00:00:00 Below average ground. We all have it. If you farm, you probably have a farm that you say, why do I farm this? 00:00:06 Maybe you bought it. Maybe it's what you're born into. Maybe you rent it. Maybe you do us a favor. But you know what we're gonna talk about in 00:00:11 this episode of the Greenery. We're gonna talk about crappy farm ground, how to do it, and why you 00:00:16 Do it On a farm. The work's never really done. We're calling the day anyway because my friends from extreme ag are coming over. 00:00:24 You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? And the best part, you are invited. 00:00:30 Pour yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. Hey guys. 00:00:47 Alright, Tommy, this is your topic, by the way. I'm sitting here with my good friend Tommy Roach, with nature's Matt Miles, Chad Henderson, extreme ag guys, 00:00:56 uh, just for the viewer. Nobody knew we were gonna talk about this topic except for you because last night you said we were talking about 00:01:04 crappy ground and you said, God, we should do a whole grainery episode about that. Sitting around at the Grainery talking about the 00:01:10 crappy ground we farmed. I said, well, my buddy, uh, joined, came over the other night 00:01:16 and when, uh, will was talking to him, he said, there's a reason that, uh, our bo zip doesn't have any hips or back left. 00:01:22 I picked up rocks every spring of my entire growing up, and then spent the summer bailing 10,000 bales of hay that we grew off of that crappy ground. 00:01:31 I think I got a good handle on crappy ground, but I don't have what these guys have. I don't have the farm experiences they have You 00:01:36 got any, you got any crappy ground Stories? I just know that this is your home place and it's, and it's a pretty place. 00:01:42 It is a pretty place. So, you know, when we go on these farms and we get to travel up north and get to sea farms and you know, they have these pile 00:01:47 of rocks out there and they always have a pile of rocks. Like, it's like a pile of rocks. 00:01:50 Like it's three traps with loads of rocks out there. These boys pick up, he's got like 10 rocks out there and he's home out like, you know, 00:01:58 I've been picking up rocks all my life. Here's type 10. I'm gonna take two of 'em. I didn't put 'em all here. I'm, 00:02:03 I'm gonna take two of 'em home with me. You know, You To keep your door open. You, you, you said it's a fun topic to cover. 00:02:09 'cause you know what? Everybody has that farm, whether they own it, rent it or whatever. Maybe this is the only, everybody has a crappy farm 00:02:16 store, meaning farm ground. So, where I grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and Chad's gonna, 00:02:24 I'm sure we'll talk about this in a minute, but I mean, he's worried about buildings and Amazon and all this stuff. 00:02:31 Got one up his acres. So where I grew up, um, places where I was cutting hay, plowing, whatever, there's race, there's NASCAR tracks now there's uh, 00:02:45 lions Airport, now there's houses, subdivision championship, golf courses. They're everywhere. Right? And it's not the best ground. 00:02:55 I mean they, we were digging, they were digging. So soil and gravel to build all these different things. So you can turn, I guess more of the stories. 00:03:05 You can turn the crappiest ground that you think you have into something that can grow a crop in this instance. 00:03:13 I was gonna say, uh, one thing that I know, if there's a stone quarry within a mile of you, you probably have crappy ground. 00:03:20 That's just one of my observations. Oh man. Okay. You're down in the delta. It's flat as a pancake. I'd never been there until I came to DHA County, 00:03:29 uh, uh, Arkansas. Um, other than you kind of scared me about cotton miles and poisonous snakes. 00:03:37 Other than that, I don't think you have crappy ground. I think you have low organic matter ground. I think you have, um, it needs a lot 00:03:45 of water kind of ground. I don't think you have crappy ground. I didn't see anything that I would call crappy. 00:03:50 I would like to see what your ground would do if it was 20 degrees cooler. Just where the, just 00:03:56 where it didn't like bake it to beach on top. Pack It up and take it to North Dakota. It's not much. You probably better there. Right. 00:04:05 Probably grow potatoes in North Dakota. Yeah. I'm gonna tell you a funny story. We're on a webinar and Chad's on there 00:04:12 and he's talking about his crappy ground. He said, my crappy ground, you know, that sand is my crappy ground. 00:04:19 And I stopped on the webinar. I said, Chad, you're talking about your crappy ground. My best ground is a sand. You remember that? 00:04:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't know what to say because he Took offense to it, just like you talking about. But but lemme tell you this, in my area, the red dirt, 00:04:33 which is his best ground, is our iest ground. You've got some more challenges 'cause you've got some curve 00:04:42 and you've got that clay that gets kind of cooked. From my opinion, from my impression, I'm not, I've never fallen in north Alabama. 