Straight Outta Louisville
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Hello folks, welcome back to the Straight Forward Farming Podcast. I'm your host Tony Reed, alongside Nick McCormick as always, coming to you straight off of a trip from Louisville, Kentucky. National Farmer Senior Show. Yep, the old Buick made her all the way there and all the way back. People can't believe I drove that son of a bitch all the way there, by God, but she made her.

Yeah, I'm a little surprised myself. Actually, I was too. I really figured that thing would be sitting alongside the road somewhere, but we made her. Well, you can tell I didn't drive it because the one time I drove it,

I thought they'd get the jaws alive to get me out of it. Yeah, you'd still be in it. Yeah, no doubt. Yep, pulled the dipstick that morning. Wasn't no oil on it whatsoever. Dumped a gallon of Lucas in her and sent it. I checked it again before I got in the car to come home from down there, and it was just barely on the bottom, so I dumped, I don't know, three or four more quarts of 1540 in her and run her all the way home. Good to go. You don't have to change it now. It's all fresh. Kind of what I thought. Yep, made her there and back.

Hell of a deal. Yeah. Great show, as always. God, it seemed like it was the busiest show as far as people. Oh, my goodness. There were people everywhere. The weather was nice, though, and everybody was wanting to get out, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, it was crowded. Yeah, that's probably the most people I've ever seen. Yeah. I think they had sold-out signs on the tractor pull window there a couple of nights, if I remember right. Did they? Yeah. It was a busy show. Yeah, that it was. What I realized is...

If you need concaves or planter attachments, the options, they are unlimited. And they got them, ain't they? Oh, my goodness. Unbelievable. It seemed like every company down there was selling one of those two items. Yeah. Yeah, that they were. But you'd think there'd be such a glut of that that... I guess not. I don't know. I mean, like I said, it's a great show. I mean, there's something to see for everybody. Like, what always amazes me about the show, like, yeah, Deere and Case and NACO, they're all there. But generally, they don't bring...

anything that you don't know a little something about going into it. Like to me, the farm show is you, if you're really looking for, or where I have found stuff, it's like you're, you're walking through, you're like, Oh, there's company ABC and they've got this little widget here that solves this problem that I knew I had, but I didn't even know they made a solution for where this company has that. Like it's the small stuff for me that, that I usually stumble across that, that,

I'm going to call it unique or whatever, like I said, that you have a problem or didn't even know you had a problem. You're like, oh, that guy's got a better widget. I need one of those. To me, that's the benefit to that show because there were I don't know how many thousand companies there. Oh, gosh. It's a boatload. It's a bunch. And the funny part is with all the merging that's went on in the last 25 years, you know, you've got your big players now. You've got Agco, John Deere, Case, Kinsey. You know, your big main players. But it's like...

Think of the thousands of other companies that are there that have filled that entire building. There's no more space left. There was even more people wanting to get in. Yeah. But they didn't have room for. And, man, it's just unbelievable. Absolutely. It's hard to believe you can fill that kind of square footage. It is. But they do it every year, you know. Yep. And, man, it seems like there's all kinds of elixirs and fertilizers and microbes and Jiminy Christmas. I almost wish...

And it'll never happen. And I don't, I don't know that I want it to happen, but a small part of me wants them to organize it by we'll call it genre. Yeah. So like if you're selling head gates for cattle and there's 25 companies doing that or, you know, whatever it is, let's put them in an area. Like if we've got to break it down kind of by product, um,

They're not going to because this company's had this booth space since 1984, and that's fine. That's cool. I get it. So I kind of know the lay of the land. There have been so many years, but I'm like, some of that stuff I'm not the least bit interested in, but I can't even get to the stuff that I want to see because there's so much other stuff and so many people, and now they've introduced the scooter thing, and I get it that not everybody can walk the show.

But holy cow, does that slow up the flow of traffic. It's just like the Farm Progress Show. It's out of control. It's like you can't even get up and down the aisles now because of the motorized vehicles. And yeah, I get it. And I'm not talking wheelchairs. I don't mean that. I'm talking literally motorized scooters. And a lot of those people that were on them need to be on them or need to be on a treadmill either way. But I mean, I get it. People there with bad, they've had a knee replacement. They've had ankle surgery. I get all that and they can't walk it. I totally understand that.

But, man, does it make the flow of traffic kind of a pain, you know? Yeah. Yep. It's always fun to get away. You know, I quit going to that for 20-some years and finally got back into it here four or five years ago. I always dread going, but after I get there, I'm glad that I did, had fun, see a lot of people and meet a lot of new people. Yep. I look forward to it every year. I catch up with a lot of people I haven't seen for a while. Agreed. I enjoy it, and I go see the things that I think I need to see. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm mostly there for the Tractor Bowl side of it, and for the friend side of it, I suppose. But it was a great show. Yep, I agree. So yeah, we got together here, what was it? When was Super Bowl Sunday here? It was a week ago this last Sunday, right? We got together at your house. Did you track Taylor Swift on the jet? I did not. I did not, nor did I care. Curious how you can do that without having any sort of emissions involved.

And no carbon footprint. Yeah. I'm not sure how that works. It must have been an electric jet. Yeah. I'm sure it was. Yeah. Must have been. Yeah, I heard she's a little huffy. You know, everybody's tracking that now because. Yeah. I guess it is what it is. I guess so. It's all part of it. Yeah, no doubt.

Price of fame, I suppose. I suppose. Yeah. Yep. It is funny after you go to a farm show and stuff, and I want to preface this by saying I'm a nobody. I mean, I truly am. Don't take this the wrong way, but a lot of people there recognize me. Yes. And it does put into perspective how Garth Brooks, a Michael Jordan, a George Strait, a pick-your-poison...

Yeah. Doesn't have a live. And like I say, I'm nobody. Like, I get recognized at a farm show because my followers are in the farming community. I can go to JCPenney's tomorrow and nobody's going to. Yeah, me totally. Where they can't even do that. Yeah. And I do see how that could. I could see how ultra fame would get very taxing. Yeah. It's not.

to understand how a Britney Spears or whatever celebrity, pick your one, kind of goes off the deep end at some point. Because that would be tough to... Yeah. And I get a lot of people at them shows or whatever that ask me like, man, don't you ever get tired of this? And it's like, well, if I did, I could simply stay home. It don't bother me to go there for a couple days. And it is what it is. Like I said, you can get away other places. Whereas those people at that level...

You can't. Yeah, you're stuck. Take Taylor Swift, for instance. There was a camera on her dedicated at all times. Yeah, they only showed her on TV how many times. But there was a camera on her hoping that she would pick her nose or rub her ear wrong or whatever all game long, and that would get a little old. The only time it ever gets old for me is...

So I went down there with Cody and Ryan and, you know, been walking, or not walking the show, but been at the show. You've literally met several hundred people, if not a thousand people that day. And if you finally want to unwind and sit here and eat supper in a bar by yourself, and the minute you sit down, people just start dragging chairs over uninvited, reaching across the table, shaking hands, and

And I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but it's like, give us 15 minutes. That's all I'm at. Just 15 minutes to unwind, have our food, talk amongst ourselves, and then when we get up to go start drinking beer, then it's game on. You can do whatever. You can come up. You can take pictures. You can do whatever you want. But just give me 15 minutes. No, I get that. And people don't respect that. And I don't mean this to sound shitty. I really do. I don't mean it that way. But it's like, just show a little bit of common courtesy. Don't just start dragging chairs up to tables uninvited, you know. Yeah.

So I don't know. Yeah, I get that. I totally understand where you're at there. But overall, it's fun. I mean, I enjoy meeting everybody. And like I say, if I didn't like it, I would simply stay home. Yeah, exactly. Met a lot of good people. There's so many good people in the farming community. We catch a bad rap at a lot of levels. Well, you're not a farmer. You're a grower. Exactly. We can't call ourselves farmers anymore, Tony. That's no good.

Yeah, it's National FFA Week, but we got to leave it at that, right? Yes, we can't call Future Farmers of America. We had to PC that up, and yeah, yeah, which...

There's a whole other topic, which happened years and years ago, probably about the time we were in school. I think that happened right before we got in FFA, I think. Yeah, I think it did. Yeah. Right before that. I believe you're right. But, yep, you're a producer slash grower. You're not a farmer. I'm not a grower. Growers sell pot. Right. Exactly. I'm a farmer. Yeah. I'm not a producer. Yeah. It is what it is, I guess. Yeah, it is. So what else is going on? It's a PC world.

Well, I guess I'm in the market for a truck. Are you? Well, I see where our illustrious government in Illinois is looking to outlaw diesel pickup trucks made before 2010. Yep. So hats off to them. So I assume that they will lead by example.

And find a way to replace everything the state of Illinois owns vehicle-wise. That would even include the Illinois Army National Guard. The National Guard, fire departments, everything, I assume, without wasting my tax dollars, I assume they will find a way to replace all their equipment with super eco-friendly vehicles.

So looking forward to that. Yeah. Yep. I look for that to probably go over about as good as the AR-15 registration, which everybody complied with. We're up to a whopping 0.3% of people who registered their firearms. It'll go just like when they raised trailer registration to $400 and everybody with a $500 trailer decided it wasn't really worth $400 to register it. So we'll just pull it anyway and it probably won't have a license plate.

