When is a good time to buy ground?
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Hello folks, welcome back to the Straight Forward Farming Podcast. I'm your host Tony Reid alongside Nick McCormick as always coming to you on a Christmas Eve Eve. We're here with Holiday Cheer. We are. That we are. We got a guest in the house tonight.

Local neighbor boy, and I'm going to have to call him the neighbor boy because anybody that's five years younger than me or less is still a boy. Absolutely. Josh Bumgarten. He's, we're going to say, cattle farmer, horse farmer, grain farmer, truck driver, government employee. I mean, this guy wears all the hats. All the hats. Under the sun. We don't know if he's going to talk or not, but he is here in studio with us. He's listening, if nothing else. Exactly. Yep. So feel free to say anything you want to say.

Or just sat there like a bum on a log. Nobody in this podcast gives a fuck. That's our motto. Nobody cares. Okay, there it is. So what do you guys want to talk about? Obviously, he may not want to talk about much. What do you want to talk about, Nick?

How it's Christmas Eve Eve. It's this year's quickly coming to a close. It is got your Christmas shopping done. I do have it done for the most part. I think I'm still waiting on a couple things to come in, which is spectacular that I ordered in November. But you know, it is what it is. Yeah, I got to go tomorrow. Got to take Joe because even though we do our own family Christmas here, we still do a secret Santa where each person gets one other person a special gift. And of course, she can't drive and

So I think she got Carolyn's name, so she can't really take her on the Secret Santa mission. No, that's true. So it's up to you. Exactly. So got a gift for my Secret Santa gift and her Secret Santa gift, which is probably just going to equate to a bunch of candy or something, Dollar General, and we're good to go. So that's where we're at.

Tony, wearing many hats, including one of Santa Claus. Exactly. Exactly. Yep. I think everything I ordered off the TikTok shop, which I've done all my shopping on the TikTok shop this year, worked out rather well. It all came in. Every time I tried, my credit card's like, nope, why are you on the TikTok shop? Hey.

Get an alert. Have to call. I'm like, yeah, it's not worth my time. I was just trying to get sockets for everybody. Exactly. From what I've seen. Yeah. The three-quarter-inch socket set. Or a diesel heater. Yep. So everybody's getting sockets and diesel heaters. Which I've already gave them to Carolyn because, of course, leave it to my wife, the nerd that she is.

When I first seen these items on there, I thought, yeah, it's got my wife written all over it. And then I fell bad after I got them. I'm like, these are so stupid. It's not even funny. And she actually loved them. I bought the, have you seen the home apothecary book? Yes, absolutely. I almost ordered it. I got that. And then what's the one that goes with that? I can see the, the something about home remedies. Yeah. Home remedies. The hundred thousand one lost home remedies. Something like that. Yeah. Yep. So that's what I got her. Yeah. I'm sure she is all over that. Yep. Just thrilled to death.

Did you ever buy a Christmas gift over the years and then somebody needed it prior to Christmas and you had to give it early? I don't know why this came across my mind the other day, but years ago we had a trailer with a hydraulic beaver tail and it had froze up. Dad's like, gosh dang it. This was before we had a valve six heater and our salamander heater had quit. It had been defunct years before that. I'm going to have to call around and see if I can find a salamander bum one for my buddy or maybe I'll just go buy a new one. Heath and I are like,

Well, as luck would have it, we got you a new one right over here. I guess you're going to open it early. You're not going to have anything on Christmas Day. There's Santa, but here's a new one. Yep. Probably the best gift ever. Like the most obviously needed and useful gift ever. He needed that. We pointed it right in there, followed it out. It was good to go, but it's funny how stuff like that works once in a while. Yep, it is.

Yep. So, yeah, my Christmas shopping is done and the gifts have been given. And so, yeah, I'm just along for the ride now at this point. Yeah. Ready to rock and roll. Yeah. It's so fun when you have kids and you see them light up over the box, whatever toy you got them. Yep. K-Men, where they can play with that. Yep. It is. I know every year the Christmas budget, the wife's like, so what do you want to spend this year? And it's like, geez, like the last three years, you just like double it. Yeah. And there's less gifts than what there was a year before. It's like, my God, it's crazy. Bite inflation. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We should find something else for the kids. I'm like, really? Because I know what I spent on them. I think they're good, but okay, we'll get them something else. And the bad part is my kids, except for Joe, the other two, they're getting at that age where they're getting hard to buy for. Yeah. They don't really need anything. Exactly. It's just fun at this point. Yeah. So, but we'll get through it.

Could be better, could be worse. What do you think of these old grain markets? We got some welfare money coming from the government. Man, look at this. Get the Denali's ordered ASAP, man. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll be living like a Rockefeller by the end of the month. Yep. Yeah. I don't know. The markets have taken a nasty turn, and I've done yet another terrible job again this year from the looks of it as things go down, which is spectacular. Excited about that.

I'm firmly convinced that grain bins are only there to speed the harvest process up, but not make you a single dime in any other form or fashion. They're costing me at every turn at this point. Love them, but yeah, they are killing me. I love, because I'll even see this. So like my wife's side of the family, none of them are farmers, don't know anything about farming.

and they'll be like oh you put all your grain to bend this year yeah oh yeah yeah that's great you know way to do that you'll make all that money and that's like a yeah newsflash asshole yeah yeah cost you several hundred grand but yeah that's what we did yeah worked out great last year yeah yeah i could give a master class on how to not market grain last year yeah which everybody well you're not that boat alone well that's neat that we're all going down together but yeah still not that great yeah yeah yeah i don't know it uh

quite the deal. Lenders are getting nervous, which I still think the lenders pushed this whole little bill through Congress to ensure that they get their money back. They got to do what they got to do, Tony. And truthfully, though, with the markets being what they are, the inputs being what they are, and I haven't confirmed exactly what the payments are. We're just going to use round numbers here. Let's say it's $50 an acre on corn and $40 on beans. It's going to be roughly somewhere in that general. That's still not putting...

anything that i've got anywhere close to where it needs to be no man no does it soften the blow yeah yeah don't get me wrong but it's not like you're yeah you're not going out and buy i mean you should just put that on op note or whatever and move on about your day yeah oh you covered my fungicide i mean it's better than nothing i mean i guess i'm taking it but yeah i don't know

Yeah, not that they necessarily owe it to me, but by the same token, they are manipulating the market to keep me from making what I would like to make. And this is the golden question. How do these high rollers make it in times like this? I mean, are their bankers willing to go along in 10-year blocks that says, okay, you lost money for five, but you made a killing the next five? How does this work?

A buddy of mine told me, Tony, you're just going to borrow enough to where they can't say anything. And he's not wrong. The tail starts wagging the dog. I'm not saying it's always that way or that's how everybody's doing it, but it is interesting. I've had more than one guy tell me that, well, if you borrow enough, then they can't do anything about it. Yeah, because I... Okay, I don't want to get to that point. I've had a guy tell me, if you borrow $100,000, it's your problem. If you borrow $14 million, it's the bank's problem. Yeah, exactly. And he's probably not wrong. He's probably not wrong, yeah. But...

I just, I don't want to live like that. No. They might deal. Yeah. But I don't know. And I've said it before, time and time again, people talk on TikTok and, oh, this is great. You know, it's going to bankrupt some of these big guys, which it's not because... No. It takes down more little guys than it does big guys. Yeah. When was the last time any high roller around here went bankrupt? Yeah. In our immediate area. I mean... I don't know. Never that I know. No, they haven't. So...