00:04:50 Um, I don't think you have rocks. You said those Midwest boys talk about rocks. I don't think you have rocks. Do you have rocks? 00:04:55 I have gravel compared to y'all's rocks. How about that? We don't have any, You know, like anything under this 00:05:01 would be a gravel compared to y'all's rocks. Mm-Hmm Mm-Hmm. Well what I look at is as I look at the depth of the top, 00:05:07 so, you know, and at max, I don't know what you are at max, we're six inches. Would you not agree if that Yeah, probably more like four. 00:05:14 I say six 'cause it makes me feel better. Mm-Hmm. You know, so, and then like you said, the o emm is is less than zero 00:05:21 To a half percent. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, when you go look at guys land in the Midwest, and you're right about that, laying 00:05:26 around Dallas, I've seen it. It's, oh, it's, it's tough. But when you go look at guys land in the Midwest, 00:05:32 you know, it's a whole different world. I actually thought that red dirt, because of my red dirt, when the first time I went 00:05:37 to Chad's was gonna be worse than the sand. It's, it's actually better. I mean, it's actually your, it's your better dirt. 00:05:44 It's got more moisture holding capacity and You know, we can put, you know, um, in the bottoms we may have up to a foot, you know, 00:05:51 but up on the, up on the hills, I mean, we're like, man, we'll have inches. 00:05:55 Well, they won't even, there's crops and same thing with me on dry land if I had, if I still had it, but on those blow sand hills, you know, 00:06:02 like over by the airport, you know that don't nothing grow there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I mean we, we'll just, you know, 00:06:08 you, you figure out where those spots are and you, you, you know, you do like you used to in the old days, you line 'em up with gin trash, 00:06:14 you dump a bunch of chicken litter on 'em, you know, you do whatever you can do to peel 'em up. You know? But what's the alternative? I mean, what, 00:06:20 I mean, you're the guy that should be able to tell us how can you fix crappy ground? It's not overnight deal. Sell it and you've got to 00:06:29 Right. What you sell it, sell it Right. Sell It. Build houses on Amazon. Yeah. Build 00:06:34 Houses on it. And it's definitely not you. You've got to use the practice of spoon feeding. 'cause you definitely can't put it all out there, you know, 00:06:43 like planting or before and go, go take vacation. He's right. I tried that, that that won't Work. I ain't, it won't 00:06:49 work for me at all. Like zero. And and you mentioned about his red dirt. Yep. So if you look at Alabama, Oklahoma parts, Texas 00:06:59 where they make bricks to build houses. If that's, that's why he has a hard trouble with his red dirt. 'cause it turns into a brick, but 00:07:07 It red dirt is your best dirt, correct? Yeah. Well, you get too red It, it'll get, you can have very red 00:07:13 and then it goes into a chocolate into the bottom, you know, and it, and, but it's not a chocolate like 00:07:17 what they would see up here in the Midwest, you know, in the Midwest, you know. But it's, it's a, it's a different color red, you know, 00:07:23 when you can get that in it, you know, it'll hold good moisture. And two, we've done a better job, I think over the years, 00:07:29 you know, our, uh, from back in the years where you had a hundred years of cotton. Yeah. You know, and a cotton's like a tree, you know, 00:07:35 and it, all it does is pull. All it does is pull, pull, pull. And don't get back. We didn't do some of our and I 00:07:40 and take this the right way. Yeah. As a mid-westerner. And I'm not insulting where you are from. We didn't do southern soils any justice 00:07:49 by cottoning them from century raven. We took what was already 10 kind of, kind of sensitive and in, but you 00:07:57 Know how happy we were when corn went to $4 and beans went to 10, $11, you cotton, we could actually get out of some cotton. 00:08:03 Yeah. And it, it'll make, it'll make 200 pounds different on cotton and, and 10 bushel beans. 00:08:09 Yeah. Just having that one corn crop, that was one mistake I made this year. Cut all my corn out just about. Mm-Hmm. 00:08:15 And I, it is a losing proposition this year. Yep. But if you look at what I lost on, if I'd have had it rotated next year's crop, 00:08:23 I would've actually at least broke even. And I, I'll grow corn break even to have that yield on the other crop. Yeah. 00:08:29 You said that in a, in a different recording or maybe it was on one of our podcast. And I think that that's something that's a long-term look 00:08:35 that most people would maybe not be as good at until, until the experience. And I'm telling you like, it's, 00:08:41 it's just like out here on your ground, you know? And I mean, I know you've got the depth of it, but on your ground here I see 00:08:46 where they cut the cornstalks off of it bailed the cornstalks up. That's silage. But yeah, it's, it's the same thing. 