In this special episode of the Farm4Profit Podcast, we are thrilled to sit down with Welker Farms, the YouTube sensation that offers a unique glimpse into the daily life of a multi-generational family farm. Welker Farms has captivated viewers with its blend of farming expertise, entertaining content, and authentic storytelling, creating an incredible connection with a global audience of agricultural enthusiasts. In this interview, Nick and Scott share the backstory of how their YouTube channel began, its evolution over the years, and their motivation for opening up their lives on the farm for the world to see.We dive deep into the day-to-day operations at Welker Farms, exploring how the entire family contributes to the farm’s success and how that translates into the content they create for their channel. The Welkers give us a behind-the-scenes look at the joys and challenges of balancing full-time farming with video production, editing, and the occasional blooper reel. They discuss how the content they produce has shifted over time in response to their growing audience and share some hilarious moments and mishaps that didn’t make the final cut. You'll hear about their favorite pieces of equipment to operate, as well as the tasks they’d rather avoid if given the choice!Beyond their role as YouTubers, Nick and Scott are deeply committed to their local community and agriculture at large. They talk about how their channel has positively impacted their hometown and inspired others in the farming industry to embrace technology and share their own stories. As the episode comes to a close, they share their vision for the future of Welker Farms—both on and off the screen—and the legacy they hope to leave behind for future generations.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/
you know, you just can't get it all done. But then somehow we roll over the next year and things keep happening and you realize, well, I guess we did get it done. Yeah, that's my adjust. But yeah, it's always evolving. You just have to be willing to evolve.
There is a podcast in Iowa Fought for profit was named by they They stirred up a banker near Then quick came an auctioneer Making profit was their first goal Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy Soon may the farmers come Well, I'm excited about our fall lineup of content, Corey. We have a lot of great shows. We have a lot of great conversations at
Husker Harvest, Farm Progress. Yeah, it's been amazing. Selfishly, we did take advantage of that because we're in the field harvesting.
Yep, we are. Yeah, you took me out of the field, actually. Thank you for that. I know. We've got to get jobs done, right?
Well, we think it is. Yeah. Is your phone ringing? Oh, shoot. Oh, no. We probably should take this one.
Okay. Hold on.
Let me pull it up.
Pull it up. Pull it up. Oh, Randy. Hello.
Hey, guys.
What's up, Randy? Hey.
Oh, not much. Just hanging out. What y'all doing?
We're fine. I'm a little concerned about why you're calling.
We're actually recording right now.
You want to call me back or are you good?
No, we're good. We like to take live calls.
All right. Yeah, I wanted to run something by you. Have you seen the new James Moose 1000 brand-new tractor on the Brand Ambassador? Have you seen that? The what? James Moose? Yes. It's called a James Moose. It's a brand-new tractor hitting the market this fall. Long story short, I'm the official Brand Ambassador, and we got one. It really is a phenomenal machine, innovative.
Nothing else in the market like it. But what I wanted to ask you guys, if I could come on your show and promote it and kind of get the word out there for James Moose, is that something y'all, I don't know if y'all do that or not.
Okay, so I'm Googling James Moose and nothing's coming up.
Yeah, they haven't really, you know, got on the internet, so to speak. They're really starting out grassroots. But I can get you the email contact and all that if you want to email them.
I mean, we do promote. We do have advertisers. Okay, I'm looking at it right now. You found it?
I've got some videos out now. How soon could we get it out? Could y'all start talking about it?
We got our business lady here, Rachel. I mean, is this something that we can do? This kind of looks like a John Deere. No, we... Are you sure?
Well, it's got green accents, like a John Deere. But, I mean, look at the, there's yellow, red, black, a lot of different components.
And you just use a bigger animal than a deer as the logo. So does that mean it's better? Uh-oh.
Oh, he's... Oh, he had an incoming call. Yeah, somebody called me. It was Owen, the owner. But, yeah.
Yeah, Rachel, is this okay? Can we do something with this?
I mean, we're going to have to take a look at it. Yeah, it definitely looks familiar.
I mean, we partner with John Deere. Yeah, I don't want to step on their toes.
Well, it's not a John Deere, though. I'm sure you guys promote other brands. John Deere is not the only ship in the ocean.
We kind of give them exclusivity, right? They're our go-to partner, right?
Okay, is there a good story behind this brand?
Oh, it's a phenomenal story. It's manufactured right here in Weewahichika, Florida, which is about 40 miles down the road.
Weewahichika? What?
You never heard of Weewahichika? No. It's where all the Tupelo honey comes from in the whole world. Oh, all of it?
I think.
Probably. Is there Moose there? No, but the owner's last name was Moose.
The owner's name was James Moose.
He's since passed, but now his son Owen runs the company. He's the one that actually contacted me through a DM on Instagram.
Do you realize how familiar that sounds, James Moose? It's the guy's name.
Tanner, if you made a tractor, would you name it Tanner? Whatever your last name is? Or would you just – it makes sense.
It does. It would make sense.
I mean, it's just a bigger deer. A moose is just a bigger deer. But they don't see very good, I don't think.
That's not the point. It's a brand-new tractor, and I'd like to promote it.
It looks like an old John Deere. But it's not. It's not. I mean, what's the features? Why is it so much better than a John Deere?
Well, number one, it has automatic traction boost. That is where it can sense when you need extra traction. It engages four-wheel drive, limiting your chances of getting stuck.
And that's why you get pulled out by a John Deere tractor in your videos here that I'm looking at.
I have a prototype, Corey, so they haven't got all the bells and whistles worked out. The automatic traction boost malfunctioned.
If it wasn't for that, it would have worked fine.
We know if things are malfunctioning coming straight from the factory.
Right. Well, and that's part of the, I mean, being the grassroots, right? You're kind of like, you're leading the edge here.
I'm the test dummy. Why I called you guys was to see if I could promote it on your podcast. I know you guys got a pretty big reach.
Well, I also don't want to make you mad because I know that we kind of owe you some money ourselves because of the hard work that you did for us. But if I look at this content calendar that we've got, I could probably get you squeezed in on the Welkers episode that comes out the first part of October.
Perfect, because guess who else is supporting James Moose and promoting them? No way.
The Welkers?
Yep, the Welkers. Wow. You're kidding me. Go check out the videos. They're already out now. They're going to get one this fall.
Rachel, how come we're not promoting James Moose tractors?
You probably think, well, the Welkers, they need something big, right? They're like the big buds. The James Moose is a 300 horsepower tractor, but you look at it, you say there's no way that much horsepower is packed in that type frame, but it is.
Do you have proof of that?
I can show you the specs on it and stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
But the first part of October works, and it sounds like Welker's is an okay thing to get permission from them?
No, I work directly with them, so I'm helping them get the brand out now. I can share Owen's email address if you want it, or his phone number. I can give you his phone number.
How did you become the brand ambassador? Can I ask that?
I got a DM through Instagram from Owen Moose, which is the owner's son, just saying he was a fan of my content and his father had developed a brand new tractor and wanted to know if I would help get the word out. So I said, sign me up. How do we get one? Well, they're going to start coming to dealers this fall here pretty quick.
We're going to start in the southeast mainly and then trickle our way up north. Probably this year, but next year you should start seeing some up in your part of the world.
If we're going to do this, we don't want to get it from a dealer. We will run this ad, but we want Owen to send us one before anybody in this area gets one. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I can talk to him. They've got limited supply, but every day there are more and more coming about.
Okay.
I'll share you his phone number, and y'all can work out the details. Does he have a lot of technology in him? Oh, yeah. And that's the beauty of it. A lot of the technology in these new tractors, do we really need them? It just complicates things. So the moose is very simple. Gives the farmer what they need and nothing more.
And you don't pay for it.
Guess how much it is. Take my guess. $50,000. Come on, Corey. How much is a brand new 300 horsepower tractor today?
