Episode 12: Shop Work, Things to Consider Heading Into 2024

 

Transcript

 

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of an Earful podcast about farming and country life. Zach, what’s going on around here today?

Speaker 2: (00:08)
Oh, there’s a lot of things going on. There always is. We’re hauling some corn, working in the shop, getting some seed shipped in, and, uh, just kind of going through the motions.

Speaker 1: (00:22)
It’s kind of weird. We get outta the field. We’re less busy, but we’re all spread out, so it seems like we’re more busy.

Speaker 2: (00:28)
Yeah. It, it’s, it just kinda, I don’t know. I don’t really have a good way to describe it. Yeah, it’s just a different kind of busy, uh, you know, you have, you know, a certain amount of things to get ready for springtime, you know, you have to haul some corn. It’s just, yeah, it’s just busy in its own way.

Speaker 1: (00:47)
You get through the holidays, everybody’s got their own thing going on. You know, some people have holidays on the holiday, some of ’em have it after. Um, there’s always travel involved. It just seems like everything around here is so screwed up for about two or three weeks and then we get back in the cycle of things, get back in the shop. But, uh, hope everybody out there had a Merry Christmas and are ready for 2024 to get started.

Speaker 2: (01:11)
Yeah. It’s, uh, the holidays are all screwy. It’s always has been, always will be. But uh, yeah, we’re in that, that limbo week between, uh, Christmas and New Year’s where nobody even knows what day it is. So, I’m not even sure what day it is today.

Speaker 1: (01:28)
Uh, we’re looking at a Thursday today. Uh, alright. It’s so strange though. Um, Christmas being on a Monday Mm-Hmm. like, there’s no break. It’s not, it just was weird because it still felt like the weekend, it felt like Christmas should have been Sunday and then you come back to work on Monday, but wow, it’s Tuesday. It just didn’t make any sense.

Speaker 2: (01:49)
Yeah. Then you got a lot of folks at tech off, uh, you know, Tuesday, you know, the day following Christmas. I mean, there’s still a lot of people traveling home and, you know, maybe even celebrating, you know, with extended family, things like that. Uh, you know, we all didn’t do that, but it’s just weird. You call around and you’re trying to do your normal business the day after Christmas and you’re realize like nobody’s at work.

Speaker 1: (02:14)
Yeah. Uh, we’re all lucky though, basically longest anybody has to travel around here 45 minutes to an hour. So it’s not like anybody’s taking any plane rides or anything to go see family.

Speaker 2: (02:27)
Oh yeah. I couldn’t imagine that. I had that thought there yesterday. You know, you see all these cars traveling down the interstate, a lot of out-of-state tags this time of year, um, going one way or the other. And I think to myself, I would hate to, you know, interstate travel to have to go celebrate a holiday ’cause it’s already, uh, it’s already not my favorite thing to do. I couldn’t imagine traveling. Yeah.

Speaker 1: (02:50)
Well I was always lucky growing up when my grandparents were around. Um, the whole family lived within a mile of each other, so

Speaker 2: (02:57)
Yeah, Evan just had to walk to Christmas.

Speaker 1: (02:59)
Yeah, we pretty well just walked to Christmas and if it was snowing we’d just take the tractor. So

Speaker 2: (03:03)
Yeah. Uphill both ways, .

Speaker 1: (03:07)
So, no, it’s a good time of year to be in the, be in the shop. Of course. It’s been a lot warmer than it’s supposed to be.

Speaker 2: (03:13)
Yeah. Um, kind of unseasonably warm I guess. I don’t know. It’s pretty nice. I mean, I’ll take it.

Speaker 1: (03:21)
Yeah. And it’s been raining the past few days, but you went to cut that we’re cutting a driveway in, goes to our loading dock and once you got down a couple inches, that ground was dry and pretty easy to work with. I mean, it had a little bit of moisture in it, but it wasn’t soup very far down, so I was surprised to see that.

Speaker 2: (03:43)
Yeah. It’s, uh, we, we need the precipitation as much as you hate the bad weather, you know, we so dry, uh, for most of this year and it’s just unbelievable, you know, sitting here in December, you cut, you know, six inches off the top of the ground and you’re down to dry dirt and, uh, yeah. That’s not, not usual I guess.

