In this #Farm4Fun episode, we’re thrilled to chat with Shawn Feikema, the Minnesota-based farmer and YouTube creator behind Tractor Talk with Shawn. Shawn’s channel offers a unique glimpse into life on his family farm, where he manages daily operations, shares his love for tractors, and dives into the mechanics and history of farming equipment. We talk about what it’s like farming in Minnesota, how his multi-generational farm has evolved, and the challenges of working through the state’s unpredictable weather. Shawn also gives us behind-the-scenes stories from his YouTube content, discussing his favorite equipment reviews, learning experiences, and the excitement of growing his online farming community.Listeners will hear about his journey balancing farming and content creation, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and what inspires him to keep sharing his passion with the world. Whether it’s talking about his favorite tractors, the Minnesota farming community, or the unpredictable challenges of farming, this episode is full of fun moments and insights into rural life. Join us for a down-to-earth conversation with Shawn Feikema, packed with laughs, farming wisdom, and plenty of tractor talk! Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen!Websitewww.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode linkhttps://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail [email protected] to YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
Not like it used to be 30 years ago. When you weren't in the house or in the office, you weren't connected. So you could just ignore it now. You're connected all the time. It doesn't matter. Your phone starts beeping at 6 a.m. and it don't shut off until 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. And so I think it's just a matter of, there just comes a point where you do, you just have to put it down.
There is a podcast in Iowa. Phone for profit was named by the face startup.
Making Buffet was their first goal, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go Before we knew, conversations grew, growing corn even said FU So won't you join tenor day coring crew, please like, share with you Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go
And listeners, welcome back to the Farm for Profit podcast. You got Tanner here. Corey's here. And David's here. Wow. I think for once, I was one of the louder ones. We're going to have to get... When you're in studio, you can kind of control the volume. Yeah. Control the input. But maybe I just started off a little bit too excited. For this Farm for Fun episode.
Well, it is Friday. That's when we should be recording it. That's right. It is like 9 in the morning, though. It is. We're drinking coffee. Coffee, not ale. Other good stuff. Exactly. That's right.
Oh, that's good. We had a great Farm Progress show. We had a great Husker Harvest Days. We got to dive here into the studio to get to meet a good, hopefully, new friend of ours. Hopefully.
I think that would be great.
Hopefully. Hopefully. You listeners are friends of ours, and we like when you send us information. So farmforprofitllc at gmail.com. Hit us up in our DMs all over the place and leave us a review. I don't care what you type in the review. I just want five stars.
I'm starting to care what you type. Oh, you do? I'm starting to care what you type. We'll get into that during the show.
Okay. We do. But share this with your friend. If you're going through harvest this fall and you really enjoy this episode or other ones, please pass those along. We appreciate all of that.
This will be a nice break between Farm Progress and Husker, you know, because I know our content gets really long. We do a lot of the content at the shows, but we're back in studio to break it up a little bit. So that'll be nice, a little bit refreshing.
absolutely well do you want to introduce our guest today yeah do you ever i need to trim my mustache you ever get a mustache hair that goes up into your nose yeah i feel like i've been like you know like looks like one of them guys that just shoving stuff up my nose sometimes you haven't haven't maintained the nose and sometimes those hairs will turn into your mustache turn into your mustache just bothering the crap out of me okay i'm a professional we'll get this done that's funny
You ready? Yes, I'm ready.
Today on the Farm for Fun show, we are back in studio. In between Farm Progress and Husker Harvest Days, we head up to Iowa's Hat. Is that a thing, Tanner? The state of Minnesota to meet up with a third-generation farmer that is out to try to do more with less to hopefully preserve his family's farm legacy.
A fellow strip tiller, this man farms corn, soybeans, small grains, hay, cattle with his uncles and brother. Please welcome from Laverne, Minnesota, Mr. Sean Fikerman.
Woo-wee. Thank you, guys.
I should have asked. Did I say that right? Is it Ficama?
Yeah, you did. You're one of the few. Mostly it's fecuma or some crazy thing like that. You nailed it.
I bet there were no fecal jokes in high school. I bet there was none. None.
Remember the ages of what are the telecallers or what was it? Telemarketers. They'd call the house and if they got your last name wrong, mom would just hang up. That's how it was. That's how it was at my place anyway.
I'm pretty sure the first pickup that I bought
came from laverne minnesota ford dealership up there really herman motors just rusted out or what no it was black betty is black and chrome rocker panels dual exhaust he saw the tiktok i sent you guys last night about the crappy truck and the girls like that you know all right before we get into you what was your what was your first vehicle sean oh it was uh uh i can't remember the year
But it was a Grand Am, Pontiac Grand Am.
I had a 92 or 3 Buick LeSabre. But that was what my parents had given me to drive to school. The old family car with 175,000, 200,000 miles, whatever. But the first pickup or first vehicle that I bought myself was a 1999 Chevy 1500.
I had an old Danger Ranger. Danger Ranger. Yeah. Ford FN Ranger? Yeah. Ford FN Ranger. Uh-huh. Blue in color. Oh, yeah. 800 bucks. Ford from the beginning. I had a Ford from the beginning. Yep. I've been through all the brands, though.
It was a chick magnet, wasn't it?
Oh, it was. Tell you what.
Yeah. My first one was a dad's old F-250, regular cab. And then I had a Grand Am, but the first one that I bought was that F-150 from Laverne.
Yep.
Yep. Very cool.
Very cool. Well, normally we don't get off the rails that early, but Sean, the show is for you. I kind of do. I gave a little, tiny little snippet in my intro. Who is Sean and what do you do? Well, and who is that?
That was my dog. He was sitting nicely, but somebody apparently has walked in the office in the conference room over there, so he just... He doesn't like it when somebody else shows up. On point. I thought he'd lay there quietly. Hopefully he will from now on.
Like a yellow lab? Yes. What's his name?
Max.
Max.
Hey, our dog's named Max, too.
Yeah.
Look at this. We're just connected from the beginning, Sean.
Yeah, right.
Max.
All right.
Well, who is Sean and what do you do?
Okay. So, um, yeah, you mentioned anything that we're a third generation on under this location.
My family's been farming for as long back as I can recall, but so yeah, we, my brother, it's my brother and I that own it and our wives, my uncle, I have two uncles that work with us here yet that they, you know, that generation, as you guys probably are well aware of, they just can't quit because it's really farming is what they do. And yeah, what they do.