That's true. Probably $399,000. Yeah, $400,000.
$100,000.
Okay. Ain't nobody going to beat that price point.
I mean, that's probably about double the price of a 4450 back in the day.
I was just going to say, it looks a lot like a John Deere 4450. And that's not worth $100,000.
It's similar. I'll agree it is similar. But if you were going to make a brand new tractor brand, wouldn't you want it to resemble other popular tractors?
I guess.
Wasn't Deere the first one to make a tractor? So every tractor kind of looks like a Deere.
In my CTO campaign, I did say I wanted to bring back the simplicity of tractors for John Deere and make a 4440 and a 4020, but just new. That makes sense.
I think I like your... It's a different way of thinking, but I really think once people get in it, they drive it, they see how well it works, and they see how much money they're saving for a brand new tractor, I don't see why this brand couldn't be at the top of the totem pole in three or four years.
All right. I'm ready to make a deal because I think we can help you. How about you drop your lawsuit against us for stealing your music on our intros? We run this ad, and you send us some James Moose merch so we can rep it appropriately when we go out and about, and you get us in contact with Owen Moose. So you drop your lawsuit.
$10,000 lawsuit.
It's gone. We run this ad. We get some cool stuff to wear, and we get to talk to the boss.
How many people from here do they have?
Lots. Tens of thousands.
Pretty good numbers. Oh, yeah. Probably more than Zach Johnson gets on most of his videos, I would say. Not quite as many as Welker. Doubt it.
Also, Zach is repping this brand as well. Oh, really?
Wait.
Check out the video, Zach.
We're talking about it. Okay. How else are you promoting this? Who are you working with? Tanner said you got merch?
There is one right now.
Yep.
We also have this colorway, James Moose, $1,000. We've got hats, shirts, and stickers exclusively over there at farmfocus.com. So head over there, check it out, buy it, and support the brand that supports you.
Who else are you working with?
You got Zach, Welkers, and Bills? Zach, Johnson, the Welkers, Nick and Scott, and Trevor Bills from Arizona trying to get to the West Coast. Awesome. But we don't have anybody in Iowa yet, but play your cards right. Hopefully we will. Okay.
You know what I'm saying?
Do you think we have a deal? Do you think that would work? Yes. I will agree to drop the lawsuit for illegally using my song without my permission in return for promoting the brand. I think we can do that. And a couple hats and shirts. Rachel, what size shirt do you wear?
Um, like a smaller or medium.
Yeah, I'll get you a smaller medium. Corey, you're probably extra large. Tanner, are you a large? A large or a medium? He's just a little guy.
Yeah, he's a little person. If you have kid sizes. Yeah, we got you sizes.
I'll, um, well, you guys know Ben from Farm Focus, so I'll contact him and y'all just get in contact with your sizes. And the hats are snapbacks, so...
Perfect.
They fit any size head.
Love that.
That's great. So you're great at making songs. We actually need to get our song freshened up at some point since we're doing this deal. So, yeah, we should throw that in on the back end. We'll go the right way about getting that done. Yeah, we'll go the right way. But you make a song for this? I know you like to make songs.
Absolutely. Yep. Got a banger of a song made. It's about a minute and 40 seconds. Just talking about all the features and everything involved with it. So if you could play it, that'd be pretty cool. I'll send it to you.
How about we do that? We'll hang up now, and that's what we will share with our audience is your banger, and we'll get the word out that way.
And I would like to mention, probably by the time this airs, if everything goes smoothly, you can find that song on Spotify and all streaming platforms.
great i love it yeah awesome well i i'm glad this was the conversation we got to have and it wasn't you upping your lawsuits yes i was a little nervous when we answered yeah and i i hate the way all that happened but as an artist i just feel that i should be you know paid for my art and i didn't want to step on you your toes because y'all probably didn't think anything of it but
We've had many conversations.
I thought you were sending us the gift.
Yeah, I thought you were sending us the file. Yeah, I sent it for you to hear it, not the world to hear it. Okay. You know what I'm saying?
Well, I mean, business is business, and we're going to just bury it and bury the hatchet here. Sounds great. Square it up.
Wipe it clean. And start over.
Great.
That's great. Well, let's let the listeners hear the song.
Wait, what do you say? You got some slogan with this, right?
Oh, yeah. The slogan for James Moose is, nothing cuts loose like a moose. Here we go.
Nothing cuts loose like a James Moose 1000. I said nothing cuts loose like a James Moose 1000.
Nothing cuts loose Like a James Moose Nothing else on the market like it today It's a brand new tractor, hey by the way It's got automatic traction boost Click off some gears and cut her loose Amazing price point like you've never seen That's because it's yellow It's not green, it's mean and it's ready to go So get you today and put it on a show The world of media.
Absolutely.
My phone's been blowing up because there's that auction over there. My dad and brother have been watching. And they're like, oh, should we buy this? Should we buy that?
Just say yes. Yeah, absolutely yes.
Yes. I'm a little busy, guys.
Yep.
Absolutely. Well, everybody that is at Farm Progress Show sitting here in the Sukup booth, we thank you for sitting in here. Whether it was just to take a load off and try and cool down, or if you were here to see the Wilkers, we're excited to have them here. The Farm for Profit podcast puts on two episodes every single week. We've got a Farm for Fun show and a Farm for Profit show.
We try to help farmers achieve higher levels of profitability with the trends, tips, and techniques and experts that we get to meet, all while having a good time, throwing a little entertainment into the mix.
Absolutely. Yes, if you're walking out there, it is actually way cooler in here and there's a nice breeze. So come on in, take a seat. This will be what? 45 minutes of pure entertainment.
We'll see how these guys put up with our hard questions. But excited to finally get this interview put together. It's going to be one that I think both you and I have been looking forward to.
Absolutely. I haven't.
All right, you ready? I'm ready for you. All right. Today on the Farm for Fun show from the 2024 Farm Progress show here at the Sukup Manufacturing booth, we finally catch up with one of the premier farm content channels known for their great personalities, farm content, and awesome farm machinery, including the Big Bud tractors.
They farm spring wheat, winter wheat, yellow peas, garbanzo beans, anything else?
Children. Children. Lots of children.
Oh, gosh. North from North Central Montana, please welcome third-generation farmer Bob and fourth-generation farmers Nick and Scott, a.k.a. Leg Arms Welkers. Yeah. Hey. Hey. What's up, boys?
Ah, it's good to be here.
Yes. This has been a long time coming.
Yeah, the last time we were together, I was spanking the Mono Farmer in a go-kart race. That's right.
I beat his butt, too. It was pretty easy. That was awesome.
I thought he was supposed to be good at racing. I was thoroughly disappointed. I don't think he had enough corn that day.
The way that I remember it is I thought I was the one doing all the spanking.
Now, you were too light. You couldn't hold in the corners.
You were sliding out.
I guess as the story gets older and older, every one of us could have won, right?
Yeah.
I think I got pictures on my phone. What have you guys been up to?
Oh man, sweating.
Yeah, that's pretty brutal. It was kind of funny, when we first got here to the hotel, the lady's like, so where are you guys from? And we're like, well, from Montana. She's like, okay, well, welcome to hell.
If we would have held this last week at this time, it would have been like 70s, amazing, no rain, you know, it would have been great.
We were working on the combine, getting the bean and the corn head ready, and we didn't hardly break a sweat.
I don't believe you there. I'm sorry. I'm going to call BS on that one.
Yeah, we got to the hotel and check in and she goes, yeah, welcome to H-E-M-M. What are we in for? But hey, no sweat. It's being here. There you go.
So what have you guys been doing here at the show?
Good question. Well, we are partnered with Case IH, so we've been spending quite a bit of time at their booth. They launched the new 11 AF-10 high-capacity combine, so spending some time talking about that. We ran them during harvest, at least the AF-11, so that was quite an experience, so being able to share that with everybody.