Speaker 1: (04:10)
No, no. Well, we’re usually either frozen to where you can’t cut it off or so wet, you can’t walk across it. So I guess this is something just a little bit different, but I think it should, what you, uh, dug down yesterday should make a pretty nice driveway getting these beans

Speaker 2: (04:25)
Tomorrow. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s, um, let’s just say word to the wise here is that, uh, cutting a driveway in, in December’s typically not the best idea right after our rain event, but we were kind of up against the wall, but I think we’re going to get her done. But, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s strange. But, uh, yeah, I hope we actually kind of keep getting some rain here and get soaked in and need some freezing, freezing and thawing action to help break this ground up a little bit.

Speaker 1: (04:56)
Yeah, yeah. We need some, we need a little freeze and thaw to kind of break things up. We need a little freeze to try to kill all these bugs and diseases and things. I hope, hope we can get that coming pretty soon. When I was looking at AccuWeather the other day, uh, they were showing like not getting above, uh, freezing for two weeks and I looked again yesterday and it looks like we’re barely gonna get below freezing for that same time now. So in other words, they have no idea.

Speaker 2: (05:26)
Oh yeah, of course. You know, we go through this cycle every year, you know, in the fall, you know, you’re looking at everybody’s predictions and whatnot and it’s always gonna be a cold, miserable bunch of snow. You know, it’ll be that kind of a winter. That’s what it seems to be advertised to us as every year. But then we get into it, it’s always like the exact opposite.

Speaker 1: (05:50)
Well, it hasn’t been that many episodes ago we talked about, oh, this is gonna be the worst winter we’ve ever had.

Speaker 2: (05:56)
Yeah, yeah. And uh, honestly this year I kind of felt more, I guess I believed it more this year with the pattern of the weather we’ve had.

Speaker 1: (06:07)
Yeah. The dry weather, something had to flip a switch. Yeah. And usually it’s cold enough that that would be a snow switch,

Speaker 2: (06:14)
Right? Oh yeah. I mean, we got, you know, we’re short on precipitation. You gotta, I mean, most of the time that’s made up for either in the winter or whatever. So I hope this isn’t an indication of a wet spring.

Speaker 1: (06:28)
Well, we’re supposed to have an early Easter and usually an early Easter brings a good planning season.

Speaker 2: (06:33)
Well, I hope that’s the case ’cause uh, yeah, the, uh, wet spring is not fun. It’s a, that’s a stressful time of year anyways. Much less, um, battling with the weather.

Speaker 1: (06:47)
We’ll find out. You listened to our episodes in February here. We might be snowed in knee deep, I don’t know.

Speaker 2: (06:52)
Oh, maybe. But uh, I’m sure we’re gonna be in for it at some point. It might come around a little later than we want, but, uh, you know, so far, so far it’s pretty uneventful. We had a little skiff of snow there that one day and uh, that’s about it as far as winter weather goes. Yeah.

Speaker 1: (07:12)
I talked to our friend, uh, Dr. Eric up in Michigan that works at Farm Talc or owns Farm Talc and he said they had nine inches of snow the day before Halloween.

Speaker 2: (07:23)
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: (07:23)
Um, and they’ve only had a couple other events. He says it’s been unseasonably warm for them also. Yeah,

Speaker 2: (07:28)
Yeah. That’s, that is kind of strange. I don’t know. We’re probably in for it at some point at least. I hope so. I mean, we, we do need some, we need some precipitation. We actually just need some rain. We need the ground to get good soaked down. ’cause this has happened to us in years past too, where you’ll have thawed out ground and you’ll get, you know, say three to six inches of snow and then you’ll insulate the ground and it really won’t freeze.

Speaker 1: (07:53)
Right. Right. So it’s best to best to get a good freezing event and then get the snow on top of it so that way your ground stays cold. Right. ’cause you get, uh, snow and then cold. You just got slop if you wanna try to do anything, you know, driving across fields.

Speaker 2: (08:11)
Oh yeah. It’s nice to have some frozen ground to work on if you’re trying to do any, you know, random maintenance and things of that nature. But it just is what it is. We always just kind of deal with it as it comes anyways, so, uh, we’ve got enough shop projects that, uh, a little bit of nasty weather isn’t gonna hurt us too much anyway.

Speaker 1: (08:31)
Yeah. I assume we’ve gone through the semis pretty well. I’m assuming the next thing to come is the planter.

Speaker 2: (08:36)
Yeah. Yeah. I figure so, uh, probably a couple tractors and then get into the planters and strip them down and check ’em out. And we always like to go through those with a fine tooth comb ’cause that’s where, that’s where it all starts.