So, um, we got, uh, six full-time employees. Um, So, yeah, we crop farm. We do corn, soybeans, and we do quite a few small grains, strip-till, no-till. Yeah, dabbling a little bit in a lot of different things. We have a feedlot, so we market 5,000 to 6,000 head of fat cattle a year. Yeah, we row crop a little over 7,000 acres.
Well, the cattle market's been a lot better than the row crop market for you, probably.
Yes, finally. Yes, yes. Yep, yeah. Finally, we feel like the cattle market is... is rewarding us for the years and years of just
eking by it's like oh well at least we got some manure out of the deal there you go that's when you start talking about the value of manure which it is a big value but it's like it is it is yep yep so so yeah that's a little bit of uh kind of what we what we do um trying to think if there's anything else you said wives do you have a couple of them or just just one wives yeah uh you know i i have one official wife okay yeah
Yeah, so no, it's my wife and my brother's wife are pretty heavily involved as well. So we do monthly board meetings. We meet with our CFO, our tax people, and all that stuff. So everybody's in the room and going through financials and all of that stuff too. So that's how everybody gets a little involved and gets a way for us to keep communicating. And so we're all on the same page.
See, they have a CFO. Yeah. I need a CFO. Is that a your employee CFO, or do you have like a fractional CFO?
Yeah, fractional. Yep, yep. Actually, we hire their firm to do all of our tax stuff, and then they also offer CFO service. So he does it for a few other operations and not necessarily all ag. Most of them somehow related to ag, I think, but I don't know all of the other operations he does it for, but...
Do you just, do you just love having that?
Yes, absolutely. I would never, ever. I, you know, when I, when I went, I went to a two year college, Ridgewater college in Wilmer, um, came back to the farm thinking, you know, farming was, you know, we're going to haul manure. I'm going to combine and I'm going to plant. And, uh, it didn't take me long into it to realize that, you know, there was more to farming than just pulling planters.
And, you know, it was a business, right. And, and my, my dad and my uncle already had the operation at a sizable spot. I think they had 2,500 at a cattle on feed and stuff like that, but hog business, different things like that. But, uh, Kind of started realizing I needed to focus on some business stuff and ended up going to TPAP. I don't know if you guys are familiar with TPAP out of Texas A&M.
It's called the Executive Program for Agricultural Producers. It was started by Danny Kleinfelter. And it's a one-week, it's a two-year program. You go there for a week of intense business stuff. And I went down there the first year, decided it was something neat and kind of, I guess opened my eyes to the agriculture business world. And so that's when I went, you know what?
I don't have the brains needed to run my operation where it needs to be from the financial perspective. So, and that all worked together with us going through our transition from one generation to the next. And that's how we kind of ended up where we did just because we started down the transition path. And then as we did that, I'm like, Hey,
We need somebody who understands financials really, really well and how to really set us up well for the future. And so that's kind of how it started. And that was probably 14, 15 years ago. So, yeah, because I think I went to TPAP in 2006 and 2007. Yeah, kind of just been doing that since then. Yeah.
That's the first I've heard of that. I've never heard of it either. You've heard of it? Really?
Yeah. And as a lot of bankers, it was always pitched. They wanted to sell to our customers through us. So they'd always send up marketing flyers and want you to leave a brochure on your bulletin board. But that's probably the only reason I knew of it.
It sounds like someone we should talk to.
Oh, yeah.
Right? Like that's kind of our mission. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think Danny Kleinfelter – oh, don't quote me on this. I know he had some health issues, so I'm not sure. He's not involved anymore. They've kind of taken it over, but it's like Dick Whitman, several university-type people are all involved with it. I know Mike Bolche from Purdue used to be involved. I'm not sure he is anymore. It's an amazing program when it comes to just –
dialing in it doesn't talk about production it doesn't talk about any of that so it's all about business and managing businesses for the next generation and beyond hell it sounds like a mini series yeah there's probably enough content yeah there yeah you'd have plenty of content there's a lot of uh a lot of great people involved with that or if that with that organization so so you said third generation at this location where were you guys before that
Well, so my grandpa, my grandpa actually grew up in Hayward, Iowa. That's where he started where that's where he was born. So what is now considered Oak Grove state park in Iowa was their farm. Um, and it's right on the Sioux river there, I believe. And, uh, yeah, when he left the farm to go out on his own, then he moved to, uh, South Dakota actually by renter. That's where he met my grandma.
Um, and farm there for a little while, always just rented the farm. And then his first farm that he purchased was this one here. So he left those other two because he said, I don't want to live. I'm sick of living near a river. I am don't, I'm tired of flooding. So I'm moving away from a river. So that's what he did. Unfortunately, he found a lot of, you know, rock.
Yeah.
I always find that interesting when farms pick up and move. Yeah. Because it seems like such an undertaking to do, no matter whether it's 50 years ago, 100 years ago, now. I mean, it's so much infrastructure, the land, access to land, and it's just like... I don't even know how it would happen.
I've had a couple clients that have said that, and they're like, well, we'd like to move our 2,000 acres to here. Can you find us 2,000 more? I'm like, well, all connecting? Yeah. Like, this is not an easy feat to do, you know? But they bought it way back when, when it was, you know, 50 bucks an acre. And so now they're ready to cash out and move somewhere else. But, yeah.
I also think of the aspect of... moving your community, right? Like usually farmers are so involved in the community. Maybe it's a good thing. You get to start over fresh, clean, you know, maybe.
We talked to Justin about what it was like farming in Ukraine. And he said, you didn't have, you had to bring everything with you.
Yeah.
Here we have a sense of community and yeah. What's it like when you don't have that community anymore?
Yeah. Right. Well, I remember my, you know, my dad and my uncle talking about too, like every March, just because farmers back then were more, more likely to rent the entire farm place. Every March, you had new people in church with you. Every March, there was a parade of farm equipment moving from one place to another because they lost their rented farm here, so they had to find another one.
I agree. I can't hardly imagine what that would be like, but they do it all the time, I guess.
If you were in Nebraska and you moved to Iowa, it would be like going to heaven. Yeah.
Yeah.
What would it be if you went to Minnesota from Nebraska?