And then just a lot of fans, just meeting everybody, talking to people, telling stories. It's been awesome. It's been a good time.
Now, we have a lot of connections, too, outside even Case IH. Just wanting to touch base that we've been meeting for the last four to five years. And it's always cool just to touch base with the Midwest and the people.
Very cool. Well, we've been a podcast for five years, and I think we've tried to get you on a couple times, and it never works out because we knew we wanted to do it in person.
Well, I mean, we've tried to make it happen, but just schedules just never worked out until today.
And when you live that far away, it's tough. So we only see each other passing by at farm shows and all that stuff. So I know probably most of our listeners know who you are, but let's go back, start with Bob and just get a background, who you are, what you do and why you're here.
Okay. All right. My grandfather came from Oklahoma when they opened up Montana in the early 1900s for homesteading. 340 acres was what they were given. That was huge. Most of you guys are thinking about 160. Well, this was double. And so that encouraged my uncle and grandfather to go up and homestead just outside of Shelby, northern Montana, about 70 miles east of Galatia National Park.
And my uncle had enough for one year and left, and so my grandfather took care of that 320, and then his 320, and then in five years they own it. And so that was the first generation. He stuck it out. My dad and uncle farmed it, and then it passed on to me. I'm third generation, and I'm just managing the farm. It's growing. We're getting more acres, but I don't see that as acres.
I just see it as a heritage. We are a heritage farm in Montana over 100 years old. And I just see is that this fifth generation that's on the farm right now is going to be using that land. So I'm just a caretaker. It's a privilege to be able to see that I have this started in another generation and they can experience the joys that we are experiencing.
So yeah, basically as the fourth generation, it's always been a part of my life that I wanted to be able to pass the farm on because I know it went from him to me. And seeing that legacy being passed on, I think we all have this understanding that we're here to just take care of it. And we could be very selfish and try to milk it for whatever we can, but that is not part of what we do.
We want to make sure that we can make it thrive and make it succeed. And so we work very hard to try to In our area, which is a very harsh inclinement, to give you an idea, it's basically a desert. But the only thing that makes it different from a desert would be the winter months, basically. So we have like really harsh winters, it's really cold.
But then there's times it gets kind of warmer and then we have a lot of wind, but it's very dry. So when we say dry snow, the snow doesn't stick. It blows away. The only thing that really has stayed in our area is rocks because they don't seem to blow away. So that kind of gives you an idea what it's like. An average rainfall, what would you say?
Probably about seven to eight inches roughly on a good year. But we've been growing crops on like four inches of rain. So we're very different. So now to give you an idea, we're like closer to 11,000 acres now. And so you're thinking, oh my goodness, how can three of you guys run 11,000 acres? Like that's insane.
Well, it takes a whole lot more acres to produce the same amount as somebody that has 1,000 acres. So if you think about, like, the amount of quantity, if we're making 18 bushels an acre, let's just say some guy's making 100 bushels an acre on 1,000 acres, and we're doing that on 5,000 acres, I mean, you can kind of do the math, kind of roughly throw it out.
You said 18, 1,800? Well, our average is around 30. It's supposed to be 30 for spring wheat, 37 for winter wheat. But the last few years have been brutal. And it hasn't just been drought. It's also been hail. So it's just one of the troubles that farming face. We look for it every year for a crop. Again, we look forward to the next year.
Well, in this environment, you have to farm like each year is going to be a drought. You just have to keep that in your mind. And it's sad to think it that way, but that's just the way our climate is. Now, we've been here for 100 years, and it's only by the grace of God we're still here. So that's pretty neat to have.
All right, Nick. Yeah, so yeah, that's basically just our story. So I guess we can move on to you. Yeah, no, no. My name's Nick, Nick Welker. I'm the third in the family. Well, actually, who's older? Leg, arms, or me? Don't get it wrong.
It really upsets one of us. Who thinks? Show of hands. Nick?
Or leg arms. No one wants to participate.
I'm not sure the speakers are on.
No, we're pretty close. I went off to college, was going to pursue a career in aviation, was planning on being a pilot. That sounds fun. Did some Air Force ROTC for a few years, was going to be a fire pilot. And then I decided to change that to air traffic control. I was going to be a controller in a tower.
flower in a tower they call it yeah and then in the process of waiting for a job with FAA I was back at home and the farm was growing quite a bit during that time and there was a lot of need of help and I just sort of stopped applying for the position and started farming so not that I didn't grow up on the farm but that's kind of how it took me back to the farm and then in about 2000
10, 11, we were getting close to our 100-year centennial for the farm. We homesteaded, or official papers, or 1912. So I wanted to do something special for the farm, so we got the first GoPro Hero ever made, the very first one. And we went together and bought it together, and I stuck it to everything I could, made a video, put it up on the internet.
It did really well for a year's worth of farming. And then we had our Series 1 first big bud that my grandfather bought. one of the first ones made and it was due for a major makeover. So I was like, well, that'd be kind of fun to do a time lapse of this, put it to a time lapse, put it up on YouTube. That did very well. Kind of got the whole big butt thing really sparked up again.
And from then on, it was just like, this is kind of fun throwing videos together and putting them on the internet. And a couple of years later, it morphed into the vlogging style where instead of pointing the camera at the tractors, we're turning the camera out and pointing at us, which is not totally awkward at all. But it's been quite an experience.
And then it just, I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me, but it just kind of kept taking off and people kept watching. And so we just started making videos and man, it's been 12, 13 years since we've really been doing it strong. And so that's what's brought us basically to this point now, which has been quite a journey.
So one thing, too, to consider is you are one of the first YouTubers out there that was using drones and cameras and sticking it to things and doing cinematic. And that was before YouTube was even making any kind of money or anything like that. So he's one of the grandfathers, I would say, for that generation. He doesn't like to say that. You can call me Gramps.
And another thing is that we didn't put all this together. When you look back and say, well, we need to do this, this, this, this to grow a channel. It was just things that we needed to do on our farm. And then things that were out of our control, like Farm Simulator game. You know, that's a big worldwide farming game. And of course, they wanted big buds on that.
And they came to us and said, they asked for a farm that runs big buds. And so they mapped our farm, part of our farm, put it on there. And that, of course, blew up. And so it was just those kind of things, some of the creative builds that we did. And we didn't do it necessarily, but it just, you know.
So we look back, and it was God that was putting certain things that finally culminated into us being here interviewed by you guys. Absolutely. Which is a privilege.
And my brother is married, has three kids. I'm married and have four kids.
And you all have said you're on the farm.
Yes, yes. We're a mile apart. Just far enough where a 30-06 can't quite make it.
See, when I moved back to this area, I moved so that I was 30 minutes from my in-laws. That way, if they drove over and I wasn't home, they'd be upset. So at least they call first. You guys are too close for that.
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. No, no, it's a little different. I do have an alarm that beats when someone's driving down the driveway.
Did you tell Zach about that? He doesn't like people coming down his driveway.
He doesn't? Oh, weird. I tell everybody to go there. Give the address and everything.
About 3 o'clock in the morning and then 4 o'clock and then 5 o'clock. So, Bob, what did you think when this all came to about? I got to imagine it was a different deal for a dad looking at this.
Well, in the very beginning, you know, we start and we do start doing some repair work or whatever. And he's like, stop, stop, stop. The camera didn't quite work. And Scott and I would be kind of, you know, well, we want to get this done. You know, and so we'd have to do a stop and then redo it like this and then start again and do it like that.
