you know, we’re getting a lot of rain. We’re getting a lot of snow, ice, freeze thaws. That seems to shift more towards the spring now where we’re getting all that, we’re catching all that precipitation that we, you know, would’ve liked to have gotten in that, you know, end of the year timeframe. We’re catching that in April. So it’s choking out our planning window big time. And folks are having to adapt to that. And you’re seeing so many guys get in the field earlier, just nervous on this, on this wet weather that may come in the spring. Yeah. And I think that paid off for some guys this year. I think it didn’t pay off for others this year, just all about where you’re at. But it’s pretty wild. I mean, if you, you probably shouldn’t be out planting if you’re having to wear coveralls.
Speaker 1: (23:44)
Right.
Speaker 2: (23:44)
But this year
Speaker 1: (23:45)
It
Speaker 2: (23:46)
Worked. It worked. I i, it it may never work again. But I mean, was the emergence awesome? No,
Speaker 1: (23:55)
And that’s what I hate. I hate growing a crop. You know, you get 60 say 60 crops in your lifetime. Mm-Hmm. . You get out there, you plant in a hurry and you get a bad stand. I feel like crap all summer because I know that that corn does not have its full potential.
Speaker 2: (24:13)
Yeah. ’cause I mean, that’s half the battle. Right. It’s getting a nice even emergence. Yeah. And if you don’t capture that, yeah. I mean that’s something that can haunt you through the rest of the year.
Speaker 1: (24:24)
Because if you get that even emergence, you know, you did what you could have done. Yep. Period. End of story. Mother nature’s gonna dictate most of the rest of it. You can give it a little bit of nutrition in the, you know, during the year. Uh, keep the weeds out of it, try to protect it from fungus. But I mean, if you don’t get even emergence, you’re just dead in the water.
Speaker 2: (24:46)
Yeah. And you know, like I said, we were saying a lot of these guys went out in that real, or you know, late March timeframe, first to April timeframe and started planting corn. It’s cold. It was so cold. I mean, we were dipping down into the thirties. I mean, it was cold. Yeah. For planting corn. I mean, when you’re out here shooting for that, you know, whatever, 50,
Speaker 1: (25:09)
50
Speaker 2: (25:09)
Degrees, you know, that 50 degree, you know, soil temps and you get that preached to you everywhere you go. And then you’re out here wearing your car hearts, you know, dragging a fuel cultivator and then chasing it outta the field, the planter. That’s, it’s a little fundamentally, I mean, maybe a little questionable, but it shook out this year.
Speaker 1: (25:32)
But if you listen to the hefty brothers, those, I mean obviously we live in southern Ohio. We don’t live in Michigan or the Dakotas or somewhere like that. Those guys say they plant with frost in the ground.
Speaker 2: (25:44)
Ooh. That would make
Speaker 1: (25:45)
Me, as the frost is coming out of the ground they are planting because they, they don’t have a long enough season. They
Speaker 2: (25:51)
Don’t, I mean, that’s true. Yeah. I mean they, they definitely have a shorter window than what we do here. And you know, it just trickles on down. But it just seems that our planning window is getting narrower and we’re having to maybe get more comfortable with going out there and, you know, maybe giving it a shot with some cooler temps and, you know, going at it that way. ’cause I, I think we probably should have planted more in that early timeframe when we decided to hold off because of temps. We probably could have pushed on.
Speaker 1: (26:22)
But cool soil for a conventional guy is cold soil for a no-till guy. Yeah. Uh, and we were no-till this year. Uh, it worked okay. I mean, our yields were good, but we just have to do something different to set ourselves up for success in the spring. And that’s where we went to strip-till.
Speaker 2: (26:41)
Yeah. Yeah. And I gotta, you know, talked to, I talked to somebody last week there about some strip-till, and they’re a strict no-till guy talking about fields that haven’t had a, a plow sat down in ’em in, you know, 30 something years, uh, not even to work the ends. And, but, but across the board, I mean, I I, I’m seeing a little bit more interest in maybe a minimum till, you know, style of planting and farming. And I think that’s interesting and I’m glad to see that. I mean, I think that, you know, heading towards that minimum till, uh, not disturbing that ground so much. I mean that, that, that’s good to see other people, you know, wanting to pick up some of those fundamentals and really give that a shot. ’cause I mean, you’re out here, I mean, how much equipment does a person have to have to be a hundred percent conventional?
