This weeks farm news
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Hello folks, welcome back to the Straight Forward Farming Podcast. I'm your host Tony Reed alongside Mr. Nick McCormick. Nick, what's new with you this week? Oh, nothing too exciting. Just been working in the shop, hit a few tractor pulls. Good to see everybody again. It's been a while and enjoying that so far. Yeah, the pulling circuit and everything pretty well open full swing. Yeah, it's pretty well open full swing. Yeah, all the fairs I've been to were well attended.

That's good. Everything's going good if they don't shut it down here again soon. Yeah, exactly, which I'm not going to say yay or nay on that deal. I mean, I'm about sick of it. I think everybody's about sick of it. So I don't know where we go from here, but they need to get their shit together, in my opinion. It looks like we're headed for another lockdown here in Illinois. Oh, yeah. We've got a lockdown. That's the only way to solve this. Yeah. Lockdown. You know, now we've got local people who've had the vaccine getting COVID for a second time. So, you know, that was real effective. Mm-hmm.

Working good. Yep. I don't know. School's starting up. What? Kids will be home next week, and that's it. Then they go to following. Summer's over. Yep, it is. Summer's over. Yep. I don't know where it went, but... Yeah, it didn't take long. No, it didn't. It sure didn't. Nope. So... I seen this week. Did you see where John Deere, Bear Flag Robotics... No. No.

Yep, they announced, John Deere announced, I don't know, yesterday, day before, that it was going to acquire Bear Flag Robotics, which is a Silicon Valley startup that makes fully autonomous tractors for farms for $250 million. So it looks like the days of the farmer sitting in the seat of the tractor are coming to an end. I mean, like it or not, I don't like it.

Well, I guess that way when the emissions shit goes bad and it quits and kicks an error code, there's nobody in the seat to be mad about it. Well, I guess so. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But, you know, it's pretty interesting. They talk about these companies. You know, they use a lot. Because you always get the argument that, oh, you could never have a tractor-to-field cultivator going through the field because if something wads up or breaks or whatever. But there are so many things to do with cameras now and whatnot. I think you can monitor a lot of that stuff relatively easy myself. And I think it can be done. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I think they'll pull it off. It'll take a little time to get ramped up to where it's perfect or as good as it needs to be. But, I mean, just look at all the sensors on a new car versus the vehicles we grew up with. Yeah. I mean, every time I go past a road sign in my wife's car, a light flashes at me. I'm like, easy there, killer. It's just a road sign. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for the notification. Right.

But I got it. I saw it. It's on the other side. It's in the ditch. It'll be okay. I'm not driving over there. So they'll have the same thing on that, and it'll work out in the long run, I suppose. I'm not happy about it or excited about it, but whatever. I mean, it's getting to the point now where all we're doing is riding along anyway. You know, I mean, this stuff's becoming so automated that you're not really doing much. I mean...

Now, you know, our combine, you can set in the office and watch on John Deere Operation Center. I think it's not real time. It's like a 30-second delay, but you can watch it going through the field and the bushels, and you can actually change settings from the office to

You know, if you were sitting there and your son was running it and you're dumping grain at the bend, you go out and you're like, hey, you're cracking the piss out of it. You can go into your desk and you can change the settings in the combine and change it from right there. So, you know, as every model comes out, we're getting farther and farther from setting behind the steering wheel. And I've always said I don't think it's going to be one of them deals where they can't just come out and say, hey, this tractor has no cab. You can't even get in it. That won't have a welcome reception. Right.

I think they've got to get you bored enough in the cab that you're like, what am I doing here? Yeah, I'm doing something else. Yeah, so, you know, I don't know. This is probably...

10 years off, I would say, from becoming very wide scale. What burns me is they keep trying to automate the jobs I like doing. Nobody minds driving a tractor or combine. Automate the grain dumping into the bin. Automate cleaning the bin out itself. Let's automate that shit. Yeah, I agree. I don't mind sitting in the seat in a tractor or combine. Yeah, so I don't know. I've seen where Deere had bought, what was it, Blue River Technology...

That's been a few years ago, I think was the name of it, for like $305 million. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, some of these companies, too, they buy shit like that to shut it down so they can have their own version. So I don't know how far. Eliminate competition and whatnot. Right. You know, the sad part is it's like $250 million. I don't know what this company actually has. But it's like that's a pretty big number. But by today's standards, it's not that big a number. It wouldn't have been that many years ago, and that would have been...

a whole lot of money. Now it's a sideline investment. We'll dump some cash in and see where it goes. And I think we have to get to self-driving cars on the road first. Because at least then I can stay in my office and tell the tractor, hey, you've got to go two miles down the road and pull in the field here.

to where otherwise somehow you're going to have to be logistically moving this shit. I've got to take it to the field and then get out of it and go back, which can still be done. Yeah. With those small little patches, it's not going to be very handy. But out west where they've got big fields or whatever, that would be – the tractor's going to be there for a while. Right. So I think once the fully autonomous cars and trucks are on the road and people get comfortable with that, I think you could really see this go to a new level then where you just tell it to go here and it does it and –

And that'll be the end of it. But, you know, I'm seeing all kinds of things in these bigger cities. And, you know, we don't see it here because we're such a small farming community. But, you know, New York City, these places where they're actually kind of testing this stuff, you know, where it's a completely driverless car, you know, Uber, you just ring it up. It's just like a little carriage on wheels, you know, pulls up and picks you up.

So, I don't know. It's coming. I mean, I don't like it any more than you do, but it's coming. Seems to be not that long ago somebody said auto steer. Yeah. And we're like, ah, we don't need that. Yeah. And here we are, you know, so it...

Time passes by pretty quick, and I'm sure it won't be that long, and it'll be in the field. And, I mean, look at it now. I mean, you can't find help to do anything. No, that's true. So at the end of the day, it's like, yeah, I really like driving my tractor, but I like making money too, so I'm going to have to follow the money. And wherever that may be, you know. Yeah, with the shortage of farm labor, this may be the future. It'll for sure make it easier for the big guys to get bigger.

Yeah, I think COVID has really put the fast track on some of this stuff now where you can't find help and people have realized that they can not go to the office like they used to. Yeah, it's going to change the scheme of the workforce. You know, a lot of jobs are never going back into a building. Right. You're going to do it from home. They've decided that some of this travel is unnecessary, that stuff's still getting done regardless. Right. The irony to this is we've got what?

