00:00 Is your grain infrastructure exactly the way you want it? Are you going to improve it, upgrade it, 00:05 put in more capacity? If so, you'll wanna listen to this. Welcome To Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, 00:11 where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode of Cutting the Curve is brought to you by cloth 00:20 where machines aren't just made, they're made for more with a wide range of tractors, combines, foragers and hay tools. 00:28 Cloth is a family business just as driven, demanding, and dedicated as yours. Go to cloth.com 00:34 and start cutting your curve with their cutting edge equipment. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:40 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme as cutting the curve. I've got Chad Henderson from Henderson Farms 00:46 and his cousin Stuart Sanderson, joining me from Mass in Alabama. I've also got Rodie Berg from Superior Grain. 00:53 We're talking about the planning that goes into the considerations that you need to have it top of mind when you're improving, expanding, 01:01 growing your grain setup. All right, we've got now on-farm storage that now in my neighborhood and Chad's neighborhood, 01:10 and I'm sure in Roddy's neighborhood that looks like it's bigger than a small town elevator was just 20 years ago. 01:15 We got huge grain setups, we got grain legs, we got dumping, uh, you know, uh, platforms. 01:20 We got so much stuff. Lots of money goes into this and you need it and it can make you money, but by golly, 01:26 you better plan it out correctly. So since Stewart does the, the business and the grain handling side there, Chad Henderson's farm, 01:32 we decided, you know what, these guys should be on together. And then roadie, of course, has seen it all. 01:37 Uh, they cover a lot of geography, a lot of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, and to Indiana where I'm from. 01:43 But we're gonna talk about mistakes that'll get made and then how to avoid them. And when you plan your grain setups, Stuart, you are 01:49 so eager to go ahead and hop in here. You said why you've gotta have that grain set up the way you want it, where you want it go. 01:58 Well, there's several factors that go into that. And you know, I like to be hands-on around all of our grain storage, because once 02:05 that crop comes outta the field, that's our equity in those grain bins. And so I like to have a more hands-on 02:11 management approach to it. And we've got all the technology, we've got the sensor cables and stuff in these green bins. 02:18 I can look on my phone or look on a computer and tell what's going on in there, but still I like to be around it 02:23 because, you know, you have little things that come up over the course of a year, of course, of a storage year, uh, that you just, 02:29 you just need to be there. And, uh, you know, it's something I do. And, uh, you're trusting that bin to take care 02:37 of what you put in it. And you know, it's not always going to be exactly like it is when you put it in there. 02:43 And so, you know, you have to, there, there's always gonna be a uhoh somewhere. And, you know, the closer you got your facilities 02:50 to your headquarters, you can mitigate that uhoh that, uh, could, you know, cost you, 02:55 cost you some su substantial money. Got it. When you, uh, talk about these things, Roddy, you know, it's, it's a major, uh, 03:08 setup and it's not like you're building all of 'em new. A lot of times you're going and retrofitting, right? A lot of your work, you go and you're trying to retrofit. 03:15 I would think that one of the first considerations is if you're, if you're building new 03:20 or building on, is to make sure that it continues to be one that you can retrofit and add onto. 03:25 Because seldom do you just do that the way it is and then not change it. Is that an accurate, uh, assessment on my part? 03:32 Well, that's, that's best practice anytime that you are planning for expansion. Um, you know, Johnny talked about it 03:39 before when they built their dryer, you know, they built it, you know, a third bigger, I believe it was than 03:45 what they needed that day because they took on additional farmland, got an additional combine. 03:51 Mm-Hmm. Um, you know, with the capacities changing with, um, combines and stuff out there too, harvest, you know, 03:59 we're talking 5,000 bush bushel and hour capacity out of the harvest equipment. And if you don't have the storage space 04:08 and elevators are full, what are you gonna do with it? Chad, what's wrong with the grain setup at Henderson Farms as it sits right now? 04:20 Um, Because I assume you're gonna think about that if you're gonna make changes or growth. You always think, you know 04:26 what we wish we've done. We got much Time. We ain't got that much time. I told you in the pre-op this, you know, when, when Stewart 04:32 and I started this, when our farm rotated out of cotton. And I say, you know, we've always been grain farmers 04:38 to in essence, but this is cotton country. We know that. Um, but when we rotated out in oh six and oh seven, we built a grain bin set up. 04:47 And I told y'all to start with when we started this thing, the only thing that was right about it was the color. 