00:08:51 I mean, the silage is just like cotton. It took, so, I mean it just, everything off just pulls it off. 00:08:55 So our, you know, when we started getting more irrigation in our areas and we can, you know, big crops make big crops. 00:09:01 Okay. You know, you, you make a big crop then it makes another big crop, you know, and it, it starts putting that back in the ground. 00:09:07 And until we could do that, like our organic matter when we, last time we grew cotton, you know, 00:09:12 and say oh six, my organic matter was, uh, three quarters to 1%. Yeah. Okay. Today about all my organic matter is 00:09:20 two eight to yeah. 3, 2, 3, 3. So You've, you know, you've, you've taken crappier ground and made it better because of your practice. 00:09:27 Well, I mean it's just, just, you know, and we've got better, you know, we won't say like, oh well we've done this. 00:09:32 I mean, I think that we've got better varieties. We've got better suited varieties for the areas. We've better farming practices. 00:09:37 You know, we've had better technology. There's a lot of things that's come down the pipeline that's made us farmers better. You, 00:09:42 You've got corn and wheat Rotation and we've got, People don't give enough credit to wheat. That's right. Wheat for, 00:09:47 And we're putting three, three crops in two years. So we just keep piling the stove back in It. Unless you take the straw, 00:09:52 which That's right. The, unless you take the straw. It's interesting that since you get around the country, they do now, I mean, uh, with extreme ag, we're all over 00:10:00 and they're going, they're seeing farmers all over the place. But you see enough armed people 00:10:04 and you're rounding enough, you're around enough agricultural audiences and whatnot. It's kind of funny. There's almost a competition. 00:10:12 Just like, okay, you go to a sales meeting, say you're sitting at the bar at a sales mate, We definitely got You. 00:10:17 Say, say, you say you think you got a bad territory, you gotta come my territory. It's this competition of who's got what, who's got to work. 00:10:24 Who lot farmers, if you go to a bunch of farm meetings, there'll be some, every one of 'em has gotta make sure they go around the table like, 00:10:32 well, yeah, you know, you got some light soils, but you ain't know what I got. And it becomes his competition. 00:10:38 Kinda wanna tell him, the guy who wins the argument over who has the s*******t soil doesn't really win. 00:10:43 Yeah, that's what I gonna say. I, I'd rather be the guy that has the vessel. Yeah, But you're not. 00:10:48 No, But you're also not the worst. But there's a com competition over who's got it worse. You know what I mean? But 00:10:52 You know what it, you know, and I, and I say this a lot in meetings, you know, they, people wanna talk about our a hundred bushel beans 00:10:58 and high yield is not necessarily a number. So the number for a high yield soybean is not a hundred bushel. 00:11:07 The number is whatever you can improve the normal average bushels you grow on your farm. Yeah. The, the, so if you're, if you're on, 00:11:14 if you're on 50 bushel an acre soybean ground and you can increase that to 70. Yeah. That's a better return than me on 80 bushel. 00:11:23 Increase it to 90. Yeah. Well you know, me and Temple was having a conversation on the way up here and we was talking about like, 00:11:28 hey, well how are we going to do this? You know? Um, a lot of our trials we're doing now, you know, oh, we had a one bushel return. 00:11:33 Oh we had a three bushel return. Okay, well if you're making 30 bushel beans and you had a three bushel return, it's 10%. 00:11:40 We made 10%. Yeah. Right, right. You know, you're talking about $30 an acre at 10 bush, $10 beans. 00:11:46 So, you know, we kind of need to change our mindset about the how much, what the percentage is on what we're doing. 00:11:52 You know, 'cause double crop bean and we had this, well, we made 60 bushel. Well we you didn't, you didn't do nothing. 00:11:56 Well, can't everybody make 60 bushel double crop beans either. That's right. One bushel on a hundred bushels 1%. Right. 00:12:02 That's right. So What's the crappiest, what's the crappiest farm? I'll go around here. Uh, we'll stick with you. 00:12:07 You're on a streak here. The crappiest you got, you Get on a streak. I can do this all day. I know you can. I like it. 00:12:12 You got 7,000 acres that you're operating right now. You're down a little bit because you gave up the farm you used to farm over in Georgia, if I'm not mistaken. 00:12:19 Right? Okay. Yep. So you're down on acreage 'cause you gave up some stuff or got taken from you at development, whatever, 00:12:25 you've lost acreage to own the development, always moving. But the point is, I bet you didn't 00:12:29 lose your crappiest ground. You still have a crap. You still have a farm that either you own or you rent or you share. 00:12:36 That's crappy. Yes. Um, well, you know, it's just like beauty's in the eye of the horse. Right. You know, so crappy. 