Hundreds of thousands of vehicles sitting that can't go anywhere because of a chip. Maybe not hundreds of thousands, but tens of thousands of vehicles. A lot. They can't move because of a chip. But, yeah, we keep going down the electronics path. Maybe instead of buying this company, they ought to start a chip manufacturing company. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you think too, a lot of these, you know, they're talking about all this real estate in cities now that have opened up, you know, warehouses and just different stuff because COVID has just completely turned everything on its head. That always brings me back too because they're like, what are we going to do with all these buildings? But that comes back to the vertical farming, the indoor farming. You know, if you've got a great big warehouse that you're not using now, that would be a prime setup or something like that. So,

I think we're going to see a dramatic shift. I mean, I really do, like it or not. It's coming. Yeah, seems to be. Yep. Moving along here. The White House rolls out EV, electric vehicle sales targets. The long-awaited fuel standard. I mean, have you been waiting that long for fuel standards? I know I haven't been. No, I've been on the edge of my seat, Tony, frankly. I mean, I've just been sitting here...

I just really can't wait to drive 10 miles at 3 mile an hour and then plug back in. I mean, I am excited for it. Yeah, it's going to be great. In fact, they're going to do a lot of this stuff by executive order. They announced August 5th plans to issue an executive order that seeks to have zero emissions vehicles make up 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030.

Here's my thing on that, though. If these government officials want this shit, won't they lead by example? I agree. I don't see his limo being electric. Nope. Air Force One ain't electric. Air Force One ain't electric. That plane ought to be solar. Yeah, for sure. Just let it charge up a couple of days. We'll take a 15-foot flight, set her back down again, let it charge back up. They never want to lead by example. It's good enough for you and me, but it's not good enough for them. Yep, exactly. Yeah, so...

So I don't know. It's even worse that the car companies go along with this stuff. I mean, this is an executive order. I don't know how that works. But prior to that, they still go along with this shit. Still going along with it. The American consumer is not out there beating their drum for electric vehicles. No. But it's like we said earlier on the emissions thing, this, that, and the other. At some point in time, if the engine companies would have just said, hey, we're not doing it.

Same way with this deal. The big three, Toyota, whatever, say, hey, that's cool and all, but the technology ain't there. It's not practical. We're not going to do it. Shove it up here, and we're not going to do it. They'd probably been better off. Yeah, so you got a little bit of everybody to blame, which takes you back to another, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, but when you start filtering towards the top,

There's not very many people that own a lot of shit in this country. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're exactly right. And so it's not like you're out there having to convince...

500,000 people that, hey, we need to do this. It's literally less than 20 that are pulling the strings in these companies. As long as they own the companies that are going to benefit from it, we'll go along with it. For sure. And the American consumer is so naive. Oh, we're going to do this. This is going to be great for the environment. Well, how are we producing electricity? And our power grid won't handle it anyway. Let's just say tomorrow we woke up and 50% of the vehicles were EVs.

go plug them in. Your lights are going to be off in your house. Exactly. It's not going to work. It's always funny, though, when you follow the trail, and I'm not saying this is the case here, but usually you'll take a guy, whether it's a Buffett or a Bezos or a Gates, whoever, to pick your poison on that. They'll really push for electric vehicles, saying it's all good and great.

But really, they own the company that fucks with the recycled batteries because they know you're going to have to go through recycled batteries like a bastard. The ironic part of the EV thing is golf courses are going back to gas-powered golf carts because they can't get you through a round of golf with an electric one. And they have to put batteries in them every how often, which is basically like buying the golf cart again. Right. And the gas ones will run forever. Yeah.

But let's try that on a large scale and see if we can do it with big trucks and trailers. That sounds like a great idea. Yeah, I'm just dying to have a wreck in an electric vehicle and have battery acid all over me. I can't wait for that day to happen. Or you clamp it down with the jaws of life and zap yourself. That'll be spectacular. Yeah.

Yep, I see the crop insurance rises to the top of the farm bill discussion. That's just what we need. And actually it says right here, panelists on a forum called Designing the Ideal Farm Bill. Oh great, coming out of government, yeah. But we really designed the ideal farm bill. The sad part is, as dumb as the farm bills usually end up being, I'll simplify the farm bill for them. And I'm not saying I'm advocating for this, but I can simplify it for them. How about everybody that's

File the 1040F over, pick your number, $20,000. The new farm bill is we're giving you a million dollars. Cash. But we're now doing another farm bill for 25 years. Here it is. Go fuck yourself. Here it is. Here's your million dollars. We're not touching this topic. We're not giving you a dime. We don't have any programs for another 25 years. That saves them what? I don't know. $10 trillion over the course of the 25 years? Right. You know? Now, granted...

The price of trucks is already high in front of you. Oh, yeah. You give them a free million dollar. John Deere will make out like a bandit Chevy GF. But, yeah, those same six-cup people that are in charge of all that stand to win on that deal. It's probably a good deal for them. Right. You know. But that's what gets me, you know, like they was talking about here earlier.

Minnesota Congressman Colin Peterson, which he was former congressman, I guess. You know, I don't know the guy at all. I'm not from Minnesota. He might have been the greatest congressman ever. I have no idea. I don't know which side of the aisle he's on. I really don't know, don't care. But it said he helped write the past four farm bills, so that tells me right there he ain't real fucking bright because it's been a train wreck. If there's one thing farm talk has taught me is that farming is so regional. Not even Illinois versus Iowa versus Indiana. Not versus, but...

You know, it's different. My county, your county, my township, your township, which we're the same, but, you know, two townships over. Things change pretty quickly on the needs and the wants and what's going on there. So doing these widespread, you know,

slap a check mark on it we got a farm bill for everybody deal yeah it's given taken there's usually more take than there is given yeah and there's a large group of people that are getting shafted for sure and they're pandering to the people they want to pander to and move on you know and i never realized till talking to doug yeager out in montana you know i assume federal crop insurance was pretty much the same and this and that and boy was i wrong i mean crop insurance for them is virtually unaffordable i mean it's like

You basically have to have a complete loss, and then you might break even. Yeah. You know? And, I mean, that's not the case here. And I'm not bragging or boasting how it is in the Midwest. No. But it's definitely not fair to them. No. I mean, if you're going to have a government program that's supposed to help, then you think it would help evenly. Exactly. That's the way I see it. But...

Boy, was I wrong. So it makes me feel even more sorry for them guys. They're out there right now in the middle of a drought. Because you know how it is around here. The 2012 drought, I mean, yeah, it sucked. We all sat there and watched your crop burn down to literally nothing. But at the end of the day, it was one of the best financial years we ever had. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, so overall, you know, and finally to the point it got laughable. It's like, well, who cares? What are we going to do? Farmers are a unique beast though, right? Like 2012, we have crap yields. Everybody's upset. Come out financially pretty well on that because the drought was so widespread. Right. And prices went through the roof and, you know, so the insurance is pretty good. 2013, we have a great crop. Prices are shit. Man, we just can't pat ourselves on the back enough for all this grain we raised. It's like...