04:51 And if y'all know that all grain bins are the same color, so that's the only thing that was right about it. 04:57 You know, it's whether you set, you know, there's a lot to go into it, whether you put the pa, whether you put the grain bins, you know, kneehigh 05:03 and air, whether you put 'em flat on the ground, whether the runway to the bins has scales in it, where's your scales going to be? 05:10 Where's your dump pit going to be in relation to your scales? Where's your unload pick gonna be? 05:14 And there's a lot of things going to, where's your next five bins going to be? Yeah. You know, and that's, that's the part of stuff that, 05:22 that we just didn't see, you know, that you have to have a real vision for how many bushel you want to hold, you know, 20 years from now. 05:30 Well, that's the thing about, that's, that's the thing about Johnny when, when Johnny Rell, you, you've been to his place, it's massive. 05:36 And he says, well, we built it bigger than we needed. Uh, and we, and we thought, gosh, we'll never need all this, this, and we need more. And they had just built, 05:44 Well, I, this, I, I mean, I think Johnny's first set of beans is a beam facility, and the second set of beans, he just said, oh, 05:50 I'm just gonna move over here and I'll build a corn facility. You, you know, I mean, it's, it's almost like that, 05:55 you know, where you just, Hey, I, it's just cheaper to go over here and start again. Is that right? Rodie? I mean, a lot of times it can 06:00 Be, it, it can be depending on where you're, if you're, you know, locked into a certain area and you can't get, you know, you could go skinnier bins 06:08 and taller versus fatter bins and shorter and stuff. But I mean, you, you gotta consider what you have for space, your best utilization of the space, you know, that's, that's 06:19 where your economics are gonna come into play. So planning your grain infrastructure and your grain infrastructure expansion. 06:26 Uh, how old is the stuff at, uh, Henderson Farm Stewart? What's the, the first one was, 06:31 is 20 plus years old. 25 years old. Well, the first, the first setup that we did here with the bins and the dryer was built in oh seven. 06:39 And then we added the additional, uh, two bins and two grain legs. Uh, I think we added that in 2015 or something. 06:49 2014 or 15. 14 or 15, we added the, added two more bins in a leg. And then, uh, five years ago we added another 06:58 150,000 bushel, uh, grain bin that we added to it. And, and that was, as you know, our operation expanded and, uh, we needed more storage. 07:07 But you know, there, there's a lot of the marketing side that get into storage. 07:12 We added a bagger to it. Yeah. Well, yeah, we added a grain bagger. We had to add, add a bag, a grain bagger to it, you know, 07:18 which is not the best addition to the grain bin set up, but it got us out of a pinch. And now we're going to do another bin 07:25 because we run a bagger. A bagger will make you buy a bin. A ba a bagger is a used bandaid at best. Yeah. 07:33 I'm not even sure what they, they're talking about somebody help me out here. What's a bagger? 07:38 Well, that's just that those are more common the further north you get. And it's basically because the, the ability 07:46 to put up grain vans and run power to 'em gets kind of tough in areas way up north, especially get up towards Canada 07:52 and it's a, it's a cylindrical tube now. People have been bagging salads, uh, for years, and it's kind of, it's the same process. 07:59 That's the same process. So the grain goes into the bag, the bag is sealed off airtight, 08:04 and, uh, depending on your climate, the grain can stay in there for many months, uh, at a time. We still, and still Cody knocks it out. Yeah. 08:11 We store, we store grain up to 18 months in grain bags and had, had no problem with them. And generally speaking, you can do that 08:19 for about 8 cents a bushel. Uh, so it, if you come up on a year where you expand your operations significantly, 08:27 and you need some storage and need to be able to keep the harvesters running, uh, the investment in the bagging system is, is a very 08:35 inexpensive way to go per bushel, uh, to help you get through a crop. But, but the headache on getting it out 08:40 and putting it in will make you do what we do and go buy bins. Uh, okay. IIII, I've seen them. It goes in wet, right? 08:49 Doesn't it go in like it goes in green? No, No, no. It's gotta be dry when it goes in. Okay. 08:54 And that's another variable. You know, the bin is a way to, if you can dry corn in it, you can air corn. 08:59 You can't do any of that with a, with a bag. It's simply a way to store conditioned grain, you know? That is it. You know, and, and it's, and, and, 09:07 and yeah, it'll work, but it's, it's, it's definitely something you don't want to have a lot of on the farm. 09:12 All right. So when we thought about what's wrong with your grain slip, you said everything's wrong except for the color. 09:17 Jokingly. The, the problem is it wasn't wrong in 2007. So I think we need to start talking about the fact that if you plan on being around for more than a year 09:26 or two 10, these things evolve. Um, you know, reminds me of the, the dairy farms around me growing up and ours, you went from 10 cows to 20. 