Just be a colder heaven. It still wouldn't be Nebraska.
So you guys fight rocks just like I do, huh?
We don't struggle so much with your field stones. As much as we have solid ledge rock, we call it, it's solid granite. So, I mean, we have granite outcroppings that we literally will cover them up because you can't... The only way to get them out of the ground is to dynamite them out of the ground.
So you either just cover them up with dirt and farm over them so you don't have to go around them, or you dig out what you can, but most of the time you can't. So our ledge is basically from surface to... I don't know how deep it goes. We got a 400 and some foot well, and we never ran out of solid rock. Oh no. So it's solid rock underneath. It's great dirt on top. I mean, it's really great dirt.
It takes a lot of tile, but yeah, it's somewhere between, you know, zero and, 40 feet, you're going to hit solid granite rock.
So you say solid, like it's just one giant rock. It's not like just a bunch of small rocks.
No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking solid. Like we mine it here. We have two mines here that mine this granite out of. It's this red, that red quartzite type rock or whatever you want to call it. Yeah.
And that's mined for, like, tabletops or kitchen countertops or what?
No, it's actually put in asphalt. And a lot of our roads now, they crush it. So they'll dynamite it and then crush it, run it through crushers. And they use it for roads. And a lot of it's going into concrete and asphalt now.
Have you guys seen red pavement?
Yeah. I have, yeah. Yeah. Probably makes pretty good roads, I would imagine.
It makes awesome roads. The only downer is that the stuff is so jagged and sharp, it can be a little hard on tires. But we like it because it doesn't have no clay, so therefore when it rains, our roads are nice and hard, and I can still drive my pickup over it and not make it a muddy, sloppy mess versus regular clay gravel. Right.
That's interesting. So you said the fields are great if you can have tile in them. But if you've got all this rock, I bet being a tile installer is absolutely atrocious up there.
It can be, depending where you're at. Because like I said, some places the rock is at the surface and you aren't tiling. It is what it is. But most of the ground has got a minimum of probably six feet of dirt over the top of it. And it might come up in places in your field, but you can still tile.
But yeah, I mean, we do our own tiling, and I've completely bent the back framing of a Crary tile plow mounted on my 9RX. I mean, you hit them, it does not move. That doesn't sound like a good day.
No. If I'm wrong, you don't tile at a very fast speed. So that's still impressive that, oh, crap, I hit that rock.
and uh really made a bad day yeah yep yep how long have you guys been doing your own tile 2008 so 15 years wow yeah i'm sure that has uh paid extreme dividends yep yep uh we always say we're paying you're gonna pay for tile whether you have it or not so that's how we look at it and uh Yeah, we're going to start a project. So a lot of times we'll try and tile behind our small grains.
So Monday is kind of our go time. We've got a quarter section we're going to try and put. I think it's scheduled to have like 117,000 feet of tile put in it. Wow.
That'll be a project.
Yep, that'll take us a couple days.
So what does your rotation look like? You mentioned the small grains, and I know when I talked to you two weeks ago, that's what you guys were doing was harvesting.
Yep. So our rotation, I mean, right now it's typically, I'd call it a corn soybean rotation that we're continuing to try and add more small grains to. So this year we had like 680 or 690 acres of different small grains, whether it was oats, triticale, hybrid rye, cereal rye. I think that covers it.
What is triticale? It's a cross between wheat and rye.
Yeah. Yep. So it's typically grown, from what I understand, we grow it on seed production. So I have some seed production contracts with Milbourne Seeds or Renovo out of Brookings. So that's what we grow it for. But I think the dairies are, they love that triticale because it elongates, don't quote me on this, but it elongates and makes for better feed quality, but still gets you the tonnage.
Whereas rye, when it elongates and gets its tonnage, it loses its feed quality. So a lot of dairies are putting it in, and then they'll chop it off in late May or something, and then they'll put their silage corn in. That's my understanding. A dairy guy would much better be able to just grow it for seed.
The only time we've ever grown it at the feed yard is when we were taking advantage of the...
and the government reimbursed you for planting cover crops but you had to explore a new species oh yeah so we included triticale as a new species but ultimately it got mowed off in june baled or chopped yeah yeah we had a instructor at iowa state in agronomy that just i mean he loved triticale i mean just love to talk about it lance i think was his name i can't think of his last name but uh
If any Iowa State grads from the 2005 to 10 era, they would probably know exactly who I'm talking about. I swear, that agronomy class was supposed to be about everything, and all we learned about was triticale, something we don't grow in Iowa. Right. Yeah.
We've been running like corn, soybeans, so we do a fair amount of corn on corn. So in my ideal world, I'd probably like to go corn, soy. And then go back, go to a small grain and then go two years corn back to soybeans. And I like to follow my favorite. Our favorite thing is to follow oats. We're kind of going to we're going to pull away from the rice and the triticales.
And we're going to try and grow more oats just because we can grow oats really well here. So that's kind of what we're going to concentrate on. And we get a lot of we get a lot better symbiosis or synergies between oats and corn. When we grow corn behind oats, we'll get 20 bushel plus above and beyond what we normally would. Wow.
The following after that, we'll pick up a few bushel on the beans as well. Nice. So just breaking up that regular corn-soy rotation has really helped push some of our yields.
Who are that husband and wife that are opening an oat plant?
Oh, yeah.
Plags. In Minnesota.
Yeah. Just talked to them yesterday.
Yeah.
Yep. Landon Plagg. And his wife. I have not met his wife, or I haven't met them. I just talked to him on the phone yesterday.
I took a picture of the shirt. He's investing a ton of money into that.
$37 million. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep.
Is that something you're looking to grow for?
Yes, that's what we were on the phone about, yep. Because it's supposed to be a farmer-owned, I think it's called Green Acres Seed Co. Green Acres Seed Co. And they're based out of Latimer, Iowa, but I think the plant is going to go on Albert Lee, Minnesota.
And I had not heard anything about it until I was at Striptail Conference a few weeks ago and ran into some people that were talking about it, so... Started doing some investigating. But, yeah, it's kind of going to be a farmer-owned deal. So you buy shares kind of like they used to do the ethanol plants, you know. So I don't know. I'm pretty intrigued by it.
And what did he say? $30 million. He says, I'm personally backing it or something. Yeah.