Yeah. Whatever. But what I learned through COVID is none of that shit's really a crime if people could get sick from it. That's right. You can tear down statues. You can burn buildings. You can do whatever you want. You can violate any law you want.

if there's a chance that you could get sick. Right. So I'm just going to assume that that's still a deal and I'm just going to go on about my merry way. And here in Illinois, we're actually decriminalizing everything. I mean, like you can, you can pretty much do anything and they can't lock you up. They can't do nothing. In fact, I seen one of the new laws that come in to effect in January, which I was actually on board with, like a cop can't pull you over now for no seatbelt for having anything hanging from your rear view mirror. All

all this piddly bullshit that they should have never been able to pull you over with the beginning, but that's all off the table now, which I'm pretty sure now, like you can drive over people and everything else. And you just, it's about like checking in a deer. You just call it me like, Hey, I hit a guy back here a little ways. They just mark it up as a stat and go on. I mean, that's what it sounds like. Oh, it was the over the white line. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just going to play by their rules. Virtually nothing's a crime anymore. So, well, I mean, keep my diesel pickup and that they are leading by example there because politicians don't abide by any of their own rules. Exactly. We're good to go. Yeah.

Move to Illinois. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep. Somebody needs to. Yeah, that's right. Everybody else is leaving. Yep. Taxes are high. Nothing to show for it. Yeah. Chicago drags you down. Yeah. Come on in. Yeah. But they claim we can't make it without them. But I'd like to try. Yeah. You know, I've often wondered, well, we can't make it without Chicago. I wonder how states like Alaska, Wyoming, all these...

Places where not many people live that have 500,000 total population. I wonder how they make it. That's weird. Can we give them Chicago? Yeah, I was going to say. We can help them out. Yep. We can annex. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, the wife and myself and the kids just come back from Hawaii. Had to go out there and do a little filming for Acres TV on a coffee plantation. If you've never been to Hawaii...

It's kind of one of them places you should see at once. It really is neat and worth getting there. The flight's long. The commute sucks out of the Midwest. But once you get there, it is fun. I don't know that I'll ever go back just because it is expensive and so long. But it is neat. Yeah.

It's a neat place to see. Yeah. How was Pearl Harbor? I've always wanted to see Pearl Harbor. I'm afraid I'll get mad. Pearl Harbor was really cool. Or emotional or whatever you want to call it. And so I'll give you a little back story on this for the listeners. So this would be, whether you want to call it God's hand, good karma, whatever you want to call it. So the wife, that was her sole reason to go to Pearl Harbor. That's all she wanted to do to go to Hawaii. She didn't care anything else, beaches, none of that. I want to go to Pearl Harbor. I'm like, that's cool. I wasn't like...

jumping up and down, wanting to go to Pearl Harbor, but it's like, you know, I'll definitely go since I'm there, you know, but it was one of them deals. If we went, we went. If something come up, you know, okay, whatever. So set it all up. So we got to fly from Island to Island, which that's not cheap. You know, when you're taking a family of five, I forget what it was. It was every bit of five, 600 bucks round trip just from Island to Island. And so, uh,

We get up early one morning. We fly over. We was on Kauai, which is the farthest west island. Then Oahu, where Pearl Harbor is, is the next one back this way. So we just had to jump one island. It wasn't all the way across the islands, you know. So we got up early that morning, flew over there, and...

We landed, and when we landed in the airport in Oahu, it's laid out really weird. Like, the signs don't really tell you. You know, you're like, like these signs are telling you you got to go to level three for ground transportation. It's like, well, that don't make sense. How are you going to get on a bus on the third floor? You know what I mean? It's all laid out kind of weird until you kind of figure out what's going on. And so jacked around for 30, 45 minutes trying to figure out once we got off the plane, where do we go to get from the airport to Pearl Harbor? Yeah.

And so finally figured out you got to be here for the city bus, you know, whatever garage site too. And that's where the bus will pick you up. So we finally get there. There was a man and woman stand there. They was probably in their mid fifties or so and stood there for a while. And then they finally started talking and a real nice people. It was from Kentucky, super good people. And so the bus finally comes. And so they go to get on the bus ahead of us. We didn't realize that the bus drivers don't carry change. Well, it was going to cost like $1,000.

It was going to cost like $6 for him and his wife to ride the bus. All he had was a $20. It was going to cost like $18 for me and my family. All I had was a $50.

And he told me, he's like, well, this is stupid. We're all going to end up wasting a whole bunch of money. He's like, I'll pay for your bus ride. He's like, at least I feel like I got something from my money versus just donating it to the city of Honolulu. So I'm like, well, that's cool. I said, hey, if I run into you over here at Pearl Harbor, I'll get you paid back. He's like, don't worry about it. Who cares? 20 bucks, big deal. So got over to Pearl Harbor. And so you got to have reservations to actually go out to the USS Arizona because it's out in the harbor. So you can't walk to it. You got to take a boat out to it.

Well, up on shore, there's a bunch of different museums, submarines, different stuff you can tour and go through. So when we got there, our tour to go to the Arizona was like four hours later. So I'm like, we just will start down here at this end. We'll hit all the museums and end up on the other end. That's right where the boat is. Hit the Arizona. Then we're done. We go to the airport, fly back home. Yep, sounds good. So we do all that.

take hours, you know, and just kind of tooling around. So we'd go down to get in line to take the boat ride out to the Arizona. And they're like, oh yeah, the boat rides are canceled for today. It's too windy. And I mean, my wife was just immediately in tears because, you know, it costs too much to fly back and forth. Like we already flew over here once. It's like, I'm not coming back tomorrow, you know, to go out and see this thing. And I mean, she was literally in tears. And so they're like, that's all we can tell you is just come back tomorrow. So some people there got to talking about or talking to the park ranger and

And he's like, I've been here for X amount of years. He said, I have never, ever seen him shut the boats down and then start them back up in the same day. He's like, it just don't happen. You know, he's like the wind don't lay at two o'clock in the afternoon, which is not wrong. It don't hear either, you know? So the wife was just in tears. I'm like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, it just is what it is. You can see it from shore, but that was it. You know, it's half a mile off or quarter mile, whatever it is. So, uh,

We mill around, go through a few more museums. I told the wife, I'm like, well, we just won't go. I mean, what's the point in waiting? I mean, just head for the airport.

So we walked out of the last museum and Cora, our daughter, she goes, hey, there's those people from the bus. And they were off quite a ways or whatever. And I told the wife, said, I'm going to get change and pay that guy for the bus ride. So there was a little store there that sold candy bars and stuff. So I ran down and got change and went over and took the money up to him. He's like, oh, I'm not worried about it. I'm like, no, take it. I didn't come here for a free bus ride. You know, just take it.

And so we stood there and got to talking. He's like, man, he's like, I hate that. He's like, that's the only reason why I come to Hawaii was to take the boat out to see this thing, you know? And so then boats go out every 30 minutes or every 15 minutes. And so we were standing there talking and he no more than said that. And the park rangers like, Hey, we're opening the boats back up. The wind has died down just enough. If you had your tickets, get in line.

And so we were actually able to go get in line and get caught the last boat of the day out to see the Arizona and then come back. But it's like, if this guy never loaned us that money, we were headed for the door. You know, we were leaving. Yeah. I would have never went and got changed, went back and repaid him and stood there and talked. And then they come across and said, you could go, you know, so it's awesome. It all worked out, but yeah, it was neat. Um, the Arizona, the only, I'm not going to say disappointing. I don't, I don't mean it like this, but,

When you go out to the Arizona, there's not really much to see because it's all underwater. I mean, you can see the top of the deck for just a little bit, and then, of course, there's the nice memorial there or whatever. But, yeah, when you get out there, you're not going to see much of the boat itself. I mean, but overall, very nice place. I mean, it's a lot of history there. It's learned a lot. Could you see the oil come up? Actually, we did. Yep, we sure did. Yep, big old rainbows would come up. Yeah.

But, yep, it's a neat place. That's definitely one place that you need to go if you go to Hawaii just because I didn't know what all was there. I didn't realize there was all the museums and the submarines and the different stuff that you could do. So once we got there, yeah, it was really cool. And it's all laid out really well and got a lot of really nice detailed history to it, you know. Yeah. It's neat. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yep. But the island we were on is very – so it's 97% –

undeveloped so it's really it's literally just a sliver around so the whole north north end and northwest side is you can't even do nothing it's just mountains straight out of the ocean so it's just down the east side and across the south side is the only developed probably part of it where when we flew into a while you could tell immediately coming in on the plane it's way more developed houses you know high-rise buildings and whatnot so pick your island and yeah go for it so that's awesome

Yep. So don't know if I ever make it back, but it was worth going once. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. That would be cool to see. Yeah. I've always wanted to get over to Europe and see the D-Day stuff. I would, yeah. But again, I don't really like leaving the United States, so it probably wasn't going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, because there's really nothing else in Europe that I want to see. I wouldn't mind seeing the World War II stuff. Once again, my ancestors left there for a reason, Tony. They got on a boat with no map.

and said hey any place has got to be better than here we heard about a place called america and here we are yep so i'm just going to write it out although the rest of the people that came over from europe and influenced our laws and getting the words that now i may have to leave again who knows agreed agreed so did you get a chance to watch the big tucker carlson putin interview i did i saw some clips i didn't watch the whole thing that's all i see what's your take on it you know he

He kind of lets on like, you know, we're all being fed a line. And I'm not saying we are or aren't. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'd say he's probably accurate there. But then again, he's speaking Russian, so I don't really know. I mean, the interpreter could have been saying anything. That's kind of what I thought too. You know, he could have been saying Mickey Mouse is a rat, not a mouse, and I wouldn't have known the difference. Agreed. You know, like I don't speak a lot of Russian. But it was very intriguing. I thought some of his answers were very –

Very well thought out. Yeah. You know, like, well, I'm going to tell you the path to take, but I'm not going to walk you all the way down. And I'm assuming he had access to all the questions. I mean, one would assume one would assume. I mean, I haven't, of course you don't get many speeches by him over here, you know? So I don't know if that's his normal, if he's that good, if he's, if he's the Ronald Reagan of Russia, where he can just knock it off in a good way or, uh,

You know, I'm assuming he had the questions. And that's fine. I mean, I'm assuming that was part of the deal. Like, yeah, I'll do the interview, but you're going to give me a heads up. Like, you're not going to blindside me with anything. You know? And that's fine. Yeah. You know? And it does make you wonder because I trust the American government about as much as I trust the Taliban. I mean, you know. I'd take Vladimir Putin for the president of the U.S. over Joe Biden. Yeah, I would too. In a heartbeat. I wouldn't even think twice about it. Yeah, you're not wrong.