09:35 Well, that's a doubling, you know, it's only 10 more cows. It's a doubling. You need to, 09:40 Same thing you to use people like, like rodie at superior bends. And you gotta sit down and you gotta have an in depth 09:45 conversation about where your goals are, where your farm goals are. Before you start a bend project, you really need to know 09:52 where you want it to end at. Right. Roddy, I mean, what do people, what do people mo what do people most people do wrong? 09:59 Well, a lot of the times you, you need to have a plan. And that's what we try to ask everybody. Okay, what is your long-term plan? 10:07 You know, how big are you today? But how big are you gonna be? Or how big do you wanna be? Or, you know, some guys maybe they don't wanna 10:15 get bigger, but they do. But what potential, uh, size are you gonna be in 10 years, 15 years? Because, you know, I've been, a lot 10:24 of guys have beens from the seventies that they're still using and actively using, and they're holding up just fine. 10:30 Um, but yeah, I mean, you need to have a, a direction To, but they're small, but they're, but they're small. And the point is, they weren't small in their era. 10:38 If they'd have built it exactly 50% larger, all the neighborhoods says that guy trying to show off, and then it would still look small. Right, 10:45 Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing is, is having a plan of 10:52 where you think you're gonna be in 10 years, because then you can figure out, you know, do you have enough space where you're at right now? 11:01 Or do you need to consider going to a greenfield site, or do you look at what you currently have and add on to it or upgrade it? 11:10 Uh, there's a lot of different factors that, but the first, like you said, Chad, the, the first, uh, first key component of that is figuring out where 11:20 you think you're gonna be in 10, 15 years. So you're making that investment and you're not pigeonholing yourself. 11:28 So, so I mean, when we started, we, we built how many thousand bushels that that was, uh, 140. So 140. I mean, that was, that was literally 10. 11:39 No, it's eight times bigger than what we had. Yeah. We built eight times bigger than what we had. Yeah. You know, when we was building for the grain 11:47 that we was potentially going to have, we still had a cotton rotation, uh, at the time. Yeah. And, 11:54 and so we thought we was, that would be jitters, right? Yeah. You thought, you thought we're eight times in our 12:00 capacity, Graham we're taking on new. And, and here it is not even 20 years later and you're saying, yep, we need to expand 12:07 and we need to grow this thing. Oh, no. And then seven years later, we went with another 120. Yeah. 12:14 So you Double doubled it. Yeah. Three or four years later we went with another 150. Yeah. So you, that's, and, and, and we had no plan. 12:23 And that's what I told you about all the way back to the front. It's just get with a good company to have a good plan, 12:30 a good start, you know? Well, a lot of, a lot of that too is, you know, the, as, as far as getting bigger bins 12:35 and expanding more, uh, depending on where you're at, the marketing opportunities that you have really can drive the size bins that you want 12:45 and the capacity you want to have to hold more of your crop. Uh, you know, I, generally speaking, 12:52 initial grain bin setups were for a particular crop. Get your wheat crop out, get it delivered, get your corn crop out, get it delivered, 13:00 get your soybeans out, get it delivered. Well, in the, the day and age of marketing where we have better opportunities 13:06 to store grain, to get carries in the market to sell it 2, 3, 6, 8 months down the road, the larger capacity is becoming more the norm now. 13:16 So, you know, it's not so much that a lot of these, you know, early grain bin systems were inadequate at the time. 13:24 It's just the opportunities there to hold a larger percentage of the grain is a lot more prevalent now than it used to be. 13:33 And, and, you know, infrastructure in income, cities and towns and states and, and different grain markets and different grain buyers 13:42 and way our exports are now really has driven a lot of this increase in capacity. Also, 13:49 Even obviously look at Plus yields. I mean, the fact is, Yeah, I was just gonna say that 13:54 the yields are, yields have been 50%, Chad and Stewart are getting 50% more yield than they did when they put up those, you know, in oh five 14:03 or six when they started thinking about putting up green bins. Yeah, that's great. We've seen it up here too in 14:08 the last five years. It's like the yields have increased almost exponentially in some cases. 14:15 So let's Talk about it. Yeah. To be able to hold that quality is another thing, another reason exactly. Into better bins. And, and, 14:21 and, you know, y'all can speak to this from a, from a construction standpoint, getting better quality structures 14:28 and infrastructure helps hold that quality of grain a lot better. Which, which can a lot of times be the difference 14:35 between a profit or a loss. Exactly. I wanna hear about the quality, I wanna hear about the, the right way to do it. 14:41 And also I want to hear Stewart's wishlist and Chad's wishlist, and then Rodie can walk us 14:45 through the way to make that happen. Before we do that, I want to tell you about Nature's. Nature's is one of our business partners here at Extreme Ag, 14:52 uh, Tommy Roach and the gang over there, great folks to work with. And it's really prevalent this year. 14:57 We did a recording with Chad talking about spoon feeding a crop when you didn't need to just go out there and, and, 15:03 and blanket the field with, uh, too much fertility. Well, you know, in these fertility costs and lower commodity prices, it's an excellent time 15:10 to go back and listen to that spoon feeding, to still maintain yield. Nature's is focused on providing sustainable farming 15:16 solutions and helping you maintain your potential for genetic achievement. You can do this with nature's 15:23 and their high quality liquid fertilizers powered by Nature's bio. Okay. Nature's bio. K Nature's bio. 15:29 Kay Fertilizers help you mitigate plant stress and enhance crop yield and boost your farm OOI throughout the growing season. 