So I don't know why everybody thinks there's going to be this big golden opportunity if you crash the markets. Yeah. I mean, basically, if you're not getting in now, you're damn sure not going to get in if it gets that bad that it's taking them guys down. Exactly. So let me ask you this question, and I don't know the answer to this question. I have to do some research. But generally speaking, if the rest of the economy is good, are the grain markets bad or are they good? Usually they're bad. Usually it's opposite. That's my gut instinct on it from a—

I don't track it. I don't have a spreadsheet for this, that, and the other, but that kind of seems to be like when farming's good, maybe the rest of it ain't doing great. And you can track it back a little bit just in our immediate memory against the big economy bust in 2008, 2009. Crops were extremely good. You'll corn $8 a bushel. I don't remember what beans were. That was a good example. The economy was bad. Farming was good. COVID.

economy was bad farming still state i mean there was a what would you call it a hiccup in there i mean where everything got screwed up but i mean overall it it kind of yeah it worked itself out yeah so yeah i i don't know it um i don't know what the answer is and truthfully to be honest with you i just i don't care i just truly well i can't control it right i just have to manage within my means and and try to work through it and i can't control it it is what it is so yeah you know

I just avoid debt like the plague. And the guys that don't, I commend them. It's paid off. It's worked. You know, ground has always been too high. They weren't afraid to jump in and just go millions of dollars in debt. And I guess it works till it don't. But I guess the same token is, does it really matter what your land is worth if it's not for sale? I mean, I guess it does for borrowing power. Don't misunderstand me there. But if you bought land at $3,000 and it went to $10,000...

Okay, that was a good investment, but you didn't sell it at $10,000, so you don't really see the return until you sell it. The only way that works is if you bought some at $9,000 on its way up because you had the three paid for and it allowed you to buy the nine. Yeah. I didn't realize when I was in the eighth grade that I should have borrowed every dime I could have got and bought everything I thought I was ever going to need. I didn't know I had to buy every tractor, every combine, every piece of ground I wanted, pickup truck, et cetera, when I was in the eighth grade. But looking back, I guess I should have. Should have. You know? Yeah.

So, kids, what we're telling you is leverage yourself to the hills. Bar it all. Bar it all. Bar it all. Don't be scared of $20 million. Bar it all. Don't worry about how to pay for it. Just bar it. And if you can't make the payment, just borrow more to make the payment. Just go for it. Put it in an LLC of some fashion. Let it go defunct. Start over again. Yeah. You'll be fine. Get six LLCs deep. Just keep shuffling shit around. You'll be fine. Takes money to make money. That's what they always say. That's what they claim. That's what they claim.

Yep. I would be scared to death as a cattle farmer. Like, I don't raise cattle. I know enough about the cattle markets to know that they're extremely, extremely, extremely high right now. Yeah. And, I mean, how would you want to go buy six pot bellies of cattle and dump them on the lot and then tomorrow it dumps? I don't know. And the flip side of that is, is people say, well, if you look at the cattle numbers, there's no way it could dump because we just physically don't have that many cattle in the U.S.,

But the flip side is, well, if you start importing some, where do we stand now? And I'm not saying that's what we're going to do or whatever, but sometimes you can get caught up in the hype the other direction that it's never going to go down, and it does. A bunch of those herds get decimated. Cattle takes a long time to recover. Absolutely. They like hogs, yeah. It's probably going to be a little bit. They probably are fine. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I love steak, and I'm trying to eat as much as I can for you guys. Yeah, same.

Don't like too many bullshit. He doesn't like steak. He does eat a lot of hamburger. Yeah, I will clarify that. I'm not a big steak guy, but as far as the burger side, absolutely. And somebody's getting the burger because it takes a lot of cows to make steak. That's right. There's not that many steaks in the cow. Yep, so you take all the steaks. I'll take the burger. That's fine. I'll take one for the team. I don't mind. I'm glad to eat my share. Probably a couple shares, actually. Yep. If you had it to do over again, if we turn back the clock right now,

It's Nick McCormick, 1998. You're fresh out of high school. What are you doing different? Oh, boy. You know, I'm not. I could analyze this and I could give you 10,000 things that I would do different, but I'm not going to say that I would do anything different because if I had done anything different, I probably wouldn't have met my wife, which was the single best decision I ever made in my life. Sure. She's not listening to this podcast because she never does, so I'm not just kissing ass there even though I kind of am. So I really can't.

I really can't say that I would do anything different. And financially, there's a lot of things I would do different. But I love life. I love my life. Could it be better? Absolutely. But the mistakes I made led me to where I'm at as much as the good decisions did. So I'm not going to look back on that because I can't change any of it. Yeah. So...

Financially, yeah, there's a lot of things I should have. I should have bought a ton of ground when it was cheap, right? Should have bought, next to ground, bought Bitcoin. Yeah, no doubt, right? I mean, assuming, let's just stay in the ag realm, though. And I wanted to buy some ground over the years. Even when I was in high school, et cetera, et cetera. That's all, you can't buy that. Don't do that, don't do that. It doesn't pencil, it doesn't pencil. Ground never pencils. You find me ground that pencils, I'll take it all. Who doesn't buy ground that pencils? I've never found ground that penciled. But I could have bought some back when it was three to four.

or even less, and didn't, I would assume I would have it paid for by now, which would give me the borrowing power to do all these other miraculous things. Yeah. So what advice do guys like you and I got to give our kids? Because our parents said don't buy it because it was $4,000, $4,500. You're never going to pay for that. So now at $15,000, we tell our kids, don't buy it. You're never going to pay for that. Well, I don't think they will. The other thing is, the caveat to that is, though, like once some other things get righted in the ship,

Market-wise, maybe some of these investors get out. You know, we've had a lot of people that have invested in land because whatever else they were trying to do wasn't working. So they bought ground. And they don't farm. They're just doing it as a sheer investment. Yep. No emotional ties, no nothing. A place to park money. Yep. And...

Our parents' generation never had to deal with that. That wasn't a thing, right? Like, that didn't happen. Like, old man River down the corner might have bought 80 acres that he didn't really need because he'd already retired, but it butted up to anyone to own it, whatever. But it wasn't Bill Gates buying it. You know, Sam Walton didn't buy a bunch of ground in the 80s when Walmarts were popping up on every corner, right? If he did, it was to build a Walmart. He didn't buy it to farm.

So I think it's a little different now. Maybe that bubble's ready to burst. Maybe it's not. I don't know. If I knew all that shit, I wouldn't have to go to work in the morning. And I guess when you get in markets like this, it's easy to get, I don't know if, I don't think discourage is the right word. So every day, just through social media avenues, and I'm not saying I agree with this, and I'm definitely not the one saying it, but you hear all these people talking about, well, do you realize how much ground we're losing to urban development and to solar and this and that?

I mean, to me, sitting over here at a grain farm, it's like, good. Yeah. Take it all. Yeah. That makes my product worth more, right? Yeah. The land that you have that doesn't have urban development or windmills or solar panels should be worth more. And the crops that you're raising on that ground should be worth more because we're taking more out of production, right? So I don't really care from that aspect how much we lose, I guess, until the houses start encroaching on my ground, which where we're at is going to be a thousand years. Yeah, will never happen. Yeah.

So I don't know why other farmers get all twisted at that. And I go back to this analogy many times. When Whistlin Diesel crushed a 1206, people were just up in arms ready to kill him. If I own a 1206, I'm happy about it. Crush all the rest of them so I have the only one left.