But we didn't make any money. Ah, that's okay. We had a health problem. Yeah, exactly. Farmers are unique that way, I guess. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But you're right. It's very different from in a not very...

Yeah. You know, it doesn't take much terrain in between. You don't have to go very far, you know. Especially if you jump a body of water or something like cross a river or whatnot. You know, it's totally different on the other side. And their needs are way different than ours. And it's just. Have you ever noticed, looking back, it's almost like you can see why they drew the state boundaries the way they did. Because, like, when you leave Illinois headed for Missouri, it's like it's all the same. You get the Mississippi River and it's like you're in a whole new world now. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like somebody got here like, yeah, we don't want that shit across the river. We're stopping here. Well, I told you one of the smartest people in the world at one time lived in Illinois, Tony. Well, see what happened is our ancestors were over in Europe and it was getting out of hand over there, getting super liberal, super dumb. So they got on a boat with no map, no compass, no bullshit, no nothing. And said, it's so bad over here. We're willing to die in the ocean just to get the hell out of here. So bang, here they come across the United States, settle on the East Coast.

Everything's going good. Here come those same dipshits from Europe. Somebody gave them a map, told them how they got there. Bang, here they come. So they start moving west. They start moving west, you know, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Then they get to the Mississippi, and they're like, you want me to cross that on a horse? Heck with that. We're staying right here. There you go. And that was the end of it. And that's why at one time the smartest people in the world lived in Illinois. Yeah, there's probably something to that. Now, Brad, you know, if you go very far, well, a good ways north, Mississippi's like,

You know, your creek out back here. Yeah. It's not very big at the top, but. Right. Yeah. Around here, crossing the Mississippi. It's a big deal. Especially certain years, pretty big deal. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Gosh, you get down around St. Louis, that thing's half mile wide anyway. I mean, if not more. Yeah. For sure. You watch that old stuff where they're trying to build the first steel bridge to cross it or whatever. It's like, that's an undertaking there. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, I've seen here Virgin Galactic reopens a sale of rocket rides starting at $450,000. Are you going to get in on some of that maybe? Well, you know, I was going to, but they won't let you drink. And, you know, the hospitality I hear is not that great on there. There's no in-flight meal, no movie. I don't know. You've got to wear a mask. So I'm out on that. Right. I don't really have any desire to go to, I mean, are you calling it the edge of space? I mean, because you're technically not in space. What are they calling it?

I don't know. I don't really want to pay $450,000 to have zero gravity for five minutes. No, no, I'm pretty good right where I'm at. I mean, you get that high, you're not going to see nothing anyway. No, that's a neat concept, but I think I'm good. I wonder what their end game is on this spaceflight shit, you know, because they've all got it now. And, I mean, you've got, what, three big companies that are doing it and pushing it. I mean, what is the end game? I mean, I don't know. I don't know.

Well, I think it's the classic deal. It's getting so out of hand here, we've got to find someplace new to screw up. So we're going to look for other plans to try to mess them up, I guess. I mean, just like a deal like this, though. Let's just pretend that, okay, this has been out 10 years now and the cost has started coming down. And if I could do that for $1,000, I wouldn't do it. I mean, I just don't see the point in it. No, I'm good.

Yeah, that doesn't interest me much. I guess maybe I roll a little bit different than other people. I don't know. Well, the little deal they cart that out on probably has Goodyears on it. Probably blow a tire on the way out there. You'll be sitting on the runway for two days. Yeah, exactly. God. Unbelievable. I don't know. I guess maybe when you get to that...

point in life where you've got that much money you just start trying to think of shit to sell people. Dreaming shit up that you can do with it. But I guess I wouldn't be taking other people with me to outer space. Fuck it, I'd go by myself. That's just me. And notice Noah didn't take a lot of people on the ark. Yeah, exactly. Yep.

World food prices fall for the second month, but they're still up 31%. Yeah. Wouldn't know why that's happening. Yeah, no doubt. Well, it's because you guys keep destroying your crops. That's what it is. True. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as most of you probably know that follow me on TikTok, I'm banned again. So if you do want to follow me on my backup account, it's DestroyingCorn2020. And I'm not lying. It really is. That's my backup account.

So, yeah, that's where you can find me from here on out. I probably won't post much on that account. It's just in the event of if and when I get permanently banned, which it's common. So that's where you can find me in the meantime. What do we got? Heavy rain in Europe, lower than expected wheat yields in Russia. Gosh. Yeah. Did you see this? The mystery of the missing U.S. workers explained. Did you see that? No, I didn't. Take a look at that.

The U.S. economy is in the midst of a historic comeback, but it's happening with the lowest rate of labor force participation in more than four decades. Well, you keep paying people to stay home, they're going to keep staying home. This is true. That is true. It leaves economists, policymakers, and investors wondering, where have all the workers gone? Answers start to reveal themselves when you look at the labor force participation rate, a measure of the share of working-aged Americans who are employed or looking for work

which has been struck near its lowest level since the 1970s for almost a year. The working age population defined as those age 15 to 64 declined in 2019 for the first time in decades, then again in 2020. Blame it on the boomers. There's a shocker. Exactly. Another great benefit of the boomers. The neediest generation. Yep.

So, yeah, basically the baby boomers, when the pandemic hit, they're like, yep, we're out. Yep, we're out. But we still want to be in charge. Yep. We'll control everything, but we're going to do it from our house. Yep. Yeah, sounds about right. So, yep, they finally leave us with high inflation, basically. Yeah. In a sense. Yeah, thanks again. Thanks again. But they're still running the entire government. Only 25 more years of them being in charge. Yeah, exactly. God damn.

I'm so sick of it. I'm sick of all of it. I'm sick of the pandemic. I'm sick of the baby boomers getting in office and never leaving. I don't know. Yeah. Potash price up more than $100 per ton in two months. Shocker. Yeah. Don't know why they have to do that, you know, just because corn got high. I mean, you know. Yeah. And the fact that potash mine ownership is pretty small, the number of

available places there. Yep. Let me guess, labor shortage, you know, conveniently. Yeah. You know. They should automate that. They need electric dump trucks. They do. And some robots, and they'd be good to go. Yeah, they should. I was trying to like, doesn't a lot of our potash come out of China? Or maybe that's some of the others. I don't remember. I know potash used to come out of Florida. Or no? No.