Speaker 1: (08:50)
Yeah. Bean planter is kind of a project every year. ’cause you being no-till beans, it gets, it gets beat up pretty good.

Speaker 2: (08:58)
Yeah, it sure does. It’s always interesting when you get to strip ’em down just to see what, you know, what is broken that we didn’t see, you know, finishing up planting or Well, yeah, I guess it would’ve been finishing up planting wheat ’cause we use that planter for wheat also, but, right. Uh, yeah, it’s always interesting to see what has broken and what was on, uh, on the brink of breaking, so. Right. That’s always pretty interesting. But yeah, we gotta run through the planters and really we really try to pick those apart pretty well. Get everything tuned in, you know, just as tight as we can. Just try to avoid any, any, uh, stops in the field once we get started. And, uh, about it.

Speaker 1: (09:43)
Tell you, the one thing I’m most excited about on the Beam Planner is we’re gonna get, uh, air adjusting road cleaner.

Speaker 2: (09:49)
Yeah. That’s gonna be a game changer. ’cause uh, yeah, road cleaners are, uh, a no-till farmer’s best friend. But, um, the, the place where they don’t shine so well, uh, is where you have places in the field where you’ve worked some, you know, say a washout or a compacted area that you had ripped in the fall. Those row cleaners act as a, uh, chisel plow almost when you run ’em through, uh, loose dirt, um, when they’re, you know, just, uh, when it’s just gravity pushing ’em down. So yeah, I think that air adjust is a game changer. Or we put that on the corn planter last year and that’s so nice. You can uh, really deal with all kinds of various obstacles in the field with those.

Speaker 1: (10:38)
Yeah, I mean we really, we’ve already got the tank ’cause we’ve got air down force. Mm-Hmm. , we’ve already got the row cleaners. We just need cylinders and lines.

Speaker 2: (10:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: (10:46)
So it should be a pretty easy install

Speaker 2: (10:47)
I would think. Yeah, they’re not bad. Those things are not bad to put on. Um, if you already got the row cleaners that have the brackets for ’em, they pretty well make, uh, even if you don’t have the right brackets, they make all kinds of adapter kits and everything else to get those cylinders put on. So yeah, that’s a real game changer. It was an awesome addition to the corn planter, so I’m excited to see ’em go on the bean planter as well. Just, uh, it saves crawling underneath the planter in the middle of a field trying to rein, you know, 32 row cleaners. ’cause they’re not exactly light.

Speaker 1: (11:21)
No, no. And there’s not much room on them. 15 inch planters either.

Speaker 2: (11:25)
No. And there’s no good way to do it. And, you know, got an older, I say older, but uh, older than us guy that runs the bean planter in the spring and he’s not a big fan of having to crawl under there and move all those road cleaners. Uh, you know, when we’re sure to help. So it’ll be a good addition. I think other than that we’re really not looking at any, uh, major additions to the planters this year besides opening

Speaker 1: (11:52)
Desk and seat tube

Speaker 2: (11:53)
Guards. Yeah. Besides the, the typical, the typical wear points. So that’ll be nice. It seems like every year we say we’re not gonna change anything and then we kind of go and fundamentally change something on the planter. So I’m pretty pumped to uh, not have to deal with that this year. I’m

Speaker 1: (12:10)
Not gonna lie. I really like the way our bean planter’s been working. Um, for those of you out there running a 1790 just or any kind of deer planter, any kind of deer plate planter with uh, just regular deer maximer units on it, we switched to sugar beet.

Speaker 2: (12:31)
Yeah. Sugar beet plates. Yeah,

Speaker 1: (12:33)
They’re sugar beet plates from deer, um, factory plates. And we’ve been able to singulate soybeans with those. Of course, we’re running 80 20 instead just straight talc. But, uh, for flowability reasons. But it really has made a big difference if you’re trying to singulate soybeans. So that would be one of my recommendations to you. Uh, if you’re looking for a cheap way to kind of precision eyes your bean planter

Speaker 2: (13:03)
Yeah. It’s definitely a cheaper option than going to an electric drive.

Speaker 1: (13:07)
Oh, for sure. So that’s one thing that we’ve started doing. Oh my gosh, what’s it been four years ago we changed that.

Speaker 2: (13:15)
Yeah. And this really has been a game changer. I mean it’s uh, definitely a more even stand.