Now my tractor went from being worth $20,000 to $500,000. Yeah, you're not wrong there. So I don't get where people get all twisted about that. Develop at all, I don't care. Yeah. And that's where I'm going, especially in markets like this. We clearly don't need any more corn or soybeans or wheat in the Midwest hitting the market. No, apparently we don't. Yeah, apparently we don't. Which it does make you wonder, how does that fluctuate so much, right? Yeah.

The population grows every day. So did these people not eat as much yesterday as they did two years ago? I don't know what they did. And I can't speak for Chicago, but just take a town around here of 20,000 people. 80-year-old Ma and Paul Kettle both died this year. Well, shouldn't there be a house there now that's on the market because they're dead? I mean, does it just get bulldozed down and...

I mean, why isn't there a younger person moving into that? You know, I don't know how it all works. It's kind of mind boggling when you think about it. On the grand scheme. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So to answer your original question. Yeah. Financially, there's things that would have done different. I mean, cripes. There was a time there where you could have just bought brand new under first Brent wagons, parked them in a shed, did nothing with them. If you could have leveraged it and sold them for a tidy profit. Yep.

But that's no different than Bitcoin or anything else. Like, there's always times to buy that stuff. I'm like you. If you told me today, what would you do different? Or would you go back and change anything or whatever? I wouldn't change nothing. Because I wouldn't have my wife. I wouldn't have my kids. I wouldn't have... I have no qualms in my life whatsoever. I am a million percent happy where I'm at. And that's as simple as one small decision, right? Yeah. Like, maybe you don't go to the party or the bar or wherever. You know, wherever you initially ran into your wife at. Yeah.

Same for me. Like if I don't go out that night, I don't ever meet her. I don't have the kids that I have now. Like would I probably be married to somebody else? Probably other kids. Maybe. Yeah. Probably would. Statistically speaking, statistically speaking for you, Carolyn lovers. Yeah. Um,

I'm not going to go down that path because you can what if to your blue in the face. But, yeah, I mean, if I had to do over again just for a financial thing, I'd have bought some ground when I was younger, when I was willing to work more hours, didn't have other responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. You know? Yeah. But see, that's where I'm at. When you were one, I don't look at Nick. You got talking to Mike. We've we've told you how many times we're going to tell you. I don't want to kiss this fucking thing. You have to. So when you were on by ground, how much was it? When I was in college, it was under three.

Okay, so now look at me, and it's 10 to 15. Yeah. And I feel like now's my time to do it because where's the cap? I don't know. What's the cap here? If you would have asked our dads when we were in high school, that was the cap. Yeah. And we've quadrupled that. Like the neighbor, Kurt, when he bought that 80, his dad said, 85 bucks an acre, you'll never pay for this in your lifetime. He sold it for almost 9,000. Yep. It's like, do I jump off the deep end now?

I don't know. I got to think we're towards the upper end of it now, but nobody knows. The reason why I personally don't know if we are or not, because anytime we'll talk about it on TikTok or whatever, and I can't speak for where these people live geographically as far as on the edge of Cleveland, Ohio, or just Ohio. Yeah. Well, ground's already 25,000, 30,000 here, which that's got some wiggle room. I mean, as ours here where we live going to 25 or 30, I don't know.

It's on its way, seems like. I know when I was in college, we could have sold everything here and bought ground in McLean County, Illinois, which is black. A little bit of a roll to it, but way better, you know, productive-wise for less money than what we could have bought it here for. But I don't want to pick up everything and move and sell it like that. But from a purely financial, if I would have just been one of those investors we talked about earlier, that's what I would have done, right? Like I called somebody down here, I'd have peeled it all off, I'd have bought it up there. Yep.

Now, theirs is probably higher than ours, a little bit higher than ours. But the productivity in the meantime was way better. Yeah. You know? And I still think we're competing with solar and wind as well, just because if you're an investor, just strictly from the standpoint, no ties to farming whatsoever, I can buy the farm ground, rent it to the farmer, plus get some money off solar, windmill, whatever, and that. And then my sole intention is to dump this ground in 10 years. What I don't understand about any of this solar and wind is,

Why do they seek out good ground for that? I don't understand that either. Why are you seeking out some of the most prime land in the world? Why isn't that shit in New Mexico? Like, they're putting some north of Mattoon right now. Flatest, blackest stuff you can find. Why is it there? Like, why would you put it there? Yeah, that's where I smell it, right? Champaign County's littered with it. All great flat, black land. Like, I would think you would put that next to a dumpster fire of ground. Yeah, agreed. They don't. Agreed. You know.

So, yeah, I don't know. I smell a rat on one hand. On the other hand, I don't care. It's just more ground out of production. Good ground. I mean, hell, if we want our stuff to be worth more, take all the good ground out of production. Which wouldn't bother me so much if I owned enough down here, you know, that I didn't want to expand. Now they're just all going to take their big fat checkbook and come down here and buy more, you know. So there are going to be those investors that we were talking about, and then they own ground, and we can't do anything with it, you know. Yeah. Where is the tipping point? And I don't know where this is. I don't know the number. I'm clearly asking.

That's why our ancestors fled Europe, because it got to where ten families owned it all. And you can kind of see it in a ten, but I mean, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting bigger and bigger. So just take just a normal middle-class kid,

from blue collar america gets out of high school and says i'd like to buy 40 acres with a house on it like my mom and dad did my grandpa grandma did you can't how can you buy ten thousand dollars an acre plus whatever the house is worth yeah and you're working for on the high end around here 25 bucks an hour there's no way yeah no way no i get it it doesn't make sense i mean in today's farming economy if you're not going to inherit something to back it eventually you're

you're kind of up a creek. Yeah. At some level. Like, you got to have a few acres coming that Grandpa bought for 200 bucks an acre to make it work, you know? So you bring up a good point on that, like, you know, Europe, et cetera. So have you ever watched 1883? I have not. Have you watched 1883? The precursor to Yellowstone.

Yeah, vaguely. Okay, so you know the premise. So basically, you've heard of Yellowstone. Have you seen any Yellowstone? Parts of it. So anyway, 1883 is the precursor to that when they originally are going west. Supposed to be going to Oregon. They end up in Montana because hold on. Anyway, doesn't matter.

Use Podbean to record your podcast.

Use Podbean AI to optimize your podcast. Use Podbean AI to turn your blog into a podcast. Use Podbean to distribute your podcast everywhere. Launch your podcast on Podbean today. There's a ton of Europeans on this trip. And they left Europe because basically they were miners or maids and they were tired of it. Like, how bad would it have to be for you to pick up all your shit, put it in a wagon, pulled by a horse...

and get shot at for three months by Indians, thieves, bandits, et cetera, with literally nothing. Knowing there's no stores in sight. I mean, there's a stop here or there or some fort where you can buy something like

the balls on those people back in the day. Yeah, and back then it was just a promise. Like, we're told it's pretty good in Oregon, but we don't have pictures. We don't have the internet. There's no internet. Facebook says the farming in Oregon is great. Yeah. And why was Oregon the destination? There's a trail to that. Oregon's not that populated, is it? You're exactly right. So believe it or not, I've been eyeing this on Netflix for like a year now. You ever seen this? It's called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Yes. It looks dumber than shit.