Yep. I think they said – I don't know what the oat market is right now, but I think they said they'd guarantee – if you're an investor at a certain level, they'd guarantee you like $6.50 a bushel for three years.
Yep, $6.50 a bushel for three years, and then they'll have a – It'll be from after that, I think. I should really not probably say too much because I'm probably going to get it wrong. But if you're interested, you'll just have to call them. Green Acres, yep.
But yeah, they'll have some sort of inflationary type scenario that they'll base off of the products coming out of the plant, whether it's the flower or the meal or whatever they're selling. So, yeah. So are you trying to...
like put a crop after the oats at all or a cover crop?
We are putting a cover crop in. Typically we're putting a cover crop in. And the one that we're probably most interested in going to is probably seeding the oats with clover. So the clover will just hang out underneath the oats until you take the oats off. And then it just kind of greens and it, you know, produces some nitrogen and some of that stuff. But right now we're,
Right now we're doing radishes, turnips, vetch. We seed that all in behind our small greens. Done a little bit of work with some local guys who have mother cows. We'll actually lease out our cover crop acres and they'll graze them through, you know, October through Christmas or something like that. We've done that, you know, done that. It works pretty good.
But typically I'm just after getting a cover crop in there to break up some compaction and some of that kind of stuff. Yeah.
How long have you been doing the cover crops?
I think we started playing with cover crops 10 years ago on a really small scale and just have kind of been building. Last year or the year before was where we really took it to where we're going to put it on as many acres as we can possibly. find the time to get it put on.
Any of that decision-making come from, uh, carbon as well, or CI scores or anything?
Uh, no, no, we've been doing it just because we really like what we're seeing in the soil from it.
Okay.
Um, so we're just, uh, yeah. So a lot of our ground is, yes, it's got all this rock underneath, but it is heavy black clay dirt. And so we get compaction really easily. Um, and it's wet. I mean, uh, I, Most of my friends can't stand to listen to me because every time it rains, I bid about it.
Um, and they, most guys like to have rain here when it's a drought, we're sitting right where we want to be because that's, that's where our ground shines. So, um, Yeah. So we're trying to find ways, hence tiling, and then just trying to get more water infiltration to try and be able to have the soil healthier and not run away. Um, we don't have a lot of slope here, but we have enough.
And if it rains three to five inches or like this past June, when we had 10 inches in one week, um, I don't like seeing that dirt run at wash away. It drives me insane. So we've been doing a lot of rye after soybeans and, uh, we, um, Yeah, we just seed rye after soybeans, and then after our small grains, we're running these blends. So that's kind of what we're doing.
Oh, there goes Dave. He's off. He doesn't even like cover crops.
He's trying to sneak.
He's like, yep, there he goes. Trying to sneak out of here. He's like, yep, I'm done. So it must have been about the same timing that you started cover crops that you did strip-till? Is that the same time?
Yes, yep. So we actually started covers the very first – Cover crops I tried were before we went strip-till because we did a couple of fields, and then I thought, oh, I'm going to go out and till it in the spring, right? What a train wreck that was. That was like I had tilled up a pasture. So that was not –
the greatest idea but you know you learn as you go and you figure things out and and now you know we plant green most almost all our corn is planted green which has worked fairly well up until this year um this year it didn't work i i was not super happy i'm not i shouldn't say it didn't work it just my corn looked like crap because we're in north in southern minnesota we're not supposed to be planting in three foot tall rye um that we don't have the equipment for that and and
Just because of the way the weather was, when the rye came out of dormancy the first of March, it just had so much time to grow. And when we planted the third week of April, it worked great. But then we got, like everybody else, we got all that rain and we didn't get back in for two and a half, three weeks. And by the time we got there, it was three feet tall. Some of it was over four feet tall.
And yeah, so that part I hope I never have to do again. But if I can plant green in foot tall or less, I love it.
So that was my experience in 2016. We tried cover crops in front of beans and in front of corn, had some flown on and it was the year that they come out of dormancy and they were four foot tall and it was rubbing paint off the rock bucket on the 8420. And, and I tried the tillage thing too. And it was like, Just coming up in just big clumps because of those roots, you know.
And then it's like, well, we tried vertical till, disking, probably ripping. And the best thing we found was that those acres, we just no-tilled it. But I had to go really slow, you know, in that. You could have bailed it off. Yeah. Yeah. Where am I going to take it? That's the problem is we don't have the cattle around us. So then you have to haul it all somewhere. Right.
Yeah, that's a big deal. You know, people ask me, like, how come you're willing to try all this stuff? I'm like, because if I screw up, I make my brother take it and feed it in the feed yard somehow. You know, do something. We can figure out some way to deal with it.
Yeah, cattle are – I do think cover crops are the answer if you have – Oh, yeah. Because it's a feed source of some, or a roughage at a minimum.
Yep. You know, so. Yep.
And then all your small grains even, right? Like, even if, like, you don't hit grade on one of your small grains – Boom.
Goes into feed. Feed. Run it through the roller mill and feed it.
Yep. Yep. We get people telling us all the time down here in Iowa, you guys quit needing to grow. Stop growing the monocrops, the corn and soybean rotation, or just corn, whatever. And it's like, we want to grow something else, which is why I'm excited about this Green Acres deal, because they said they'd start pulling some oats down to Des Moines area.
Okay.
Yep. But it's like, we just don't have a market. Without putting it on it, finding a rail, trucking it to, you know, way beyond the cost of what it should be, you know, it works. So, it's nuts.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that don't, you know. Yeah, the people from the outside. So we get a lot of tour groups that come through and different things. And they're like, well, why don't you try different crops? Like, there's got to be a market, you know? I mean, it's hard to beat corn. Corn and soybeans have the markets. They do because they grow well where we grow them.
And so it's hard to find something that can compete with that, you know? Yeah. Which is unfortunate, but it's the reality of the world we live in.