Speaker 1: (13:20)
Yeah. So I would totally look into that. Um, go to your local parts store and ask ’em. ’cause that’s, that’s been really good for us. It’s saved us a bunch of money. ’cause we were not happy with those, you know, getting three seeds in a bunch every time you drop with the regular John Deere was 108 cell. Yeah. This is a 64 cell.

Speaker 2: (13:42)
That sounds about right.

Speaker 1: (13:43)
I think this is a 64 cell plate, so it’s spinning faster. But you’re also, you know, most guys around here are dropping their populations. You, you go down to, you know, a hundred to 130,000, you’re not spinning that plate near as fast as you would be if you were doing 200,000 like we were back in the day. So that’s also something to keep in mind is, man, I’m cutting my cells in half. Yes. But you’re also putting a lot less beans on. So it’s been, it’s been nice for us. We’re variable rate in that way, um, with the row flow through precision planting. But we do not have the precision planting units on there. Uh, been a, been a good move for us. Just something simple that maybe you guys can take away and look at. Also for guys that are, uh, doing no-till of any kind and have trouble with gauge wheels, uh, for ag, the number four and the word ag manufacturing makes a wheel. We call it bowling ball material. I don’t know what their technical term is, but those gauge wheel tires are so hard that corn stalks bean stubble can’t penetrate ’em and you don’t have the trouble, uh, tearing those gauge wheels. Obviously we’re not in the parts selling business, but these are the, these are the things that we’ve noticed. Yes, those things are expensive, but if you’re tearing gauge wheels every year, it takes three years to pay for these things. And we’ve had ’em on there for five and they look like we just put ’em on.

Speaker 2: (15:13)
Yeah. They’re pretty wicked. Those, uh, those things are definitely a game changer. My goodness. We were just cooking through those rubber, uh, gauge wheels and, you know, just seems, I don’t know, just as if we’re just raising a healthier corn crop. So we’re dealing with these very rigid stalks in the spring and these things are just absolutely small, a rubber gauge wheel. And, uh, man, we were splitting ’em and you just, it was, there was no winning with those things. So, uh, yeah, this harder material on these gauge wheels is a, it’s a, it’s a move. I’d recommend anybody run ’em.

Speaker 1: (15:54)
I also like where we went to one fat gauge wheel, one narrow gauge wheel, and we’re staying in between the corn rows with our 15 inch planter, putting the narrow gauge wheels on where the corn stalks would be in the fats to the inside. Uh, where there, where there would be no stalks. And we’re staying inside the rows that way and still getting pretty good flotation out of our gauge wheels.

Speaker 2: (16:20)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh, it’s pretty slick, pretty slick way to do it and, uh, keeps us from running a, a row unit right down an old corn row. So, um, ’cause that’s never recommended, you know, everybody does it a little bit different, you know, um,

Speaker 1: (16:34)
There’s a lot of guys on angles I’ve been

Speaker 2: (16:36)
Noticing. Yeah. Uh, a lot of guys are playing on a hard angle and you know, it works for them. Um, but we’ve just found this to work pretty well for us. We try to split those rows and, uh, you know, stay off that old corner row and, uh, then you’re not dealing with so much trash and, you know, a bouncy row unit and uneven, you know, an uneven planting depth on those rows. So yeah, that’s, uh, that’s definitely a good deal. But, uh, it’s

Speaker 1: (17:08)
Taking, taking a little bit of time, planting beans and actually doing it right as paid us dividends.

Speaker 2: (17:14)
Oh lord. Yes. And it’s, uh, we got a lot of guys that are at fault for this, but it is, beans get treated like the stepchild crop as far as I’m concerned. It’s, uh, you know, guys will, you know, fuss and fight around about how they wanna put their corn in and you know, what seed to use and they’ll really, you know, pour the coals to it. But as far as far as the beans go, they could care less. They dump ’em in a drill and just send it. Right. But, um, I think taking a little bit of time in evaluating, uh, your, you know, how you’re planting beans and how you’re treating ’em through the year. I mean, beans pay too, so,

Speaker 1: (17:53)
Uh, better than corn sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on yields. Not this year, but, uh, we’ve had years where the beans definitely outperform the corn. Just depends on how you finish.

Speaker 2: (18:02)
Yeah. And I, I don’t know, I I, I think it’s good to, don’t, don’t be scared to, you know, throw a little bit of money at that bean crop. I mean treat them. It’s uh, you know, put some foli years on there, maybe reevaluate how what you’re doing with your planting situation. Maybe take a look at your populations and, uh, I think, I think a lot of guys now are coming around to the, to the thought of let’s back our populations off. And I think that’s a, that’s a wise decision.