Like, literally, I don't know if you could find a more incompetent individual. I mean, he proved that 40-some years ago when he first got into office. But he ain't got any better. Had a special prosecutor or special investigator or whatever it was just admit it. So how do you get determined that you're too incompetent to stand trial but you can still be president? Not to get too deep into the political path, but I'm like, so you're telling me this guy is essentially too old and too senile to stand trial?

But he still has access to the nuclear football. Now that seems like maybe that doesn't make sense. The math ain't math in there. Seems like maybe that's a bad idea. Agreed. Just throwing it out there. Totally agreed. Not to turn this into, you know, the big political deal, but seems like that's a bad plan. Eh, whatever. Is there anything farming you want to talk about? I don't know. We seem like we always, we call this straightforward farming. We end up talking politics in World War II. Farming-wise...

You know, I had a guy explain this to me the other day, and I don't remember the years, but apparently this winter has shaped up like it's leading us into 2012 or 2009, and there was a third one. Two of them were good. Twelve obviously wasn't, you know, awesome. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes. I do know that I've got slaughtered in the grain markets, but what I learned at the farm show is so has pretty much everybody else that I know.

So, yeah, this is the one year where having grain bins was a travesty. You'd been better off to sell it all off the combine and walk away and move on. So...

I did not make great decisions on that. So I'm hoping for a rally there, but it still won't rally back to where it was. But at least maybe I can put a tourniquet on the bleeding. And, of course, you never know when people have sold grain. I mean, there could have been people a year ago or back in June, whatever, that have sold grain for this coming fall already and got, you know, and I'm just pulling the price out of the air. I mean, 525, you know, I don't know what it was. Whatever it was.

So they're not in as bad a shape. I mean, but watch. I'm pretty sure they probably didn't sell 100% of their crop. We had corn with a three in front of it the other day, didn't we? Yeah, exactly. That's killer. Yeah. I mean, there's got to be some guys sweating it. I would think. I would think. Yeah. Yeah. Low prices and high interest. Yeah. Jimmy Carter's back. I appreciate that. Yeah. And the funny part is...

It don't really seem like it's slowing down on the machinery side, which maybe some of this money hasn't got bled out. I think it's trickled down. I don't think it's got there yet. I think it's probably coming, but it's not quite there yet. I'm just curious as to where the prices will be if we would happen to raise either a decent crop, average crop, whatever, or a good crop. The unfortunate part about farming is to really do good,

A lot of people you know have to do bad. Agreed. You know, because we overproduce, at least according to their numbers. You know, we've got, we should have, the amount of carryover we've had in the last 20 years, 10 years, five years, whatever it is, we shouldn't have to farm next year. Agreed. Or grow or produce. Produce, yeah. Whatever we're calling it today. We shouldn't have to do any of that because we've had billions and billions of bushels of carryover for 10 years now. So we should be able to ride on that, right?

I would sure think. Use that up. Yeah. Why this country ever went to South America. Yeah, I'm sure glad we went down there and showed them how to farm. That was a great plan. Yeah. That worked out spectacular. Absolutely unbelievable. Yeah. And that's where I still don't buy this old adage, well, buy any piece of farm ground you can. They quit making it a long time ago. Bullshit. They make her every day in South America. And I forget what they said. There's still...

enough land down there that's like ultimately close to the size of the u.s that ain't even been touched yet what happened to clearing the rainforest remember that yeah that was a big deal oh my gosh that was all tied in with the ozone and we were protesting the shit out of that you know the medicine man he had the cure for cancer but those damn ants and the sugar or whatever it was and then we burnt the rainforest and we didn't have them anymore but now they're clearing rainforest left and right i don't hear anybody complaining about the rainforest going away nope never hear a word about it no

Hole in the ozone must have gotten healed up. Must have healed up. Now it's holding all this heat in. Now it's too hot. We had a hole. We were letting it out. Now we're not. Bring out the Aquanet. Yeah. Yeah. Have you followed the farmers in Europe, the big protests? I haven't at all. I have seen some clips from it, but I have not followed it. That's how I am. I have no idea what's going on, how big it is. Is it as bad as what the clips showed to me? You know, I don't know. I mean, they act like they're dumping manure 12 foot deep around the Eiffel Tower. I don't know.

Well, I hope they are. Yeah. Seems like that probably needs done. I don't know how much of that's real or not or so on and so forth. It's hard to say, you know. And everybody, I see these posts on Facebook. Well, we need to do that here in America and the next revolution is coming. No, it's not. You can't even make a post on social media without six people arguing with you over whatever reason. Nobody in this country can get along well enough to do anything. And everybody's so scared of the government. Yeah.

Oh, I can't cut hair during COVID. They'll take my license. The fact that you have to have a license to cut hair is a little appalling anyway. You don't have to have a license to be a politician. Maybe I ought to be in class for that. Maybe I ought to have to pass a basic government test and prove that you're not a shitbag and a criminal and run for office. And then pay a bunch of big fees to get your permit to be a politician. But you've got to get re-educated on cutting hair every year. We're scared to death to do it. I saw a guy the other day. He floated teeth in horses.

He has to get recertified on that and take all this training every year, two years, three years, whatever it was. And he had to know this about horses and that about horses. I'm not saying that doesn't play into it. But at the end of the day, a guy that's really good at that, I don't really care if he knows how to braid the horse's tail. Yeah. Agreed. If he can float their teeth.

Which I always found it weird they called them floating. They don't really float them, they just grind them. They smooth them off, file them down. But it seems like a weird term for it. But hey, whatever. It's probably some PC term, probably along with the rest of them. Yeah, because my whole thing during COVID...

the wife would tell me, you know, she'd say something about a haircut or whatever. I'm like, well, just go get one. She's like, well, so-and-so, you know, they're not doing that now. I'm like, why not? Well, you know, they can't. They're afraid they're going to lose their license. I'm like, so you mean to tell me that there is just thousands of people out there filling up these prisons because they were cutting hair without a license? I mean, there's just roving gangs of people in these prisons. There I was, sitting next to Al Capone. Yeah. What are you in here for? Well...

I cut hair without a license. Yeah. I mean, come on. Are you serious? Put him in the badass section. Yeah. Just Shawshank Redemption all based around a guy that got arrested for cutting hair without a license. No doubt. That's the movie we should make. A new version of Shawshank. Andy Dufresne. He's in here for cutting hair without a license. Just like the saying in the movie went, everybody in here is innocent, man. Didn't you know that?

It's a crazy, crazy mixed-up world out there anymore. Yep. Goes back to an earlier podcast we did, Tony. Don't comply. Agreed. Don't give in on some of this stupid shit. Agreed. There is so much stupid shit anymore. At some point in time, you just got to say, no, I've had enough. Yep, and nobody will. You always hear the old adage, well, you know, the fine's cheaper than the fight. It just paid the ticket, this, that, and the other. I just rented that on the...

The trip to get your truck. Yeah. So I logged on that night, put my license stuff in to pay the tolls. Okay. Nope. No tolls. No tolls. Nothing shows up. Okay. No big deal. 15 days later, whatever it is, I get a letter in the mail. And the tolls were like 35 bucks, whatever. But it was $15 per toll booth.

late pay since I hadn't paid. Now they couldn't find me. They couldn't send the letter before the, I think it was actually 30 days. They couldn't send the letter before that. They had no idea where I'm at at that point. But after the fact where it was $15 per toll booth that I had, that I was late paying on to do it. So it ended up being like 80 some dollars. So I call them. I'm like, Hey, I logged in. I put my information in. I put my license plate in. It shows me no tolls. Nope. So they, the, the, the hiccup in the system was,

I have D license plates on my truck. They had it down as my license number plus the D. I'm like, but you had to pick which license plates you had. Passenger car, B truck license plates, C truck license plates, motorcycle, whatever. I'm like, there is no D option. They have the D as part of the number. The D is not part of the number. That is the series of license plates that I have. I went round and round and round with this gal. I made no headway. I'm like, it's not my fault that your website set up poorly. Yeah.