I started watching the previews. I started watching last night. I was immediately hooked. And there's a sequence, so I'm going to have to back this up here and tell the story. So The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on Netflix is basically six little 30-minute movies within a movie. And so part of that was they're heading west on the Oregon Trail. And I thought the same thing. Why are we going to Oregon of all places? Of all places. But that's where they were going. So that's where I was going with that. But I just...

Apparently Oregon has a magical plan. You wouldn't move to McLean County 20 years ago when you could just put all your shit in a vehicle and drive up there in an hour and a half. Yeah, exactly. So let's get all this shit behind an ox and plod our way to Oregon. It's going to take six months. I suppose it wasn't... We weren't in enough pain and suffering to do that. Like...

I just, it baffles me a little bit that those people are that tough. Like, to do all that, like, you're literally going to start a new campfire every night and cook over this little tripod deal and hope you don't get shot in the meantime before you have your next hot meal. You're going to take your food with you. You're going to have to drive cattle to do it. Yep. You know?

It's a little bit mind-boggling. It still comes back to Ron White with the whole Oregon Trail. You've heard that bit, you know. The fattest girls on the planet are in Kansas. He's like, my ancestors got on the Oregon Trail in Independence, Missouri. We got to Kansas and said, fuck it, we're done. And I'm going to fuck that fat girl right over there.

Well, I always said for years, that's why the smartest people in the world lived in Illinois. That's right. Because Europe gets bad, and you move out of Europe. So you get on a boat. You don't know where you're going, but you're on a boat, so you got some hope. And you get on this boat, and you get to the East Coast, and you're like, oh, this is okay. And then a bunch of dipshit other Europeans come over here that you don't like, that you tried to avoid to begin with. Like, shit, we're heading west. We're heading west. And then you get to the Mississippi. Like, can you cross that on a horse? They're like, nope, staying right here. And that's why Illinois was the best people. Yeah. But...

Then we let Chicago in. Thanks a lot. I think Wisconsin is where we acquired that from. Exactly. So here we are. Why the fuck we never defaulted on that payment, I'll never know. Yeah, no doubt. It's for sale for a dollar. Yep. But to answer your question, I don't know where a guy jumps in. I truly don't. I don't know. I don't know if you buy ground now or not. I don't have balls enough to buy any. That's why I feel like now I should do it because whenever I turn 60, it's going to be $35,000 an acre. I'm not saying it won't be.

Because at the rate, there's no cap. Where's it going to stop? I don't know. I'm 44 years old and 100% out of debt, and I'm not looking to go a million dollars in debt. Understood. That's where I'm at, but you're younger than I am, but just not my jam. Well, I think we said earlier, you should have bought one when you were in the 8th grade. Yeah. And you already missed your window. Well, that was slightly plausible back then, but yeah, ain't no shit. But we say that, but like, are you any more able to pay for it now than you were in the 8th grade?

I'm not. I'm not either. I didn't have a wife. I didn't have a family. Like, I had the same job I got now. So, and I could have cut my expenses down to absolutely nothing through high school and post-high school if I really wanted to. You take out, you know, going out to drink with Tony. My expenses at that point in time were pretty minimal. I mean, obviously I wouldn't do that in the eighth grade, but, you know, post-high school or whatever. Like, I could have worked an extra job then with no real repercussions other than I wasn't going to be around for what? I didn't have a family to come home to, you know.

to support, so on and so forth. So I could have threw all my chips in the middle of the table and went for it. And back then it was cheap enough. It's not that case for you. But back then it was cheap enough for Tony and I. We could have got a second job or overtime from a good factory job and covered them. If the ground just broke even, we could have covered the interest and put some against the note all the time. Because there's several guys around here that did that. Now they were older than us. But that worked out really well for them.

And it hasn't really been that way since. And the difference, too, is that a lot of us didn't see coming either until 2008, 2009 was when it first done it. You know, corn going to $8 a bushel was, I mean, absolutely unheard of.

To where now it'll hover around five or six. And, you know, we've all had these arguments on TikTok that we're still paying the same for inputs and still receiving the same amount for our corn as we were in 1980. I'm not saying you're not, but you were making 100 bushel corn and you're making 250 now. Exactly. So I get what you're saying with the inflation. The corn should be $10 a bushel, but you got to take in the yield inflation as well.

You know, in my opinion, and you can tell me if I'm wrong on this, but the time to grow was in the 90s. Absolutely. The guys that pushed in the 90s that didn't have somebody tell them, by God, you remember the 80s? The guys that were young enough in the 90s. And just shrugged it off. And didn't have enough people from the 80s to tell them not to do it and just pushed on through. Not that the 90s were great, but stuff wasn't that high yet. Right. And they bought a bunch of that. 2000s come on. Maybe they were a little better here and there. And they got a bunch of that shit paid for. They're sitting pretty good now. Yeah.

And let's face it, all life is timing. Absolutely. When it comes to wealth, J.D. Rockefeller should have died on a train. Yeah. Ended up being the wealthiest man ever. Yeah. Should have died on a train like his luggage did, you know? You're right. But he didn't get on it, you know?

How many people were supposed to be on the Titanic that were uber wealthy? Yep. You know, the world's a different place if they get on the ship, you know? Where do you jump off if you're, let's just say you're 75 years old today and you're done farming, you're going to retire, your kids don't want to do with it, and you own 2,000 acres, you know, pick your poison, I don't care where in the country, because all the ground's inflated, I don't care where you go. Yeah.

Where do you pick your point of, do I just sell it and cash in now and give my kids cash, or do I just go ahead and die and then let them cash it in and take the cash? I mean, where's that tradeoff of... Well, for starters, Tony, if you're from the boomer generation, you never quit. True. You milk three or four people to do it for you towards the end, and you screw some of them over, and then you rant to a guy you barely know, and then your kids have to deal with it beyond that. How many of them are worried about capital gains?

A lot, but somebody's got to deal with them, whether it's them or their kids or whoever. I mean, because most of the kids sell it. Yeah, the majority of the time, yeah. You know, so I don't know. I don't know where it goes. Hindsight's always better than foresight. We won't know until 10 years from now. Like, wow, 2024, we were sitting around, we should have bought some ground. But it doesn't seem like ground is sold around here like it used to either, you know. And I am so thankful.

in every aspect not just farming but every aspect that you and i were born when we were because we got to come up through the late 80s and we were just starting to understand and take a good interest in farming we were 8 9 10 years old you know at 10 66 was a big tractor back yeah and then the 90s come along holy shit this guy's got a 49 60 or 71 30 i mean it's this guy is rolling now he has a cab that doesn't come off real easy like it's not just on there for fun yeah that's like yeah they like put it on there with a

Like they designed it into the tractor. Yeah. Which wasn't a thing when I was a kid. No. A 1066 cab was like, okay, you must be from Michigan or Wisconsin. Like that didn't, I mean, they sold them around here, but it wasn't integrated into the design of the tractor. That was an afterthought. That was a heater houser plus. It wasn't like the thing. If Farman changes as much in the next 30 years as what it has done,

I mean, you and I are in our mid forties, but just in 30 years that we can remember easily, if it changes that much in the next 30 years, I have no clue where we're going to be at. Not a clue. Autonomous. Autonomous. Yeah. And that's where I was wrong. A hundred percent wrong. When people start talking about autonomous, I said, we're going to, we're going to start making things smaller instead of running two 24 row planners. You're going to run four or five, six row planners from your pickup and run here and there and

No, I was totally wrong. You're going to run a 24-row planter autonomously. That's where it's all set up. You can go to the farm show and see it. We're not building small stuff. We're making it autonomous on the 24-row planter.