Speaker 1: (18:31)
Yeah. Um, I completely agree. For standability, for disease, for the whole, the whole gambit of things, if you can back that population down a little bit and feed them, uh, you’re gonna be way better off. We’ve got a grower that’s in twin rows. He’s planting about 110,000 and he’s still having trouble with white mold. Uh, so he’s the one that we’re working with trying to get, get it figured out. But he’s raising big bean yields really great beans. Oh yeah. And they’re just getting, the beans are getting so massive that they’re canopy and he thinks they’re holding too much moisture in that, that skinny row. When I talked to him the other day, he’s thinking about shutting that skinny row off and just going 30 inch beans.

Speaker 2: (19:18)
Yeah. And that might not be a bad choice for him, but, um, that particular grower’s dealing with some, uh, really, uh, I guess an interesting scenario as far as he’s kind of, he’s in a lot of that river bottom ground. So, um, that’s something that we don’t deal with a lot of in our area. You know, as you push towards the southeast from where we’re located and you’re getting down to the side of the river and the higher river, you know, there’s a lot more growers down there dealing with, uh, different types of soil that we’re not familiar with. So this, uh, this grower we’re speaking of, he’s, uh, it’s a kind of a learning experience for us too. So.

Speaker 1: (19:56)
Yeah. And it’s weird because he’s too far south to have white mold.

Speaker 2: (19:59)
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: (20:00)
Yeah. Usually that’s a north of 70 problem.

Speaker 2: (20:02)
Right, right, right.

Speaker 1: (20:03)
And he is far south of 70.

Speaker 2: (20:06)
Yeah. It is strange. It is definitely strange. And uh, I guess it’s just kind of getting ahead of that and understanding that where you’re going to be dealing with it. ’cause it seems to be fairly consistent.

Speaker 1: (20:17)
And I’ve always been told once you get it, you got it. So I would say that it’s a problem that we’re gonna be trying to help manage with him for a while. But I’ve also been told that it comes in on the seed so it’s sketchy. I think it’s a deal where if you’re planting shorter, seasoned beans, which it seems like we all have switched that way. Mm-Hmm. , um, anything below like a three three, uh, you’re looking at that growing could be done in Michigan, Minnesota. It can be done anywhere up pretty far north. You get that short. Uh, I mean that would be the upper end of them, but if they’re doing production up there and having white mold problems, well then you bring it back to your fields down here in the Southland. And that’s a, that’s an issue we have to fight now. ’cause we have one farm. We, we have one farm that has had white mold on it before. We don’t see it every year, but if the conditions are right, you’ll see it. And it just appeared one year and then now it’s, it’s there. You know, sometimes.

Speaker 2: (21:22)
Yeah. It’s just, uh, it’s definitely one of those things you get talking about molds or diseases and fungus. It’s, it’s interesting to see how, how and how you get it and what conditions really bring it on. I mean, obviously, uh, long periods of moisture and low sunlight bring on most problems, but it is interesting to see where the problems keep reoccurring.

Speaker 1: (21:48)
Right. Like our, I mean this is our third year with Tar Spot. Yep. So that gets us one cycle. Corn back to corn. Uh, and so I know where we had tar spot the first year, very small place, um, came in very late, no damage done. And this year that field was planted to a fairly stable hybrid, um, for Tar Spot. And I saw it throughout the whole field. I don’t think there was any really yield limiting, it came in so late. But I mean I saw speckles throughout that field across the whole thing. Right. Um, get up into next county up, you know, 10 miles up the road and I did not see the first dot on any of those fields up there.

Speaker 2: (22:36)
That is so strange. Um, heard a lot of horror stories on Tower Spot this year and uh, you know, we kept an eye on it and kept, you know, just an eye on areas that we’ve seen it years past and we gotta see it come in. But I guess we’re just lucky enough that it’s blowing in late here the last couple years that it hasn’t been a problem. But I mean, I’ve seen some pictures this year where it’s taken fields down.

Speaker 1: (23:04)
Yeah. Uh, there was a couple guys north of us, uh, that I heard sprayed twice because they got it pretty early. Don’t know, I have no idea what hybrids they’re planting, um, if they were susceptible or if it was just a field that had had history for a while or what was going on. But they had agronomists come in, find it, they sprayed it the second time. Not exactly how I would’ve done it, but they sprayed it the second time and I never really heard how bad they got hurt.