It's not my fault. So here's the beauty of it. Like there was some hitch in the get along in there too. Like you can't, you basically have to have all your information in there ahead of time, more or less so that you can just auto charge you since it didn't show up on the backside. You can't just pay it. It was a whole big rigmarole, complete ludicity. I'm like, there is no D in my license plate. That is the series of license plate, but she wasn't having it. So,

It is what it is. But I'm like, just stupid shit like that. There's no common sense involved into it. We were more than willing to pay. We pulled in and tried to pay. You can't pay at them anymore. I don't need an I-pass. I don't plan on going to Chicago anytime soon. I don't need an I-pass. I'm not going through there. And frankly, I kind of thought the road should be better if I got to pay however many dollars to go through there and then a fine if I don't pay. I'm expecting a lot better road. Not that good. Yeah.

Don't comply. That's my advice. Don't comply. I guess at this point, you need to just put it back in their court, and if they send you a bill in the mail with all these charges, be like, that ain't my license number. I don't have a D in my... You know what I mean? Just kick it back because they're arguing that you do because there's no way to... I mean, you try to tell the lady. The stupid part is, if it was a B plate, then the B is not part of the license number. But if it's a D plate, then it is. I'm like, that's not correct. That's not correct. D plates is not an option for your deal. Whatever. Jesus Christ.

So I'll be getting B license plates next time I renew. Good thing they didn't have the ag plates where it says AG vertically on the side. Throw them clear off. No doubt. Oh, my God. No doubt. Next time I'll do what I should have done is taken the front license plate off. Yeah. Like, what do they do in states that don't require a front license plate? I guess you don't have to pay the toll. Apparently. Roll on. God. Yeah. And the bad part is in Illinois, it's like that with anything you do. Oh, my gosh. Whether it's getting your stupid fucking void guard, a hunting license, all this shit.

Your website is complete fucking garbage. Yes. And this is how you expect me to get it. And then I get a fine when I didn't comply because I don't have the fucking option to comply. Look at the healthcare websites that they came out with however many years ago. Absolute train wreck. I'm like, in my mind, if you're setting that website up, you go to whoever does McMaster Car's website, and that's the people you get. The world's best website, bar none of any company I deal with, McMaster Car has far and away the best website ever. And they sell, you know, hardware, technology.

et cetera, et cetera. They sell damn near everything when it comes to running a business like I have. That's the people I would get. No, instead, the U.S. government, who's going to launch a health care system for 300 million people, gets like Jim, Bob, Bill, and Frank that own, you know, like an Apple IIe, and like, hey, can you write something up for this? No. Clearly they couldn't. And that's how every Illinois state website is. It's unbelievable. We're the pinnacle of shit when it comes to all that stuff.

It's mind-boggling. Yep. But you get on the Illinois Department of Revenue website, boy, they've got that son of a bitch running like a sewing machine, boy. You've got to check this box. You go here and you do this. I mean, they don't fuck that one up. No, they're on board on that. Yeah. They make sure they get that. Yeah, it's just appalling. It is so frustrating that I'm supposed to comply with this, and then this is the shit you get me to work with. How am I supposed to do it? And that's the only option on all that stuff now is you can't even do it in person. You have to do it online. Yes.

And that's the funny part. We're going to go paperless. Going to go paperless. So as growers slash producers slash farmers, walk into the FSA. Yeah. Because you ain't doing any of that online. No. That is paper after paper. I've cut down since my dad passed away. I have signed my name more times for that. The rainforest is partially gone just due to the fact that my father passed away. I have cut down more trees.

That's all our FSA office is, is filing cabinets. The whole fucking building is filing cabinets. The whole building. I don't know how they keep track of it. I don't know how they manage it at all. Like, it is. And I'm not. The people that work there are great people. Oh, absolutely. I'm not knocking them in any way, shape, or form. Don't take this wrong. The system is what the system is. They're just playing with the rules they were given. Agreed. But holy cow, is that a lot of paperwork. It's like the stupid fucking form you got to fill out every year if you make over $900,000 or whatever it is. Why don't we just make it to where, no, when I make over that, I'll come see you. Okay.

That's what I told them. I'm like, can I just sign a one-time form that says if I ever make over $900,000, I'll let you know? Well, that would be simpler. I'm like, so you've got landlords every year. They don't farm anymore because they don't want to deal with that shit. But they can't just sign that one time. No, every year they've got to deal with it. No power of attorney. You have to sign it yourself. Yeah, they've got to sign it themselves. I'm like, it's ludicrous. Like some of that shit that I had to sign had to be signed in person or notarized.

By the landlord. If they wanted to go to the FSA office, they'd still be farming. Yeah.

Makes no sense to me. I don't know how big farmers, because I'm just a blip on the radar on the ground. I could not imagine going into the FSA office farming 10, 12, 15,000 acres. In multiple, multiple counties? That would be a nightmare. I don't know how you'd ever keep track of it. Like I say, the girls in our local office, great people. They do good at what they do, but it's like, how would you ever dig through that pile? Oh, my goodness. It's just...

no between the emails and the signing and this that and the other like i said they're just doing what they're told and i'm uh and i have no way directing any of this towards those ladies they are or men there's several men that work there too i don't want to get my pronouns wrong yeah but uh we got to be pc time but uh holy cow it's just a it's just a whole lot of a lot of something like i can't count the number of hours that i have got wrapped up oh into that transition like yeah

And that's just one office in one county. Yeah, well, two, but...

Because we're right on the line. Well, yeah. But still. But still, yeah. I mean, gee, many Christmas. Mm-hmm. And look at the federal government. But, you know, any business you go to now locally, whether it's a tire shop, whatever, if it's any kind of a chain or multiple stores, first thing the bill says, go paperless, go paperless, get email, you know? Yep. At the hotel, farm show, if I was willing to use my phone for the key, there was some sort of discount or something. I'm like...

I don't, you guys can't even scan this key and make it work. What the hell makes you think the phone's going to work on it? Like, as far as I'm concerned, give me back the key. So funny note to your Hawaii trip. So quick backstory, why Tony and his family were gone. My family tended to some animals here. So your house still has a key. My son was mesmerized by that. Never used a key in his life. He was 11, 12, 12 years old. Never used a key.

He came over here with my wife one day. She unlocked the door with the key. He's like, what did you just do? She's like, I unlocked the door. How? With this key. So every time after that, like he was dying to come over here. Can I run the key? Can I run the key? I'm like, little things you never think of. Like, all my stuff's always been digital keypads since he's been around. Old enough to type them in. Bumfoozled by the key. Just, just.

I'm going to give him a set of keys for Christmas. Keys to nothing. I got all kinds of them from years past, you know. So, yeah, keys, that's where it's at. That'll entertain a kid for hours if they've never seen one, you know. Yeah. And that's when I thought, you know, maybe I've sheltered my kids a little too much on certain things. It was the same way, though, with, I don't remember if it was my old Ford that you and I went and got or if it's my old Buick car. The first time my kids got that, my daughter asked me why it had two keys. And she's like, well, that one's round. She's like, what does that do? I'm like, oh, that opens the doors and the trunk. Yes. She's like, well,

She's used a keyless entry. Yeah. Never used a key to get in a car. Nope. Like, yeah. When technology gets too far, though, like when the first push-button remotes come out, okay, that's handy. That's nice.

And now we're to those goddamn key fobs and push to start. Yeah. There has never been a stupider feature on a vehicle than push to start. Yep. We don't have any of those, but that's what we had in Hawaii is the rental. I fucking hate it. Absolutely. What do you do with the fob? Once you, once you're in there, it's in your pocket, it's in your purse, whatever that person hops out. Now, now you're screwed because it's not with the vehicle anymore. There's no place to put it in the vehicle. Ridiculous. Yeah. I'm perfectly fine with the key.

Agreed. You know, the first push-button remotes on a Ford, you can buy those things for like six, seven bucks on Amazon. Program them yourself, no big deal. It's cheaper to buy a new one than it is to buy the battery.

Then we went to the ones that are built into the key. Okay, that saves a little space. They're a little more expensive. Now we've got laser cut keys, which hasn't cut down on crime near as I can tell. And we've got just that and the other. The whole damn thing is ridiculous. It is. It's just mind-boggling how much stupid shit we can cram into all this stuff. We're literally making shit up to put on vehicles these days. Tractors, farm equipment. We are literally making shit up.

to throw at those things just to sell people stuff. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I'm like you. I hate the fob. We had that deal in Hawaii. Absolutely hated it. I didn't know that you could... You told me after I got home. So with not having a fob, I didn't realize. So we would be driving in Hawaii, windows down, whatever. We'd stop somewhere.

The kids would all get out. I'd have the car shut off. I'd get out. I'm like, you left your window down. So I didn't realize that you could just push it. What is it without? If you push it without touching the brake, I think that's like accessory in our day. And then you can run some of that stuff, I think. Gotcha. I didn't know that. So I'd have to start it up, roll the windows up. And then, of course, there's one of them pieces of shit that dies at every stoplight. Yes, which is...

Which is dumber than the fob. Yeah. Which I told Henry, I said, I would have put glass packs on this like my old truck. So that way at every stoplight, you get this. Every time it starts back up. It's just dumb. Yeah. Yeah. We're just making shit up. Yeah.