00:12:44 I don't really think I got any farms. That's crappy. You know what I'm saying? I got farms that's better than others. 00:12:49 Yeah. But you know, look at what we do as farmers. Let's talk about how we're gonna manage a crappy farm. I like it. So let's just say you have a crappy farm. 00:12:57 I don't really like that at all. Oh, alright. Let's Say you have a below average or, or a a A average farm. Ugly duckling. 00:13:03 How about we have a average farm. It's not above average, but it's not crappy. What do you call your worst fields? 00:13:09 It's not, we're talking to me ugly Ducklings. I know, but we're talking get the right 00:13:12 terminology. Poor, poor, poor, Poor. Let's say we have a poor ground. A lesser farm. 00:13:18 Yeah. I like your, I like your words Better than that. You know, you know, so, so we have a lesser farm, right? 00:13:22 So how are we gonna manage that farm? Because a lot of times, and you tell me if I'm wrong here, 00:13:28 by the time you pay the rent, because you've probably, you're, you're building the production. 00:13:32 A lot of the landlords work with you on that. Mm-Hmm. Hey, we know that we've got a less farm. I tell you what, we, we got a 00:13:38 better question real quick for that. How many great farms do you purchase? You always purchase a rough farm 00:13:44 and you make it into a great farm. You can't go purchase that great farm, you knows in your pocketbook afford it. 00:13:49 You can't afford it. So it's the same terminology when you're building a farm. And that's what we're doing. We're building it. 00:13:54 But look at the ground that, that, that Tommy and I have done a lot of trials on and we've figured out how to make a living on lesser soils. 00:14:04 Yeah. Lesser, Lesser. We're in, you know, we, we we're friendly here. You Know, you're probably just about the most politically 00:14:10 correct describer of farm properties I've ever heard. He was, he's trying to make himself feel better. He refuses. Is this a crappy thin poor? 00:14:18 He just says things like lesser, maybe a touch below average. You big bone, big bunny. I mean big bone, big 00:14:26 Bones. Alright, here's the thing. Everybody has one. You've got a property that if I just said, all right, across your acres name, the chunk of ground that's 00:14:39 Go ahead. The most challenging, challenging. Let's say you're working in the spring. Go ahead and name it. Let's 00:14:44 Come You named my farmer happy. Does it come to mind just like that? Yeah. Okay. And do you own it or rent it or sharecrop it? 00:14:52 Um, both. Okay. You, I Mean, I own some and I, and I share some The worst. One, 420 00:14:58.265 --> 00:14:58.625 Two, that's one of my own and one of my, okay. They're neck and neck. They, they, 00:15:04 they suck equally together. Yeah. Alright. One of'em you own one of'em, you're on A rent deal and they're crappy and poor 00:15:10 and whatever else, bad name, Whatever Adjectives. Adjectives. That Is ex farm. You gonna leave lane, 00:15:15 you're definitely gonna leave that lane be You're gonna leave that you's gonna leave that to the one of the kids. 00:15:20 You don't like, to be honest with whichever kid puts him in the home is the one that's going inherit way that farm. 00:15:25 That's right. What do you do different about that? How do you manage it differently? Well, you, you know, of course you, you figure out 00:15:34 what the top yield is on it and you'll know that by your top yield on your better fields. 00:15:39 And then you manage that farm accordingly. You know, on a budget. You know, if I think I'm gonna make 80 bushel beans on field A 00:15:46 and we're talking about field D and I know it's gonna be 65, I'm gonna manage for 65 bushel bank. 00:15:53 So you, 'cause I can't get that 80 bush, You keep the expense in line with what the absolute proven what they call it a PH. 00:16:00 But in yours it's expected. It's, it's almost known. So, And a PHI don't even look at that. 00:16:05 I look at what my five year average is and my 10 year average is. So Matt, what's our mentality? 00:16:10 What's your mentality on building that farm? What's our mentality? Is it a five year game plan? Is it a 10 year game plan? Is it a lifelong game plan? Well, 00:16:20 If it's something I own, it's a lifelong, you know, if it's something I'm renting, I have to kind of be a little more careful on that. 00:16:26 So just depends on the situation. I know that don't really answer your question, but you can improve a farm in five years. 00:16:33 I think. So, I mean quite a bit. Let me ask y'all a question. So if we take, If you got the money, we'll Take a farm 00:16:40 or multiple farms and we'll say 50% of those acres are average 25 or below average, and 25 is above average. 00:16:52 So what are you gonna do? How are you going to increase your over overall productivity? You're gonna focus on this down here on oh, this 25 bad 00:17:05 acres or the average 50 average or the 25? The 50. I think the 50. I think the 25 bad. Well See if it were me. 00:17:14 I thi this is, this is one of those deals that this is what it is and you just try to Mitigate The loss to the best you could. Right? 