Yep. So how does your strip-till process look? Because I'm a strip-tiller myself for the last three years. It's been rocky, up and down. I really enjoy it. Three years stripping? Three years stripping, yep. It's been the first year we had to abandon our strips.
in the spring but we got a soil warrior um tried some like it's a liquid one uh but mainly we've been just making strips and putting anhydrous down with it in the fall okay okay but i kind of wanted to start incorporating some uh cover crops but i haven't got to that point yet okay yeah and we yeah i we run a soil warrior as well um the shank we do all the what the shank or the colters no we run the colters okay yep we started with a shank one
the N unit or N row unit, they called it. We started with that because I was convinced I had to have a 24 row to match up with my 24 row planters, which turned out, you know, the machine worked fine, but we have since then
uh traded for a 16 row coulter machine which i i like for our situation a whole lot better um number one the rock um but uh also i just i like the strip it makes better i need a wide you know i need a nice 10 inch wide black berm here um and i felt that does it better than that mole knife did um but yeah we do most our strips in the fall
Um, we, we put down a little potassium in the strip, maybe like 50, 60 pounds. And that's about it. Um, we do not hardly buy any, uh, DAP or MAP or anything because of all the manure. So we have our feedlot manure, and then we have, um, relationships with a bunch of, uh, large swine producers. So we pump, we pump about 10 to 12 million gallons of swine manure as well. Wow.
So we don't, we don't buy hardly any PNK fertilizer other than a little bit of potassium in some strips here and there. Um, And so, yeah, we strip in the fall. Mainly we're just making a strip other than if we're putting down a little bit. Some of our cattle manure acres we'll put, we'll VRT them. So we grid sample and then, you know, how inconsistent cattle manure can be in a bedpack situation.
So we just fill in them holes with a little bit of P and K and, you know, just little low spots. But for the most part, we maybe put, you know, fertilizer on 10 to 15% of the acres of the field, you know, just to even it out. Um, and then, uh, and then, yeah, we just roll in, in the spring and plant our corn on corn acres. We do freshen if we didn't bail the stocks off of it.
So obviously we bailed a few acres of corn stocks for bedding and stuff. So we'll, uh, we'll, uh, yeah, so we'll have, when we do corn on corn air, we don't bail it. We don't run a freshener strip through, um, or trip, but, uh, if it isn't bailed off, then we'll, we'll freshen freshen that corn on corn strip in the spring.
How do you get the corn on corn acres? How do you get the corn stover to flow through in the fall? I've always had problems with that.
Which machine do you have?
On the Soil Warrior with the N-row unit.
Yeah, it doesn't.
Yeah, it doesn't.
No, no. Hence the reason I have the Coulter machine, because that one don't plug. What we did when we had that machine, so we ran that machine for like four years, I think, chopping corn head, But the biggest problem was always on the end rows when you let that machine down and you almost have to stop on the end headlands, drop it down and then go because there was never...
the the the coulter comes out of the ground as you lift that machine before the knife does and then that knife just acts like a dump rake yep you know so that's that's you know we some of the things we learned was like literally you stop on the end rows like the you know like you used to do way back in the day with a planter you know so you didn't overlap that's how you had to do it to keep it from plugging yep i do that but then even then is it that's not even foolproof
Right.
Yeah. No, no, you're absolutely right. Yeah. All of a sudden you look back and you've got a Volkswagen plugged up underneath that thing, basically, you know, and you're dragging it along.
When you got 250, 260 bushels of corn, that's a lot of stover out there. And that's a lot of stuff. You're bailing it, you know?
Yes, exactly.
And then what do you do with the big old fricking beaver hut that you made out in the field? It just, you get so pissed.
Yep. Yeah. You get real pissed. Yep. I hear you. And it doesn't clean out the best. Yeah. So that's part of the reason we've gone to the Colter machine as well, because that, that thing will fly right through that stuff. No problem.
And are you guys pumping your own, that all that hog manure or have a customer?
No heavens. No, no, no. Uh, we got a, a custom outfit, a sample tank services. Um, they, they do an amazing job. They run all RTK, um, They're running those big noon trains or whatever. Yeah. And they pump all of our manure for us.
So they put everything in a, so all of our swine manure, they take all of our guidance lines and they have the, the, the, I think, I don't know if they call them VTIs or whatever bar. So they run 16 row bars and then they, they put it right where my strip is, where my strip will be. So they lay the hog manure there.
We come back a week later with our soil warrior and freshen it and just make a nice strip out of it. And we plant right on top of the hog manure. So if you want good corn, that's the way to do it. We love that principle. It works awesome.
You're going to cost me a lot of money. My dad wants to do that. And we're still, that's our only tillage that we're really doing, full tillage is behind the manure.
Oh, sure.
Which does scratch the tillage itch a little bit. It's kind of nice. Yeah, right. But yeah, I think they could, I think we could strip behind our manure. I just got to have to get Kyle on board.
Yeah. I'm amazed. I mean, we were a little concerned about how do you keep, I mean, these things are 17,000 gallon tanks. Yeah. And I'm there. So there, there's trains. I'm like, ha, I don't know if that's going to stay on the strip very well where I need it very well. But yeah, And these guys are meticulously fussy. They do an amazing job.
And they get my guidance line coordinates, and we give them our field boundaries. They'll just do auto whatever John Deere has, the auto boundary or whatever boundary track. And they get them set up, and they let it rip, and we just come back and freshen that right behind it. And it does an awesome job. Works great.
Yep, we're going to clip that and send it to Kyle, my manure applicator.
This is what we're doing.
He'll be pissed.
He'll be pissed.
He'll be pissed. So you've got all these crops. Go ahead. Before you get into that question, I've got to ask him, Sean, what's your favorite snack? My favorite what? Snack. Snack.
That's a random.
Cashews. Cashews. Hey, we are. Cashews is one of my favorite snacks, too. But I brought in some beef jerky and I brought in some leftover chicken wings. But I didn't bring in any pork today into the studio.
Here we go.
I know, Corey, that's probably offensive to you since you raise hogs.
Anything other than beef is offensive.
There we go. Is it? All right. We have something we have to address. And I messed up. I messed up, I will say. So, Sean, you're coming into this blind. I'm sorry about that. But we have a review. They did leave five stars, right?
Yeah. We always like to feature our listener reviews. So we have a record longest review ever left. But it was left under a five-star rating.
Can you give us the Cliff Notes version?
So I will read this. It starts off extremely emphatic. Guys, I never miss an episode of your podcast. Thank you. I love what you do. I do not always agree with sometimes. And sometimes you really piss me off. That's definitely Dave. That's how it starts.