15:37 Because you can target periods of influence to go to natures.com. N-A-C-H-U-R-S, that's the name of the company, 15:43 nature's go check it out. What's your wishlist, Stewart? What do you wanna do now? And then how is it gonna play into what Chad, uh, 15:51 has been when he's out there driving the rigs around, he is saying, guys, I think we need to do this. What, what are you guys agreeing on that needs 15:57 to happen at the Henderson grain setup in infrastructure improvement project? 16:03 Well, the, the goal would be to get to a hundred percent storage of our crop, corn, soybeans, and wheat. 16:11 And, uh, now Ted continues to do his job, then I'll, that it'll be a work in progress for grain beans if he keeps raising the 16:18 yields up all the time. But, you know, the, the, the pie in the sky would be to store the entire crop. 16:24 And again, that gets back to being able to take advantage of markets. But, you know, before we even get it to market, it's, it's, 16:32 it is still, it, it comes down to getting the crop outta the field at a timely manner and being able to get that crop unloaded and get it in a bin 16:40 and get it outta the weather and then store it and start, you know, looking for your other markets and stuff down the road. 16:47 But as, as far as what we've got going, I mean, yeah, I mean, we might have increased storage a little bit faster, but again, we're farmers. 16:56 We got a lot of things going on. We, uh, other than grain bin, you know, we have irrigation systems, we have 17:02 to upgrade equipment stuff, so there's still a percentage of money that we can allocate 17:07 to grain infrastructure every year. Um, but, you know, it, it is a work in progress and the main thing, 17:14 like was already discussed going forward, you, you just need to make sure that that system 17:21 that you're upgrading is integrated some kind of way into what you already have. 17:26 That's one way of, you know, uh, minimalizing the cost, uh, from the get go. Roddy, by the way, I'm gonna go back to Chad, but 17:34 before I do that, Roddy, he's talking about integrating what your existing system is at some point. Um, is it time to, is it time 17:41 to call the scrap metal man on some of these grain bin setss and not trying to retrofit 17:46 and just go across the driveway and start new? Sometimes it is, that's where you have to kind of pencil it out and see if it makes sense adding into 17:56 sometimes antiquated equipment or equipment that needs so much work that it just doesn't pencil out to keep adding to it. 18:05 Yeah. So who makes that decision? The farmer ultimately? Is that what it is? 18:09 When you go out and when you go out and, and you're doing a site survey, do you say, Hey, I know you're emotionally attached to these bins over here, 18:16 but guess what, uh, smash 'em like beer cans and take 'em to the scrap yard? It can be. I mean, we, we try to, you know, it's, 18:25 it's almost like putting down a pet. Sometimes you gotta kind of like, I know, I know this is your lifeblood here, 18:31 but at a certain time it's time to put it out to pasture in a sense. But it ultimately, I mean, they have to make that decision 18:38 and we've, uh, we've had successful conversations with customers that they realize, yeah, the best thing we could do is, is move this across the yard 18:48 or to a different site. And then we've had other, other times where guys are insistent that they want to keep adding 18:54 and it lasts them, you know, another three or four years until they start having major problems with it. 19:01 And, you know, we don't say I told you so, but, you know, we kind of remind them this is what we talked about. 19:07 So here, you know, sometimes we'll have a backup plan knowing that, you know, three years down the road that this might happen. 19:15 So we sometimes we kind of keep that in our back pocket to, uh, have, have a solution ready when that time does come. 19:24 So Chad, you're the guy that's running across the do Let's talk about what you, what you think you need for to keep the Henderson farm, uh, 19:34 running efficiently First, do you have a scale? Yep. Yes. Okay. So you have a scale, you've got, 19:40 is your dumping site adequate? Yes. If it was in a, if y'all had a pipe dream, you know, like I said, I'd have a bigger pit. 19:48 Um, and we, and we built our, I think our leg was a third bigger than what we could use when we built it. 19:53 You know, we built a large league when we built it, but you know what Brody's talking about? Brody's talking about, um, you know, when we've done that, 20:01 that would be the problem, wouldn't it? You mean you can get it in a bin and have bins in multiple bins, 20:06 but when that leg is smaller, then man, you really have a problem on, on getting that thing unloaded or the pit is not adequate, you know, 20:12 and it takes longer time to unload with a truck. That's the biggest deal for me, is I need those trucks back as soon as possible. 