And it'll work. People will deny this and bitch and cuss. And what if it hits a rock? What if it does this? I promise. AI is coming on fast. And over the course of a day, does that stuff happen? Sure. Are you and I hitting rocks and wads of weeds every three feet to where just you're... No. It's an anomaly that happens maybe once a day. Maybe. Yeah.

And that's it. So it's coming and it's going to work. Nobody wants to admit that, but I promise. And it will be here before you know it. Within 10 years, it will be full scale. As fast as AI is coming on, plus the other stuff, yeah, it's not looking great for the guy that wants to hold a steering wheel. Which then brings in a whole new caveat of...

doing an old school versus doing a new school, then you got, you know, then you're not doing the work. You're asking your son to run the iPad to control this tractor. Yeah. And that's a whole nother caveat. What's one thing, you know, shit always happens for a reason and falls together. So what's going to be a really, really fast adopter of AI? You might ask, what's Trump saying? The first thing he's going to do when he gets in office, we're going to start rounding people up and getting the fuck out of here, which I agree with. Yes. I'm on board with that.

And we don't see it so much around here as far as foreign labor driving equipment. That's more of the milking cows, whatever. I can't speak for California or them places. But, well, shit. We lost our foreign labor. Well, sign me up for the autonomous tractor. Yeah. I've got to keep going. Yeah, you're not wrong. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. And I guess... We already have self-driving cars. Yeah. You know? I'm willing to make the trade. As bad as I hate to say that. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Things are definitely going to be changing. Yeah, that's for sure. That is for sure. I just wonder back when people had horses and guys were trading the tractors, like, who the fuck needs a tractor? You can't drive the team of horses. You don't need to be farming. Now we're saying this. You know, there was that guy. I mean, I'd be the first guy to tell you when it started coming out with just fingertip control. My gosh, I want a lever. I can hit a throttle. I can smack. I want to blow smoke. So on and so forth.

I kind of enjoy the point in clicking a farmer. I'll just click this switch. Click this little switch. You shouldn't be farming. That's kind of nice. Yeah, auto steer doesn't work all that bad. I kind of like that. It's not all bad. Yeah, kind of enjoy that. But to answer your original question, Josh, going back to technology, whatever, I don't know when the good chance to buy ground is. I truly can't answer that. I don't know if it's today, tomorrow, never. I'm not in the camp of...

okay, I'm going to go buy some ground today so when I'm dead it's finally paid for and now my kids can just take it and sell it. I don't know what that answer is. Like I said, it all comes back to timing, and a lot of that you don't know. Like if you buy ground and the next seven years are good and you get it paid down, hey, that was a great time to buy. If you buy on the beginning of a downturn for seven years, well, then it gets a little rough. And we've got a big generation or gap of people buying

in farming that have never really seen hard times. I mean, we really do. We've got kids that are 35 years old. Sure, they've seen the peaks and the valleys. They've heard about the 80s. But they've never seen hard times that stayed for five, six, seven years. Yeah. And I'm not saying we're going back to that. I don't know. But...

So that's where it starts to hurt. Even if you're leveraged to the hilt, you catch a dip in here. Okay, we lost a little money this year, but it seems like in Nick and I's career farming, it has always turned quickly. It's come back within a year or two, back to where you're making really good money.

And if we ever get one of them downturns like the 80s to where it stays bad for 10 years, I don't know where that would shake out. I really don't. My gosh, in the 80s, there was a farm sale every day. Oh, God. There was guys going down every day. Yep, and 20% interest. Give my dad credit, you know, starting a new business and so on and so forth and farming through that and buying a little ground through there, here and there, whatever. Like, my hat's off to him for that because I didn't necessarily realize it at the time, right?

Looking back, it's like, oh, how the hell do you make that work? Yeah, that was impressive. Yeah, I mean. And I think, and I can't say this for sure because I don't know, you know, we were 10 years old coming into 1990, or I was. So you don't really see it firsthand. Like now we hear stories, but I'll never forget a few years ago, well, it's been more than a few now, it's probably been seven, eight, nine years ago, the PBS TV station. Yeah.

So this was the Iowa PBS had a big documentary on the eighties. Yeah. And so they were interviewing farmers that went through it, that actually went down and never farmed again. Farmers that went through it, made it and are still going. I'll never forget. They had a guy on there and, uh,

He said, you know, I was strapped. I just bought whatever. I don't remember the acreage now, but he's, I just bought whatever. And he said, I was standing out here feeding cattle that day and the banker come by and he said, Hey, he said, you know, that 160 is for sale next to you. And he said, yeah, I heard that. Baker said, you better buy it. He said, it's going up. He said, get it or buy it. I said, why would I do that? He said, I can't handle what I got. Yeah. Why would I buy the next 160 coming up for sale? Now you need to buy it. He said, I turned it down. And he says, the best thing I ever did. He said, if I'd have bought it, I'd have went down. I wouldn't be farming today. Yeah. And so,

You've got to take that into consideration, too, that

It's sort of the too big... We're almost in the too big to fail mentality in farming now that, well, this guy's farming 6,000 acres. He'll never go under. And I'll admit, I say that too. I'm like, these guys never go broke because they haven't in our career. They honestly haven't. Or you get your outliers that have. But for the overall where we live, they don't. I'm not saying they can't because they damn sure could. You know, the flip side of that is the rules were a little different back then and things were a little... Everything was different, but...

You know, dad always told the story of a good friend of his that had bought, you know, a new pickup truck in the late 70s, bought some ground, bought a tractor or two, so on and so forth. Things were going good, bought a new combine. He's like, gosh dang, man. He's like, nah, it's no problem, no problem at all. Doing good, it's fine. Well then, you know, the 80s come on and he wanted to bail early. He could have sold the one piece of ground off that he'd bought for, let's say, I think it was like 1,400 bucks.

Nope. And that would have got him out of all debt. He'd been free and clear, little bit of money left over in his pocket. Nope. And then a few years go by and they forced him to sell it for 800 bucks an acre. And he still owed a ton of money on all this other stuff. And it's like, well, if you don't let me get out when I wanted to,

I could have been okay. But you didn't. And then, you know, so you end up not farming lost at all. Ended up getting a job in construction and so on and so forth. And then it ended up being okay in the end. Yeah. But it took another 20 years of working his ass off living in a camper. Yep. You know, out west doing dirt work to...

to come back to his house occasionally that he was living in full-time just farming. I should, if I'd have been planning this ahead a little more, so there's a guy who lives just north of here, north of Nick and I. Nick knows him well. Doug Bell's his name. And he's...

And Doug, if you're listening, heaven forbid, I'm not trying to put you on the spot here. You're 10 years older than me, maybe a little more. But he was old enough to be engaged in farming in the 80s, like seeing it firsthand. And I wish if I had planned ahead to have a guy like him sitting here with a guy like you, Josh, that was not even around in the 80s. Because Nick and I...

Hear the stories. We weren't there, but we weren't involved. When you're five, how much are you paying attention to the farm economy, right? Exactly. And so the part that Nick and I are probably leaving out to a guy like you is in the 70s, ground, like farming was good in the 70s or toward the end of the 70s. I don't know about the beginning. So ground really took off. So ground went from $600 to $1,400. $1,400.

So guys were buying, buying, buying. They get to the 80s and things start getting tight. And they're like, man, I could dump this ground right now for $1,400 an acre and be back square just like he was talking. The banker's like, no, you can't do that. You know, you got to keep going because if you sell your ground, you can't make any money to pay us back, right? So keep your ground. So they keep it. Well, then ground starts crashing. So I could have sold this ground for $1,400. Now it's crashed to $800.