I better not say. I don't know for sure. I was thinking a bunch of it was in Russia, but maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, was it Ukraine? There was somewhere over there, Russia, Ukraine, somewhere in that area. Yeah, I better not say on that. But I'm sure on one of our fishing trips in Florida, that was a potash mine. Well, I guess I shouldn't say a mine. It could have been something that was brought in and then a distribution. It was a big-ass facility. I know that. Yeah. Nonetheless. Yeah.

But, yep, it never fails. The price of corn or beans creep up, and fertilizer's right behind it. It's funny how that works. Yeah, they're never going to leave a dollar on the table there. They got it penciled out pretty well. Yep. Now, I am hearing from our local propane suppliers that...

In the event that we would have to dry this corn crop majorly and have a cold snap, he's like, there is going to be zero propane to be had. None. Really? I can believe that. I guess, which I didn't realize, right north of here, Tusco, Illinois, there's a big cavern full of propane up there. That's where they store it or whatever. I'm not saying that one, but a lot of the caverns throughout the Midwest, I guess, are empty. I guess the price has been high enough they're actually exporting it. Shocker. Rather than using it at home, you know.

Yeah. Well, hopefully we can sell it to China. Yeah. And then they can sell it back to us. Yeah. I mean, that's how we prefer to do it. Yeah. Did you realize that's what's happening with a bunch of our coal right now? Yeah. I knew you said that on one podcast. We sell it to them. They dump it in the ocean. They dump it in the ocean. They're saving it for later. Yeah. Yep. Unbelievable. Yeah. Sounds like a good plan. It's way better than us just burning it here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Because their factories over there are zero emission factories, Tony. Oh, I'm sure they are. They're clean as a whistle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they are. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

I don't know. This shit is not going to change until we get these people out of office. And I'm not talking Democrat and Republican. I'm talking everybody on both sides of the aisle. But every time an election cycle comes up, oh, you've got to go vote Republican. You've got to go vote Democrat. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. Yeah. Unfortunately, if there is a good candidate, they run them off pretty quick. Yep.

Yeah. But we're safe in Illinois. Oh, yeah. Because we got JB and we're in good shape there. Yeah. I will admit, last night at the county fair, the local Democrat tent, I almost did a TikTok on it, but I knew it would get clipped immediately. There was zero people, and I mean zero people, in the tent. No, I can't believe that. I thought they'd have a bunch of free shit. Oh, yeah. I didn't think they'd reel them in. Yeah, you'd think. Of course, they were probably all sitting in their cars wearing their masks. Yeah, that's what I figured, too. That's...

Yeah. I don't know. This thing is out of control. That it is. I don't know how we're going to right the ship. I really don't. It's scary. It's going to be a long, sad process probably. What's your thoughts on the grain markets? Which way are we going to go? Got a big report coming up next week. I don't know. You know, from what little bit I've been out and about, the corn crop,

In general, it looks pretty decent. Soybeans, of course, they're so hard to judge. You can't tell them to the combine rules. No, you can't. It's hard to judge them. There was a lot of yellow earlier, and there's some holes, so I don't know. Apparently, worldwide stocks were down, so...

I don't know. My gut, and this is only me, don't take this advice to the bank by any means. We've had, what, three friendly reports now? We're due to get stuck. And... Well, the insurance price is coming up. That's exactly what I was getting ready to say. We've got to get a beat down for that. Yep. We always... I think it was, what, one or two times in the last nine years the fall price has actually been higher than the spring price. And so, I think right now I'm sitting at around...

70 bushel an acre sold, and I want to be 100 bushel an acre sold before this report on corn. And beans, I'm about 32% sold on beans. I want to up that a little bit, too. I'm just scared. And here's the way I see it. I'm going to get heavily sold. If it goes higher, I'll just sell more when it goes higher. I just feel like it's got a lot better chance of going down. And I know the fundamentals say that it probably shouldn't. There's problems in Brazil. We've got drought here in the U.S., but...

I'm just scared that we're due to get screwed on. I'm not sold up as far as I'd like to be, and I sold a little too much too early, which was still way better than last year. I mean, hell, at 210 bushel corn, which is not unrealistic in our area. I mean, it could very easily happen.

At $5.30, I mean, you're over $1,000 an acre gross. Yeah. I'll do that all day long. Yeah, well, it's not going to matter. We'll make a little bit of money this year, and the inputs will be so high for the 22 crop that they'll get it all right back in about two months. So it's not going to matter. Yep, it never fails. So I don't know. That's just my gut, though. I just honestly feel like we're due to get screwed on one of these reports, and this could be the one. I hope not, but...

And when you look, throw in the spring or the fall price deal, it never fails. It always crashes before then. So it does seem to have a way of doing that. Podbean, your message amplified. Ready to share your message with the world? Start your podcast journey with Podbean. Podbean, the AI powered all-in-one podcast platform. Thousands of businesses and enterprises trust Podbean to launch their podcasts. 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. So I don't know what the answer is. I do think it's risky to be. Now, I understand if you're in a drought area, whatever that, you know, I'm not talking about you guys, but where you're sitting in a good spot where, you know, you've got a pretty good crop.

I think that's pretty risky not having one bushel priced. I mean, I'm not saying you've got to price it all, but, man, I think you need to have something priced. Yeah, I mean, if it dips, I mean, it's not going to go, you know, three bucks again, I don't think. But still, yeah. And, I mean, you know, it's a lot of time between now and harvest. I mean, what, it was mid-August last year or early to mid-August when Iowa got leveled. You had a pretty good crop coming on until then, and we could do the same thing here. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it could happen anywhere. But, yeah.

I don't know, from a risk management standpoint, I want to be, I'm not saying heavily sold, but I want to be half sold coming into this report. On that Iowa deal, I wonder how much of that storage has gotten rebuilt by now. Because they lost, what was it, 60-some percent, I think I heard that time? It was a bunch. A bunch of storage. And here we are in the middle of a pandemic. Can't get anything, can't do anything. I talked to a few people that work at GSI, and when they were running around the clock, pretty much, it sounded like trying to...

Trying to keep up. This is way back. Right. Trying to catch back up and build as much as they could for that. So hopefully those guys got some storage back again. Right. And I don't know how them areas are, but around here, you know, it's not like them people are a dime a dozen. You don't just have five grain bin companies in a 10-mile radius. No. I mean, we don't here anyway. No. It might be different somewhere else, but it's not like putting up a swimming pool where you and two of your buddies are going to do it on a weekend. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, that could, and then if you throw in the fact that them companies can't find help, whatever, I mean, it's just a snowball effect. So, I don't know, but that's a good question. I haven't heard anybody comment on what's been replaced or how it's going. Well, I think what the plan is, is they got these new mobile grain bins. Near as I could tell from what I saw is they're buying up all these old gleaners.