20:19 If not, I'm gonna have to buy two more trucks, then I can have more drive. Literally, I literally just talked 20:24 to a customer on the phone, uh, in an hour ago where they were saying that they have to pace their combines based on what the pit can take away, 20:36 because otherwise they're, it completely gums up their whole operation. What about then? Uh, so capacity 20:45 of dumping is not even capacity of drying because rodie and I talked about this yesterday. Uh, wet, wet bin capacity, 20:52 wet holding capacity can be a big, um, shall we say, uh, bottleneck drying capacity. 20:58 You said Stewart, what was it? 500 bushels, uh, you could dry at a time. It seems cute, doesn't it? That seems almost o 21:05 Yeah, it, it was, it was a cute, it was a cute little bitty setup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 21:10 It's the, it's the, the, the, the things that you want, you wanna be able to dump it in the front and you wanna be able to get it out the back 21:16 and you can manage the in-between a lot better. So, uh, is the under capacity, their problem is about the ability to dump? 21:24 Is that something you can retrofit or you are, is that something you pretty much, uh, bring the, bring the excavator and, uh, start anew? 21:32 Well, I mean, well, I mean, one, our problem now is not really a dump now. I mean, we, we kind of cured that when we started. 21:37 It was when we started, we had a 500 bushel batch dryer, 125 bushel gravity wagon hooked 21:43 to a six inch jogger going in 18,000 bushel bin. And we was pretty big deal. And so we took that 21:49 and we put in a 1226 dryer, a 20,000 bushel wet tank and two 60,000 bushel bin. So we really upscaled well then the next trip was the scales 22:00 and the leg, you know, we had a like a 13 inch auger, right? Yeah. 13, 13 inch auger going to that. 22:06 Well then we, when we put in the scales and the, and the leg, you know, we, we come a lot more, but the scales in the leg is the key. 22:13 Like, and, and that's not money. That's really money hard to spend, you know, the, the dumping pit and the scales and leg. 22:19 You can't make any money with that. The grain bins will make us money. We can't make any money. It's simply convenience. 22:25 And we as farmers don't make money off convenience, but we do make money off speed. And that's what roadie is talking about. 22:31 Like, we gotta have speed because the combines just get faster and get bigger and they just handle more grain. 22:38 We make more grain to farm American farmers doing a good job of making more grain and we just keep bottling it up. 22:44 We've got dumping capacity. I mean, we've dumped, uh, when running irrigated corn, I've dumped as many as 58,000 bushels 22:52 in a harvest day, uh, at our facility. And, you know, as that adequate, well to me it was 'cause I was there for all 58,000 22:59 of 'em turning the handles. And so that was, uh, that was enough. I would call and said, Hey, enough's enough. 23:05 Shut 'em off. He said, I'm done. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's a lot. That's a, that's a lot of cranking open the bottom 23:10 of a semi hopper, isn't it? Yes, it is. Many guys talking about one electric doors. I'm like, oh, come on, man. Now with a little, with a little 23:17 Push button Remote That's, that's like, that's my, I mean, I'm just running my math here. 23:22 That's, uh, that's what, 1200 bucks? I mean, it's, that's 50, it's 50 trailers. Yes. At least, Yeah, maybe then some. All right. So no, 23:31 My test weight, hell Yeah. Right, right, right, right. So what do you, What do you think, and then, um, uh, when we talk about planning, 23:38 you're gonna do a plan. What, what are you gonna do? What, what are you gonna do? You're actually, you think you've rectified the dump 23:44 capacity, it's your dryer is your wet holding and dryer capacity, adequate roadie. You tell me. Then they'll, they'll I wanna hear it from 23:50 them, then you okay them, then you, because you can tell me if they know what they're talking about or if there are those two guys 23:55 that are clinging to the, the pet that they don't wanna be put down. We in Alabama easy roadie. 24:01 We in Alabama, well, our, you know, I, the, the, the good thing about the dryer is it runs when we go home, you know, in a perfect world. 24:10 Yep. You know, so max, max drying capacity, if I'm trying to move eight points, uh, about 13, 1400 bushels an hour. 24:18 Uh, so the dryer for what we bring out of the field is, is does not have the capacity to handle it. But when it's running on a 24 hour loop seven days a week, 24:30 we're able to maintain, because we have the capacity, the way I've got, we've got our bin set up. 24:36 I, I can, I can have 140,000 bushels of wet storage. And because our systems are integrated the way they are, my one bin wet bin 24:45 and my next two bins can function basically as the same bin and I can move grain around. 