Speaker 1: (27:31)
Well, I was gonna say that brings us back to our very first conversation in this podcast is, okay, are they doing it because, you know, they’re dealing with somebody like Indigo or Cargill that’s trying to give them money for carbon. Are they doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do and the best agronomic thing? Or are they doing it ’cause they can’t afford the horsepower to pull the freaking plow?
Speaker 2: (27:50)
Can’t afford the horsepower, maybe don’t have the help. I mean, you have to have bodies, right? You have to have bodies to farm conventionally, and you’re out there cutting beans in the, uh, fall, maybe spread fertilizer, spread medo, or, I mean, there’s a lot of things happening in the fall and then you add two more bodies in there just to keep some chisel plows around
Speaker 1: (28:09)
’em. Yeah. It’s, um, there’s guys that do it, but I think, I honestly think that the dollars wrapped up in horsepower and steel to run those plows has influenced guys’ decisions to say, Hey, maybe we will run, you know, just a field cultivator in the spring, or we’ll run, you know, a turbo tail in the spring, something. Yeah. You know, like that.
Speaker 2: (28:29)
Yeah. You’re seeing a, at least in this area, I mean, we’re still, we still have a lot of conventional guys in this area. They’re, and they’re good farmers. I mean, that’s not to take away from them. I, I think you still do a respon relatively responsible job in a conventional sense,
Speaker 1: (28:45)
Right? There’s, there’s two different kinds of conventional guys. There’s the guys that actually pay attention and, you know, pick up for their washouts and don’t try to make them worse and, you know, are actually taking care of things. And then there’s guys that just go out there and just rail it and Oh yeah, they’ve got more erosion than you can shake a stick
Speaker 2: (29:03)
At. And I’ve seen definitely, definitely in the last five years, I’ve seen a lot of guys back off from that a hundred percent conventional chisel plow in the fall field, cold co field co or anhydrous bar, the fuel VA spring. Uh, seeing a lot of that being backed down more towards at least a vertical tillage pass. Uh, now that could be for any range of reasons, but we’re definitely seeing a lot more of that around here, where guys are pushing more towards that, uh, vertical tillage pass in the fall. Um, or maybe nothing in the fall. Maybe we run that VT tool in the spring to help prep that seed for Right.
Speaker 1: (29:41)
But
Speaker 2: (29:43)
It’s definitely, things are definitely changing. But that’s one thing you can count on. Things we’re always changing.
Speaker 1: (29:48)
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, no, I think, I think guys are moving towards the , I hate to say biological way of farming, because if we look back, everything we’re doing, we are so far away from what nature’s actually doing. Oh. Um, that it’s gonna be hard to ever get back. Um, and there, there are things that we promote. There are things that we do, I mean, here at Easy Custom Mag, uh, because there are things that, you know, increase yields, increase your profits and help you be sustainable as a farmer. But if we look at the big picture, how do we bring profits back to the farm? Maybe , this is something I struggle with and I’ve done numbers on it a hundred times, trying to figure out, you know, how do I feel comfortable doing this? But, you know, can you make just as much money raising 130 bushel corn with hardly any inputs as you can, 220 bushel corn with everything you had to dump on it?
Speaker 2: (30:56)
Exactly. I think, you know, it’s always a push for yield, push for yield, push for yield. Well, what if we trim some of that off the back end where we don’t require all that yield just to break
Speaker 1: (31:10)
Even? And I hate to look at it that way. I’m a high yield guy. I love to raise high yield corn, but at what point does this get ridiculous? The biggest thing is fixed cost. You know, guys paying $400 for land rent. Yeah. Well, there went your 120 bushel corn right there.
Speaker 2: (31:26)
Oh yeah, that’s true. And that’s, that’s a part of it too. I mean, you look at the, okay, you know, average land rent around here, it’s definitely spiked. Um, but what you gonna do about that? Yeah. I mean, as long as guys are willing to keep paying that it’s not, that’s that portion of it’s not gonna change. But yeah, I mean, to look at that idea is you’re running this as a business and let, let, let’s move this profit line around, well, maybe that doesn’t always mean that you have to raise 250 bushel coal.