You know, not only cars, but gas stations are fucking starting to piss me off, too. You just pull in to get gas. You know, do you want a car washed? Do you want an oil change? Do you want to take out a fucking mortgage? No, I just want to get gas. I don't need fucking 400 prompts on the screen. Stop. Then you're standing there and a TV comes on. Yeah. Scares you to death. You think somebody's talking to you. Nope, it's just a TV. I don't need to watch the news. Have we really reached a point that we need to watch TV while pumping gas? No. Which all it is is indoctrination. It's always some liberal bullshit. How about you make the gas pump twice as fast? Agreed.

Yeah. On the key fob thing, the push-to-start deal, I don't know if all Dodge vehicles are this way, but I'm pretty sure it was a Dodge. My buddy was telling me about it. He was having some sort of issue with it. Once in a while, it wouldn't start. You push the button, and it just cranks. Never starts, just keeps cranking. So you had to get out and either unhook the battery or pull a relay or something. Oh, jeez. Yeah, which is super handy. Yeah. How about I run the key? Yeah, I'm good with that. I'll run the...

the ignition when we don't need a computer for that yeah it's pretty nice i get my old ford you you turn the key with your hand yeah you got to pump the accelerator too though you can't just get that somebody turn the key you got to pump a little bit the doors don't lock you ain't fucking having to that's for those two people on the road tony back in the day when you had points and all this other shit we didn't want to take unnecessary trips because you're gonna have to give it a tune up you have to do this that the other guy do the you know a 20 point inspection to drive to louisville

Now you just hop in this shit and go, and that's why all these people show up everywhere. Yep. It's too easy. Yeah, my truck out here in the driveway, most people couldn't get it started because it will not start if you don't pump it. You went cold weather. It's not going to start. Not going to start. Pump it about three times, some of it will fire up and run like a soda machine. I think we need to get back to that. Now we've got all kinds of features that half that shit in a new combine or tractor, 90% of the people are never using. I totally agree. It's just getting out of hand.

I don't understand why you get in a tractor and there's 600 buttons on the console. It's just dumb. My combine. There's a spot up top where you can put something and the air conditioner blows across it to keep it cold. There's also a cooler underneath the buddy seat. Doesn't matter to me. I'm carrying a lunchbox with me anyway. You know, full ice. Like, I'm not packing it. Whatever. I haven't used either one of those one time. Like, whatever.

I mean, I hop in the old 21. They don't have any of that shit. And I haven't starved to death. I'm still fat like I was before. So I'm well hydrated. It's fine. You know, some of that shit I just don't need. And I still think that's probably why this older equipment is bringing record money. I think people have had their fill of it. It's like, God, just stop.

And I would like to go, and I need to make a TikTok about this because I don't know. I really am asking. Like when I was a kid, helped grandpa all the time, we didn't go to the dealership much. He either worked on it himself or had a local mechanic do his work. So we weren't going to the dealership all that much. But I would like to know, back in the day when a 4440, 1066, whatever was new, the year after they come out, when you went back in the shop at the dealer, was there six of them sitting there scattered in a million pieces? No.

I'm going to venture to say no, and I don't know. Maybe I'm totally wrong. But when you go to the local stores now, there's as many tractors with 1,000, 1,500 hours on them or less. Yeah, just destroyed. Scattered everywhere. Because back then they didn't know any better. So they're like, well, this size bearing might do it. But we'll jump at two sizes. We'll throw some steel at it. Well, now we've got finite element analysis, and we've got engineers, and we've got somebody penny-pinching,

on the backside of that. And when we can, we need it to go just long enough. So we're going to back it down to the bare minimum to get by. And then we'll worry about lay. Well, so occasionally some of those don't get out. That tractor got ran on low on oil once. So Al, it shit the rear end. So now you've got this fairly late model stuff just destroyed across the shop. And I guess to play devil's advocate, the flip side of that is say you go buy a fairly new tractor and it's 250,000 bucks, you know, pick your model, whatever it is. Yeah.

And you can wrap up 10% of the value of that tractor in pretty short order, $25,000. Yeah. With not a lot of shit being wrong with it. It doesn't take long. Where back then, if you bought that tractor for $40,000, you probably could have put $4,000 in it in pretty short order. Yeah, probably so. So, you know, I don't know what the trade-off is. Yeah, I don't know. It's...

It's frustrating. I suppose our ancestors were just as frustrated with their situation as we probably are with ours. Oh, I'm sure when the first guys went from horses to tractors and the first time it breaks down, you go, oh, I knew it. You know, never had no trouble before. Look at this shit. Grab another horse. Now here we are stuck. Can't pull this thing with anything else. It's the only tractor on the farm. Which, can you fathom only having the one tractor? No, I couldn't.

Even if it was 160 acres, which was common back then, and say, I think a lot of people always said you had like 40 acres of pasture and then 120 of row crop. But, yeah, even for 120 acres, one little bitty tractor. One cylinder. I remember my dad talking about that. They had one cylinder, and they moved it from piece of equipment to piece of equipment. I'm like, well, that's neat. I don't have any equipment that takes the same cylinder. Yeah. You know, but that's what they did. Well, you can hang it right here on the back of a 1066. Okay, but that...

I don't see myself doing that. What,

It's no wonder most of them are missing a finger. Yeah, it is. I'm going to go switch the cylinder from the disc to the field cultivator. All right. I mean, who's helping you? Nobody. We'll just keep walking back up there, bumping the lever, trying to get the pins lined up. That would be a nightmare. Or, which would have been pretty common, my four-year-old son was on the tractor. I told him to bump the lever while I had my finger in the hole lining it up. He went a little too far. Now they call me stubby.

Yeah, there was a shit pile of people back then missing fingers, arms. Hands. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. You understand it now. So I guess in some ways we have evolved. In other ways, I think we're just throwing shit at it, seeing what sticks. Yeah, now there's so much shit on it, it's like it takes me two hours to get the safety shit out of the way just to get to the part that's bad. Now you get this 25-year-old guy that calls and says, hey, the auto-steer quit.

Okay, we'll get somebody out there. Well, like now? Now it's going to be two hours. I don't know what I'm going to do. There's a round black thing. If you grab it with both hands, you can turn it. You can drive yourself. Oh. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. I'll just go to the house. Yeah. You let me know when you're going to be out. I am actually in...

Keep it simple mode from here on out. I get all these guys with 900 monitors and attractors and all their plant and stuff. I'm not saying that stuff don't work for one minute. I'm not. But I'm just to the point that's just more shit to go wrong, and I'm tired of it. And at some level, can you really prove that you're growing anything more than that? Because I realize...

Growers may lie a little bit at the coffee shop slash the implement dealer slash the restaurant, whatever. But I'm like, if you go in there and there's, you know, John Doe A and he has no technology, John Doe B that has 456 monitors and John Doe C that has two monitors.

First liar ain't got a chance. So you tell me what your yields are. Well, it's who speaks last has the best yield. So maybe those attachments don't mean shit. You just have to talk last.

Everybody's down the dumps on the grain markets, right? I can't get these numbers to work at all. Well, between the draper heads, the planter attachments, and all the other shit, I mean, you're raising 100 bushel beans and 600 bushel corn. I mean, where's the problem? Well, it's kind of farming has turned into, excuse me, growing, and producing has turned into kind of like, well, I've got this

fox body mustang and i bought i got the summit catalog out and i bought this exhaust and this programmer these wheels intake and this that next thing you know john force is scared to death of me i'm gonna whip his ass in the next drag race because i've added 450 horse to a car where they had 185 just with my 15 15 horse attachments yeah you know agreed i put borla exhaust on it and i oh yeah i am drag race ready

You know, not saying some of that shit doesn't work in given situations, but you can get pretty carried away pretty easily. How many people do you and I know that bought a fairly nice new planter, newish planter, whatever it was. Time they attachment it up, they had more in it than they give for the planter. Yeah. You know, it's like somebody was playing with that thing before. Agreed. The year before when that shit wasn't available and they hadn't been to the farm show and saw that shit, like they were putting a crop in the ground.

I don't know that all that stuff's helping. Yeah, I'm not going to say either way because I don't have it, but I don't know. There's situations for some of that. Our window is smaller, so on and so forth. But I'm like, if you start adding up, let's say the average corn yield, which the years are so different anymore, but let's say normally with a base 7,000 John Deere, I can grow 170 bushel corn, right?

I got all these attachments and these microbes and these, all this bug dust and all this shit I can throw at it. Well, I ought to be at 240, 250, 260, 300. Time it all adds up. Well, then you talk to them. Well, you know, it didn't rain on that Tuesday. And it's like, well, yeah. At the end of the day, mother nature bats last. And what you really need is the correct weather. You know, that makes, you know, you got to get the crop in the ground. I get all that. And I'm not saying we don't have any of that shit. I have spent money on dumber shit.

And I'm going to continue to do it. Like, I know. You know? I just bought lights for my planter the other day. I don't need lights on the road units of the planter, but I think it looks freaking cool. It does. And I think when I'm planting at night, it's going to be pretty handy. They didn't cost all that much. It's not going to make my yields any better, but... It does look cool. It's the cool part. And there's a lot of that shit goes on in the farming world, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can't wait to see that thing all lit up. The thing is, like when we talk autonomous tractors, right? Everybody's like, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Why would you want one of them? That's the funnest part is driving a tractor. Ain't nobody kicking me out of my tractor. I'm going to drive my tractor. There ain't no way I'm going to do that. But we got to get the biggest, fastest shit that we got because, well, I'm always sitting in this fucking thing for five days. So it's like you want to get in and out as quick as you can, but you ain't taking away my right to drive my tractor. Which is it? Yeah, and I'm guilty of that. I want to get done, so I'm working longer hours than I should, this, that, and the other, but I have another business to run. Agreed. But...