00:17:22 This one I would focus more on what the poten, you have greater potential for this 75% than you do this 25%. 00:17:31 Well, you think about it. Yeah. I mean, this is common math. You know, I can take a guy that's asking me questions 00:17:36 and he's a 60 bushel farmer. I can normally get him to 70 or 75 bushel, but if he's an 80 bushel farmer, 00:17:43 It's hard to get improvement. I'm probably not gonna improve him very much. You're Gonna get him to 82 Maybe. 00:17:48 Yeah. And he's like, well, I didn't give a two bushel. That's where Yeah, you're already at 80 By the way. I love the con. 00:17:53 I'm sorry. I I love the contemplation because the, that is so true. All right. You bring in, you, you 00:18:01 former division one football player. You bring in someone that's decent but uh, has a lot of, has a lot of work to be done. 00:18:11 You can take the, you can take a, a premier athlete and they're, they're never gonna not be a premier athlete. You can take somebody that's an average athlete, 00:18:20 but a work ethic and probably with a little work you'll take them from here to here. So I think that that's the one 00:18:27 where I think an average can get better with less work. The poor, you maybe aren't gonna do much with the great, you're not gonna get much room on at this point. 00:18:37 I didn't take you from 50 bushels to 75 easier. I can take you from 75 to a hundred. So What I was thinking on that is I had farm down there, 00:18:45 you know, at Swan Cot that we own Mm-Hmm. And we had seven acres of it out of 182 acres was a zero every year we couldn't get it planted, 00:18:54 swamp pivot, run across it. So it had added expense on top of it and you may get it planted and then you couldn't get it. 00:19:00 So if you ever planted, then it died, then you're really in the hole. Mm-Hmm. You know, so when you fix those acres Yeah. 00:19:08 Then you immediately went up. Alright. So you, you, so You, you have to go after even the corners, edges, fence rows. 00:19:14 Like you just start pulling all of it. So he went To fix the poorest. I went with fix the average and 00:19:19 He went with fix the average. Fix the best. I went with average. No, he didn't go with the best. 00:19:22 I thought you said fix the best. He said The average. He was average. He was average. Alright. 00:19:25 But what to, to back to what Chad said. So, you know, I learned this from an agronomist I had, and we'd just say it's a hundred acre field. 00:19:33 And he'd say, man, that's 10 acres down here. You know, it, it, it sucks. And I'd be like, it's 10 acres, it's a hundred AC field. 00:19:38 And he is like, yeah, it's 10%. 10. Yeah. And, and when I started realizing, you know, maybe one drainage pipe, you know, maybe, 00:19:46 maybe I spend $20 an acre down there running a finish bucket, maybe The water wasn't good enough. Right. 00:19:51 Like what you're talking about. Normally on my situation it was drainage, you know, but when you start looking at that micromanaging, 00:19:58 I guess you would call it those 10 acre spots, seven acre spots that you'd say, well that how mu how big is WinCo? 00:20:04 Yeah. 182 acres And there's seven acres. Yeah. That's what, almost 5% of the farm. That's right. So if you were making a hundred bushel beans, 00:20:11 you're making 95 on the whole farm. 'cause of that seven. Yeah. So when you start looking at those pockets in a field, 00:20:18 maybe in, in my situation, you know, I'll have a little dip go down and so it stays wet all the time. 00:20:24 Well, it's out in the middle of the field. Yeah. You keep seeing that red spot on your map. What's going on? What's going on? Look at elevations. 00:20:30 Well I could run a fishing bucket on five acres and eliminate that. So, and, and there's so many, I see this like I hunt, 00:20:38 I do a lot of hunting in Kansas and there'll be a field there and it'll have a low in it. Mm-Hmm. And it just stays wet all the time. 00:20:46 They don't make anything when one little PTO ditch Mm-Hmm. I call it a PTO ditch or Yeah. 00:20:51 Or a blade for 50 yards. Takes that out. You may not be able to hunt whatever you're hunting though. 00:20:58 That's true. Yeah. I was gonna Say the, the, but I mean, you could take minor adjustments and make big differences on those 00:21:04 pockets like the seven, but you Gotta, you gotta look for the low hanging fruit. That's right. What's interesting is you guys, 00:21:10 you guys went to portions of fields and I guess I, I was raised on some chunks that the, there was no good portion of a field. 