Speaker 1: (31:54)
Right. Um, I think it was Dowdy that talked about it first. He said, you know, we complain about the price of corn, but we wanna keep raising more. You know, you look at opec, these oil boys, oil prices drop, they shut off the wells. They get together and say, I’m gonna shut off the wells. Yeah. Then they, you know, demand stays the same. Price goes up, okay, we’ll turn ’em back on, make a little bit of money. Uh, if we as farmers got together and said, well, we’re all gonna plant 10% less corn. Well, as soon as your neighbor did that, you’d plant your 10% plus his.
Speaker 2: (32:29)
Oh,
Speaker 1: (32:29)
Yeah. I mean the, it, there’s too many people in the agricultural industry to try and regulate price in that way. Mm-Hmm. . Absolutely. Um, I mean, if we all, you know, we all stood up against CF and Nutrien and, you know, all these big commercial fertilizer guys and said, we’re not putting it on, we’re just gonna regulate the price of what we’re doing. Yeah. And screw you guys,
Speaker 2: (32:54)
Oh, I’d love to see something like that. But I don’t think you get enough guys on the same page to accomplish that task as much as that, you know, as an idealistic way of thinking, I guess. But, but yeah, I mean it’s, we could all, I mean, this, this is true in many, many situations, is that you get enough people together that can, you can make something.
Speaker 1: (33:14)
Right. So how do we, I guess, how do we get closer to nature, um, rather than putting on 260, 300 pounds of nitrogen to try to raise 220, 240 bushel corn, you know, how do we get that number to 150, 170 pounds of nitrogen to raise 220 bushel corn, uh, fertilizer’s here, I’m pretty sure to stay, um, herbicides probably here to stay. How do we keep that plant healthier to where we don’t have to use fungicides? I mean, we’re in the fungicide business, but how do we, how do we get to a point where we can keep that plant healthier through nutrition and not have to use fungicides?
Speaker 2: (33:57)
Right. And I,
Speaker 1: (33:58)
You know, how do we, how do we, I think through biology, which we are learning more about every day, uh, with our products from BW Fusion, we’ve learned so much about how biology’s working in the soil, in the plant, um, and actually the processes that it affects. How can we utilize what we’ve learned there, help our soil and use other products that aren’t as, you know, aren’t as hard on the, the actual ecosystem. Um, you know, maybe you don’t move, maybe you don’t save any dollars, but you move dollars around that, you know, preserves your farm for the long term rather than just solving the problems in the short term.
Speaker 2: (34:43)
Yeah, exactly. And it, it’s all about your perspective on things. And, and everybody’s got a different perspective. Some people have skewed perspectives and some people live in the past. Some folks do what they do out of, well, my daddy did it this way and his daddy did it this way. Well, that’s okay. I mean, at the end of the day, whatever works for you and whatever works for your operation.
Speaker 1: (35:08)
Right.
Speaker 2: (35:09)
And I don’t, and I don’t wanna think about farmers. It’s hard to get ’em to change.
Speaker 1: (35:15)
Oh, it is extremely hard to get ’em to change.
Speaker 2: (35:18)
You can’t even get ’em to plant a different bag of corn. You think pulling a fundamental piece out, like, uh, hey, let’s don’t spread fertilizer, or let’s don’t spray that feed. Right. You know. Oh, you’ll never convince them.
Speaker 1: (35:31)
Right. And, you know, I don’t want people to make fundamental changes right away, but I wanna, I wanna prove it here first. I wanna prove it on our farm and then spread it to people that I think we can do this differently. I think, I don’t know, I guess I’m a conspiracy theorist. I think big pharma and big Ag have lied to us.
Speaker 2: (35:54)
Well, I think everybody’s lying to us, to be honest with you, according to what day of the week it is, I suppose. But
Speaker 1: (36:01)
I just think we can, I think we can change things and fight back in our own way, make, make the farm more sustainable without, you know, using all the things that are bad. We spend that money and put things on that are good. You know, we put carbon sources on, we put biology on, we put nutrition on. We’re feeding that plant through the leaves. You know, if we can use foliar feeds, we use pop-up fertilizers. We’re putting biology on, you know, foliar and on the soil. Uh, we’re protecting the plant that way. I think, I think we can raise the same yields by doing things that are good, rather than doing things that are harmful. I just can’t tell you how to do that yet. So until then working, we’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing and just playing with the other things until we can figure it out.