And they hold a lot of grain. They don't harvest it for shit, but they hold a lot in the hopper. Gotcha. So they're just parking them all up and filling them up. There you go. And when it's time, swing your auger up. Nice. One after the other. They can dump it wherever they need it. There you go. Off they go again. Perfect. Don't have to pull the rotor. Exactly. You know, the guy's sitting in the comfort of his blue glass. Yep. He's good to go. Got that nice auger, you know, that swings...

They won't hit your neighbor that way, Tony. You can flip them all at once and they won't hit the combine next to you. Just up, up, up, and away. Like Superman. Yeah. I mean, every one of them holds at least 300 bushels. Oh, absolutely. And they're already galvanized. Right. Just like a grain bin. Just like a grain bin. So we found a use for them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep, the old Gleaner crowd. I can't believe I don't catch more flack from them on TikTok. Well, there's only the six of them. I went on a good Gleaner rant on TikTok for a while. I can assure you one thing. I get tagged in anything Gleaner on TikTok still to this day. Yeah, that's true. That's for sure.

Yeah, that saga is just about over. I hate to say it, but I don't believe Gleaners are going to be around much longer. No, I think you're right there. I think those guys are going to have to get Ideal or switch brands. Yeah, I think so, too. The Massey, it's done, ain't it? No more Massey Combines, or am I mistaken? I think so. I think that's right. Yeah, I think they're to the end of the rope. Yep. I mean, that would be a company I wouldn't think would have any labor shortage. You only needed three guys for no more than you build anyway. Yeah.

No offense, Massey. I'm going to make you a little offense, Massey guy. We're trying to be nice. Exactly. We're just having a little fun. Don't get carried away. Yeah, don't get wound up. You got some good product. The Massey product line. I've been on a few things that were just fine. The Massey tractors, the newer ones, are they more of a challenger? Because I don't know who's all tied to who.

You get some stuff that's the same tractor, just one's red, one's yellow. The Massey and the Challenger are essentially the same. They're just painted different colors with their edge and all that stuff over to the Fent line. You ran a Challenger that you really liked, right? Yes, but it was a Fent. Oh, it was a Fent. It was a 1042. Okay. Yeah, and that thing was awesome. I've yet to hear a bad thing about a Fent tractor. It was...

I really can't say anything about it, but I can get to run it a lot. I ran it for, I don't know, half a day or so, maybe a day by the all said and done. But yeah, I didn't really have anything bad to say about it. Yeah. A lot of neat features about it. And I haven't run, you know, I didn't run the newest deer in the newest case. Sure. That same timeframe. So, you know, maybe my comparison isn't great there, but compared to my some later model experience, yeah.

They did a lot of stuff that was nice. Right. And I think, and I don't know this for sure, so correct me if I'm wrong or don't hate me, don't flame me, don't burn me or whatever, but I think once you get used to the AGCO platform, cab-wise, that that cab is identical, whether it's a row gator, a Fenton tractor. Which makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. So I think once you can run one, you can pretty much run any of them. Yeah.

What do you think about the Fent Combine with no steering wheel? You think other companies will follow suit on that or not? I don't know. I'm still torqued. They got rid of the foot and inch pedal on the Case IH Combine, so I miss that. I would have to run one to know how I like it. I think it's cool as far as the visibility, and it's just different, I guess, sitting there, but...

I don't know how I'd like it. I'd have to run one just to give you an honest opinion. I mean, I suppose it's like a zero-turn lawnmower. Yeah, you'll catch on. Once you catch on, eh. Right. But the thing of it is, like a zero-turn lawnmower, some people are going to catch on. Some people are going to be like, I can't drive this. Exactly. Physically lack the ability to do it. I know on Mike Mitchell's YouTube video when he ran one,

It sounded like he really liked it in the field. Of course, you know, you've got auto steer, but as far as when you're actually driving in the field, he was okay with it. But going down the road, he was like, man, this thing's a little bit squirrely. Yeah, so... Which I'm sure they'll tweak something, you know, or whatever, but... There'll probably be a road mode that will slow the steering rate down or something. Yeah. Long term, you know. Which I think the one he ran had tracks on it anyway.

And he was always complaining, even on their machines with steering wheels that had tracks, you know, they ride so rough going down the road that that didn't help either. Oh, no. So...

But yeah, I've always been curious as to what other companies will follow suit. And I've never actually been up, I don't think, and looked at a Fendt. I'm trying to think when them come out in the last farm show I've been to. I don't know that I've ever looked under the side shields of a Fendt, to be honest with you. So, I'm trying to think. I'm pretty sure, I know I was, that the last farm machinery show I was at, I think they had the whole intersection of...

setting out in the open. Okay. We can walk up and look at it. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff there. It ought to do a good job. There's a little bit of everything. Yeah. It sure looks like it to me. I mean... I don't know. You know, I realize we want all these features and this, that, and the other, and I hate to keep going back to the Axelflow guy, Axelflow, but you know I'm an Axelflow guy. It's like, they took the combine and simplified it as much as they could. Right. Least amount of BS as we can get does the job, we're good. And it's like, now we're...

swinging the pendulum the other way. How much shit can we put on these things? We've got a feet accelerator. We've essentially got a cylinder. We've got rotors. We've got every threshing system ever invented all stuffed under the side shield of one combine. It's like...

We're really gaining anything from that. I still maintain that the ag manufacturers really shit the bed when they let combines get this big. Yeah, they do. Well, think about it. If you're a deer, okay, now you've got this X9 combine. And sure, it costs a million dollars or whatever. But it's gargantuan. What are you going to do on the backside? Wouldn't they have been way better off to sell you three class 6 combines to do the same job? Yeah. Because everybody can handle a class 6 combine. Yep. And they sold three of them. Yeah. You know, so they're...

They're buying power for whatever parts they're buying for it to assemble it. They're larger quantities. They're getting them cheaper. It's more efficient. They're good to go. Yes, you need more labor to do that. But the other thing is, maybe that keeps Joe Jack, big farmer, from farming 450,000 acres. Right. And if you keep them to a certain size, I farm 1,000 acres. I need one. You farm 4,000. You might need three or whatever that number is. Yeah.