00:21:19 And so I just go more went With those fields. You managed through the ability of the field. Yeah. Field. It's just like you said with athlete, 00:21:26 if you got a mediocre athlete and he's not gonna get any better, you know, you put him in a position on the team, 00:21:32 that's not gonna make you win or lose. But At least, but at least go out and do the, Go out and do an average job. 00:21:37 Do the job, do the job. So Thing, make two things, lots of things. So Kevin, Kevin's not here, but like Kevin Farms 00:21:47 and a lot, and your farm is the same way. You have a lot of tree lines and he's scooted out away from the tree line 00:21:57 because you ain't gonna, you're wasting seed. Yeah. Sucking everything. Everything. You're not gonna get any productivity off of, you know, 00:22:04 trying to fight trees. I mean, you're fighting losing metal. Right. So why not move out away from that Quit 00:22:10 Money. I mean, it's an easy place to start because the One thing you'd say is, wow, spit grace, it'd say, well you're wasting that acreage. 00:22:16 But the other thing is you're wasting the seed, the diesel, the chemical, the 00:22:22 Fir you're compound. Yeah. You're compounding the problem because you're not gonna make anything on it anyway. Mm. 00:22:28 Tree roots. Especially in a dry year. The tree roots are good for 30 feet, no question. That's right. 00:22:33 Yeah. What'd they say? They'll take, they'll take all that as A high as far as they are high, right? Yeah, 00:22:37 That's right. And another, so seeing is believing, and I know you've been to precision Mm-Hmm. In Illinois. So I don't know if they do it every year, 00:22:47 but they have a board that shows differences in ear size based on when that plant emerged. 00:22:56 So you have your, you want to try to get everything open in 12 hour. So you have ears based on 12 hours, 00:23:04 then you have ears based on 24 hours and 36 and 48. What would you think a lot of people say that they, that they wanna focus on to get better? 00:23:18 Is it those 48 hours or maybe it's, I know the right answer is you're only losing about 3, 4, 5 rows kernels 00:23:30 around on the tip and it doesn't look like it's a whole lot different than the normal 12, 12 hour immersed plant. 00:23:38 People wanna go to the ugly little knobs that that's up there at 48 hours. That's not the right answer. It's 00:23:44 You gotta improve on getting all the plants move moved from 24 down to 12 because of percentages higher. That's right. 00:23:54 You look at crappy below poor, what's the word he said? Lesser, lesser, lesser big bone. Uh, what he called it, big bone. 00:24:02 It's different for every operator. I wanna go around the table here. Some people, some farmer operators, 00:24:09 they're probably well off enough with what they got. They could just let the worst, it's the thing like a business, if you let 10% 00:24:16 of your worst customers go away, you're probably better off. There's probably some farmers 00:24:20 that would probably better off. They let the worst 10% of the ground they had just go some other poor desperate bastard that's just eager to get out there and 00:24:29 Or that has more time. Oh, or to, to vote to it. Yeah. Yeah. You know. So What's your approach on, you know, moving forward? 00:24:37 Do you, do you say, I don't want to fool with poor ground anymore, or I'm going to actually, if the stuff 00:24:43 that come up down the road, it's not great, but I'm here. What's your approach? Um, my approach is I'm going to fool with poor ground. 00:24:51 'cause that's all I know. You know, I mean, you know, and we joke about that. We do joke about it in here. It's not 00:24:57 Poor though. It's lesser, lesser, Lesser. I'm gonna fool with lesser ground, but I, but, but average. 00:25:02 But at this point where I'm at in my life and my career, it's a, you know, it's fun for me to take a challenge. You 00:25:09 Kinda like the challenge Of it. I kinda like the challenge, you know, you wanna fix something, you wanna see your work, you know, 00:25:14 you wanna see like, this is better. You know, I I I accomplish something here. You know, and that's what us as farmers we're doing, 00:25:20 you know, we're, we're, you know, people a lot of times a suburban mom, you know, she's looking at us like, you know, we're spraying stuff or we're doing things that, 00:25:28 and, and we're by far the, the best advocate for Yeah. You know, for the soil, because that's all we got to make a living with you. 00:25:35 Exactly. So, so we want to see things better. We wanna see things nicer. We wanna see clean water running outta the ditches, 00:25:42 you know, and, and with that, that's, that's the goals we have in mind every day. You would, You would feel rewarded knowing that there's a certain 00:25:50 customer base that thinks you're doing evil to the environment. At least personally, you'd go home 00:25:54 and go to bed at night saying, you know what? They don't understand. I took this turd over here and I made it better, better for the soil, better 00:26:02 for the soil health, better for the environment. I just s sheed it right up. But Is it my turn? Sure. 00:26:07 It's my turn. So, well, so what Chad's saying, you know, it depends on how big bone it is, you know. 00:26:14 So I've been blessed to the point today after 35 crops that I, I've got an opportunity that I don't have. 00:26:22 I took big bone ground majority of my life. Yeah. But you can look at a farm, Chad, look at the farm and he can say, okay, I know I can improve this. 00:26:30 And, and