Speaker 2: (36:50)
Yeah. And I think it’s good to just be open, be open-minded. I mean, just it, you should be that way about everything. But I mean, and that’s one thing farmers are bad about. Right. Being open-minded. But you need to be open-minded because it’s possible one of these days, it isn’t that you’re gonna want to change, but somebody’s gonna make you change. And that might be Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: (37:13)
And if you don’t see that coming, you’re blind.
Speaker 2: (37:16)
Yeah. So, I mean, you got the cover crop haters and you know, this, that, and the other. Well, hey, you know, it’s, it’s like cover crops is one big example of it. ’cause you got the guys that are a hundred percent in on it. You’ve got guys that are, you know, half in, half out. But it’s a good, it’s a good thing to familiarize yourself with, even if that’s not something you wanna incorporate on your entire operation. It’s something to familiarize yourself with because it’s possible. I mean, you look at what’s happening as you go north of here Yes. That, that Lake Gary watershed. Correct. Where, you know, these guys, some of these guys aren’t able to spread manure. They’re, you know, they’re making these guys put covers in it. You need to, you need to at least be aware of what’s going on. And I feel like a lot of guys are, but the clock’s a ticking. And one of these days, somebody’s gonna crack down on us and change the ways fundamentally that we’re farming. And if you’re not half ready for that, that first couple years, you’re gonna have a hell of a time.
Speaker 1: (38:19)
And I’m completely against having somebody tell us how to farm. Oh
Speaker 2: (38:22)
Lord. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (38:23)
Unless it’s with their dollars. Yeah. If they wanna, if you tell me how to farm, because you’re gonna pay me a different way, that’s fine. But if you write a piece of legislation and tell me we’re, we’re gonna farm different, that’s what makes me mad.
Speaker 2: (38:32)
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And, you know, unfortunately that’s a, that’s a possibility. But you know, hey, you know, let’s hope that doesn’t happen in the next 20 years. But it might,
Speaker 1: (38:43)
If we look at these car, look at carbon markets, you know, you got Amazon, US Bank, all these big companies paying for carbon credits. Okay. That is voting with their dollars. They are telling farmers, I will pay you money to change what you’re doing. Yep. Okay. I’m cool with that. Um, but for somebody to come in and say, Hey, you can’t spray Roundup, because I think it’s bad. That’s wrong. Like if I, I just don’t think that’s the way things need to change. Right. If a if consumers wanna come in here and say, Hey, I’m not gonna buy your product because it’s sprayed with Roundup. Okay, I will change. But to just tell me no and still want me to raise things for the same price, you’re wrong.
Speaker 2: (39:29)
Yeah. And let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But it’s something to be aware of. And I think that’s why we all kind of have to at least open our minds up to, you know, minimum tillage cover crops. Biology is not, not something that everybody, it’s not something you jump into with both feet. It’s something you never should do that. But something to be mindful of and to play with, you know, cover crops, something that’s working for us. I think the biology piece of it’s working for us. Um, you know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve not spread any dry fertilizer on this farm in a lot of years. Right. In place of that we’ve used chicken manure,
Speaker 1: (40:14)
You know, starters foliar.
Speaker 2: (40:15)
Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of pieces you can be playing with. And just to sit here and think that we can, we could pile up the ground. We worker her down two or three times in the spring plant that crop, we raised 200 bush of corn. That way of farming probably isn’t gonna be the way we’re farming in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: (40:35)
No. So this, this whole conversation brings up a point that I’ve been, you know, I like to read books about this kind of stuff and Okay. We always talk about we need to put replacement. You know, you take off a hundred pounds of something, put a hundred pounds back on. Okay, that’s fine. I understand. I understand the theory. I understand the concept. It makes sense to me. Where’d that a hundred pounds go
Speaker 2: (41:02)
Into the ether?