But it wasn't very long before, you know, the viewers start popping up and you're going, whoa. I mean, you know, we don't find this, we just normal. And honestly, we say what we're doing and have done, many of you guys do out there in the Midwest all the time. It's just that the platform has been given to us. And so we, it wasn't very long before we said, you know,
God has given us a platform, and if we can encourage others and showcase the family farm and what we do, we are representing also all of you out there who are spending just as much time or more energy and resources to produce the food for our country. And so we're very privileged to be in this position.
So is it just you three on the farm? You got some help?
We bring on seasonal help sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on, lately they haven't done a lot, but usually we bring on extra guy in the spring planting, seeding, and then harvest can be one to two, maybe three guys.
What's an average size field for you guys out there?
160.
We have a lot of strips. The way the land was built up, there's...
Yeah, I would say, you know, the 160 block, because what the difference is, is that a lot of our country is intersected with county roads a mile apart. And so you're either, like most of them are going to be 320, you know, half of the section, and because it, and there's different,
owners lands kind of scattered around so you just can't block out one you know so some is rented some of your own you whatever and so it's just kind of morphed we'll have our longest strip is is two and a half miles long man two and a half miles yeah yeah and you better hope you don't pull in the wrong driveway with the truck yes it happens yes that's why they beep you when you get to the headlands yeah the alarm goes off tells you to grab the steering wheel again it does
That's crazy. I would have thought it would have been bigger fields.
You know, you'd think so. And we do have friends that farm 2,000-acre fields, you know, not far from us. But we're just in an area where the county roads, unless we start ripping up some county roads, which I don't know would go over very well.
But if we did... Well, one thing we're concerned about, too, is fire hazard and the wind. So if you happen to get a fire that starts blowing just a little breeze, it'll get out of control. and you have nothing to stop those fields from going to the bitter end. So we try to be careful and take that consideration. The other thing, too, is we don't want to blow any topsoil.
So if you kind of have strips, at least it might catch in some of the stubble. And so there's reasons behind that.
But what that does add is then when you're filling out FAA maps or federal crop maps, there's 135 fields. So you end up, you know, doing a little bit of paperwork.
I get them mixed up. Have you ever forgot a field? Yeah. Usually spraying is when that happens. Yeah, that's it. And you come back later and you're like, uh-oh. Oh, no. Oh, that's not good. Call in your cam guy. Can we do this?
So do you do very much tillage then? Or do you end up leaving a lot of it to help with the wind erosion?
That area was noted for farming half the land and the other half would lie fallow because they had no other way to control weeds and moisture. You always conserve enough moisture so there will be enough to grow that next crop. So summer fallow is what we call it came into effect. And that was plowed. Well, we were actually... not knowing they had no other alternative is mine the soil.
Because you were mining the organic matter in there because you couldn't help but plow it. Anytime you introduce oxygen into the soil, it's going to continue to break down. Well, the land was getting just harder to farm, cloddy. It just wasn't accepting water as well. So in 1997, I made the decision, and it was 100% no-till.
You had to adjust the equipment to start tilling in that kind of a ground, but the equipment had come about then. And so since 1997, we have done very little tillage. And so we want to manage the residues out there, and actually our farmland has really improved since that.
That probably helps, too, with the labor and the amount of equipment that you need. Especially, like you said, if some years it's not for a lot.
For a while, I mean, high horsepower tractors, that's where big buds were. That's really what drove big buds was Summerfollow. Pulling big Frickstad cultivators eventually became Flexcoil, which eventually became C&H, New Holland, Case IH. But the big, big, that's what the big bud 747 was. Well, actually, that wasn't. That was built for California.
But a lot of other big buds, they were designed for that. Well, When Kemp Follow hit the scene, air drills weren't that big. Guys were still pulling box drills with small horsepower, 150, 250 horsepower tractors. So really our buds actually sat and didn't do a whole lot for a while.
But then when the air drill carts hit the scene, carts started hitting that 400, 500 bushel, widths getting 60, 80 feet. Then all of a sudden our buds became usable again and needed because you needed the horsepower and the hydraulics to pull those.
Yeah, those are always cool when I see them online. I've never, I mean, I've seen one in person, but never going. But like, do you put it like anhydrous or anything, pull another tank with it at all? I can see those huge tanks.
Yeah, we have to manage our inputs via our resources. Our resource is water. Yep. And so we look at our yield and whatever, and we can put enough N down with the seed. We'll hit those years when everything goes well and you should go out there and top dress for that. But we consider our farming very simpler than the West.
We're blown away by what you guys have to do in the Midwest to manage your water. And that's what you're doing. You've got water, generally, and you need to manage it, and it's just amazing how much inputs that you are constantly putting in there.
We need to get rid of the water, so we need to get a pipeline and pipe it over to you.
Yeah, there we go. Some of those are mine that you guys are crying about too much rain. And we're crying about too little.
I know, but it makes sense. There's too much, too little of everything. There's always, and it seems like grain prices, high, low, rainfall, high, low, winter, early, too early. You know, it's just, why can't we just have this baseline meat? We're all happy.
Everything's great. All the seed technology has really gone to like the fringe acres where it's drier and things like that. And so, yeah, in a dry year, we can do really well because we can hold so much soil.
Yeah, because I water there's been some times I've heard some of my friends that are in the row crop country and some of the rainfall you guys had during the growing season wasn't far off of Mars. You still ended up with 200 plus bushel corn. Yeah.
And then just just the must be the reserve just down on the ground that right here in central Iowa, the glaciers did as well and dropped five foot of topsoil and clay underneath and that
clay caps it there and then you just won't let it leave you know you can brag a little bit more that'd be cool and we got rocks we're so flat that we we can't get the tile to you know get it out our drainage districts are overworked so put in old clay tiles my brother-in-law does a lot of things to on the farm but then he also started buying storage units and selling stuff on ebay and he was going across ebay and he found a rock
There's people that sell rocks on eBay, put a dollar minimum bid, and they have a timed auction. So he started taking pictures of field rock, and they will pay for the shipping to send the rock to their house.
No.
They'll pay $6, $7, $8 a rock, and the rock itself will ship. It'll be like $35 in shipping because of how heavy it is.
I don't think you understand what rock is when you come out to our area. We got a lot of rock. Our rock is like round more so because the glacier's enrolling throughout the years. And so it's, but we have a lot of rocks anywhere from like baseball size to, I mean, it varies. I mean, you got to be careful. And we have bowling balls too that hit our headers once in a while.
Just think, seven bucks a piece. There we go.
More than a bushel of grain. I have a vendetta against rocks. I have a claw on the front of my John Deere 9520 that can pick them up and put them in the bucket. That's awesome. That's pretty slick. That's awesome right now. And then I had the TerraClear guys go through and map my fields and give me the most efficient map. What do you call it, Tanner? Slurping rocks up out of the field? Yeah.
I called it yeeting it into the end.
So you're saying you don't do a car hood with a chain tied to a four-wheeler and people walking alongside throwing rocks on it?
That's what you do? That's not how it goes here. Yeah, I got tired of pulling it, so they finally bought me a tractor. Okay, just for that, huh? Yeah, just for it. It's amazing. Yeah, rock on. Rock on, rocks off.
There you go. That's cool. I want to go back to the big buds because not very many people get access to see them. Not very many people have ever ran one. This is something that you said your dad bought the first big butt on the farm.
Yes. It's technically the third one ever built from our understanding.
Oh, the third of production period.
It's very, very close. Everything that I've come to understand and talked to a bunch of other guys, it is the first... big bud with the 70,000 pound Clark axles on it. So there's areas that show the, that, yeah, it's, at least that's the story.
Because I was surprised when you said the hydraulic capacity is what was needed. I know air drills take a lot of that. I didn't figure an older tractor would have... Hydraulic capacities.
There wasn't, but we upgraded. Yeah. And that's the thing that, you know, because we have vendors that know those kind of things. But with Scott and Nick, you know, they were able to really formalize in their mind and now get a grip on what we need to do when we bring a tractor in, what gallon needs to flow, what kind of pumps and stuff. And so it's just been a great learning curve.
on the farm tech school to learn what not to do and what to do. So it's been a fun experience.