that's, that's when you get the reward. If you know you can improve it based on what it's been before, it's, it's more fun than having this high dollar 00:26:39 ground here that, that anybody can farm. And you'll look at it. Sometimes you'll spend time on it and you'll be like, man, I won't give my money back. 00:26:45 You're like, oh, well it wasn't that bad, you know? But now it can be so big bone that, you know, you can't improve it. 00:26:51 And, and you know, I'm, I'm probably gonna walk away from that. But Then do we look at it like with the mentality you had 00:26:57 earlier, when you spread it across your whole acres. Acres, it's pennies on the dollar. That's true. Yeah. Maybe there's a certain role 00:27:03 that your lesser ground has within your whole mix. It's kind of like an investment portfolio. Well I got, I got this high flying stock 00:27:10 and I also have this boring cd. I mean, is that kinda how you would look at it? Well, And, and I've said, I said it earlier, it kind of, 00:27:16 you have to look at those acres as you know what it, it is what it is. They are what they are. And manage it 00:27:23 As good as you. Yeah. When you know that it's not 300 bushel ground corn, then don't manage 00:27:28 It for 300. Most of the big bone grounds gonna have the owner's gonna own some, some small bone ground to go with. I'm, 00:27:35 You know, and the thing is to take it, to get the up, it's, it's a big accomplishment on some of this ground to make 200 bushel on 22,000 plants. 00:27:42 I mean, I just soon do that is make, you know, Back To the high yield is based on The ground and it's also based on 00:27:48 how much money we're making. 'cause it's all about, it ain't make about making bushels. It's about making money. This is 00:27:53 where I'm, I'm glad you, I wanna make some money. You brought Me to Right to my next favorite thing. 00:27:55 This is why we love sitting here at the greenery and, and, uh, and having real discussions. I was gonna go right to the money. 00:28:02 You know, it's just like, it, it, okay, there's a scrap yard owner, A scrap yard don't look pretty. Right. It's ugly as hell. 00:28:10 You go to a scrap yard or junk is all that. The scrap yard owner might be more well off than Yeah. The plastic surgeon. Yeah. Right. 00:28:18 So, uh, farming, farming crappy ground if you do it because you've done it. I know, I, trust me, I got a guy down here. 00:28:27 He'd been farming in the rocks of the Wabash River for his whole career. Not in it for much. So it, it, 00:28:34 it equipment gets banged up more. But you keep going back to I'm not in it for much. You can make it work. You can make a case for Yes, 00:28:42 but you the return on investment because you're not in it for much. Is that right? Back to what I'm saying, you budget based on the 00:28:48 productivity of the ground you keep building. So if you've got, if you've got lesser ground, big bone ground, then you're not gonna spend the money on 00:28:56 that ground that you would on this ice cream ground over here. And so you may make more net profit than the guy over here 00:29:03 blowing it out on this high yield ground. Tommy, you see the whole country, you travel all of North America and your job. 00:29:10 Could you, could you give an example? You're not gonna name names. Yep. Everybody thought this guy was a lunatic. 00:29:16 He farmed in some of the crappiest place ever. Versus I was gonna say he's Me, this guy over here, this guy over here, conversely 00:29:24 is in the, you lost your meth. The Red River Valley. Or you start, I'm talking about the one in North Dakota. 00:29:29 Uh, you know, you can start naming pockets. He's not talking about Texarkana. There's a gun. Madison, Alabama. 00:29:35 Yeah. You you could go, We might need a drink. Can you name, can you name a uh, the, the dichotomy that most people wouldn't think of was like, yep, this, 00:29:43 this is probably, someone probably thought, oh you're broke 'cause you're farming the crap and you're probably rich 00:29:48 'cause you're farming the good and it's actually the inverse. Yeah. I mean you can go to places in right in the middle 00:29:54 of the corn be that they've been, they've been doing it the same way forever because they're making 00:30:03 Money. Good modest yield, good Yield, yeah. Money. But if, if they would just focus on a few minor tweak it details, 00:30:14 you would see so much greater improvement and so much, I mean, you know, we pick, we pick on Lee, we pick on Lee, we pick on Lee's ground up there, you know, 00:30:22 and say, wasn't my 14 people up there, you know, but Mm-Hmm. I mean we do pick on it, but look at the ground they've got 00:30:27 and look at the way they manage that and how much different it is from the way like any of the other people in extreme ag manage their ground, 00:30:33 you know, and to watch it and to learn from well, taking what they've got and doing something with it, you know, 00:30:38 compared to like, when you see you down there in Texas and you see Lee in Dakotas and then Kevin all the way over on the coast, you