Speaker 1: (41:04)
It, it didn’t, it had to have been, you know, it was either turn, if it was corn, it was either turned into ethanol, it went through an animal. Okay. If it goes into ethanol, that’s only pulling out the starch. Correct. Mm-Hmm. , is that
Speaker 2: (41:20)
Right? Uh, you, you could, you could tell me.
Speaker 1: (41:22)
Yeah. They pull out the starch ’cause then they feed the, they feed the animals, the protein and the dvg. So, so all that protein still goes through an animal. That nutrition should still be going into manure.
Speaker 2: (41:35)
Yep.
Speaker 1: (41:38)
That’s the reason we’re having problems with manure in these watersheds, is because we’re concentrating all of these nutrients that came, you know, through, you know, the thousands of acres down here that don’t have manure on Yep.
Speaker 1: (41:55)
All that nutrition went into an animal and threw a human and then back onto 500. You know, we’re, we’re moving nutrition around. We’re not spreading it back out. So those nutrients didn’t go anywhere. They’re just not handled properly. They’re handled as a waste item. You’ve got, you’ve got manure from animals, you’ve got sludge from humans. Um, all these byproducts of, um, different industries, uh, food waste. How can we reutilize those and, you know, put a good for the soil fertilizer on and forget about using this stuff that, you know, costs so much money and won’t break down. How do we reutilize these waste products and actually put them back into circulation, I guess you’d say.
Speaker 2: (42:47)
Right. And that’s just leaning it towards a more organic concept of growing. And I, I, I think that’s a, i i, you bring up a lot of good points in that. And I mean, that’s the best kind of fertility you’re going to get Yeah. Is to bring on an organic form of fertility, whereas we’re using all these synthetic products and it’s eventually it’s gonna come bite us. Right.
Speaker 1: (43:12)
And it’s the same way, you know, I hate it when I hear guys say, yeah, the trash coming outta the back of my combine. No, no. There’s a lot of fertility in the back end. What’s coming outta the back end of your combine? And that’s where we use meltdown on everything and guys think we’re crazy, but we’re recycling the nutrition out of that stubble so much faster. You know, and we’re using biology to do it.
Speaker 2: (43:36)
Yep. Because you’re, I mean, you’re leaving a lot of dollars in nutrition. Just lay behind your machine. Um, you know, you see some of these guys that are, you know, a true no-till they’re not doing anything with those stocks. I mean, they’re gonna let ’em lay there and break down right on top. That that’s great. You know? That’s fine. That’s great. You know, at least they’re leaving ’em there. Um, but, but there’s definitely, there’s definitely action steps we can take to try to try to upcycle those nutrients that we got laying in the field.
Speaker 1: (44:03)
Use ’em faster because they’re the most available thing to your plant. Right. They, those nutrients have already been through the plant. They’re in the form that they need to be in. They’re in the inorganic form the way they need to be and they can be used.
Speaker 2: (44:17)
Yep. So,
Speaker 1: (44:18)
Um,
Speaker 2: (44:18)
Yeah. I, I do think that piece is funny. You know, guys give us that look, you start talking biology, you start talking. Yeah. Everybody just has this, um, has the binders on. Right. So I mean, they’re, they’re, they, they’re, they hear biology, ah, snake oil, snake oil, snake oil, snake oil. I’m not putting that on. Well, it’s not that we’re trying, you know, us or anybody else is trying to sell you, you know, something that they don’t think’s gonna work. Uh, you know, meltdowns one of those products that seen firsthand, it helps us. We’ve used it on wheat stubble. It blackens out them, blackens out your straw starts to break it down. Makes it more brittle. I mean, I can tell you right now, we have a better, we have better luck in our wheat stubble than we have had in years past. ’cause we’re getting it to break down. And same thing, I mean, goes for your corn stalks too. I mean, you’ve gotta get them suckers down on the ground, get something on ’em, get that stuff broke down. I mean, you have, that is your dollars in nutrients laying on the ground.
Speaker 1: (45:17)
Right.
Speaker 2: (45:18)
Use ’em. Right.
Speaker 1: (45:19)
I mean,
Speaker 2: (45:19)
Don’t just, don’t just call nutrient and say, Hey, come spread out. Come out here and spread fertilizer and just be done with it. Look at what you got.