And you can't make your payment to the bank. So the bank's like, well, you got to sell your ground now. And it's like, well, hey, dipshit, I could have sold it a year ago, $1,400. Now you're forcing me to sell it at $800. And you're begging somebody to buy it for $800. Yeah, and nobody's buying it. So everybody's upside down at this point. The farmer, the bank, everybody. And so that's how this whole...

shit show got started was everybody got upside down because how many banks and savings and loans went under? It was a bunch. It was a bunch. An astronomical amount. Well, they should have let them buy bad blood too. Oh, absolutely. Yep. So that's how people started getting upside down. I could have sold it for here. The bank said, no, you got to keep it so you can continue to pay us. Write it down. And now the bank's like, well, fuck, you can't make your payments. So dump it now. It's kind of like me with the grain market last year. I could have sold for this. Instead, I wrote it down. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, as far as the 80s, I can't sit here and pick out, well, I remember this. I'm just too young. I just don't. I didn't know what was going on. You don't pay that much attention to it at the time, you know.

Yeah, and new tractors were still selling, not like they did in the 70s, but I wasn't allowed to see them sell in the 70s where a guy walks in, you're like, you got three minutes because there's a guy at the door that wants the tractor that you're going to buy. So either sign or leave, and that guy's going to buy it. The 80s were still selling stuff, but not like that, apparently. I wasn't there for it. And the guys in the 80s that didn't leverage themselves, and I'll never forget this. I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast or not, but I know of a guy –

who retired, and I don't remember the exact year. Let's just say it was 1983. I don't remember. Sold his ground, had like 1,000 acres. Sold his ground, and let's just say it was $1,000 an acre. I don't know the numbers. Sold the ground 1,000 bucks an acre and just put the money in the bank. Them guys are making 15% to 20% interest. I mean, that's what it was. And then he turned around after the 80s, even though he was retired, and thought, shoot, I got a whole pile of money sitting here in the bank.

Grounds cheap. So he went and bought 2,000 acres, literally. Never farmed any of it. It was just a place to park money, and some family members farm it now. I mean, so there was some positives to the 80s if you had money. If you were retiring about then, and interest was 15%, 17%.

Sign me up. A CD is pretty good then. You don't have to be a great investor just to put money in a CD and live off the interest. Yeah. I mean, this ain't the stock market where it's going up and down. I'm just giving you the money and that's what I'm getting. Yeah. Yeah. If you had money then, pretty easy to make some on it. Like you were just, you know, if you didn't know anything then, you're looking pretty good. If you're paying it, well, then a pickup truck costs double, right? Right. Like you give $9,000 for it, but you got 18 in it. By the time you get it paid off or more than that, you know.

And now the next pickup, inflation's hitting, so the next pickup truck's higher than that yet. Interest is still high. Your truck's wore out, you know, which we've kind of seen a little bit here now. Like, who would have thought when we were kids that a pickup truck would be $100,000? Absolutely. When I was a kid, you could get about any 80 acres around here for less than $100,000. Within our school district, there was an 80 out there. If you'd offered $100,000 for them, you'd own any one of them. Agreed. Even guys that didn't want to sell would have sold it to you for that.

Now it's a pickup truck, and guys are supposedly paying for that in five years, you know? The funny part is, and I don't know what the number of farmers was in 19, let's just pick a year, 45, and that's just pulling out of my ass. 1945 versus today, which I know is substantially less today, but I don't know what the exact numbers are. But back then, you could get out of high school and...

But somehow there would magically be 160 acres for sale with a house on it. You could buy it, get married. The house always went with the ground. Have a whole pile of kids. And it's just like they were just all over the place. Anybody that wanted to buy one that was involved in farming could buy one. And the house was of no value, right? Exactly. Like whatever the ground was going to sell for, the house was like an extra three grand. Yeah, just went in with it. Maybe it was within with it. You bought it. You went on. How many guys back then had, depending on if they were the only boy or whatnot...

well i only farm 400 but i own 800 but the other 400 is too hard for me to get across so i just rent that 400 out like there was a lot of those guys that didn't farm everything that they owned yeah that's unheard of now yeah you know nobody does that yeah yeah back then and i don't i don't know if and you correct me if i'm wrong nick so like i'm going to use the term supply and demand

And maybe that's not the right term, but like back then it's like, and that's, that's kind of what everybody in this community did. If you wanted to farm, you bought, whether it was an 80 or 160, but it had the house on it. And you had a whole pile of kids when you were married and you farmed and you worked your way through it where now it's like, nobody's really looking to do that. Or I don't think the volume of kids are looking to buy a house and 80 acres. You know, they would maybe like to have a house in the country, but they don't want the 80 acres with it. Yeah. But it's, well, they can't swing it. So, well, that's what I mean. But it's,

Six times higher now than it was. Yeah, it is. And in the boomer generation, you sell the house, but you don't sell the shed. Yeah, right down the driveway. You sell the ground, but you don't sell that. The shed's not with that. It's not with the house. You've got to split it every which way you can split it to try to... There's more farms around here divided right down the driveway. It's ridiculous. I live on this cool farmstead, but the barn and the great men don't go with the house over there. Yeah, absolutely. It's crazy. I would just...

But then you get north of here and there's a ton of farms that are just a shed and some grain bins. No house there anymore. But the guy that owns the farm owns the house and the grain bins, etc. But you don't see that around here very often anymore. No.

It's way split off. And I don't know if that's because ground got so high, it's like, well, if I can sell off this little bin site in two acres. I mean, I get why it happens. But you look at those old plot books I got hanging up in the shop. Yeah. Back then, everybody owned a minimum of 160, if not 700. I mean, there was...

But you look at those names, there are almost no names, and those are from the early 1900s, I think, if I remember right. There's almost no names on there. There's a few, but not very many that still, that last name exists around here now. Agreed. And back then, it's like, oh, I've got a horse. Here's a 320-acre field. Nope, now I've got a 600-horse four-wheel drive. Here's a 20-acre field. You know, it's just all that stuff's got split, split, split, and split.

Of course, all that back then was bought from the railroad, and it's however much you want to stake off was your claim, basically, and put a fence around it and go on. Which, how did the railroad basically end up owning all of the U.S.? I mean, that's where you got...

The government gave it all to them and told them to develop it, basically. They put tracks to it wherever they wanted, and they sold off the rest, which is... I mean, I've researched it back. Literally, literally, every piece of ground around here, nothing was homesteaded. It was bought from the railroad. Yes, absolutely. And I'm talking in the hundreds of thousands of acres. I mean, I have tracked all through our family tree. It was all bought from the railroad. All of it.

And did that happen in any other country in the world? I don't know. I can't think that it did. I can't answer that. Because by the time the railroad came out, the other places were developed. By the time it was developed here in your Africa, et cetera, they still don't have a railroad. So, and apparently our tracks are too narrow to run fast. So there we are.

And that's what kills me, you know, was back then. Sure, there was way more railroads then than there is today, but it still wasn't like there was a railroad every mile. No. So it's like, how do you dip shits in there with all this land? Yeah. But I'm sure some... Well, because all the power players back then... Vanderbilts. Rockefeller made more money off transporting his stuff than he did off the actual stuff, right? Exactly. Off the oil, the gas, whatever it was. Yeah. And then once that got too high, well, I'll put a pipeline in. Yep.