I am so sick. Like, I can't even keep track of the models of tractors and combines and all this shit anymore. When I was a kid, it was, I knew all that stuff. Like, the back of my hand could recite it forward and backward. Like, I don't follow IH as much, but they got so many combines and flagships and heritage series. And it's like, I don't even know what's what. And they're like, well, is it a flagship? I'm like, well, fuck, I don't know. It's a 51. You tell me. I don't know what it is. I mean, I don't know.

you know, at least deer. They've only got these numbers straightened out, but it is confusing. I've had hour-long conversations with good-bred friends trying to explain to them the lineage and how it goes, you know, because it is confusing. I did like the fact that deer always kept it to either three or four in this area, and it was just, you know, 660, 670, you know, it was easy. I could

I couldn't keep track of IH at all. I really couldn't. Good combines? It's not that hard, but it is confusing if you don't know where you're at in the system. And now they're all tractor numbers, which makes it even more confusing. Yeah. But...

Yeah, I think they'd have been better off if they had capped it. Well, take for instance, let's say, you know, I'm Jim John Deere, salesman, and boy, I really like your podcast and your TikTok stuff. We've got this used 48 row on the lot, Tony. We're going to give it to you. As a gift for advertising for us, we're going to give you this used 48 row. All you got to do is rebuild it. It's not completely junk, but it could use a rebuild.

you can't afford to rebuild a four-year-old piner for the acreage farm and you can't get into your fields if you do get it rebuilt yeah so it's essentially useless yep and the guys that buy those new buy them new they don't want to use one rebuilt right exactly so it gets tough to to get rid of some of that giant stuff in the back side to me that was the shocker when getting on tick tock i mean you always know that stuff's out there

But, you know, when I was a kid around here, nobody, and I mean nobody, had a 24-row planter. Nobody. That all come along in, what, the last 12 years? Yeah, probably. And now it's like they're a dime a dozen. I mean, everybody, it don't matter if you farm 500 or 5,000, you got a 24-row planter. But you go through TikTok, I mean, there's two guys cruising through the same field, each got a 48-row planter, they got a 36-row run across the road. It's like, holy shit. I mean, it's just mind-boggling. Yeah.

Like I said, there's no backside for those things. No, there ain't. That's why when you go to Sloan's at Assumption, there's literally 30 24-row planters set in there and one 12-row. And that's where guys around here, they're like, well, fuck, I can buy a 24-row cheaper than a 12. And so they would, even though they didn't need it. But I'm not going to do that because the maintenance and the upkeep aren't. Well, and you've got to be able to get it around, right? My brother and I bought a 24-row, had it for, I don't know, a month or two.

Never took it to the field. Took it out to the farm. Realized we couldn't get it in any of our field lanes. And said, you know what? We don't really need this thing that bad. And found somebody else that wanted it. Exactly. And moved on. Most of the guys around here that got them probably don't need them. I mean...

Several of them, no. But teach their own. Yeah, I'm the same way. It ain't nothing to me. But like I said, the backside of that is the next trickle down, when the guys that are iffy on needing them go to trade them, well, who's going to buy them after that? Yeah. You know? Yep. And now you've got pretty late model stuff. I mean, it's not uncommon now to see

A farm sale of a guy that farms a decent little jag still have a cyclo. Oh, yeah, for sure. So that planter made it from 30 years. 30 years from now, that wore out 24-row that's wore out today is going to be in a fence row somewhere. Melt it down, sell it to China, and they'll sell it back to us. I wonder what the ratio is. So let's just pretend in 1984 you bought a new John Deere 7000 planter 12-row, and you farmed with it for...

You was an average farmer and farm with it for 20 years, and it was finally wore out, so you traded off. I wonder how many acres that planter had on it in 20 years versus a 12 or 16 today. You know what I mean? Because now you do push them harder. It's sort of like a 40-20 with 5,000 hours didn't do near the work is an 82-95 with 5,000 hours. No, but by the flip side of that is we have left to ground to farm every year, right? Right. So that's what I always get a little bit of a smile out of.

Okay, you could leave your planter in your shed. I could leave my planter in my shed. Literally, almost everybody we can know could leave their planters in a shed. Go to your local deer case, whatever dealer, hook onto one, a used one, mind you, and plant

And plant the whole crop on planters that might not see the field. How many planters do those equipment dealers, not so much now because things are hard to get, they sold off a bunch of that, but in a normal year, I mean, they literally, there are thousands and thousands of planters sitting around that never see dirt for that year. Yeah, for sure. You know, there's a whole year they miss in there somewhere. I can go to Barker Implement right now and there's literally 20 planters sitting there. Yeah, exactly. And part of them didn't even see the field this spring. Didn't see the field this spring. Yeah. You know, so we farm less ground every year. Planters are getting bigger. There's more planters out there.

How many acres can they cover? How many acres are they going over? They can cover a lot, but how many acres are they actually going over? I wonder, has that number ever changed? So when we grew up, for years and years, the U of I, University of Illinois, always said, I think it was 100 acres per row. So if you farm 1,200 acres, you needed 12 rows.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I wonder if that number's changed because now you get high-speed planters or guys are over-equipped or everybody's so wigged out on planter maintenance. They've got two planters now. Everybody's got two planters. I don't know. I'll have to look that up. It's probably in the Illinois Agronomy Handbook. I don't have a new copy. Yeah, the last copy I got is like an 05 or an 08. Mine's pretty old. Which is probably all online now. Probably is. But I think for years that was 100 acres per row. Yeah. So...

That'd be interesting. Yeah. And, you know, they always talk about the, you know, the planning window. Because I always wondered what the window they gave you back then. Well... Because now they always talk about... The window has gotten smaller. Oh, it has for sure. For sure. Has it got smaller or have we forced ourselves to do it earlier? You know, when I was a kid...

He didn't even think about planting the bulk of your crop in April. Like, you might dabble in it. Right. But climate change, Tony. Oh, for sure. But I know growing up as a kid, now my grandpa, you know, he wasn't no high roller, never. I'm not going to say he didn't get in a hurry, but I mean, he was just what the average farmer did. And I was always out of school for the summer in May. Yeah.

For the most part, when they would start farming. I got to do at least half, if not more, of the farming with him because I was out of school. I'd say that's accurate. We did most everything the last two and a half weeks of May. Yeah. Maybe a little bit in June. Most old-timers will tell you you shouldn't have planted a bean before Memorial Day, which is always the last Monday in May or something like that. Yeah.