Here's the thing about big buds. When they started building them, it was actually designed after a Wagner tractor. And Wagner was the first articulating tractor that had two straight axles and pivots in the center. That's what a big bud was designed after. When Wagner closed their doors, and weren't able to make anymore, they were sold a lot of those things out in Montana.
Well, in Havre, Montana, they were selling them, and they were also kind of modifying tractors along. This dealership was making conversion kits and stuff for different tractors. They thought, well, shoot, we don't have a tractor to sell. Why do we make our own? So they started to make their own Big Buds after the Wagner tractor.
Now, here's the thing what's different about the Big Bud is they said for every horsepower you put on that tractor,
we will build a hundred pounds of weight on the tractor so that way you can if you have 400 horsepower engine it'll be a four like about a 40 000 pound tractor roughly but they built them a little heavier because the problem was you couldn't actually apply that horsepower to the ground without slippage and then you start having this hopping effect so they actually put more weight on it and the other thing too is like well what's components that are easy to use well truck engines and truck transmissions and
They started putting all this together. Well, there's not a tractor today that I'm aware of that the cab tilts back. Now, here's another thing that's thinking about. When they first built the first Series 1 and Series 2, they made a skid with the engine, transmission, and radiator all on that skid. And then with six bolts pulling the driveline, a fuel line, a couple other things.
you could pull that skid out of the front of the tractor, put it on a trailer, take it to the dealership. They might even have a skid ready to go to slap right back in. So within a few hours, you could actually have a tractor run again.
Engine transmission replaced within about six hours.
So they were thinking so far ahead, they were thinking, well, how can we make something that can be repowered, something that can be long-term use, for the farmer, pretty much built by the farmer. So HN, if you look at the HN on the side, it says Bud Nelson and Willie Hensler. Those are the two guys that really started the Big Buds. So you look at that legacy back in the day.
Now, Versatile and you've got Steiger and you've got John Deere and all these other guys, they had to up their game because all of a sudden you're seeing like 500 horsepower tractors and plows are getting bigger because of Frigstad. I mean, it was a big push. That's why they're such a legend is because that was kind of the start of the big tractors. And they look cool.
Yeah, they do look cool. They do look cool. I didn't understand the ease to work on it like that. It makes sense.
I don't know why. You know, they designed it when you don't have to unhook anything. You just take your hand and start pumping, and the cab and the hood comes open like this. And you look down, and there's all this open area down there to do your...
job any kind of work or fix anything so it's just amazing that you can get that much openness yeah inside a tractor and the weight thing makes sense too i guess that's why that uh new john deere 830 horsepower tractor is like mid 80 000 pounds and they have to take it off weight with the forklift to ship it down the road the ratio has been pretty much the same since yeah yeah that's crazy how many big buds do you guys have
Three. Yeah, three currently.
We have a Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3. Now, the other thing you can think about is they were known for whatever was on the shelf, they built the tractors. There's not really one big bud if that's the same as any other. They're all different.
And one of them was, did I see spraying or...
So that's Big Brute.
Okay.
That's a whole other story. Okay. Well, let's get into it. Well, so Big Brute. So we farm, obviously, pretty low cost per acre. So we try to keep our costs down. And we were running a pull-type sprayer behind a Magnum.
89 40 and we wanted to build our own sprayer because we knew we could do it cheap and we were trying to find what platform are we going to put this on and we have some friends that ran Tyler I don't know if you know Tyler spreaders yeah and so they have the Tylers which eventually became Case Titans and they said you need to get one of these Tylers they're built like a tank big box frames we've got a 2500 gallon sprayer running right now at the time they had one of the biggest sprayers in the world you know about 20 years ago 2500 gallons 100 foot boom and
But, you know, Allison transmission, Cummins engine, Cat engine, whatever it may be, run big acres. We don't really care about footprint in that we're not row cropping. We can drive over stuff. It's a big fat tire. So we found ourselves a 2001 FLX 4375 Titan, I think is what it was. Case, yep. Yep, with low hours on it. Should have been left in the coolie. Yeah, it was thrashed.
The rust had seen its day of fertilizer spreading, but we cleaned it up. There's the video on it. And we basically... took a New Holland S1070 pull-type sprayer, chopped it up, put it on the back of it, and we're like, this thing looks hideous in the front. Absolutely terrible front end on it. Like, I wonder if we could make it look like a Big Bud. That'd be kind of fun.
So we were looking at, like, making a hood and all that, and Nick's like, well, hang on a second.
So he calls Ron Harmon, who's the current, he's like the grandfather of Big Bud, currently running it. So... Ron's like, I think I got an old butt out in the back there. You guys can take the hood off of it. It was an old butt that was sitting next to the ocean down by Texas, and it had rusted the whole thing up. But the hood, it was actually, it had rust, but it looked okay.
So we went down to the trailer.
We were over there with cutting torch, cutting off the bolts, and we're sitting there like, this feels wrong.
This is not right. I don't like doing this.
But we knew it was going to go for a good cause. We knew that, but we're just like, oh, I can't believe we're doing this.
So we put it on the front of it, and then we built our own fenders. So that looks like a big bud from the front, but it's really a Titan floater truck.
And tell them how it won a contest.
Oh, yeah, we put it in a tractor pull.
Oh, really?
It did a full pull, but then the second time, yeah, it popped the axle shaft. It dropped the gear, and when it dropped, it dropped the drive shaft. It did pull the farthest. $1,500 later. Wow. That's the cost of tractor pulls, I guess.
Yeah.
Do you guys frequent the tractor pull scene, or was that just a one-off deal?
No. Our local fair has been diminishing year after year, and they do occasionally bring in a local puller. I mean, a couple guys come in, but it's just not big enough to do anything. But we've driven our big buds down there and hooked on and pulled the sled around. Now anymore, it doesn't happen very often. Sounds like fun. Yeah, it's kind of cool.
It's cool to hear that you guys are innovating. You're doing it the farmer way. No, no, no, no, no. Let me rephrase that. We're glutton for punishment. One of your most recent videos was you're bending a draper back, the frame of a draper back out. Like four people sent that to me.
Really? Are they trying to tell you something? Do you have a draper that's bent? No.
My dad ran one into a stump, and it actually turned the combine and didn't bend it. Yeah, it was a custom favor deal, and they cut the stumps off this high on the edge of the field, and it wasn't good. But it didn't bend.
That's impressive. So one of the things that I guess for us is we recognize that If somebody has created it or built it, what's stopping us from trying to rebuild it or making it better or fixing it? So I think there's this thing that we all have that is fear of failure. And we all have a choice.
Are we going to let this fear that I can't do it, that I'm not going to be able to make it happen, overcome us? We look at it and say, you know what? We're not going to be good at it. We don't know exactly how to do it, but we're going to figure it out. And especially where we live, we don't necessarily have the means to all the parts in the world.
So we actually have to innovate and make new things. And so when he finally decided to buy a lathe, which at first I didn't think we were going to use a lathe or an end mill, when we finally started using that, now we machine and make and do all sorts of things because we kind of have to. Yeah. So that's something I think that we've come to understand. We'll just figure it out as we go.
And we're known for our shop work, not that we're perfect at it, but that we bring the stuff in and then really kind of go from the bottom. And the latest one we did was a Peterbilt truck that has kind of an interesting history. But we brought it in, and what was interesting is We got it from eastern Montana from someone who had got it from somewhere else.
And we were doing a live show over at the Case IH booth.
It was a meet and greet at Case IH.
A meet and greet. And there was this guy I was looking at. He was just looking at us all the time. And while in the meet and greet, he came up. He goes, that was my truck. And he pulls out his phone and shows us pictures of that truck. That was his truck.