Yeah, you're 100% right on that. I mean, we're all way over-equipped for the most part, you know. Yeah, I get it if you're like, man, I hate farming, but that's what I do. That's what I got roped into. My grandpa was doing that with a 630 case. Yeah, agreed. You know, with one hydraulic cylinder and a 630 case, you know, just going back and forth, you know.

But that's also what those guys said. Yep, my 65th birthday is tomorrow and you won't see me again. Agreed. I've had enough. I'm done. Now you're just like, well, I can keep doing this. I can keep pushing that button. I'll turn it on the end. I'll push the button again. Okay, I'll do it.

And then when I get done for the day, I'll hop in my auto start pickup, and I'll drive back. And you always hear this, Dad, with the average age of a farmer, I think it's at 57, I believe. It's thereabouts somewhere. I'd be curious to know if that's an actual true stat or not. Because I've been hearing it for 30 years, and it's never changed. No. But I don't know. But it's literally everything. I mean, look down to your household stuff. Well, yeah.

I'm not going to make a pot of coffee. I'm going to make it one cup at a time. And that's going to be way better. Really? Like, it doesn't seem more efficient. Seems like it was more efficient to make the whole pot. Agreed. Yeah, whatever. Now we're just literally throwing shit at the wall in every regard of our lives. And I think Ryan Kelly is not wrong when he talks about the precision planning cult. And I'm not knocking precision planning, but they could come out.

with whatever tomorrow. Yeah. Call it whatever you want. They've had some really good innovations. They have. But they're kind of... They're just thinking shit up now. They're just thinking shit up. It reminds me of the movie Armageddon. Yeah. You've got a room full of people just thinking shit up, and another room full of people just thinking shit up that they thought up, and a room full of people backing them up for telling them they're right about the shit they thought up. Exactly. There's truth in that. I mean, it does get...

It gets a little carried away in every regard, I suppose. And I don't know. I'm torn on this. So, and this last year was a prime example. I mean, we were in the driest spot you could get within a pretty big circle around us. I mean, it would not rain here where you and I live. It just simply wouldn't. And people always, and we actually ended up pulling out an okay crop. I had a pretty good insurance claim on corn, but overall I had some that was decent, some that wasn't, but whatever. Yeah.

but people always go back to, well, I mean, you know, man, it's these genetics these days. I'm not saying it is or isn't. I don't know. But I do think a lot of it comes back to machinery and the time that we farm. You wouldn't have dreamed of planting soybeans in April when I was a kid. No. Half the time you couldn't even do it in May. Yeah. I mean, you spent all of May planting your corn and half of June planting your soybeans. But think about the horsepower that we take to the field now, a field cultivator.

You drop it on the end and you never touch it. Yeah. Back then, it was these two-wheel drive tractors. Just every 30 feet, you're raising it up, lowering it. You know, soft spot here. Yeah. So, I mean, you've got an optimum seed bed. Yeah. And the machinery to do it. And you're planting a lot earlier. Now, I'm not saying genetics don't play into it. I don't know. Maybe they have 100% to do with it. I don't know. But I think machinery does have a lot to do with it, getting it through the field and the time that we're farming. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I won't disagree with that. I mean, I told dad that several years ago. I'm like, if we were still using tool drive shit and field call, there's a disc and everything. And then field call, they're like, we wouldn't dream of being in the field now. He's like, well, maybe we shouldn't be. Maybe not. But planning date is a pretty big yield factor now. It is. It is. Definitely is.

And maybe it would have been then. Maybe they would have been way better off then. You can work some stuff pretty wet with a quad track. Absolutely. I mean... Yep. And look back then. Nobody done all the extras. You bought a bag of corn. You dumped it in the planter. It was treated corn. Dumped in the planter. That was it. Now you got 600 tanks hanging on your tractor and you got, you know, everything else and fungicide and just 9 million things going on. Yeah. So...

I don't know. I'm not going to say either way. Yeah. You just got to find what works for you. Maximum economic yield is what I'm looking for. Agreed. Where I can put the most money in my pocket and not somebody else's, which is tough to do. It is. Because you can get wrapped up in that, in the cool factor pretty easy. Yeah. And there's a hell of a lot of that that goes on. And John Deere case, New Holland, they've made a fortune just off of the cool factor. Everybody's selling the cool factor. Yeah. I mean...

We don't have more acres now than we used to have, and everybody was doing it with 23-88s and 96-10s. They're covering all their acres, covering all the ground. Now we've got AF-11s, X-9s, bigger than your house. It was getting done before. I mean, literally, I think you and I are the only two people in the county that don't go to the field with a 24-0 planter. No doubt. Literally. No doubt. I bought one once, took it to the farm, realized we couldn't make any of our turns, and promptly sold it. Got it bought right.

Didn't lose any money on it, didn't make anything on it, but got rid of it. Couldn't make any of the turns. We tried a couple of them. It's like, well, this ain't going to work. We're going to take a year off just replacing culverts. We can't get it anywhere. So, yeah, it is crazy. It's kind of like all the guys that had a 16-row standard planter, traded it for a 16-row high-speed. It's like, well, you should have just got an 8-row high-speed planter.

I mean, eight rows at 10 mile an hour is the same as 16 at five. Yeah, it should be. So now you're planting it even faster. Yeah. And then they bitch that, well, there's no weather market in the grain markets anymore. Well, no shit, because we're literally, and I'm not joking, we're planting over 50% of the corn crop in one week. Yeah. Because everybody's got a gargantuan planter running at 10 mile an hour. And you and I have talked about this before, but I don't think we ever talked about it on the podcast. Like how much equipment sits on a dealer's lot that doesn't touch dirt that year?

It's a shitload. It's a bunch. There is enough combines and planters sitting not very far from us between two or three, four locations that never touches, that misses a season. Yep. Or it catches a little bit of one and whatever they traded in doesn't touch anymore. Like it gets rotated and the economics of that work for the dealer. I'm not saying anything against them. I'm just saying it is what it is. There's way more machinery out here than there is.

to run it, buy it, et cetera. Like there's a ton of carryover in that market. Back to our carryover of the corn. There's a ton of that stuff that's just sitting there that never really touches it for a year. And think of the guys now. You buy a brand new John Deere X9. I'm just going to go to that because, you know, that's been all the hoopla for the last year or two. And I don't know the exact number. We're just going to say that's a million-dollar combine. It might be a little bit less. I don't know. We're just using a million dollars for easy figure.

And you've got these hill jacks that are either running multiple or just don't farm a huge acreage. You know, they're putting 250 hours on them. Yeah. And then they want to go trade it in. It's like, well, A, what are you trading it for? And B, that's a pretty tough sell. A good friend of mine tried that. Really? He's got an X9, went to trade it, 250 hours on it. What do you think they wanted to trade? Oh, gosh. For another new X9? For another new X9. Just the box, not the heads. Just the box. Wow.

$200,000. $250. $250. $1,000 an hour. $1,000. Now, you start doing the math on that. I realize that thing's taking in a lot of bushels. Sure. It is. But your cost breakers are still pretty high. I don't know what that thing can do, what it averages out versus corn versus beans. But that sounds like a lot of money to me. Maybe it's not in the grand scheme of it, but it sounds like a lot of money to me. And it must sound like a lot of money to him, too, because he didn't trade it. I mean, $1,000 an hour. $1,000 an hour.

And this guy takes really nice care of his stuff. It was pristine. It wasn't like it was beat up. 250 hours on it. Yeah. I keep going back to this whole, and I'm not a genius. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. This whole 96-10 deal that I bought last fall. I got lucky. I got a good one. Some bitch may blow up the minute I back it out of the shed. I don't know. But it owes me nothing. I could literally own 10 of those for what it was going to cost this guy to trade. Yeah. 10 of them.

Yeah. Surely you could get done with 10 of them. You would think. Maybe not. All that ground was being farmed with those at one time, you know? Yeah. And I realize you can't, the whole world can't be on that plan because there's not enough of it to go around, whatever. You know, it is what it is. Somebody's got to buy the new shit and that's neat. But the backside market for those is fairly thin is what that proved to me, which is why you and I talked earlier. I'm like, I think all these companies will get rid of the small stuff and

That way they force the guys that could afford a class 6 or 7 into buying a used class 9, 10, 11. Right. Otherwise, what do you do with those? They're kind of like Cadillacs, you know. I shouldn't single Cadillac out, but like expensive luxury cars. The 85-year-old guy that gets his wife a new Cadillac every year, he's not buying the used one. He ain't buying the used one. I mean, he might be now in Joe Biden's America, but prior to this, he was buying a new one every year.

Yeah. I mean, look at your buddy. I might explain it to me like this the other day. He's like, let's say you're a, you're a drug dealer and you're just starting out and you got to have a really fancy car. So you need a Mercedes or a BMW or whatever. It's like, that's your cheapest car. If you're buying a 10 year old one or whatever, you can buy them for nothing because nobody wants a really expensive luxury car. Use like the people that buy those new don't want to use one.

They're high maintenance. They're whatever. And I'm not, again, I'm not singling out Mercedes and BMW. But I'm just saying, using that for an example. And I'm like, you know, that's a very good point. It equates to farming on that. Like, you know, the guys that can afford a new X9 don't want one with 250 hours on it. They want their ass to be the first one in the seat. And I get that. You know, and if you can do it, go for it. I'm glad there's people that do it so that I have something to buy later and take good care of it and try to keep it maintenance for me. But...