Speaker 2: (23:37)
Yeah. And I don’t know, I just hope that’s something we don’t have to deal with firsthand that early to the point where it is gonna be a yield limiting problem. But I guess all things are possible with the right conditions and all, it takes us one good weather system to blow those spores down.

Speaker 1: (23:53)
Yeah. I, that’s what’s scary. Uh, ’cause they say it lives in the soil once it’s there. So

Speaker 2: (23:59)
Right

Speaker 1: (24:00)
Now we got our spot.

Speaker 2: (24:03)
Yeah. And uh, I’d say all, all across the board though this year, I mean as um, far as diseases go, the pressure was, um, I would say down, I would say definitely less disease pressure this year than what we’ve seen in years past. But we were also dealing with some drier conditions. Um, there late summer when we would typically see a flare up.

Speaker 1: (24:28)
Beads were definitely down. Yeah. Um, corn, I didn’t see a whole lot of northern except for one, one hybrid a guy had was chewed up with Northern for some reason. It must have just been really susceptible and gray leaf spots seemed to be pretty prevalent, but as far as yield limiting, I don’t know how bad it actually was this year.

Speaker 2: (24:48)
Right.

Speaker 1: (24:49)
Uh, we still sprayed everything, just try to keep everything healthy. But I don’t know, it just seemed, it seemed like a lot of guys sprayed this year. I don’t know if that’s ’cause they had such a good looking crop coming on, uh, this year, you know, for 2024 could be different. We’re looking at lower prices. If the crop is not, you know, 260 bushel corn looking like in July, uh, will we see guys pull back on that fungicide application?

Speaker 2: (25:18)
Yeah. I mean that’s anything’s possible when you’re sitting here in Jan, uh, December talking about, you know, the following year’s crop. But I guess with all things at play, you know Yeah. With these lower corn prices affect people’s decisions whether, whether they like it or not and fungicides the price of the application to make. But um, it’s definitely just gotta be a tool that everybody’s prepared to use.

Speaker 1: (25:44)
Yeah. I always laugh at the threats though. Guys are like, oh, corn’s too cheap. I’m not gonna plant corn next year. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2: (25:51)
Oh, I love

Speaker 1: (25:51)
That. Corn is your favorite thing to plant. You’re not gonna quit now.

Speaker 2: (25:55)
I mean, how many Yeah, every year you hear somebody saying that, especially if, uh, you get 1, 1 1 big may rain event, you hear that everywhere. They’re like, I’m gonna switch to beans. I’m gonna switch the rest up to beans and not gonna plant, not gonna plant the corn. Well, okay, then you come back two weeks later and they planted the corn.

Speaker 1: (26:17)
Yeah. I’ve never noticed, you know, oh man, it looks like there’s not much corn planted in this area.

Speaker 2: (26:22)
No, it’s always, it’s always the same. Now the year may come when that actually happens, but hasn’t yet.

Speaker 1: (26:30)
No. I mean the markets dictate what, what gets planted. But around here we’ve got too good of corn ground, you know, Illinois, Iowa, things don’t change. Guys have been 30 years corn after corn. It’s the guys that are on the super marginal ground that don’t wanna plant corn to start with. And they’re like, oh, okay, we’re

Speaker 2: (26:48)
Done. Right, right.

Speaker 1: (26:51)
Like, uh, Greenfield,

Speaker 2: (26:52)
Ohio, no. Yeah. You start pushing down that way and uh, yeah, that’s definitely some marginal ground. You see a lot of bean after bean action happen down there. But as far as here in the flat country that we’re, you know, fortunate to be in, it’s uh, consistently a corn bean rotation.

Speaker 1: (27:11)
Right. And it’s hard for us to get outta rotation because, you know, our storage, our equipment, it all matches pretty close to what we’re raising. Uh, to get outta rotation is pretty, is pretty tough. I mean, obviously we try to do a lot of forward contracting and adjust our input costs and stuff based on the prices. But to get out of rotation and throw everything outta rotation, um, for three or four years trying to get back in is a kind of a, a hard decision for us to make.

Speaker 2: (27:41)
Yeah, exactly. And uh, we, we’ve never really had to pull that card, but let’s just play all beans. So we’re lucky. We’re lucky we’ve never had to really do that.

Speaker 1: (27:54)
Yeah. Yeah. That would be a miserable fall to try to just run all beans. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (27:58)
I hate running

Speaker 1: (27:59)
Beans. I do too. Just header down in the dirt rocks, the whole nine yards. Yeah. It’s no fun.