Yeah. You know, I love the show, The Men Who Built America. Sure. Love it, love it, love it. But they don't show the backside of those guys. No, they don't show the underhanded dealings. Yeah, they don't show the fact that those guys were shitbags. No, they leave that part out. And not to come to politics, and we talked extensively on our last podcast and one with Ryan Peter on the Bushel and Merrill podcast. Mm-hmm.

I'm not anti-Trump. I'm not none of this. I agree with all that shit, but don't think that Elon Musk ain't putting his hand in somewhere just to make sure he don't get screwed on the backside.

You know, have you watched the show Landman? I've watched the first three episodes. I tend to watch the rest, but that's all I've made it through so far. So I won't spoiler alert for you, but so they have this oil field, drug cartels, giving them some, some grief, call the big boss. Hey, call your congressman. And once you have the military, like do some training down here. And I don't know if that's a real thing or not, but it's very believable. I assume that happens. I assume that's how they run those guys off of different things, right? Like,

I can't call my congressman and get him to do anything, right? Yeah. Because I don't have $700 billion. He wouldn't show up to your kid's school for showing down. No, absolutely not. And if that's what they're doing to keep the cartels at bay, hey, I'm all for it. Nope, no issue. I'm all for it. I would like to write the rules of engagement for that deal. But it's just interesting to see all that plays out. And like I said, maybe that's not real because there's a lot of bullshit in TV shows. Like I do get a little chuckle out of how twisted people get about shows. Yellowstone's a prime example.

People are crying about John Dutton, a fictional character, losing his ranch and the sign being taken down, this, that, and the other. I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody. That happens every day in small town America. Every day. It's happened locally. Here, I can think of five guys just off the top of my head. Yeah.

Those same people weren't crying for those guys, and they could have helped those guys. It comes back. We've talked about this before. When a fictional character is losing it, oh, then it's a big deal. The show's shameless. Frank Gallagher is probably a real character somewhere on the south side of Chicago. Absolutely he is. Somebody just dream this up. That kind of comes close to happening. Somebody followed somebody around with a notepad and was like, okay. Holy shit. Okay. All right. We'll put a GoPro on this guy, see how he lives for three days, make a show out of it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny how the world goes around. That's why I don't worry too much about the money and stuff anymore. Like I'm never going to have a ton of it and that's fine. I'm just living each day. Each day is a gift. My goal is to get my wife and kids in heaven.

Outside of that, I don't worry about the rest of the day anymore. Some of the most unhappy people I know are the most wealthiest people. And I'm talking locally. I'm not talking your people that we see on TV. I'm talking locally. Some of the most unhappy people I've ever seen in my life. Even take it on a national stage. Let's take P. Diddy. We don't have to go down that path. I'm like, that guy has...

Way more money than I got. Yeah. Apparently, he wasn't too happy. Why do people like Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, all these guys off themselves? Yeah. Yeah. They're swinging the world by the tail. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm just not in that camp. Nope. It is what it is. Yep. And doesn't it take the challenge out of life? If we all woke up tomorrow and there was a billion dollars laying on your kitchen table and says, all you got to do is put it in the bank. It's yours.

So that's going to be cool, and I'll never downplay that it wouldn't be cool that you can go do this, this, and this. It will be fun. But is it not equivalent to when we were 16 years old road tripping around, you were constantly changing the radio as stuff come on. Hey, good song, we're going to listen to this. You had to wait to record a song maybe on your big stereo at home. But once you get an iPod with 6,000 songs, you're never happy. Never happy. Just go on to the next one. On to the next, on to the next, on to the next. I'm the king of that. I'm always pushing the button. King of the next one.

I'll admit, when we were 16, I would change the radio until I found the good song, and then we would stay. You could turn my favorite song on right now. I might change it partway through because the next one might be better. Do it all the time. And that's where I look at millions and billions of dollars is you're never satisfied. It's never enough. Like, why would Elon Musk – and it's easy for me to say, if I'm Elon Musk, Bill Gates, take your pick –

Why would I get out of bed in the morning and even care what happened anywhere in the world? Hillary Clinton, why would you care what happens in the government? You're worth umpteen hundreds of millions of dollars. You're a grandma. Go enjoy time with your grandkids. But they can't shut that off. I could. And I think some of that comes back into the, let's take your kids out of the equation and take your marriage out of the equation, et cetera, et cetera. Did you ever work a really hard, bad-ass day?

And that'd be one of your best days. For sure. Some of the best memories I got. Super happy with what you did that day. And your hand's bleeding. Your back's sore. You smell like a goat. Your socks are drenched. You're just covered in dirt, mud, whatever. But you put in a badass hard day. You crack a cold beer with two of your buddies. It's a great freaking day. I don't think this next generation of kids...

And I'm not to go down the path of hating on the kids again. I don't think that's a goal of theirs. Like, pride in their work and joy. Like, some of my best days were literally what would be most people's worst days. But then you see these videos on TikTok or this, that, and the other of this guy changing tires barefoot in Africa, putting on a tire that should have been thrown away 10 years ago. And he gets it mounted up.

by some miraculous, because they don't have any machines to do it, so on and so forth. And he's super proud of himself. And I look at that and I'm like, hats off to you, buddy. You just did that by hand with not even a two-by-four, like a stick and some creek water, and managed to get it blown up. And that's a pretty good day for you. I can appreciate that. Because you could take a Jeff Bezos, a Bill Gates, an Elon Musk,

They got a flat tire. They got to call somebody. Yeah, they ain't changing it. They can't change it. They can't air it up. They can't do anything about it. Yeah. And they're not happy when it is changed. They're pissed it took too long to get there. It cost too much to get put on. Yeah. There's some beauty in hard work that people don't appreciate anymore. And it does go in stages. So to us, your Bezos, your Musk, they're the wealthy men in the world.

To the guy living out in Africa, you and I are the wealthy men in the world. Look what he's got. He's got a roof over his head. He's got a heated shop. Just unbelievable. So I guess it does go in stages. I shouldn't. You know, them guys would say, could you imagine if somebody put $25,000 on your table tomorrow and said, you know what, I just compared to a billion. Yeah. I mean, they'd be off the charts. Those guys, if you just built them a house. Yeah. A tiny house. But this thing's not built out of sticks and mud.

Pretty good day for them, you know. I saw them tractor pulling, too. Like, okay, you win, but you just bought the best tractor there was, and you went out and won with it. All right, neat. And you got Tony who, you know, built his and his shop by hand. He got 30. He's happier than you because he put his together out of sticks and mud, essentially, to equate it to the house thing. And you just wrote a check to whoever had the best one yesterday. Well, he was happier. Like, at the end of the day...

It's more satisfaction that I've done it myself versus bought it. It's sort of like the show steers in 4-H, which I'm not in 4-H. Kids never were. The kid who actually raised his calf and broke it to lead and all that versus the kid whose mom and dad just paid the trainer to do it, then you just lead it through the ring. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, you won, but did you really win? I mean, yeah. Three best basketball players I ever saw, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Larry Bird.

Their parents didn't give them shit. Nope. They didn't buy them club lessons. They didn't do this, that, and the other. Those guys said, you know what? I'm just going to be better than everybody else because I got nothing else. And they turned out to be the memorable ones. Turned out to be the great ones. So that's where you need to be. You need to be the guy, Josh, that goes out and just buys land tomorrow like it's going out of fucking style. Yeah, be that guy. Because you have nothing else. I actually, some of the best advice...