During one of our episodes most recently, this is going to probably be a couple months old by the time this episode airs, we talked with Sherry from Steinbauer. And Sherry apologized to Corey for not cooking pork for our lunch. Corey proceeded. I grow pigs. Contract grower. That's all right. It doesn't affect me at all. I don't own the pigs.
And this listener went into a very thorough answer as to why it does affect Corey.
Oh. Yes. And are you done? Do you want me to explain why it affects you? I think we get the gist. I think we get the gist. And, yeah, I should not have said that. It does affect me. I meant to say it in a lighthearted fashion to Sherry to not feel bad because I like eating shrimp and scallops too, you know. I guess I don't get directly affected because I get paid the same per space every year.
Now, I am smart enough to know that if you don't eat pork, I will not have a contract and I will not have the manure from those pigs. So I should be more... considerate of my words there, and I'm sorry. Go eat some pork chops. I had some pork ribs last night to make up for it. That's right.
Yeah, we know that livestock production is what drives the corn and soybean market. Obviously, there's a lot of byproducts that get fed. We fully get that. And he did. It was just Corey's owning up to misspeaking. So what was his name? Or does he say that? Oh... I'd go all the way to the bottom, and it was from Purdue 94. So I assume somebody graduated from Purdue in 1994.
Thank you for that. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the five-star review. I am sorry. I will be better with my words. Everyone, please go eat some pork this weekend, and we'll make up for my mistake. I'm sorry about that.
Well, our local school society just grilled like 40 loins Wednesday night. And we got rid of every single one of them. So we used a whole bunch of pork.
I mean, if anything, we need pork to go up in price because it is so cheap. It's such a value compared to all the other meat. I mean, I love a good steak. But if you go, I got my freezer full of, I got a whole hog and I got a half a beef, which is great. Those are both great values. But if you go buy a steak at the store, have you bought one? Oh, my gosh. Nope. I won't do it.
I mean, it's like $20 for just a sirloin.
Yep.
It's crazy.
It is crazy. And that's what amazes me about the beef market is how is the consumer really – I mean, Tanner, you can probably agree. When you just put it in your freezer because you have it – You don't think about it. You eat beef all the time. But, man, when you compare beef to pork or something like that, it's like, man, it is expensive.
Yep.
So, man.
No, it certainly is. So, sorry, I cut you off.
Thank you for throwing that in.
I wanted to get you fired up.
We needed to address it. No, I'm not fired up. I'm not fired up. I feel bad. I feel bad that I said that in passing. I didn't even think about it.
You know what I should do is I should go back and cut it out because now everybody that wants to go listen to it, it could just be gone forever.
There you go. So what I was going to go into was you got all these crops and you're doing all this stuff. We talk a lot about, we've just been doing this series of combine setting tips from Estes Performance Concaves. And it's crazy to think, if you've ever changed combines in a combine, I can't imagine changing combines between all of your different crops, your small grains.
The concaves out of it.
The concaves into the combine. Are you doing that? Are you changing your concaves?
No. Nope. Never change them.
All the crops, same concave.
All our crops from the same concaves. Yep.
So how do you get by doing that?
Well, we're running Estes. We actually are running one Estes. So we've been running Estes concaves for, oh boy, six, eight years, something like that. And that was part of the reason why we went was because of the different crops we dabbled with. I mean, we dabble with more now than we did then.
But back then, as I told some John Deere engineers, one time when they were out, they were asking some of these questions. And I said, well, I said, in my opinion, John Deere with the STS combine built the greatest soybean combine ever. They also made the greatest feed grinder for corn. And So that was really our real reason for switching to Estes.
I was so sick of the fines, so sick of the cob in the tank, stuff like that. And so that's what led us down to the path of Estes, which then turned out to be great for all of the other grains we did too, because we didn't have to switch conkeys. So we ran down that path for quite a while.
And then when I kind of stuck my foot in my mouth and said what I said to these John Deere engineers, they decided, hey, we can come up with something just as good. So that year, Todd hooked us up with a set of XPR2s, and we put them in a brand new 780. And we had the other combine just set up with regular round bars.
And the engineers came out and watched us, spent a whole week with us, combine and corn. And by the end of the week, they had torn out a whole pile of parts in that one combine. So basically, I ran the Estes machine.
And they, they, my uncle and the engineers were comparing all, you know, all week and they just kept taking parts out, putting different parts in, trying to get it to do the same thing. They did get it there. Um, ended up with a mostly convex set of concaves in that other machine. Um, and they got it very close grain sample wise.
I would call them right on par with the Estes, not quite the capacity I can get out of an Estes. Um, I can get a little more capacity in corn out of the Estes. But both of them, we've been running two 780s now for three or four years, one with Condex, one with Estes, and we just continually keep comparing. And so both of them run with no, never changing a concave.
But the Estes, in my opinion, still got an edge on capacity. Um, I have not tried the XPR threes yet, but yeah, so that's, that's kind of what, where we ended up with the, with the, that's kind of how we, the story of how we ended up where we did.
So, and that's the shining point of the, what I believe the XPR threes are is you don't have like that. You don't have to put any coverage or nothing. Are you putting any coverage on?
So we will throw some covers in, uh, on some hard, like our trit. When I combine that trit, that's a little, it's kind of, the trit was kind of like combine. And I don't know if you guys have ever combined spring wheat. Uh, spring wheat is a bear cat to thresh. Um, and so that I did, it threshed a little bit like spring wheat.
So I threw covers in on that one, but once we got done with that, I pulled the covers out and I never, I never ran any covers. So, yeah.
I think the moral of the story is like, we can do better than OEM, right? The OEM is, is, is just an, they're not that they're bad. They're just meant for a lot of different things. And so.
Well, and the way I look at OEM is, you know, deer's got to do what they got to do to make it for the masses, right? They can't customize a combine for everybody's unique situation. And, you know, if you're somebody that... Yeah, it just depends on your operation. If you're not pushing your combines hard, you can get a good sample out of them.
But if you want to get max capacity out of these combines, and for us, we need to keep them combines rolling, I push them things to the point where, you know, the little power meter's right in the red. You know, the beeper should be going off telling you you need to slow down. Yep. And that's when we just could not keep a decent grain sample in an OEM concave. And the Estes, we can. So...