Speaker 1: (45:28)
Right. And I think that’s what’s given us the opportunity to not use so much dry fertilizer here on our farm. Mm-Hmm. , you know. Yes. Like I said, we probably spend the same dollars that you do, but we’re using less pounds. Uh, they’re more available and they’re less likely to run off our farm. Yes. What we’re paying for, we’re using. Yep. You know, when we’re, when you’re spreading stuff on top and you get a rain and it all washes off, it’s gone. When you put something on foliar and it might just be a couple pounds of something, but it gets soaked into that leaf, it’s there. Yep.
Speaker 2: (46:06)
It’s there a spec.
Speaker 1: (46:07)
Um, same way with sidedress and nitrogen. Uh, I get the guys that are putting ammonia on up front. That’s, you know, that’s not my favorite thing to do, but ammonia is a total, or anhydrous is a totally different form of nitrogen. It’s gonna stay there. For the most part, that’s not as big a deal. Um, I don’t like it for the biology standpoint, but it’s not as big a deal as the guys that are blowing on, you know, 80 gallons of UAN with a sprayer in their burndown pass.
Speaker 2: (46:36)
Yeah. That’s a
Speaker 1: (46:39)
Or the urea piece. Hmm. Urea.
Speaker 2: (46:41)
Yeah. I just can’t,
Speaker 1: (46:42)
Especially around here where you can’t water it in.
Speaker 2: (46:45)
I can be convinced Yuri is the move. But I will say, I mean, we have a grower that we’ve done a lot of work for over the years. He’s actually a, a, uh, sales agent for us now, but he, uh, he didn’t have the option to side dress. Couldn’t, you know, it didn’t economically work for him to purchase a side dress bar or how whatever the, the decision making process was. But he put urea on this year and whether it was a timely rain or whatever it may have been, he raised the best corn he’s ever raised.
Speaker 1: (47:17)
I think it was the biology,
Speaker 2: (47:18)
It probably was the biology piece.
Speaker 1: (47:20)
But, uh, , no. I mean, some things worked for different people, but I just think,
Speaker 2: (47:26)
And it’s all situational too. I mean, you could have been one, one a good one inch rain away from being screwed or a no rain situation where that dry pelletized urea just lays there
Speaker 1: (47:38)
And think about how many corn fields we’ve sprayed with fungicide gone through there. And that corn has just been speckled up because it got so dry and that ure all volatilized and just burnt crap outta
Speaker 2: (47:51)
There. Oh yeah. I hate seeing that. But that is, that is a good way for us. We get a good idea of what’s going on out there in the farming industry is we’re able to go out across a lot of, a lot of different fields that, you know, guys are with a lot of fundamentally different operations. Yeah. So it’s really interesting to see how all that, it kind of pans out. You know, we have, we spray for as many conventional guys as we do o till guys, guys that are big on foliar guys that never put a foliar on in their life. It is interesting to see, uh, you know, how that all shakes out in what performs one year versus the next.
Speaker 1: (48:29)
Yeah. I don’t know. Do you think this’s a Sunday morning? It sounds like we’re preaching
Speaker 2: (48:34)
. Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on around here.
Speaker 1: (48:35)
I don’t know what happened. We get from equipment prices to, I don’t know who we’re composting tomatoes, but
Speaker 2: (48:41)
Hey, you know what? It’s almost Christmas. What you thinking about Christmas? Excited about
Speaker 1: (48:44)
Christmas? Oh, it was excited about Christmas. I am every other year.
Speaker 2: (48:48)
Yeah. It’s not mine. It’s, I try to be excited. I have kids and stuff, so, you know, that part of it’s fun to give them them a few things, but, um, yeah, it’s, it’s gets harder to plead man. You get, you know, nowadays everybody wants expensive stuff for Christmas. My god, I was satisfied when I was 10 years old. You give me a piece of, of a toy of uh, you know, like a 1 64 scale piece of farm equipment, man, I’m cooking. You got me. I’m good shape.
Speaker 1: (49:17)
Well, I thought you said you wanted to buy cheap toys.