24:51 And of course why it's in there, we've got the fans running, so we're getting some ambient drying going on. Okay. 24:56 So you don't, you don't lack capacity to dump right now, you don't lack capacity to hold green 25:02 or wet right now. Right, Right, right. Now ours is definitely drier. Yes, it's definitely drier. Like we could condition, like when, 25:09 what happens when Stewart starts getting in up ending points, like we would like to go to the field three or four points higher roadie, and then what? 25:16 Yeah. But what we do, we get out of our capacity at, you know, and when he gets up there, then we start busting grain, trying to get to speed up, 25:24 you know, it creates other problems. He gets spots in the bin. You know, we've alleviated a lot of the fine issues. 25:31 We went to a, uh, a double run system loading the dryer, and we got a double run system bringing the 25:38 grain off the dryer. So that helped out a lot. But still, I mean, for our, for our dryer capacity, our sweet spots, when when Chad's running 22, 20 3% corn, 25:48 everything's running good and we know that we need to be getting in the corn maybe up to 28, even up to 30%. 25:55 And you know, with the traditional, uh, continuous flow GSI drier, um, it's just you, you'd have to slow it way down. 26:04 Your grain temperatures get up too high, then your grain temperatures inside your bin get up too high. 26:09 And so, you know, the mix flow drier system would really, really speed up our operation as far as drying one, but actually getting in the field 26:21 and capturing, you know, we call it the ghost bushels that all of us in grain management talk about all the time. Yep. So if we could, if we could upgrade our dryer 26:30 and get into that 28 to 30% harvest time on the corn and pick up those extra bushels and that make, that'll make the system run a lot more 26:38 efficient, uh, we gain those extra, you know, spew cents per bushel on profit by getting that corn out at that time. 26:45 Okay. Rodie, what he's saying is, and Chad says their capacity problem is the dryer and they've got an existing system, it's not even yours. 26:56 Can your, that thing that's over your right shoulder, if you're listening, he's got a beautiful setup, a picture, a chroma key behind him of a a, a beautiful setup. 27:05 Um, you'd be tired after walking up all those stairs. I think it's probably about a hundred feet up there. That's no, that's, that's no taller than Johnny's. So, 27:13 Okay. 80 probably, Uh, 60 some. Okay. When you, um, Like I just keep looking at it, you know, I just keep looking at it and he's sitting there 27:23 and I just keep, I'm mesmerized, you know, it's just like I keep going around here. By the time, by the time Chad finally gets this, uh, 27:30 he's gonna be too old to climb those stairs. He's gonna have to send, uh, Jackson up there. Anybody, We can pay somebody go up there by that time. 27:37 So See an elevator up there. Can they put, can they put that system that's over your right shoulder on their system? 27:44 A dryer is a dryer, it can hook up to a grain bin. I mean, is there, is there a compatibility issue? No, not really. I, as long as there's space, 27:54 and even if, I mean, as long as you have enough land, I mean, technically you could be quite a ways away from your grain facility now, within reason, you know, I'm talking, 28:03 you know, feet not miles, but, uh, you know, if you've got a way to get product in the dryer 28:10 and then back out, whether it's via pumps or legs or you know, conveyors, whatever it may be, yeah. It's, it's, they're compatible. 28:19 So there's just a matter of if you have enough space to do it. So when we're talking about planning your grain set up, 28:24 uh, and expansion, the next thing for you is drier. I mean, maybe bin and dryer. What is the, what are you guys thinking, Stewart 28:31 and Chad, what is your consideration? We, We've got a, we've got 150,000 bushel grain bin sitting on the ground right now that, uh, 28:38 they'll start putting up maybe in about a month or so. And so we're getting the more capacity and it, and we could, we could upgrade our dryer, uh, the footprint 28:47 where our dryer is out, that that's one good thing, whether it's by dumb luck or what have you. Uh, the mix flow dryer, like 28:55 behind his pad there would fit on our existing pad. And, uh, it would be as simple as just extending our double runs, uh, to load it 29:05 and the double run coming off the back of it, pretty much be exactly in the same place. And, you know, with that, with that mixed flow dryer 29:13 and that, that's the thing, you know, what we have works really good right now. It could work a lot, lot better. 29:18 That mixed flow system would, will allow us, like I said, to get in the field a bit earlier 29:24 and not dry the corn down quite as much because you're getting a more, even mixture of grain coming out the back. 29:30 And then you, instead of burning fuel, you could take advantage of ambient temperatures like here in Alabama. 