It was from near here.
Yeah, it was from this area. That's cool.
No wonder it smelled like corn. I was wondering what was going on.
Yeah, at least not pigs, right?
You might get a little bit of that, too.
Yeah, luckily I don't have to do pig chores this week. My brother's on that.
Oh, good.
At least it's just B-O, not pig smell.
Corey and I owned a truck together, and we were going to try and do what you guys do. It had been wrecked, so we bought it. Took the sleeper off of it. I'm going to turn it into a day cab. And we very quickly realized we were in over our heads.
Way over our heads.
All right.
It had a C15 in it. That was good. That was about the only thing that anyone wanted. There you go. Yeah.
We actually, I mean, we didn't lose money, but we didn't make money. Yeah. But every time we dug deeper and deeper into it, we went, oh, no. Yeah.
Oh, no. It ends up that way because the deeper you get, the more you're going, uh-oh.
We couldn't even figure out exactly where the truck had been all of its life. That's how many parts were... We're like, was it in Montana for a little bit and then in Nebraska?
So are we going to make it into like a Tesla truck, you know, all battery powered? Yeah, we should.
Have you seen those guys, the Edison Motor guys?
Edison Motors, yeah. Oh, we've interviewed them.
That's pretty cool tech, isn't it?
Yeah, that's pretty innovative.
We actually owe him, probably owe him an interview after harvest. Yes, we do. Do you ever get into something like that?
Well, it depends. It's pretty neat. I mean, pretty awesome idea. I don't know if our batteries are like the winner, but.
well so i what i like about it is like the performance of the electric motors we all know is is great right now is amazing but then you have the power plant with you so you don't have to worry about charging or anything like that yeah it's like locomotive you just think about it i'm going to floor it the engine's just still idling yeah i'm like yep yeah but i'll ride around in a golf cart that's gas powered and then you get an electric one and you're like oh yeah this is kind of nice
Once battery tech and the ability to generate the electricity is perfected, electric by far is the way to go. There's no doubt. As much as I love combustion engines, it is the way to go. It's just we're not.
The problem is the cold winters, if you can figure out how to not.
Yeah, there's a lot of hurdles. Yeah, but it doesn't roll coal.
No, it's got to roll coal, right?
That's true.
We can pretend. And what are you going to spray ether on then? I mean, it smells nice, but...
Yeah, they get addicted to it. You've got to give them a high once in a while, right?
Oh, I like that a lot. So we've interviewed a lot of people on our podcast. We've interviewed people that have been on TV and have their own TV shows, but we've never interviewed someone who's been on National Geographic.
Oh, that's true. Who are you talking about? It was just a small blip. No, we got, yeah, we had contacted by a production company that was doing a series called The Story of Food for National Geographic. And they said, we would like to use some of your footage if you'd let us. I was like, oh, that is awesome. Sure. Of course, not thinking about royalties or anything. I was like, here, take it.
Yeah. And yeah, they ended up, I gave them like an hour's worth. I think they used six seconds of it.
Yes. So after this interview, we'll have you meet with our people, and you can sign the release.
There you go. Nice.
I always wondered, though, how those TV shows, and when you see the ad clips, and sometimes they don't match the context that they're actually talking about, who's sourcing those? And we learned that that was a piece of how you guys got your content used was, oh, they just ask people that are willing to give it.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what they do, 100%.
What kind of crop rotation? You said four crops. What does that look like?
So yeah, we typically, of course, originally was wheat, fallow, wheat, fallow. Then the pulse crops kind of entered the scene. So lentils, chickpeas, yellow peas, garbs. And we've found yellow peas seem to be the best. The market for it is the animal food, dog food. So it either goes towards animal feed because it's high in protein, like 26, 28%. Yeah.
Or Asian countries have really been taking it on too because it's been cheap protein for them because they're just desperate to find protein. But it's a shallow root crop that we found we can plant after our wheat. And like this year, our peas, which were on wheat stubble, ran 19, 18 bushels in a year.
Yeah, which was, you guys don't seem much for you, but that was some of our highest yielding crop for this year.
Our wheat probably ran average of 16 bushels. So a lot of that wheat, now the wheat that was on fallow ran low 20s, mid 20s. But I mean, it wasn't far off from making the yield of the wheat and it was supposed to be fallow ground. So we were supposed to be spending money to keep the ground dead. And here we had a crop we were able to harvest on it and we sold it for $7.50 a bushel.
It's dropping, but the wheat's worth $5 right now, if we're lucky, before discounts. So I mean, it will be our most valuable crop. So now with that though, we can't plant the farm in that every year because of... diseases like Astrakita and stuff. So we have to do 30% of the farm rotate. So then after that, we'll do a wheat crop again, then we'll follow it.
And so that'll give us the three to four year rotation between the pulses. And we've tried some oil seeds in the mix. The problem is we keep trying all these crops and it doesn't rain. So everything keeps a fail. Like that was a failure. Camelina. That was a failure. Lentils. That was a failure. Like,
So we're kind of like, okay, we need to stick with the crops that we know are tough and can handle the drought. And when we finally get into a normal precipitation cycle, I think some of these other crops are going to be good. Because there is a lot of market for a lot of these crops. With Canada, Canadians are amazingly innovative. I would say a huge chunk of our tech originates in Canada.
It's unbelievable. A lot of the manufacturers are up in Canada. And they, there's farms, they're running eight, nine different crops in the same farm. And I just, it blows my mind. I can't imagine it, but they have got it down to an art.
So a lot of that market's kind of drifting below the border and a lot of them actually will send trucks down and pick up our product and take it back to the border across to Canada, so.
That's where my next question was going to go. How do you market that? Do you put these in a bin or store them in a flat storage or does someone just pick them up out of the field?
Well, it varies. It can go to Canada or it can get shipped on a rail car and then that rail car could either go to the west coast or it could maybe go to the east or... It's hard to say. It's whoever buys it and then they try to get it to those people.
Well, we bin it typically first, put air on it. We don't dry anything, but we do sometimes get a little higher moisture, so we put air on it. And then while we have it in the bin, we then start watching the markets and start marketing accordingly. And, yeah, there's a local SNCC, Harvest States, a couple there. That then goes on trains, and it goes to the Asian nations.
All our wheat goes across the ocean. Hardly any of it stays in the United States because it's a high-protein wheat, and that's what the buyers want.
Well, the other thing, too, is where we're located at is we have a major train facility that goes through, and it can get on the tracks and just send it straight to the coast. And so it's an easy way of shipping it, and that's the most efficient way of shipping it is by trail car. So if you think about one rail car, it could be 3,000 to 4,000 bushels. And you got a hundred and some cars.
I mean, yeah, that's that's why they just say, hey, let's just send it over there and put it on a barge. Yeah.
So can you load train cars on your farm or you got to go to a
elevator or something so no we we don't on the farm uh we come drive down the elevator it's a it's a mighty two and a half mile haul downhill oh that's not bad yeah so yeah we roll dump in the elevator and then the elevator when they're eventually full they then fill the the cars accordingly but occasionally there are times where it will feel direct to a rail car for certain crops they'll have a conveyor set up we'll just drive out on this load right on in yeah
So I still, I can't fathom what it's like to harvest 19 bush of wheat, 18 bush of wheat. How fast can you drive?
Oh, it's exhilarating. Tell them what we got on this. So normally when we're harvesting, our top speed's probably six miles an hour. And that's just because our header physically can't cut it fast enough.
it's starting to lay under the the cutter bar um and uh so this year we had the privilege to demo uh the 9260 case h9260 and a case ih af11 with a 50 foot fd250 macdon head and the header has 19 longer knives and redesigned guards and i didn't really think a lot of that but I pushed it up to 14 miles an hour and it was still cutting the crop with pretty even stubble behind.