I'm going to say we got an S780 as well, and Maya Cornhead's asked us to go up and demo their head at Farm Progress Show. And then Estes heard we were doing that. I had XBR2s in it. They said, oh, we'll come throw the XBR3s in if you're going to be demoing it. And I kind of got nervous because I know there's a little break-in period, you know, with them and all that. Yep.
And always nervous. You didn't get a little bit nervous. Like, I don't know if I've ever seen Corey that nervous before. No.
Yeah. And we're throwing these things in the day before we take it up there. And then it's going to be the first day of harvest, which is like always never runs smoothly. Never runs good. Right. And we go out there and all these other combines that are have different heads on them and different colors, all that.
They're stopping in the middle and like there's grain everywhere on the ground because this we put a really early hybrid in up there.
um planted early early and then they sprayed it with default twice to get it so they could do demos so these cobs are real spongy little kind of crappy little ears and we're just like cruising through and not having a problem at all and i'm just like wow they got something figured out here because i know i had a little bit of a break-in period with my twos
Okay. Yep. I would agree. And then I think that's when we were that week, those, the John Deere engineers were running with us. That was the one comment they made. Like, like they, cause they had one guy riding with me and one guy in the, in the other machine. And he's like, like literally you made three passes across the field and the thing was set.
I said, yeah, because they're so easy to set compared to, in my opinion, compared to OEM. You're dicked at all the time on a freaking OEM concave. Like, oh, it's cracking the kernels. Oh, I got a little too much cob. But you just set them Estus and let her rip.
Yep. I will give it to the deer employees and engineers. We pulled in up there at Farm Progress, and they had already been out pulling off the end rows and all that. And they said, hey, this is the cob size. This is what you should have your rotor speed. This is what you should have your concave set at, your sieves, all that. And I'm like, why are you telling us this?
We have a different color head on the front of the combine. And they're like, we want all the John Deere combines to look good.
I was just going to say, you're still running a green combine.
Yep. Yep. So like they were very helpful, but like their settings of what they told us to do, they kept coming over during the demos and were like, Hey, you need to, you need to do this. That's what we're running. And it's like, well, no, it's different concaves in here. And they're like, Oh, well, it looks good. It looks good. So, yep. Yep. They were trying to be helpful. Yep.
Yeah. And I, you know, I, I, I don't, I don't want to bash John Deere cause I, John Deere has been great to us and, and,
Well, you've got a very nice John Deere gun safe behind you.
I wish it had my guns in it. Unfortunately, it's just paperwork. Oh, no. The one that's not on camera is the one that has all the guns in it.
That's great.
That's the next thing we need to add in studio is a gun safe. Yeah. What are you going to store in that?
uh outlines outlines how we could keep all of our sd cards all the way that's right it could start our what are they it's the archives archives of farm for profit yep there you go yeah there's too many other people that use this studio for me to feel comfortable for our guns to be in there yeah that's probably true yeah so what's next what are you guys getting ready for now
Uh, well, uh, right now guys are picking up bales and, uh, getting straw moved off the fields and seeding some cover crop. And, uh, Monday we're getting ready to start tiling. Uh, I think next week I got, uh, two Delta airlines tour groups coming in. So waiting for that. So really from where, uh, they come in from Atlanta from headquarters or, um, um, they come from,
Minneapolis, wherever they're, it's their corporate customer. So it has to do with SAF, sustainable aviation fuel. It's kind of going down that. So we kind of got involved with that a couple of years ago through Jivo. So Jivo is a company looking to build a plant in Lake Preston, South Dakota to produce sustainable aviation fuel.
They bought our old farmer-owned ethanol plant several years ago for their testing. It was an old ethanol plant that had kind of outlived its efficiency, but it made a great test site for them. So that plant is here in Laverne. And got to know them pretty well. And because we're strip-till and all that stuff, got hooked up with them. So we did some promotional marketing with them.
And then next thing I know, we ended up doing a whole documentary about That kind of came out of that. So we got a documentary that we did on strip-till and different things. And then, yeah, so they bring out their corporate customers. So we've had Google, Nike, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I don't know.
We've had probably 300 people come through here, most of them who have never been on a farm. And we just show them what farming is and how sustainable aviation fuel works.
would be would be made you know how it would be made from corn and and the whole cycle so we got two groups coming uh yeah next week tuesday and wednesday i think so getting ready for that because the only plant right now making saff is in georgia yes yep
And that makes you kind of an influencer. You're there talking to the bigwigs. Now, do they bring, like, gift baskets? So when Nike shows up, you get a new pair of shoes?
Unfortunately, I have gotten no gift baskets. It would be nice, but no.
It's a different group of people, isn't it? Because we went to a True Terra field day in Wisconsin last year, and we're like, oh, yeah, a field day. That's right up our alley. No, it was a field day for people coming to see how carbon credits and things like that work. And so it was Nike and General Mills and a bunch of different companies like that. And so it was just a cool experience.
Yeah, it's fun. telling people about agriculture. I mean, that's really, that's why we ended up doing our, you know, the documentary we did and different things. It's like, we just want people to understand what's going on in agriculture.
We're the first generation that really has had to deal with teaching people about where their food comes from, because in the past, you know, we didn't have this many people living in urban areas. Everybody knew about agriculture. Now nobody does. So that's kind of the I don't know. It's interesting. It's fun. People don't, yeah. People just, I've had, I had one lady I'll never forget.
She stood at the end of our driveway and she says, I can't believe people live like this. And I said, what do you mean? She's like, I never imagined that there's just this much open space and that this is how you live.
You're just out here running feral and feeding cows and going stuff. Yep. So what's the documentary called? From the Heartland. And where can you find that? YouTube.
I feel like I've seen this. Yeah, From the Heartland. It's on YouTube, and it's on any Delta airline in-flight movie entertainment.
That's where I think I watched it. I think we have heard that, yeah.
That's cool.
Really cool. I didn't know we were interviewing a movie star.
I wouldn't push it that far, but... We're going to.
It's going to be in the title. Sean, however you spell his last name, Finkel... Fickema? Fickema. Movie star.
Just remember, it's I or E before... Well, how do they say it? It's I before E except after C and in Fickema.
In Fickema. Sean Hollywood Fickema. There we go. I love it.
Yeah.
So did you start your own YouTube channel or anything like that now that since you're an influencer?