Speaker 2: (28:04)
It’s not near satisfying as she corn.

Speaker 1: (28:07)
No dumping every three or four minutes. Yeah. It’s pretty wild.

Speaker 2: (28:10)
Yeah. It’s, it’s all fun anyways, but it’s, uh, I’m excited for 2024 I think. Uh, it’s always, always something to be excited about. So the following year’s crop potential and this year was a tricky one, but every, we say that every year at the end of every year, it seems like. ’cause every year’s a little bit different.

Speaker 1: (28:33)
Yep. We’ve done some learning this year. Uh, foliar programs are going to change a little bit. Yep. Uh, gonna get simpler, which is nice. They’ve come out with some combination products that are going to take some jugs away and, uh, we’re gonna be handling a gallon instead of a quart, but it doesn’t take us four jugs to get to that gallon now.

Speaker 2: (28:55)
Yeah, exactly. And uh, you know, anything you can do to simplify your operation and make it a little more efficient, that’s, that’s always a good move.

Speaker 1: (29:06)
And price points are gonna stay pretty close to the same. So that’s exciting. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: (29:09)
That’s nice.

Speaker 1: (29:10)
I ran some budgets uh, a couple days ago. Uh, corn was down 20 bucks and beans were down 10 I think. So that’s not significant numbers, but it’s better than going up that

Speaker 2: (29:24)
Oh yeah. It wasn’t like the last couple years where you’re just kind of shaking in your boots, waiting for price sheets to see what in the world’s going on out there.

Speaker 1: (29:33)
Yeah. I mean, granted, we’re moving a couple things around. Uh, trying to get a little bit more efficient on our chemical program, try to use a little bit less chemistry, uh, you know, try to focus more on residuals and less on rescue missions. So Yes. Hoping we can, hoping we can save a few dollars there. Trying to do, you know, ounce prevention, pound to cure Oh lord. Yeah. Type deal. But looks like we might be able to do this crop a little bit cheaper, but you know, when the corn price is a dollar less than it was when we looked at this same time last year, a little bit tougher.

Speaker 2: (30:08)
Yeah. It, uh, always affects the decision making, that’s for sure. But, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s exciting to look forward into the next year’s crop and think about all that potential is just sitting in the bag of the barn.

Speaker 1: (30:24)
Yeah. Yep. Um, one concern I have just when we talk about inputs is nitrogen getting up the river. ’cause all of our, all of our 32 comes off of the Ohio River, uh, coming out of New Orleans. And with the Mississippi River, like they were saying, it was running backwards. And the Ohio river’s so low that they’re only filling barges half full. Well, half full barges still charge the same amount of freight as full barges. So how’s that gonna affect our nitrogen price getting an inland

Speaker 2: (31:00)
Oh yeah. Somebody’s gotta eat that cost.

Speaker 1: (31:02)
Yeah. ’cause you’re not gonna put it on a truck and bring it up from New Orleans. Oh yeah. It’s gotta be out to be on water.

Speaker 2: (31:07)
Yep. Somebody’s gotta eat the cost and it’s always the end user.

Speaker 1: (31:11)
Yeah. And here we are. So I guess one thing you guys wanna look at going into spring is we might be dealing with some higher nitrogen prices. I do not know, uh, I have not purchased all my spring needs yet ’cause I don’t know. But we better be hoping for some rains so these rivers can get up and be able to move, uh, commodities out. For one thing, you know, a lot of, a lot of soybeans go down the river to the port and exit that way. So hopefully we can get commodities out and, you know, inputs in. ’cause it’s a, you know, it’s a world market we play with now. Oh yeah. It’s not just your back door.

Speaker 2: (31:52)
Yeah, it is wild. Just sit here, pray for rain here, get the rivers up, get the inputs in and your export’s out and uh, you pray for a drought in Brazil.

Speaker 1: (32:02)
Right. And then, uh, we pray for perfect planting conditions when it gets to be spring. See, you have to understand that we’re farmers and we’re never happy.

Speaker 2: (32:12)
Never. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. You ca I catch everybody here doing this. It’s, you know, you pray for rain, pray for rain, pray for rain. We get an inch rain. It’s like, ah, dag gone and I hate to be doing this particular job out here and it’s wet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can never, you can never be happy.