And so we averaged about 11 miles an hour with that combine, about 55 to 60 acres per hour, burning less fuel than our other combines per acre. And it was quite remarkable. And I didn't break one guard on that entire header that entire time. And the other headers we have, which are draper heads, 45 foot,
MacDon design, case branded, and they, I mean, we're constantly out there changing guards, changing sections, but that new header, flex head. I'll tell you, it was like Speedy Gonzalez out there. Just dust cloud, just dust rolling off the combine.
It looked like a summer following.
It's pretty amazing. But I mean, that combine was outcutting our two class eight, 45 foot combines by itself. It literally over doubled our capacity.
Well, we can't even put that combine to the full test with our product. I mean, our crops, there's just no way to feed it. But it gave us a whole new perspective of like, wow.
You had to go 11 miles an hour to keep the sieves loaded. It has a gauge that says... with pressure sensor that says, you know, here's where you need to try to keep it to keep the sieves loaded properly. And about 10 to 11 mile an hour is where we had to keep it.
Give me more. They're meant to be ran full.
Oh, yeah. It doesn't like it otherwise.
Fortunately, I did stop before I hit the Canadian border before I could get it turned around.
So is tech like that, you know, getting bigger, is that what's helping you farm that many acres, get over that many acres?
Absolutely. There's no way physically. There's absolutely no way. I mean, what was a good day of summer following with a 50-some foot freak's dad?
You know, if we spent a long of seed hours in that, you know, you could get somewhere around 300 a day with a 60-foot plow, you know, just constant, a full, long, long,
And I'm doing 1,500, 1,800 acres in a day with a sprayer. Or in harvesting. I mean, it took a day to harvest a field, and now we are harvesting sections in a day. And so that, oh yeah, and the grain trucks. Our biggest truck growing up, the grain hopper on that new F11 is larger than the largest grain truck we had growing up. So the combine itself is bigger than the truck we had.
So it's just that level of... There is definitely still room to scale for size. I think we're getting towards the limit on some of the Like, well, there's only so big you can make a machine. It's got to fit down the road.
Right.
And so, but air drills, I mean, they're 100 feet. They're getting, yep. There's things coming down the pipeline, 1,300 bushel carts on the back. So, yeah, it's, I don't know where it's going to go. That's it?
That's tiny anymore.
Tiny. Two of them. Have you ever used one of them other bins?
No, have not. No, have not.
Those look kind of cool.
You know, you realize the mother bin would be basically our whole entire store.
Yeah, I was sitting there thinking about that. That would hold our years farming on it.
And cut down on trucking.
There you go. Just store it in there.
We'll buy another mother bin. Do you have aeration on that mother bin? Because that'd be fantastic. I think you could pretty easily.
Well, yeah, 60 miles an hour helps aerate it. Just put a tube down the middle, like a tile.
So you just hook up all three buds. All right, let's take it to the elevator and barrel smoke down the hill.
I don't think it's meant to be moved full. I bet you'd make a good YouTube video.
Drag it.
Well, actually, what was told me was there's an elevator that quit allowing some of these carts to come in because when you add the tractor and the cart, it was overloading their scale. It was going over the 130,000. So they said, hey, you know, because they were close and they're bringing it in. They go, let's not do that again. So I guess there is a limit there.
Amazing.
Everything's getting bigger.
It certainly is. So as you guys are looking to the future of the farm and the future of the channel, what are you excited about? You're going to keep doing more of the same? You got more stories to tell?
You know, I don't really know where the channel is going to go in that if we just continue to tell a story, and I don't really know what that story is going to bring. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the farm to grow in the next 10 years. There's a lot of acres that could be added. So we're going to have to hit that crossroad. What does that mean for us? Do we need more equipment?
more manpower. Um, we've got a younger generation that's quickly growing and won't be long. And these kids will be able to start participating in our farm operation. So we're trying to think ahead for that. Um, you know, and it's right now, it's not a great time to think about the future.
Cause you're like, I don't know if we're going to make it through this year kind of thing, but it, it is exciting. But I, I, you know, every year I think this is going to be a boring year and it just seems like something happens that just makes it fun. Yeah, or something you want to forget.
So we were talking about acres and efficiency earlier, and we interviewed a couple weeks ago a farm that was in Canada that farmed 40,000 acres. And they got it broke down to the acre. If they can't grow by 8,000 acres at a time, and it's different for everyone, but they won't do it because that's a whole set.
That's however many combines, that's one sprayer, that's so many trucks, that's so many people.
It's based around the seeders. It's based around 24-hour capacity of one of their air seeders.
we have a couple of farms that are not too far from us that are, they're pushing like, what would you say? Close to 70,000 some areas. Yeah. They're, they're, they're a big kind of, um, investor farms. Let's put it that way. Yeah. It's a massive, I don't even want to, I don't even know how you would, uh, make that work to me.
That just seems, you're not going that way. You just want to grow and keep it a family deal.
And, I don't like the idea of mega farms, not that I'm against it, but for us in particular. But there's a point where you have to grow to stay in business. I mean, and that's where you got to kind of follow. And if there's land that's been next to you for
well, the entire life of the farm and it has a chance to come up and you've got the opportunity, it'd be, you always look back and why didn't grandpa buy that piece of land? He had the chance, he had the money, why didn't he do it? You know, and you don't want to be that person, but you got to be smart about it. So I think, you know, you just got to give it a try.
And if you see the opportunities, even they might not be very well or great, you still say, you know what, at the end of the day, could I live with myself without trying? I think we all want to be able to at the end of the day say, I gave it my best. So I think that's, we'll just see how it goes when we get there, I guess.
And the other thing, we're blessed, ROI is low. As far as the, I mean, it's high compared to our input costs. We don't have, we have some land payments, but not a lot. You know, when we look at what you guys are paying for cash leases and all that, it's huge. It's unbelievable. Our cost of farming per acre is much lower.
And so we're going to make a profit this year even with that because we haven't invested a lot of new color. Yeah.
you know a fresh paint uh we've been made to do what we can do and so we're going to come through this fine yeah um and i kind of learned that from my dad and my uncle back then when they had really tough years going through and i said you know those years are going to come uh but there's also the other year right so one thing too to consider is probably one of the reasons why our farm
has succeeded is the Big Bud tractor. And the reason why I say that is we have not made payments on new tractors. These things just keep running and they've paid for themselves.
I don't think we've ever had a payment on a tractor.
No. No, I've always had one.
Only combines.
Yeah, we've taken combines out in a five-year program because there was zero interest back. Remember those days? They had five years, zero interest like that. And so, well, I'll just go ahead and do that.
Not that we just have cash to throw at stuff like that, but we buy these bargain deals. We bought a $6,000 truck, put an engine out of another truck that was thrashed, under $20,000. We've got a nice semi to pull stuff around. We didn't have to spend $100,000.
We find stuff that usually people don't really...
want or don't really see the need to put it invest time in it and then we're able to make it work for our application so we can afford that so we're trying to be smart about how do we use our the money that we have to grow the farm without putting the farm at risk and that's that's something that why we do a lot more hands-on work i think i think our biggest struggle now and our biggest resource that is getting short is time oh i thought it was just going to be your your ambition to keep going
I'm not joking. Time is getting to be tough trying to find out how to get it done with the means that we have. Before, bachelors, no kids. It's like, you know, all the time in the world. Who cares, you know? But now it's a struggle to find the right time to be able to get this stuff done.
Yeah.
But anyway, somebody came on the farm and just asked, well, how many employees do you have at this farm? And it was asking Nick, and he looked at the three of us and looked and says two and a half. So at least I pull half weight.
Maybe he was talking about himself.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm glad you said you're going to be profitable this year. That's why we had to fly you in because everyone around here hasn't been talking profit for a while, and that's what our show is all about.