Speaker 2: (49:20)
Yeah. Those aren’t cheap anymore. , but, uh, used to be the thing, right? Yeah. Um, I had to a lot of memories for vibe there the other day. I was watching, uh, flipping through whatever, I don’t remember what it was like on Instagram reels or something. And, uh, this little kid, he probably eight years old, had a big setup on a table of a bunch of 1 64 stuff. Barns and harvesters and planters and the whole nine yards. And I’m like, just revitalized all that in my mind. I’m like, I used to do that, man. That was the best. ’cause you, uh, never lost money. It was always good conditions to go out and plant or harvest. You never had any breakdowns. It was great.
Speaker 1: (49:58)
Uh, I don’t know. I had a few row units fall off my planter. That carpet was kind of tough.
Speaker 2: (50:03)
I did have a few, I did. I remember you losing a few tires over the years and things like that. But, uh,
Speaker 1: (50:09)
But you didn’t have to wait on the repair company to come do it. You just pop that sucker Right on.
Speaker 2: (50:13)
I’m telling you, I’m telling you that that was, uh, that was always fun as a kid, man. That really was. But yeah, no, this, this, all this stuff nowadays is, uh, all the things that kids like now. I mean, it’s not that there’s, you know, not kids out there that obviously like toys. I mean, all my kids like toys except for the older ones or whatnot. But everybody wants, you know, computer or wants an iPad or a new phone or all that like that. I’m like, uh, it’s hard to, it, it’s hard to convince me that this, this time of year is literally just to go out and spend a bunch of money. Right. Which, that’s what everybody wants you to do.
Speaker 1: (50:47)
Well, you should just like, that’s what I told my wife and her family and my family and everybody, you know, if we just get together and have a meal, it’s not like any of us are, you know, starving or need something or can’t afford, you know, our basic necessities. No, we’re not rich. But you, you don’t have to worry about going to the grocery store. Yeah. You know, why don’t we just get together and eat and just enjoy each other’s company rather than go out, spend all this money on useless things that nobody really wants. You have to load up in the car and take home. I mean, let’s just enjoy each other and Yeah. Actually enjoy the season rather than making it stressful and expensive.
Speaker 2: (51:27)
Oh, it’s terrible. It’s terrible now, but it’s too easy now, right? You got Amazon. I mean, the Amazon Boys, whew. Them boys is busy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s, uh, my wife been singing a little song. She made up about how it’s gonna be an Amazon Christmas or whatever, , because, uh, everything we’ve gotten for the kids, man, it’s came in a, uh, came in an Amazon box this year. We don’t like to go out and fight the crowds and fight the people. We got enough going on. We don’t want to do that. You know, so, um, kind of utilizing that online shopping piece. Of course. Um, it’s been unreal, man. Every day I get home there’s Amazon boxes outside and my, uh, just, just another arm and a leg laying right there.
Speaker 1: (52:05)
You know, I did finally convince my wife, we shouldn’t exchange presents. We should just go on a trip. And that, that has been nice.
Speaker 2: (52:11)
And that’s kind of the where we went this year with it too. We’re, we’re gonna actually leaving tomorrow to go to Tennessee. We’re taking a little pre-Christmas vacation, but it’s a little bit of a Christmas present for everybody. So we, we did about half as many gifts as what we would typically do on any other year. And we’re just gonna do this vacation. And, ’cause you know, I, I sat at, I sat all the kids down there, oh, I don’t know, probably month, month and a half ago. And I said, tell me three things you got for Christmas last year. You think any of those kids could tell me anything?
Speaker 1: (52:43)
Holy cow. That is like now
Speaker 2: (52:45)
They remember next level
Speaker 1: (52:46)
Parenting.
Speaker 2: (52:47)
Now I remember last year, uh, my niece, uh, my niece, my wife went to Florida and uh, you know, that was a big thing. She remembered that obviously, but spent hundreds of dollars on just useless stuff. I mean, I couldn’t tell you what I got ’em last year. Right. If they don’t remember, what am I doing that for?
Speaker 1: (53:05)
Holy crap. I can’t remember either.