29:36 I mean, we may be a hundred degrees when we're shelling corn and you know, that's, that's free drying air outside 29:43 that we can use these big fans to push through there. And so there, there'd be a lot of advantages to us upgrading to one of those systems and it, 29:50 and it would fit our operation. What mistakes do you think? Uh, okay, so the next thing for you is 29:58 bin's going up a dryer like that is next, next year. Well, I mean, that's with, with $4 corn right now. We may want to talk about that maybe next year 30:09 a a little bit, but that is, that will shoot this corn will corn, whoops up there. It, it will, it's definitely, it's definitely the next, 30:18 the next step in, in what we've got going on there. All right. Rodie be the professional that you are, that gover, uh, goes out 30:25 and looks at grain setups all the time. What mistakes do you see that you wanna make sure that Mr. Henderson and Mr. Sanderson do not make? 30:33 Well, one thing, and I saw, I, I guess I haven't seen their setup, but a lot of guys, uh, I've seen it happen a few times 30:39 where everything runs through the dryer. You know, you guys talk about there's years that you want to get in the field and take it out when it's 28 30. 30:48 Um, you know, there's other times you guys are probably pulling it off at 16 at the end of the season, 30:53 but you don't need to run that through the dryer. Why go through the pro, you know, you spend all that money harvesting it, it's coming out, you know, 31:01 nice product, nice and clean. Yeah. Now you're running it through extra handling, going through the dryer. 31:07 Even if you're not running the dryer, it's still a, a break point. Any wear point you typically want to have the, 31:14 the shortest path between A and B or your product when it's conditioned. Now, if that dryer is in that system as part of that A to B, 31:24 if it's wet, obviously that's a necessity, but if you can eliminate that point, you know, just give yourself options so you're not boxing yourself in. 31:33 I like it. So one of the recommendations is there's times when you don't need to run something through the dryer. 31:38 So make it so that you can either dump and it and turn it so that it goes to the dryer, or you, you change it, bypass it, you change, 31:46 you change a valve. I change a valve, I'm not sure to call it. I would say we're less, less than 50. 31:52 Probably 50% of ours go through the dryer, uh, uh, 50 to 60%. But our, our system is set up like that. 31:58 We have two legs and roadie. So what, what we have is we're in there dumping wet corn, we got wet corn going up one leg, 32:05 and then the double run coming off the dryer is going in a totally separate leg and going into different bins. 32:12 And so the only, the only the only grain that has to go through our dryer is what we want to go through the dryer. All 32:18 Right, well basically like Our wet bin, our, our wet bin that feeds the dryer. Um, now if we want to just dump that bin, say that 32:27 that corn gets into condition and we want to dump it, we do have a bypass off of our double run that comes off the back of the dryer. 32:35 And so no grain runs through that dryer when we're emptying out our wet tank. Yep. I, I just heard something that running everything 32:42 through the driver's a big mistake. You guys didn't make it. Uh, by the way, 32:46 this is the most passionate I've seen Stewart ever. He gets very passionate about grain setup, uh, planning. I'm telling you why. And this could be a, 32:53 this could be an ongoing show where we just come on and talk. All right? Another mistake that you see commonly roadie 32:59 that uh, when it comes to grain setup, expansions or initial development that then is kinda like shooting themselves in the foot. 33:09 Um, making sure, you know, you talked about it before and power's a big issue. Uh, a lot of guys think they have unlimited amount of power, 33:17 uh, and better's power co-op or just, you know, whoever you're getting your power through, um, you may be tapped. 33:24 Um, we've seen it up here in the, in the Midwest. Um, I think more so we have a lot more three or single face power up here 33:32 than like you guys do down in Indiana. I know a common thing down there is to do phase converters on single phase power, um, 33:40 but they are limiting in certain areas how much extra service you can bring in. And if you don't have that ability to power 33:48 that new equipment, you're pretty much, you either have to bring in three phase, which can be a, a astronomical expense if it's even available. 33:58 Mm-Hmm. Um, or, you know, some of the options we've seen, we've done a few projects where guys have done generators 34:04 on just a drying system. So the dryer, the fill, the takeaway, all that stuff is run off a generator 34:11 and then the rest of your unloads your fans and stuff are run off your regular power that you've had out in on the, 34:17 on the site since the start. Alright, My absolute The Other thing roadie is how you gonna heat that dryer, whether you got availability 34:24 to natural gas or you have to have propane storage on site and availability of that in your area. 34:30 Constraints about the size tanks that you might be able to have, uh, and things like that, that could absolutely, you might, 34:37 you might want a big capacity dryer, but just the availability to heat the dryer may be a limiting factor. Also, 34:43 We've run into that numerous times. I think Rell talked about that, that he's fortunate that he's able to get natural gas and the cost between that 34:52 and liquid propane was significant. In other words, it brought his drying cost down to where he can grab that 30% corn 34:58 and catch an early basis premium and not have a whole hell of a lot involved in the drying electricity capacity. 35:05 By the way, you talk about how it is in Indiana, I'm terrified of electricity. Full disclosure, I'm colorblind. 