Yes, that's right. What does an acre of land sell for? The last land I bought was last year $700,000. 700 bucks. Now, it wasn't prime Iowa farmland. No. You know, you have five feet of soil. We had five inches. Yeah. You know, so we didn't have to pay for all that extra footing. There's a couple of crazy people in Illinois that would have paid that for rent. Yeah. Oh, I know it.
That's what I'm saying. It's just mind-boggling what it takes to farm out here.
What it costs you to grow your acre of corn is what we pay for our land, basically.
Right.
But you have to understand, we don't get the high input, or we don't get the amount of dollars per acre that you guys get.
So it's a way different scale. Just different levels. Yeah, it's pretty much the same, but just a smaller scale. I will say, I see a lot more newer paint in this country than I do in our country.
So something's working. We had a couple good years.
Yeah, there were some years that were killer. And we droughted during them, so.
Yep.
Yeah.
I want to know, before we let you go, how did the nicknames come along? Did you give them to yourself?
No, no, we did not. Mine was Hollywood because I make videos and I hate Hollywood. I do like a couple movies. No, no, so people call me Hollywood. I just say Nick, though, but I don't really care. Whatever they want to call me, that's fine. Scott, we were doing a live stream and some guy in the comments during the live stream kept saying, hey, ask that leg arms over there.
What's that leg arms doing?
No, no, he was like, They're like, holy crap, that guy's got big arms. And other friends are like, they're basically legs.
And then some guy's like, well, call him leg arms.
And then he started calling me that. And then it just stuck. And it's like, I didn't ask for this. So now he's got to maintain it. And then my wife is like, well, you need a name for yourself. So she made the shirt. And she does all the graphing design for us. She made the first Welker Farms logo. And I was like, no, I don't need that. And she's like, no, no, you need it.
And it's like, all right, if you say so. So now I'm like selling a brand of my own, which is weird. But anyways, yeah. So the pressure's on to maintain it. Yeah. How come Bob didn't get one?
Yeah, well, I'm the caretaker of Kobe. So, you know, I'm the dog guy. Okay. The dog guy. Tanner does have that on here somewhere. Yeah, I do.
we don't we don't miss very many things no you guys are trying not to yeah yeah when the equipment appears on a farm we have to get a dog approved so you know that's very important and the buds are definitely dog approved have you seen the videos and they love riding on that fender
Yeah, Scott, your wife has been helping us with some logos, too.
Oh, really? Nice.
Because she works for Farm Focus? Yes, she does. And, yeah, we've recently got on there and started putting out some swag. Oh, wow. Yeah, she probably doesn't like us very much. We're very slow to work with. And indecisive.
She's very on the ball. When she needs to get something done, she wants to get it done now, even if it's two years in advance. Yeah, she definitely doesn't like us then.
I will say that I admire her. I drive her crazy, too. Probably better than nitpicking, though.
That's true. Yeah, we can't ever make a decision. We're going to be better at that going forward.
We do struggle, but we will. So, yeah, we have been asking a question to all of our guests at the end of every show just to get a perspective from Farm Progress Show. We want to know how you guys juggle work and personal life.
Oh, my. That's a tough one.
Notice it's juggle. It's not balanced. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Well, I try to look at my mind. Well, obviously, our livelihoods are based off of the farm. And so when it's time to farm, it's time to farm. and we do what we can to farm. And if I have to put it in a couple extra hours to get the spraying done, whatever it is to be, that lets me get the time off afterwards to do some of the family, I'll do it.
But there are times too, like, so we're coming to the show, we got greened out on Friday, we had Saturday, to basically spend time with our families before we came here. And I almost loaded the sprayer up, went spraying because I need a lot of there's a lot of spraying to do. But I decided, you know what? The family is more important than the fields right now. Those weeds can grow whatever.
Let them grow. Neighbors might judge, but that's fine. I'll take care of when I get back. You know, so you have to make You have to make a call, and you have to be willing to make sacrifice, too. I mean, I used to be big into hunting and all kinds of things, and I just realized there was a time for that.
I had that time, and now my time is my family and my responsibilities, and so that gets put aside. But it's just, I don't know. There are days where I feel like it can't do it. You just can't get it all done. But then somehow we roll over the next year and things keep happening and you realize, well, I guess we did get it done. Yeah, that's my adjust. But yeah, it's always evolving.
You just have to be willing to evolve.
I think for me, that's a tough question. I'm very, very, very blessed that my wife gives me the grace to put up with me for spending those long hours. And I understand that there's only a certain amount of time per year that we have the opportunity to provide for the rest of the year. And so I try to take the initiative. I try to work hard.
As a father and a husband, one of the ways that I feel that I'm blessing my family is knowing that I can provide for them. So I try very hard to do that, but I've also been trying to spend more time with my kids and with my wife. And so if there's any freedom that I have I spend it with them.
I don't do any fun things for myself besides like in the morning I get up at 5 and then I get on the elliptical and then I go in my own gym and work out and that's my own time. Do you trial? I trial. Well, I'm working on it after breaking my arm. It's been an interesting struggle. It's a special elliptical. I lift the elliptical up and down.
But no, I think we all have struggles in our lives, and each stage of life, you have battles, and sometimes it takes a little bit to figure it out, but you'll get there. And I think if people can have grace with you, and you can have grace in them, you'll get there. You'll figure it out.
And quickly for me, I'm getting into my upper years. I'll be 70 this fall. And so a lot of classmates of mine are retiring. I'm going, what? Retiring? I never figured I would retire. They'll just finally put me in the back 40 and let me just run around that with a tractor. But, you know, I've reached the pinnacle where I don't have the responsibilities they have.
I've been giving them over since 19, you know, in my 60s, you know, and I've just kind of held my hand up. They've kind of taken the reins and run with it. I think it's a travesty if fathers don't do that.
If they don't give their sons who are coming up in farmers or daughters the ability to make the decisions, to take the reins and just give up control, I say you're really shorting the next generation of really being able to carry that ball to the finish line. I just don't have the responsibilities that they do. I have grandkids, but we can turn them back. We can play with them.
We can spoil them, mess them up, and then turn them back to their parents. I really live in a good life in this way, but I'm not going to change. I still want to be out there. I still want to see them succeed and the next generation take over. Lord willing.
Yeah, I love that. Great answers by all of you. I had to retire.
I got to hear who won.
They were all different. I mean, it's the best place. I've got a soft spot for Nick's.
Pick a favorite. I got a soft spot for Nick's because I loved hunting as well, and I had to physically tell my friends, like, I am retired from hunting. Like, they wanted to go duck hunting all the time. And now the only hunting I will do, I will have my bow with me during harvest, and if we get rained out, and I don't have anything else to do, and the kids are in school.
I could actually go sit in a tree stand. I don't need anyone else to help me. And you know I haven't been shooting, so I will miss. But it's more of a therapeutic thing. Yeah, absolutely.
Guys, this has been a pleasure. Remind our listeners where they can find you if they've never heard of Welker Farms before.
Yeah, I mean, a quick Google, you'll find us, Papa, but YouTube, Welker Farms, Instagram, Facebook.
tiktok pretty much all the platforms um just type in welker and usually welker farms pops up um and yeah usually posting once or twice a week on on youtube and then the other platforms try to do it daily or throughout the week so yeah so quick quick jab you were on youtube before zach right yeah well yes yes i was but yet somehow you've let him double you in followers yeah i know yeah well he's very compassionate
There is three of us. I know. Zach's just one of those that you just can't underestimate.
Except when you're running go-karts. I was going to say, unless it's on a racetrack.
I can beat him on the racetrack.
All right, guys. Thank you so much. We appreciate you sweating it out with us here on the Sucup stage. And I can't wait to do it again next time.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Crack a cold one. You deserve it. I'm going to get a water.