Speaker 2: (53:07)
Why fill your house full of stuff that you don’t remember? I mean, I, one thing I get excited about every year is I get some socks. It is socks and underwear season for all us men out there. Yes. Congratulations. Um, I, I’m need, I’m in need, man. My, my socks, you can wear ’em to church every week ’cause they’re holy . But, uh, it is crazy man. It, it is just, it’s a consumer world. We, we buy all this useless, almost, almost slip there, all this useless stuff every year. It’s like, why do we do this to ourselves? Enjoy each other’s company, enjoy, you know, just being together and getting to spend that time with, you know, family, extended family or whatever. I mean, it, I I just hate this Hallmark holiday. You gotta spend money to show you love somebody. That’s not how it used to be. No, it’s not how it used to be at all. Used to be, you know, Christmas time, maybe your kids gotta maybe one or two nice little gifts and that was Christmas. And now if you’re living, if you’re not trudging through your living room knee deep in presents, it’s not even Christmas anymore to these kids. Right. That’s all they know.
Speaker 1: (54:13)
And Christmas lists.
Speaker 2: (54:14)
Ugh.
Speaker 1: (54:15)
It’s like supposed to be a shopping list for gifts. That drives me nuts.
Speaker 2: (54:20)
Oh that drives me nuts too. It really is now
Speaker 1: (54:22)
Like we do, I mean we do the gift boxes for the needy kids at church and stuff and like I’m totally cool with that. Oh dude, let’s do that. Give those kids something that they can’t, you know, I had a kid ask for crayons and a coloring book.
Speaker 2: (54:35)
Yeah. Give, I mean yeah, by all means get that kid some crowns and color.
Speaker 1: (54:39)
Like they’re totally gonna appreciate that way more than getting, you know, one of your kids’ cell phone. Like the $3 that was spent there is gonna be appreciated more just because it means they don’t have anything to start
Speaker 2: (54:52)
With. Exactly. And I, so there’s a lot of people in the world that have needs and basic needs that don’t get fulfilled. And that’s the kind of stuff we forget about this time of year. And you got a kid pouting on Christmas morning ’cause they didn’t get an iPhone 14. Well I don’t really like that. I hate that.
Speaker 1: (55:08)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (55:09)
We don’t, we don’t appreciate things in the world likely used to. Things are too available. We’re all too spoiled or we all can open our phone right now and get on Amazon and you’re gonna have that box sitting on your porch in the next day or two. We are instantaneous gratification. We like to spend money on each other. I think we could take a step back, appreciate what we got. Appreciate that we’re even here. Right. Because at any day you don’t know we can walk out of this barn right now, get ran over by a truck. Yep. We need to learn to appreciate one another. We need to learn to appreciate life for what it is. And I think we can get past all this stuff this this time of year. It drives me nuts with all this. It really does. It really drives me crazy. We should
Speaker 1: (55:53)
Be the number one podcast.
Speaker 2: (55:55)
Yeah. Well I’m telling you, they need to put us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: (55:58)
Yeah. We just went from, uh, we went from equipment to, you know, changing the world through organic fertilizers and now we’re philosoph, we’re Phil, I don’t know, we’re philosophers on uh,
Speaker 2: (56:10)
I didn’t know how to change that to a verb. I don’t
Speaker 1: (56:13)
Philosophy should be taken care
Speaker 2: (56:16)
Of. Philoso. It sounds like you’re sitting here trying to explain Meltdown too.
Speaker 1: (56:23)
So. Well we’ve been on this thing for an hour, so we probably better, I was like
Speaker 2: (56:28)
36 minutes.
Speaker 1: (56:29)
We probably better go do something productive for the
Speaker 2: (56:31)
Day. Yeah. I got a lot of stuff to try to knock out before I leave on vacation. Woo. And uh, heaven’s got a lot of stuff to catch up on ’cause he just got back from vacation. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: (56:41)
Get a little thin this time of year. You know, holidays, people got Christmas, you know, you got the holidays different times of the different days of the week and Yeah. We all go on vacation this time of year.
Speaker 2: (56:51)
Yeah. It’s all, every, every time of year is busy in its own sense. And this is no exception. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (56:57)
Everything’s still hanging together by bailing wire because we just got done with Harvest. It’s just a whole, it’s a whole conglomeration of mess.
Speaker 2: (57:05)
Absolutely. Well, it’s, uh, been a real one And Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: (57:10)
Yeah. Merry Christmas guys. We’ll, uh, we’ll see you next time out in the field.