And now we're planting them first of April, so 60 days sooner. My brother always tells me, as soon as we get home from the little farm show, we're heading to the field. I'm like, really? Why? He's like, well, it can't be any colder and wetter than it is when we've been doing it in April. We might as well get it done. You've got a point. There's that warm stretch in February sometimes where it's nicer. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd be curious to know if them numbers have changed, you know, and I don't know that I ever heard statistics on a combine, you know, an eight row head for... So they've got all kinds of theories on that. I'll tell you, like my one professor told me, Tony, they had all these calculations you could do and so on and so forth. And nobody was as small size wise as they really thought you should be per their calculations.

But he's like, you can do it this way, or you can do how most people do it, and that's drive past your neighbor's farm, see what he's got by the size bigger. That's how most people do it. Or you can run these calculations. I think on our farm at the time, we needed like 100 horsepower tractor and 290 horsepower tractors. I'm like, I wouldn't take those out into the woods to bush hog around the edge of it. Right, right. Yeah, you got guys bush hogging now with new front wheel assist tractors, you know, 250 horse. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, they're stable, Tony, in the air conditioner. Which I will admit that we had that 7930 that I used to plant with when we had a 12 row front wheel assist and duals. And I did like that just because you was in a cab, you had duals, you could go anywhere. Yeah. And we, luckily we're all in the same agreement on our farm. It's like, I'm not going to turn a tractor over and get killed. Yeah.

Over mowing a few weeds. Exactly. You know, we literally mow our road ditches once a year. That's all we mow. Once a year. All we're looking for is to keep the sprouts out. We got neighbors that mow them four and five times a year that apparently love to wear out tires and burn diesel fuel and tear shit up because I've had several mechanics tell me the best thing that was ever invented was a back wing mower because they tear the piss out of everything they're going to do. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, what's now? Are we going to start planting flowers around the telephone poles? You know, we got guys out weed eating them. You know, we're going to put up stone pillars at the...

fucking entrances to the field? I mean, what are we doing? You know, it just, you know, it's been a few years back now, probably 10 years ago or so.

We had army worms real bad, if you remember. And the guys that hadn't mowed yet didn't have much trouble because they stayed in their road ditches. But the guys that had it mowed down like a golf course, they went straight through that and on into the fields. Yep. Remember on your way to Sigel, they were so bad on the road, it was like a slick spot. I mean, people had to slow down to keep from having to wreck. I know guys were taking yard rollers out and rolling the road as they were coming across. Yeah. Going from one field to the next, they were rolling them down. Yep. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, we just, to us, it's not a, it's not a,

I guess, to see if it has the prettiest road ditches. I mean, think about it. That wastes a lot of time and a lot of fuel. It's the most expensive thing you can do on a farm is mow roads. But we do. We've got some neighbors that have mowed four times already. And I'm not talking just the nice little piece along the road everybody sees. I'm talking everything. And they're big farmers. Yeah. They've got to keep the hired man busy, I suppose. I guess. And it has rained some this year, so they do grow faster than normal. I guess nobody's ever called me and said, you know what?

Of course, I don't mow the roadsides, but this is why. But do you know of anybody who mows the roadsides and somebody called and said, hey, you want to rent my farm? You really keep the roadsides mowed up nice. I suppose it happens. Generally, the almighty dollar takes over, and it don't matter. You give me $450 an acre, I don't give a shit if you mow or not. You know what I mean? I don't know. I mean, I get it. You want to take pride in stuff and keep it looking nice. But it seems like about every two years, you'll ruin a tire. You'll run over something in a road ditch. Yeah.

I don't know. Whatever. Rock through a car or something. Teach their own. No, I'm not knocking it. You want to mow them every day? By all means, go for it. It don't matter to me. But, you know, it's funny. When I was a kid, nobody mowed road ditches. No. My grandpa, none of them people did. Maybe once every so many years just to knock the saplings down or whatever. Of course, back then you had a lot of fence rows. Exactly. But you had, you know, way less to mow. Yeah. So, I don't know when that all started, but...

I don't know. Go, go replace a batwing mower now for 15 grand. Yeah. You know, usually within a few years or just demolished. Yeah. Yeah. There's really no such thing as a nice used batwing mower. It's been used very much. Exactly. Yeah. I'm mowing golf courses with them. Yeah. So,

Yeah, that's one of the other deals, I guess, where times have changed. We didn't have a batwing mower for years. It was a three-point bush hog. Yeah, you couldn't mow shit for road ditches with them. We mowed trees over with it. Any tree you could push over, you set it down on there, jump a little bit, chop it off, had a stump jumper on it, you're good to go. You didn't need a chainsaw. You can get with that. Right.

You can push it over, you can knock it down. The old three-point bush hog I got is just completely destroyed. I mean, the deck has just beat all the shit. It was Dad's, and I'm sure he, I mean, I know he bought it used, but I mean, it's about on its last leg. It's pretty rough shape. Gearboxes and those might be better than we give them credit for being. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. In fact, I think Grandpa's, the one he had, it was a, I think it was called a Service. In fact, I know it was. It was yellow.

And I don't know where that company ever come from or where they went or. I don't know. We had, we had this old red one, faded red one that we'd mowed down trees for years. And dad had bought a nice new woods for some reason. I don't really know why. And, uh, we were going to keep the old red one. Cause that's what we know mood trees with, you know, and this old boy was driving through from Arkansas and he spotted that.

And that must have been the Mercedes Benz and Morris in Arkansas. He wanted that thing something fierce. And so, well, we don't really want to sell it, you know, but I guess I'd take, you know, whatever for it. Bang. Load it on a trailer. Hold it out of there. He had to have it. Okay, I guess. He was just driving through, you know.

I was going to get something else. He saw that more and he wanted that thing. Had to have her. Okay. I mean, yeah. No grass. That nice chops down a nice tree. Right. Right. I don't even know what all companies are left in more. We got a John Deere bat wing and you know, Rhino and I is Bush hogs still in business. That's what I thought. So yeah, Bush hog makes a nice one. Rhino makes a nice one. I like rhinos cause you can buy them in case I eat red. Yeah. Um,

Wood still makes one. Schlutti is pretty popular. Oh, yeah. State buys all Schlutti. Oh, yeah. I guess I, yeah. You mentioned that. Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. They used to buy all Woods because they were made in Illinois, but I don't know if they are anymore. Yeah. I don't know. Um, but yeah. And I mean, hell, they're even getting bigger now. I've seen a lot of 20 footers. We got a 15 footer, but hell, I've seen 20 footers now. I've always wanted a 20 footer, but everybody tells me I'll hate it. But 15, you really can't swing over. You got tractor with duals. It's like a foot wider and that's as far over as you can get, you know?