know, 00:30:45 Well we've been down there and you drive by Lee's fields, you can pick his fields out from anybody else's. 00:30:51 He's obviously, he's took that big bone ground and He's managing average ground at a very high potential. And you, you don't wanna bash on the neighbors, 00:31:01 but it's pretty darn evident because I was there and I'm like, well the, the darkness just 'cause of organic matter from third to Peter 00:31:08 that no tillers started 30 years ago. Yeah. So Matt, tell me what you think about this because me and you started in this adventure, you know, 00:31:15 and this, you know, when they ask us to come into extreme ag and I know, you know, everywhere I go, 00:31:20 like I pull up here at dams, I look at across the field, I'm like, I wonder how I'd work that. 00:31:24 Like everywhere we go, Wilma, I wonder how I'd work that. So how many places when we say I wonder how I'd worked at 00:31:30 how many places have me and you or have you, and I would say me, how many places have we been Right on how we would work it. 00:31:38 Like probably not many. You know, like We in a different area. Kinda like we were talking about earlier episode, 00:31:43 we change our farm and then we don't know how to do what we changed it to. I Mean, I remember when I went to Kelly's first time 00:31:49 and you talk about going that and if, if nobody thinks that the ain't nothing less about the Les Hills, you know, and I know I ain't spelled the Les Hills, but Yeah. 00:31:57 Right, right. I mean, ain't nothing less about it, you know, and you look at that, I'm like, I 00:32:00 don't even know where I'd start. Yeah. It's, I can get overwhelmed out there because it's so different from when I 00:32:05 Every like, I have to be toed over. I mean, you guys think it's different from you. I'm supposed to be in, I state what happens at Kelly Yurts 00:32:12 and what happens at my part of the world. We're supposed to be, I states it's about as disparate as anything. He, 00:32:16 He should have it, it should be a whole nother letter. Yeah. Right. What did, what did Vern say on that show? 00:32:21 Anybody farm that flat ground? Like in, So that's Thought's gonna say Arkansas, but he said South Dakota. So I got out of that. 00:32:28 That's one I'll go with. Um, you know, the old thing of, uh, if you were given a whole bunch of God-given athleticism, 00:32:35 it's easy to be an average athlete if you're given not so much and you know, work a lot harder at it. Maybe the same thing goes with soul. 00:32:42 Do you think the people that are able to make it on crappier ground are better? I don't think they know they got cap crappy ground. 00:32:49 Maybe that's it. Like, like they, they just, They they manage what they know. Yeah. I mean like if I was to try to do what he does 00:33:00 or he does or Kelly does, I'd fail. But if they tried to do what, what goes on around South Plains in, in Lubbock, I mean they, 00:33:10 they would probably fail as Well. I would plant that whole circle and then we'd screw up. 00:33:13 Yeah. That folks dry. You wouldn't have any water to do Circle. Yeah. So we'd screw the whole circle up instead 00:33:19 of just farming half of it and letting this half lay out. I think we had a good discussion here about, uh, lesser 00:33:26 to average ground. Thank you. Like every farmer, there's not a farmer I've ever met that didn't claim that they had a crappy, well, 00:33:34 that Smith property over there. You wanna see what, like, hey, things look really good over there. 00:33:39 Yeah. We should see the back of it. It's whatever. It's wet, it's rocky, it's whatever. Everybody has a story. Am I right? Yep. Every farmer you've ever met always tells 00:33:46 you they've got a place that you just, you you wouldn't know how to farm it. It's too bad too. Anyway, we're talking about 00:33:52 below average ground. That's a great topic here at the Grainery. We are so glad you joined us. 00:33:57 Uh, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Nature's Nature's with, uh, that's who Tommy Roach is with. 00:34:02 Um, you know what, what's cool about Nature's all their fertility products are being used by the guys. 00:34:07 Uh, a lot of it in furrow. Very, very much dialing in, putting the fertility where it needs to be versus 00:34:12 flinging it out there necessarily. Probably from an environmental standpoint, good ground or background, you're gonna 00:34:17 be under the scrutiny to do that. Less ground, lesser ground. You're gonna be under scrutiny to do that, like to. 00:34:22 So anyway, bio Kay Technology isn't every one of their products and it's kind of a cool deal. Uh, here at Extreme Ag we've teamed up, uh, 00:34:29 in partnership with Bio Kay. So anyway, if you wanna learn more, go to natures.com. So next time you're welcome, any time to Grainery, 00:34:35 you should pull up a chair right here and enjoy us. It's real discussions about real issues with real farmers coming at you. 00:34:41 You're invited. Please share us some bite to enjoy it. So next time, cheers from the grainery. Good. 00:34:46.145 --> 00:34:47.125