And I'm not talking about you because you're probably on the cutoff of getting – how old are you? 31. 31, so yeah, you're getting too old. But I did have a lot of people always tell me, when you're 18, go out and borrow as much as you can because if you lose it, you've still got time to start over. And that's where I'm at in life. At 44, I don't have time to start over, so that's why I'm scared to death of debt. I just don't do it. Yeah, understandable. I like my wife and kids. I'm not looking to work.

20 hour days anymore i'm good with that i'll do it spring and fall if i have to but i don't want to stand on concrete all day long every day i like where i live i enjoy my shop i don't have to call the auctioneer and move back to town yeah forget all this but that's just me some people debt don't bother them i've never had credit card debt car payments i don't do any of that i just i don't it ain't my jam nobody's willing to drive cross country to buick tony is exactly

That's just money in my pocket. Every mile down the road, I'm just shoving another quarter in my pocket. I almost had to do it only because I got in this Buick once, the old one, and I couldn't get my fat ass out of it. This is true. It was either call the Jaws alive, buy it from Tony, or just die in it. That was like right out a year ago. It was in December. I went to Chicago and bought that old 78 Ford I got.

And so I had drove my old Buick to Nick's house that morning because we were going to take his truck and trailer to go get this 78 Ford. So when we got it back, we unloaded the truck at his green buildings in town. And he said, I'll just take my truck home. I'll get your car, and I'll meet you at your house.

And so, yeah, by the time he got to my house, I was like, you're going to pry my fat ass out. He's like, I can't get out. He was like snugging my car. Yeah. Like, if it's yours, you own it now. I was literally trapped. I'm like, the wheel doesn't tilt. I don't know. I got nowhere to go. I'm like, call the dog and have him chew my arm off. Give me a little extra space here. It was rough. Yep. It was rough. Sort of like Police Academy where Hightower rips the front seat out and sets it in the back. That's what he had to do. A little bit of, yep. He made it, so. Yeah. Hanging by the thread.

Gosh, I don't know how long this has been, but we've been... Actually, we didn't stray too far off of the farming. This was mostly farming. Just straightforward farming as you could get. Yes. And we're not going to make any guarantees on the next one. Yeah, it's about as straight as we get on it. But we did kind of stick close to the reservation. Stick to the farming.

For the last, well, we're on season four, episode nine. So this is probably the first actual farming podcast you guys have had in close to a year. Yeah. Congratulations. So kudos to you guys. Hopefully some of these people are driving to Minnesota for Christmas like Nick Boyes does. Yeah, hopefully they're enjoying their travels. When they say they didn't vote for Ronald Reagan. Yeah, absolutely. We won't talk about that. Yeah. But you guys enjoy your holiday travels. Have fun. Yep. Hug your family tight.

Every day is a gift. Yep, that's right. Enjoy your time with them. Don't worry about the neighbors. Just take what's on your plate and deal with it. That's all you can do. Seriously, that's all you can do. We could sit here and bitch. And it's like Nick and I have often talked. The number one reason, like when you start talking about big farmers renting this and 90 entities and this and that, at the end of the day, it truthfully is jealousy. It's like...

Yeah, absolutely. Which I will admit, the older I get, I don't know that I would like to do that. Like 20 years ago, I'd have been all about it. I'd have farmed 10,000 acres if you'd have let me. But the older I get, I have mellowed out. But at the end of the day, most of it's jealousy. And it truly is, and I won't make any bones about that. I wish I had enough to be a full-time farmer. Yeah, it is what it is. Never going to happen. I'm trying. I think if we could all be more neighborly and more civil to each other, it sort of comes back to...

Don't the seeds kind of sow themselves? If you can do that within your community, that maybe then people don't go outside the community to look for other farmers or whatever. And I'm not knocking the people to do it. You don't see the Amish running to the BTO across, you know, down the road. Maybe they got something figured out. But I do think at the end of the day, truthfully, and my wife has finally got on board with this. She's finally coming around. As long as I beat it, we've been married for 18 years. God, it's been forever. I think it's 18 years. Something like that, yeah.

I just, I don't give a fuck. I just, people do not understand the level of give a fuck that I do not have. I just don't have it anymore. I just do not care. Every day that I get up, it's sort of like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. I got air in my lungs. Yeah. I got a roof over my head. I got a wife and kids, and that's pretty much all I am. I don't care. I don't care to be the big swinging dick. Oh, my God, he farms 2,000 acres. He picked up 300 acres. I don't care. That does not turn me on. I don't care.

And so when you can reach that level where you don't care, life's a lot easier. It truly is. I don't care. I do not care. I've seen triumph and tragedy in and out through this whole year. A lot of it this year. A lot of it. More than I wish to ever see again. Yeah. I'm just over it. I don't care. I've got more than 99% of the people on this planet could ever ask for, and I'm good to go. I don't care if I die tomorrow. There's no regrets.

I'm just, that's where I'm at. Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of done with 2024 from that standpoint. So as a young man, don't let it get you down. Don't look at the neighbor. If he farms more than you do big deal, this has always been my go-to. Well, this dipshit has to farm 6,000 acres to make a living. Then he must be a pretty shitty farmer. I can do it on a few hundred. Yeah. What else are you supposed to say? Don't worry about it. Don't look at them. Don't, don't drive yourself into debt and ruin your family.

Because you want to be a big swinging dick that says, why farm however many acres, whatever your magical number is. It ain't worth it. It ain't. It ain't worth it. Nope. Absolutely not. I'll bet Nick would give up every acre of farm ground he's had to have one more day in the shop with his dad. Absolutely. If they said, Nick, you got to rent it out tomorrow, but your dad can come back for one day. That's all you get is one day. Yeah. It's going to be a pretty big day. But yeah, we'd have a good time. Yep. Call the neighbor. I'll rent it to him. Yeah. Absolutely. So what's the matter? What does...

And we've all seen the same Facebook post. A hundred years from now, nobody's going to know any of us ever walked face to face. Like we said in that plot book, those guys are there. All their grounds gone, their name ain't even on the book anymore. Most of your grandkids are old enough. Well, hell, he was dead before I was born. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You're not going to have some big, gigantic, gold-plated tombstone because you farmed 6,000 acres. So who cares? It don't matter in the long run. Let it go. Big deal. Work towards the Lord. Yep.

That's all you can do. So you got that? You got that? Yep. All right. Okay. We're just making sure. Stick with Jesus. He fed 5,000 people with a couple of fish and some loaves of bread. Yeah. Be like Jesus. See, he was a good farmer. Yeah. He was a good farmer. Absolutely. Several thousand people with a loaf of bread? Back then, nobody was gluten-free. Yeah, exactly. So he had that going for him. He wasn't getting no subsidies either or crop insurance. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. He just done this single-handedly. Nose of the grindstone. Yep. Yep. With a little help from his neighbors.

helping him drag the fish in yep that's right well anyway we probably should yeah wrap this one up let these people tool on down the road to your next family get together now don't be starting shit with your in-laws yeah just go put your head down get through it yeah get back home now if they voted for biden feel free to kick exactly or if you're in minnesota and they were some of these that didn't vote for reagan yeah do whatever you got to do yeah

But otherwise, long live the Republic. Yeah. God bless America. Yep. All right. Thanks for tuning in, guys. We'll see you in a couple weeks, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Could be tomorrow. Could be next year. Yep. One more reason to live another day, because it could be the next day that our podcast drops. Absolutely. We'll see you next time.