Speaker 1: (32:29)
Yeah. Boy, boy. It’s getting dry. Get like six tenths of an inch rain. Oh boy. I hope it doesn’t turn off wet now. Oh yeah. You just get, I don’t know, it’s such a fine balance, but we always seem to get it done somehow.

Speaker 2: (32:40)
Yeah. We always make it happen, but we’re never happy with the conditions we’re working in. Yeah. But I think that’s across the board just how we all operate.

Speaker 1: (32:48)
So No, hopefully we can get, uh, seed coming here tomorrow, get some stuff running through the shop. We’ll be excited to get ready for 2024. I’m excited to get this seed treater spinning again. So,

Speaker 2: (33:03)
Yeah, I think it’s uh, I think it’s gonna be fun. We’re gonna, uh, hopefully learn a lot this year as we do every other year. Yeah. Uh, gotta be, gotta always be learning.

Speaker 1: (33:16)
Yeah. And uh, if you guys are listening to us, I really hate to think that you’re trying to learn from us. ’cause we’re just a couple guys just trying to learn on the fly.

Speaker 2: (33:26)
Yep. That’s just about it.

Speaker 1: (33:29)
I would, I would like to have, for us to have had a podcast in 2014 when we graduated high school and kind of started this adventure. Oh

Speaker 2: (33:35)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s,

Speaker 1: (33:36)
Uh, the growth that we’ve had from then to now is probably ridiculous. But you don’t realize it, you know, ’cause it wasn’t really documented.

Speaker 2: (33:46)
No and uh, yeah, you, if you think we don’t know anything now, you should have listened to us 10 years ago.

Speaker 1: (33:53)
Oh buddy. Yeah. We knew, we knew how to do calculus and chemistry and whatever the heck they try to teach you in school, but you don’t, uh, you don’t really know what’s going on out in the field until you actually get out there and observe the crop. I like that. Uh, Dowdy and hula always say, you need to be a student of the crop. And if that’s not true, nothing is because these crops talk to you. Sometimes you don’t know what they’re saying, but you know that they’re either mad or happy and you try to figure out why.

Speaker 2: (34:23)
Yeah. And you know, just that every year you should take away a lesson from that year’s, you know, crop. And, uh, you know, we find that every year to be true. We make small adjustments every year. There’s never a year that we just say, oh, that was perfect. And yeah, roll on. I mean, we’re always making min even if it’s minute we’re making adjustments, uh, to go into the next year to hopefully, you know, do ourselves better favor and, uh, hope the end result is a better yielding crop. Yeah.

Speaker 1: (34:53)
So I always talk about 2018 because that was our best crop. Not much better than this year, just slightly. And I was going through inputs. I keep records of all the inputs from year to year. And I went back and was looking at what we’re doing different now from what we were doing then. And in all reality, things have not changed that much. We’ve moved things around, changed some timings, but very, very close to the same inputs. Chemical names have changed, actually. Chemicals that you’re putting on haven’t changed that much. Right. Uh, it was interesting to look at, but it, like you said, very small changes. We, we’ve got figured out how to grow crops. Oh yeah. Now we’re just trying to, you know, really tune it in and things change with weather conditions, but really trying, just trying to tune in and get it right.

Speaker 2: (35:44)
Yeah, exactly. ’cause I mean, you get one, one, let’s say one good shot getting a crop to the ground. Yeah. You can try the second time, but you know, that’s how that goes.

Speaker 1: (35:53)
Yeah. Replant never works.

Speaker 2: (35:55)
No, it doesn’t.

Speaker 1: (35:56)
It just makes you feel better that you, you know, have something growing in that spot. But replant never works.

Speaker 2: (36:02)
Yep. Your first shot’s your best shot, so you better make it count. And, uh, like Evan says, an ounce of prevention’s worth a pound of cure. Find that to be true and all matters in life, but, uh, especially when it comes to putting a crop in the ground and, uh, dealing with weeded pressures and disease pressures and, uh, it’s, uh, it’s something.

Speaker 1: (36:31)
Uh, well thanks for listening guys. Uh, I think that’s probably about enough for this morning. We’ll just, uh, follow us on social media. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (36:42)
Get in

Speaker 1: (36:43)
There, shoot us a review on, uh, at Easy Custom Ag on Google. Uh, we appreciate you guys listening. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, nice things to say, yeah,

Speaker 2: (36:54)
Good suggestions,

Speaker 1: (36:55)
Please message us either through our website or on Facebook. And, uh, we’ll see you next time out in the field.