Yeah, we do have our own YouTube channel. Yeah, I'm not, you know, I'm not Zach Johnson. I don't carry a camera around everywhere I go or anything like that. That's just not my thing. And that's a lot of where all of this started was so like 2008, 2009, after TPAP, I got to be good friends with several guys from all over the country. And we decided that we were going to keep getting together.
And so we got together in Las Vegas with our wives. And it turns out our wives all get along great. But we said, hey, take some pictures or something of your farm so we can all share a little video or a little presentation of your farm. So we put this video together and then we're like, God, you know, I bet you we have a lot of landowners who'd like to see this type of thing.
So since 2008, we've been building a video every year of a recap of the season that we send out. So we got to a point we were sending out like 100 and some DVDs. And then, of course, when YouTube came out, we started went down that path. So I think we got all the way back to like 2012 on YouTube, our YouTube channel right now. But, yeah, we still put together a film every year.
um doing that or a film but uh yeah video of kind of the recap of the season and send that out so that's kind of how all of this started people started seeing that and then it just kind of it just blew up from there man that's pretty cool what's the channel's name uh it's just under ficama farms okay do you do much for any other social medias no i'm actually like I don't do social media at all.
It's just not my thing. I don't know. I don't have Facebook. I do have a little Snapchat, but I don't take videos of myself very often. I don't know. It's just not my thing.
So how do we reach more farmers that are like you and don't have social media?
I need to be on Delta Airlines podcast list, I guess. You know, I don't know. I...
Because how do you learn about new things? You learn about them from other people?
I just research it, yeah. So, you know, all of a sudden I'll hear about Farm for Profit podcast, right? So I'll look at it and, you know, then that's where I start researching it. So I start watching it online if I need to. I don't know. I guess that's how... Yeah, I don't know. I'm really old school. I tell my wife all the time, I'm like, I'm really like two generations wrong.
Like I should be 80, not 45. But...
I mean, you're old school social media-wise, but you're kind of new school everything else.
Okay, fair point. You're right. I don't know. I'm just not a super social guy, I guess. I don't know. I just kind of do my own thing. I just do a lot of research before I do new things. I don't know. I just like to try new things all the time. Social media is just not one of them. That's pretty cool. For whatever reason, I don't have an answer for that.
So if you want to get in touch with me, you almost got to send me an email or put it in a magazine.
Oh, that sounds terrible.
One of the only people that opens a magazine.
I'm one of the only guys that still says, no, I want my media in a magazine. In print, yes.
That's why it hasn't completely died, I guess.
Yeah. Yep. There's room for it. I'm doing my part.
Single-handedly keeping print alive.
Mm-hmm.
I think it'd be a very cool farm. to tour and meet, come up there and meet everyone sometimes.
Absolutely. I wish I could have made it work during Farm Progress and gone down there and done it live. That would have been a great time.
You know, it's always better live, but I think this has been a pretty good virtual show. I had a great time, and I know I got stuff here that we haven't covered. I think you could make some Farm for Profit episodes, not just Farm for Fun episodes.
We could do that. We could maybe figure out a way to get up and see them.
Yeah, that'd be great.
We'd love to have you.
Small grains, there's the employee aspect, and all that. That'd be kind of cool. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So the last question we ask our guests when we close out an episode, and if you did your homework, you already know what it's going to be. He probably didn't listen to the end. He probably didn't go to the end. There's only six people.
Actually, I didn't listen to the end because I got interrupted and I had to leave, so I didn't get a chance to finish.
No cheating then. How do you juggle personal and work life? Poorly.
You know... I, I, yeah, I don't do it real well probably, but guess what we've done? My wife and I, um, probably the best thing we did is we bought a place out in the black Hills that gives us a chance to just, I have to get away because otherwise I'm one of those guys that from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, I'm working right.
Whether I'm sitting in my chair, I'm researching, I'm reading, I'm doing something. So, um, that's been a good one for us, but just, just, uh, enjoying the moment I got, you know, we didn't talk about it, but I got two, two daughters. One's a senior in high school and one's a sophomore in high school, both playing volleyball. So trying to get to most of that.
Um, the other thing that helps probably is, um, as we've, we've grown our operation, we have employees. So we try and we try and to be very family friendly. So, you know, if people have places they need to be, to be with family, that always comes first. Not that it's, you know, makes it any easier to leave. Right.
I mean, I always feel guilty every time I leave, but there comes a point you just have to, you just, you just got to get away from it. We live in a world where you know, we're connected at every moment. And so you can't just set the phone. It's not like, not like it used to be 30 years ago. When you weren't in the house or in the office, you weren't connected. So you could just ignore it.
Now you're connected all the time. It doesn't matter. Your phone starts beeping at 6am and it don't shut off until 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. And so I think it's just a matter of, there just comes a point where you do, you just have to put it down. But I don't know. I always say I do it poorly because I struggle with that. Because I love what I do.
I am super passionate about my career in agriculture. And so it's really hard to just not do it, right? It's who I am. Yeah, you're not alone. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's most farmers. And so you just... I guess some of the most fun with my family is just bring them into it, right? My daughters run grain carts.
My daughters help me on the farm, and my wife is heavily involved in the farm. So our entire family revolves around the farm, right, wrong, or indifferent.
That's why we started – when Tanner started that question, he used the word balance, and it's not. It is not a balance. That's why we use juggle because – Some of it's not a 50-50 mix. It isn't.
No, it isn't. But you know what? At the end of the day, I'm sure you guys agree, there's no better way to raise a family. I mean, it is just the life lessons that are learned are invaluable for kids. What I learned, what my kids learn, I think is invaluable, and you can't replace that with really anything else.
I think you're spot on. Well, Sean, this has been a pleasure. I'm glad that we were able to do this. I can't wait until we do the next one. I do think there will be another one.
Yeah. That'd be great. I had a great time. I had a great time. Love to sit down and have a few beers with you guys. Yeah, that'd be good. Do that. So that'd be great.
Next time we won't do it at 9 o'clock in the morning.
Yeah, I thought of that. I'm like, I'm not going to haul out beer now. It's just a little too early for that.
Yeah, the employees go, see you doing that? Like, oh, it's Friday.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we just had our safety meeting last week Thursday, so I can't haul out the beer just yet.
That's good. But no, thank you again. And Corey, what do you tell the listeners? Crack a cold one. You deserve it.