I always hate the ditches we got because you got to get in the V of the ditch. You know what I mean? To make it work, right? Yeah. And it's like you've always got a little strip along the crop that you can't quite reach. So you got to go back and re-mow it to get that strip. Almost everybody I've ever talked to with a 20-footer hates it, though. Is that right? Yeah, we got rid of that. Went back to a 15. It just doesn't fit? Just doesn't fit. And I'm like, well, my 15 always leaves a strip or I can't get where I need to get. Yeah.

If I had my ultimate batwing tractor, it would be one of two tractors either, like a 74-88, 2 plus 2, so you're not wide, but you're still front-wheel assist and you can turn right out of a ditch. They'll crawl right out of a ditch. You don't have to hump the brake or anything. It'll go.

Or like a 9380 with a 30-foot mounted batwing. That's what I really want. Then you can put it in the corners. You don't have to, you know, you can turn tight. Because you can't turn very tight with a batwing, you know. So if you're mowing any swing way out, mowed one, you'd be good to go. Well, hopefully, you know, once Biden takes over, we all have to have solar panels on top of our houses. We can do away with telephone poles. And then we ain't got to be mowing around all this shit. We can just go. Well, the power ought to be underground anyway. Which, I agree.

I've always wanted somebody who's in the power industry to tell me, because I don't know. It's Greek to me, but if you're in Puerto Rico or somewhere that gets demolished by a fucking hurricane four times a year, at what point in time is it cheaper to just put the shit underground and

So it don't get demolished. I mean, what's your major mouthful? And what's the first thing you do if you're cleaning up your farmstead or you're building a new one or you're redoing it? Put the power underground from the pole in. Yeah. It seems like you could do that everywhere and then the poles wouldn't get knocked over. I've always wondered that, especially in hurricane zones, you know, where they always talk about power and...

And I don't know. But maybe it can't be done. I don't know. I'm not an electrician. I have no idea. I don't know either. Maybe there's a bigger reason why they can't do it. But that just always looked like the logical way to go to me is put it underground. Well, it probably gets rid of jobs, Tony. Well, yeah, it could be. I don't know. Several years ago, before I moved, power would go out there fairly regular. And they'd usually pop the breaker on the pole, and they'd come out and fix that and this, that, and the other. And they were having a lot of trouble with it. Well, you're...

I said, you guys ever going to fix that line underneath the ground? I'm like, well, you told me like three years ago that that was the problem and you were fixing it temporarily and you're going to put a new line under. We did.

Yeah, you did. Well, hold on a second. Guy punches up. By gosh, you're right. So they get to dig around. But that line is shit. We do need to replace that. Well, it saved me from coming out in the middle of the night and snapping this fuse back in. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes it won't. They put like three of them in. Okay, we got it. Ten minutes later. But invariably, if they had to dig, it was always in the middle of the night. It's like, you could have fixed this during the day. Right. You know. Yeah.

They put a new line under it, and it was fine after that. It never popped a fuse one time. No kidding. But that was like a five-year process to get all that done. I'll be damned. Was that when you lived north of town? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hell of a deal. Yeah. I don't know. I just can't figure out why they don't do that. But what do I know? Hopefully somebody will comment and tell us why. But that sure looks like the way to go, in my opinion. Seems like they did it with telephone wires. Yeah. Yeah.

Does any place in Europe have telephone bowls? I don't know. I assume they do. We're fortunate that at least they're on the correct side of the ditch. You can go to Indiana, they're on the roadside of the ditch. Yeah. So you really can't meet two tractors and two field cultivators over there. You're kind of up a creek there. Yeah. Once again, it's one of them state things, I guess. I don't know why. And things get wider and wider.

And more thought out as you move west and the fact that they got settled later on, right? Yeah. You know, that's why the roads are wider and things are set up a little bit different, square miles, et cetera, you know, because it's newer. Yeah, for sure. Yep, the westward expansion. Yeah. Wouldn't that have been something? Oh, my gosh. 160 acres, which I think they upped that to 320 later on. You know, just stake your claim and away you go. Yeah. But I guess you can see why...

Some of them guys went broke, too, even though having the land given to them, the Dust Bowl and stuff, you know, back pre-crop insurance days. And it hits you for three, four years in a row. And then the Depression. And it always makes you wonder if that shit hadn't happened, would the West be vastly more populated? Yeah, it's very possible. Yeah.

Because, I mean, man, times were tough. That's unbelievable to me to look back on some of the pictures, you know, and the damn dirt looked like snow drips. I mean, it was over the fences. I mean, I can't fathom that. Crazy. Yep, the old Great Plains. That's definitely a vast area for sure. Yeah, not a lot to stop at there. No, there ain't. And I wonder, is it due to rainfall? I mean, around here...

You would have trees. I mean, if you have a field set idle for three years, you're going to have trees and sprouts in it. Yeah, absolutely. And it always makes me wonder when they settled Illinois, you know, they're like, oh, it was this vast farmland, you know, with what prairie grass, you know, head high. I'm like, well, how the fuck did that happen? Because that don't happen nowadays. It's trees and sprouts in a jungle. Maybe the prairie grass had it all snuffed out. It must have. I mean.

Yeah. Of course, a lot of it was swampland, too, so maybe it was too wet for the trees and the paragraphs. It could have been. The trees couldn't. I don't know. But at least around here it was swamp. Yeah. A lot of it was, you know. Better not say that too loud. They'll be trying to reclaim it as wetland. Yeah. And actually, it's even worse to the north in the good ground. Yeah. It's like most of the guys stopped right here where we're at. It's like, fuck, you can't do nothing up there. It's a swamp. And then they finally, once mechanized machinery come in, they could actually dig drainage ditches and drain it. Yeah.

They found out it was the place to be, I guess. Yeah, for sure. I don't know. Well, we probably ought to cut this one off here, hadn't we? I don't know how long we've went here. I've lost track of time. Yeah. I think we've...

Covered enough for one podcast anyway. Sounds like maybe Mrs. Growing Corn is wanting to jump in on one of these again. Yeah. Which we always got to have somebody to heckle and raise hell with. That's the only reason why we invited her on is to make fun of her. Somebody's got to be a victim. Exactly.

We can't bully on TikTok, but we can bully her on Instagram. That's right, exactly. This ain't going to get taken down for harassment bullying, by God. Well, anyway, thanks for tuning in, guys. We always appreciate everybody listening to the podcast. It's very humbling when you go to the county fair and people come up to you and tell you that they enjoy it and whatnot. We really do appreciate everybody that tunes in. With that being said, we'll see you guys on the next episode.

And we'll go from there. Sounds great. See you guys. See ya.