Holy cow. We're, we're over top on that. I think, you know, the market has shifted a little bit in the fact that I think deer case, whoever, Klaus, all those companies have kind of realized, well, we just need to produce a certain number of these. So there's always a shortage ish. We're not going to get back to where we're just loading dealers up with all this new stuff. And we're going to dump these new ones at a discount. We're going to produce just enough. If you got it retailed, we'll deliver it to you, you know?

That's kind of what I'm seeing. The days of equipment manufacturers having all that shit stockpiled, they're over. Everybody else in the world is just in time, whether it's Walmart, whoever. So now we've got million-dollar items. Why wouldn't that be just in time? We're seeing that in the automotive world, too. Dealerships aren't going to go back to stocking 45 Super Duties and Silverados. They're just not at your local small-town dealer. They're just not going to do it.

I mean, the numbers don't lie. If they can look back and for 15 years we've sold 25 of this particular truck a year to these big guys with money, why would you order any more than that and have them sitting around? Well, and the other thing is the union contracts have got high. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to jack the price. We're going to produce less. We're going to make the same amount of money. Agreed. We're going to run less shifts. We have to pay less people.

And we inflate the price. We artificially create a, not really a shortage, but just enough. We make the same money, the world goes around. So that's my take on it. Right or wrong, I'm probably 100% wrong. I've never been right in my life, so I don't know why I'd start today, but that's my view on it.

Yeah, I don't think you're wrong on that. I mean, I really don't. And COVID kind of set the stage for all that. We had a big shortage, and now we just can't get back on board. And that allowed everybody to dump all their inventory for everything. From flugelbinders to combines, they got rid of it all, right? Like, they dumped everything. Got rid of all the old inventory. We'll take anything you got. You know, we got rid of all that shit.

So now they can kind of re-look at the market landscape and be like, well, we probably shouldn't stock up like that again. Like, we're never going to get the opportunity to get out all that shit again. Here's what I would like. Because everybody was out of everything. Agreed. At that time. And here's what I would like to know. Like, you go by, whether it's a John Deere, a Case, or even a Ford, Chevy dealership, whatever. You know, they're all getting loaded up on inventory now. I mean, they're not just racking and stacking five deep, you know, but...

Where did all this shit go that's supposedly waiting on chips? Yeah, whatever happened to all those vehicles? I mean, that's all we heard about the... The entire Kentucky Speedway just full of brand new vehicles. Yeah, so... What happened to them? Yeah, where did it all go? I mean, you would think everything would just be... I mean, we heard all these rumors, you know, Grand Island, Nebraska. I mean, just combines for days. Yeah. So where are they at? I don't know. Are they still sitting there or... I don't know. I was led to believe in the automotive world that they just end up scrapping all that.

I'm assuming the U.S. taxpayer picked up that bill, but you never have heard anything. Because they were two model years old by the time they got all the shit for them. And they've been sitting outside the whole time. Yeah. So like they're... And I'm just picking on case. So why are combines still selling at not quite an all-time high, but a very, very strong market when there was supposedly...

hundreds of these things sitting there waiting on a chest all they needed was a chip i mean you or i would have bought one if you just said hey this combine was worth x amount but it's two years old but it's never been started touched whatever if it was a deal i'd have bought it yeah why not yeah i don't care but it's just like they all vanished they're gone yeah it'd be very interesting to know whatever happened to that you just don't hear anything on that which goes back to our well i don't trust the media on anything but yeah there's there should be

A mountain of new vehicles sitting somewhere. Oh, my God. You'd see pictures on Facebook of just, like you say, the Kentucky Speedway or whatever. Just acres. I mean, just trucks for days. Yeah.

And they only had this one chip. Yeah, that's all they needed. And Jim's out there just moving this chip from car to car. You know, he's in a golf cart. He moves this vehicle out to Kentucky Speedway, and he drives the golf cart back. It was probably a fucking key fob. That's what he was all waiting on, a key fob. Probably. Yeah, it probably was. Yep, didn't have batteries for a key fob. Yeah, but that whole thing went away, and I haven't heard a word about it since. It just tells me, and I'm only following the farming world just because I know a little more about it, but there should be just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deer-encased combines piled on lots of...

Somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere. Probably took him to South America. Sons of bitches. Yeah. Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Took him down there and took pennies on the dollar. Yeah, probably so. No, uh, no technology fee on that. Fucking shit. The American farmer ate that. No problem. We got it.

Ivo, we take the Panama Canal back, fill it in, fuck you guys, go around. Well, that's the one positive of the market. Didn't somebody, didn't they plug some river in Argentina or something? Oh, really? Some ship went awry. Really? No, I hadn't seen that. So they got tugboats on it. I think it was Argentina. That's part of the reason beans supposedly went up today. Really? Yeah. They're going to have to dredge it and hold on. Do you think the American government...

still medals or maybe they're too stupid or don't care or whatever now. Like, like when we were kids, like in the eighties, like you'd see some, you know, big story on the media and then let's just take a deal like that. For example, this river got plugged and you know, suddenly, suddenly it worked in our benefit. And then you find out 10 years later that, well, the America has kind of done that on purpose. I'm sure we probably do. Do,

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know if you thought we still do that today, which nowadays is probably to benefit somebody. You know, heaven forbid we do anything to benefit our own country. Yeah, well, I mean...

I'm hoping, here's my plan, Tony. I think we should send a shitload of booze to everybody that's driving one of those ships and barges in all those South American countries. Like, you know, Exxon Valdez this shit and we need you to wreck some stuff. That's a good story, too. I'll get off on a side note here. So when we was in Alaska in 2016 or 17, went out into Prince William Sound. And so we was on this boat and it was a tour to go see these glaciers and yada yada. And I

After we got through the whole big tour, it was like a two- or three-hour deadhead back to the port to get off the boat. And it wasn't a cruise. It was just a one-day deal. You just got off the same day. And so when we went through there, you know, and it was all done, there was five or six of us went up into the wheelhouse with the captain and just got to talking about the Exxon Valdez. And you want to talk about getting an education there. That whole deal, what you and I were told in the media,

Couldn't have been further from the truth. I mean, all the locals up there knew the deal. The guy wasn't drunk. It truly was this deal with...

I forget how exactly it ran aground, but they led us to believe that he was drunk and it was negligence and this and that. Totally wasn't. Then they got these big sock booms, like when you have an oil spill on top of water, you throw these things out to contain the oil. They were ordered to stand down. Nope, don't throw that shit out from the Coast Guard, this and that. So this fucking oil is just going everywhere. And so he said, I can take you right now down here to where that happened.

And he said when the government got involved is when it went to shit. So crude oil has a natural enzyme in it that will eat itself. Yeah. So, and I don't know the mileage, but let's just say there was 20 miles of shoreline that just had crude oil just soaked. You know, where you see the Dawn dish soap cleaning the baby ducks off. Yeah, absolutely. So he said that the government went in with hot water and sprayed all that shit down. It was taking the oil off the rock because up there's a lot of rock. You know, Sandy Beach, like it's big rocks, you know. So they're up there.

hitting it with hot water, well, that killed that enzyme because the water was so hot. So he said, we can go down there today and you can pick up a rock and roll it back and it's just solid crude oil underneath it.

But if you get to the parts that the government didn't touch, totally gone. As pristine today as what it was is the day that it happened. Yeah. Because the crude oil ate itself. It's gone. Boom. I can't believe that. But the whole deal, I mean, this guy was telling us this for like an hour. I mean, just the cool shit that he was telling us and the way that we were completely lied to was appalling. I am shocked that we were lied to, Tony. Agreed. I don't believe it.

Yeah. Sounds about right. But it seemed like back when we were kids, the government was always meddling in shit overseas somewhere here. Well, they probably still are. They just don't cover it the same. So are you going to get in on the slavery deal that Joe Biden's wanting to pass now? Well, I...

I would like to, but tell the listeners the whole deal here. Well, so it's up in arms. I saw a video on it and then I researched it a little bit and I saw three videos that said it's a lie and I saw three videos that said it's true. Okay. So it could go either way with the housing for labor deal where if you'll house a migrant, they can do your cooking, cleaning, landscaping, wash your car, whatever, et cetera.

May or may not be true. Do you qualify for tax credits? You get a tax incentive. Yeah. So it could go either way. Who knows? But once in a while in those deals, like, don't you feel like they throw this concept out there? Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. And we'll just see what public opinion is or see how this is –

This is perceived. Oh, no, that was a lie. That's not true. I'm not saying that's the case with this one, but sometimes you're like, well, we don't want to throw them a strike down the middle. We'll just throw them a slight, not a hard curveball, just a slight curveball on the outside edge of the plate and see if they swing. Oh, they like that.

We'll just move that in a little closer. Let him take a swing at it. Not saying that's the deal, but we'll see. Or there's some big donor that's got a mess on his hands with some buildings in New York City. Can't find any help. So it's like, well, we'll do this. And he hurries up and grabs onto it and takes the loopholes and gets these giant tax credits. And the whole program, it's gone in six months. Didn't work out. That's no good. But it's a lifetime deal, so we're going to keep giving it to him because, well, he got in on the ground floor, Tony. Yeah. Yeah.

happen to know the right people at the right time yeah that's just where i want to be but i don't have enough money to play in politics i just want to grease enough palms well here's the thing about the world and this is a message for the kids networking is everything agreed it doesn't make two shits what you know it is who you know make all the contacts you can at the earliest age you can if you go to college join every club everything you can do

And like I said, touch as many hands as you can because that will get you way further in life. It literally goes from playing on your high school basketball team, whether you set the bench or play, to whatever else. You can be a half-ass shitbag athlete, but if your dad is buddies with a coach, you're probably going to sit on the floor. You can be above that guy, but your dad's too busy at work, doesn't have time to go to the tavern with the coach.

Hey, maybe you won't play. And that's all the way up to the rest of your life. It is. It is all about contacts and networking. The old saying, it's not who you know, it's who you blow. That's exactly right. That holds a lot of truth. That holds a lot of truth. Because I've seen some dipshits in positions like, how the fuck did you ever get hired here? Hunter Biden? Agreed. Agreed. Perfect.

His dad? Nancy Pelosi, the best investment person in the world. Phenomenal. Yeah. Yep. Dave Ramsey should be extremely proud of Nancy Pelosi's investing abilities. No doubt. I mean, you never lose. You never lose. Never lose. 85% returns all day long. Warren Buffett ain't got shit on Nancy Pelosi. Nope.

Nope, she did not do the growth stock mutual funds that Dave Ramsey would recommend. No. She was way over that. Yes, yes. Single stocks. Terrible plan. Yeah. Yeah. But if you pick the right ones all the time. She's one of those people that's like, well, the casinos always win. I always win at the casino. Yeah. Yeah. She's doing great. Yeah. Yeah.

So my advice to the kids, make all the contacts you can because you never know. And I have seen this. I wasn't that way per se. I mean, I'm a naturally somewhat outgoing person-ish. But I have seen that work out on both directions numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous times in my life. And sometimes you never know. Like a buddy and I were talking about this a while back. He's like, you know, you got to be careful who you're an asshole to in high school. Because sometimes they end up in this spot.

And you need that help. You're like, man, I really wish I hadn't been a jackass to that kid in high school. And there's a ton of truth in that. Like, you just never know. And it's never good to be an asshole. Sometimes you got to be or sometimes you just are because you're having a bad day, whatever the reason. But get involved in as many things as you can. I mean, it's FFA week. Reach out and talk to as many people as you can at all that stuff.

You know, you and I were a fair amount reserved in that stuff. Our kids are somewhat reserved in that. But you can get a lot of places in life by just talking to the right people. Oh, for sure. Maybe 10 years before you need them. But eventually, it's like, hey, I walk into this job interview. Well, hey, there's Jim. I met him 12 years ago at the National FFA Convention. Guess who's getting that job? The guy that was real nice to Jim. Agreed. You know?

So it's, and it's funny how that works. And I've noticed a lot of times in life, and this was probably before tech doctors, because I've met so many people now that you, you can't keep it all straight. But I always noticed growing up and up to the last 10 years, it seemed like around here being in small communities, uh,

You would meet somebody one night at – maybe it was your house. Some guy didn't even know, but you did know. Met the guy once, and that was it. Hadn't seen him for 10 years, but it seemed like it always comes full circle. And it was maybe never a favor, but somewhere you crossed paths with that guy in business. Yeah, again.

Of some sort. And he might have just been a guy sitting behind a desk taking the order for your planter parts or something. Yeah. But it seemed like it always come back around. Hey, you remember me? And oh, yeah, you know, and it never mattered to nothing. But yeah, you're right. You got to watch. But now it does. Yeah. You got to watch how you treat people and you got to make as many contacts as you can. Yeah. In the social media world, it's a little bit different because you do meet so many more people. Yeah. Yeah.

Even if it's like prior to social media, I would tell you if you meet somebody once on accident, eventually your paths will cross again. Agreed.

If you go around long enough in the social media world, you meet so many people now that that may not be true, but you really only need one or two of them. I agree to get you out of whatever it is later on, you know? Yeah. Now you're pulling from such a large physical mass. You know what I mean? You were talking to people from Washington, Oregon, you know, that you would have never done that before. Never ran into otherwise. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, it's funny. That shit seems to come full circle more often than not. Absolutely. And a lot of times it don't amount to nothing. But, yeah, be very careful. Yeah, yeah.

Get out of your comfort zone and meet people and be nice to them. Yeah. And that's what I've always tried to tell my kids. You know, we all dicked around in school, but honest to God, I mean, you and I went to high school together. It was more of us versus the faculty. We weren't picking on other kids. I shouldn't say never, but it was never out of control. No, no. I didn't pick on anybody any worse than what a senior picked on me. And it never got carried away. But you got to be careful crossing that line because...

especially in a small town, the kid that you picked on, he might be your banker in 10 years. He might. He might. Which, on the opposite flip side of that, I do think we need to bring more bullying back, even though it was called bullying back then. Because some of those kids you can just straighten out with a little bit of peer direction. Agreed. Like, some of those kids just need a little bit of a shove, figuratively, or maybe literally.

In the right direction, and he might be able to steer them in a better direction. Yeah. But it's a fine line to walk. Yeah. And we can throw it out there. I don't care. My kid got blamed, and he swears up now that he didn't do it. I don't know if he did or didn't. I don't care. I don't think he did just from the way he told it to me. But somebody got their locker zip-tied shut with a single white zip tie at school.

Which would not have been a headline when we were in school. And he's like labeled, you're just the biggest asshole in school. There was this scuffle. It wasn't a fight or nothing like that, but it's just like. Yeah. All these kids are coming home telling Nick and I about it, and we're just sitting here just dumbfounded. We're like, this even made. In our day, you just got your pocket knife out and went.

And clicked it off. Or maybe just jerked up extra hard on the lever and let it... Yeah, let it cut itself because it's sharp there. It would have been fine either way. The only person in our day that would have been mad about that might have been the jander if they got caught in the vacuum. Agreed. That would have been the biggest problem we had, which coincidentally we were all friends with the janders. So it still wouldn't have been a problem. Exactly. Because...

Turns out those guys were really nice guys. So there was no reason to pick a fight with them. Yeah. So, yeah, Nick and I look at each other and we're like, this is not news. And if that's what it takes to be a badass these days, well, I guess call me Hulk Hogan. Yeah. I did a few more things than zip tie locker. I heard about the story my daughter and I were talking about. I'm like, well,

didn't he just go down to his spare locker and she's like what do you mean spare locker i'm like well

I had a spare locker. You don't have a spare locker? She's like, what would you do with a spare locker? I'm like, put your spare shit. Exactly. I had a food locker, a trash locker, a book locker, a coat locker. I had like four of my lockers. There was way more lockers than there was kids at our school at that particular time. So you had a spare or two. Like you didn't hang your, your coat wasn't in your way in your normal locker with your books and shit. You kept that in your coat locker. Agreed. Down the hall. Yeah. You only need to go down there twice a day. Wants to put it in, wants to get it up.

Apparently, that's not a thing now. Apparently, that's a big thing. Really? Yeah, I don't think so. They don't have spare lockers now. No shit. I don't know if they're all zip-tied shut or what the deal is. It could be. And they're definitely not pulling pocket knives out to cut the zip ties off. But in my day, you just got a spare locker for that. My first question when I heard this story was, well, did he zip-tie the kid? Was the kid in the locker when he put him in there? Apparently, he was not.

And at that point in time, I started to lose interest in the story because it doesn't seem legit at that point. Like, well, if he wasn't in there, it wasn't that big a travesty. Yeah. The wife was telling me about it. Like she was, I'm not going to say she was worked up, but she was like concerned, like did this get out of control or whatever? And the longer the story went on, I just start rolling my eyes and walking away. I'm like, I can't even believe you guys are telling me that. I mean, yeah.

Why am I even hearing this? This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. And it wasn't even the big, like, quarter-inch wide zip ties. No. We're talking an eighth inch or smaller. Yeah. And he still swears up and down he didn't do it. I don't care if he did or didn't. Whatever. I couldn't care less. But...

It's just like, man, if this is what it takes to entertain you guys. It's where the world's at. Yeah, it's where the world's at. He'll be on the TV at the next gas pump when somebody's getting gas. Local bully zip ties locker shop with one single white zip tie. Yeah, no doubt. Crazy times, Tony. Crazy times. It's unbelievable. I don't know how we're getting by. I don't either. Well, God, we've ran this one. Yeah, we've ran it long. A long time.

We'll try to get back sooner. Yeah. I think I've got a podcast stuffed in this computer somewhere that we shot way back when it had Mrs. GC on it. Yeah. I'll have to see if I can dig that out.

See where it's at. No doubt. And we'll shoot another one. Yeah. Yeah, we'll definitely get back on these. We always tell you that and we never do. We like to keep our listeners hungry. Could go either way. Yeah, exactly. People can listen to this on the way to Commodity Classic. They wanted one for Louisville and we were actually going to shoot one. We were going to. We were literally, Nick pulled in my driveway...

I walked to the shed to get some beer, and we didn't stand there 30 seconds, and a neighbor and his wife pull in, and it escalated from there. Yeah, we never made it in. We never made it. He was going to have one for Louisville, but we didn't. Don't blame us. Blame them. Exactly. So you can listen to this one on the way to Commodity Classic. If you don't, nobody cares. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.