35:10 I don't touch electrical wires. I don't, I'm afraid to. I'm afraid to. I ain't doing it. But anyway, I don't know. Do you guys have an adequate electric capacity in Alabama 35:17 where you are or is that a consideration for you? We do. Uh, we're, we're blessed here. We've got three phase power. 35:23 So we're, we're you, you gonna talk about being scared? We got 4 80, 4 80 volts running through everything we've got out there. 35:30 Everything is 100% three-phase power. But we, So what happens, Stuart, I go to this, I go to Matt Miles farms farm 35:37 and he tries to walk me through a swamp and tells me that there's, uh, cotton mouth poisonous snakes in there. 35:42 I come to your part of the world, now you're gonna start to threaten me with 480 volt wa electricity. 35:47 Why do these southern guys always try to threaten me, Rodie? Did I do anything to them? Hey, 35:50 Damon, have you've been in our irrigated fields, haven't you? You've been in our field with our irrigation systems, right? 35:56 Yep. And, uh, you've been out there when you've seen them running, right? Yep. Well, there's 480 volts running to that pivot, 36:03 that water's coming through and you, you ain't been scared of it yet. Yeah. And now, and you got me standing in a puddle 36:08 of water and then Chad hands me some bare wires. Okay. Uh, running everything through the dryer is one mistake, electrical capacity, 36:15 and that's something you really wanna check out before you start. You know, start, uh, digging the concrete forms. 36:20 What's another mistake that you see rodie and making sure that these guys don't run into it. Um, sometimes it's as simple as not listening 36:26 to the experts. Um, you're asking, asking, asking an opinion, and then, you know, completely ignoring it. 36:34 We've had a lot of, you know, like I, like we've talked about before, you know, guys that have old systems that, 36:40 you know, I want to add onto this. And we say, yeah, you can, but it's just you're putting a bandaid on it, 36:46 eventually you're gonna have to address this. Um, or, you know, wanting to use, uh, a grain pump on a, on a grain, on a dryer fill 36:56 when they probably should have used a, um, a leg. Yep. And I've walked on numerous sites where I can see, you know, the wet fill is definitely not 37:05 gonna keep the dryer full. And I said, you know, you're gonna have issues with this. Well, it'll be fine. 37:12 And then they complain about capacity and it's like, well, you can't keep your dryer full because you didn't size your wet fill accordingly. 37:20 So that's a lot of it is just being able to, you know, some of it's not even a cost. 37:26 Sometimes it's just a, a mindset and to get guys to, you know, wait, Wait, wait, wait, wait. 37:32 Are are you saying farm people are bullheaded fixed in their way and can't be told anything? 37:38 Wait, wait, wait. I never heard that before my entire career. I said nothing of the sort Been 37:45 Around these people. I've been around these people for admitted. I've been around, I've been around farm people 37:49 for half a more than half a century. I'm not afraid to say it. All right, get me outta here. Everybody. Um, planning your grain setup, 37:57 your grain infrastructure expansion or, uh, new construction. We talked about the mistakes. Talked about the wish list. 38:03 Uh, I mean, get me out here closing thought Stewart and, and Chad, uh, you're gonna do this. 38:08 It's a big expense. You need it, it makes your money and obviously it makes it so you can keep your farm operation going. 38:13 You'd probably like to not have to do it, but it's kind of a necessary evil. So, uh, what's your closing thoughts, Stewart? 38:21 You opened us. Well, I, I just, I just think that if you're going to remain profitable in farming, you've got to be able 38:30 to maximize every bushel that you bring outta the field and getting it planted it, getting it harvest and getting it outta the field. 38:38 That's a big part of it. And then when I take over with my grain bins, that's a equally as big a part 38:43 because what we do from there to the time we sell determines profitability. And anytime you're thinking about how you want to 38:53 increase your storage, you gotta really consider what your goal is in managing that grain when it's in there. What, what's your end goal? What you want to do with it? 39:03 How do you want to promote your, your commodities to your market? And that will help make a lot 39:09 of decisions going forward about how and when you need to upgrade your facilities, expand it, and make it fit the scope of your operation. 39:19 That I think that's probably one of the best things and advice I can give people is, is get this thing to the scope of where your operation is 39:26 and then get your vision and then start tar, take off and build Brody. Are they, uh, 39:32 are they, is he on target there on uh, what we want for the, the thoughts on this, Stuart, you wanna jive in as a salesman? 39:40 Well, sure. Right. What, what's the commission, right? Talk about that. Yeah, I mean that's, that's, you pretty much summed up. 39:47 I mean, that if, if everybody had that same mentality, I think we'd all be in a, in a better situation. Make sure you can drive your trailer truck around it. 39:58 Sure. We, we, we can, we can talk about the loop and stuff later on, on how to, how to access and everything, but yeah, it's just, you know, it just takes a little bit 40:08 of thought and you gotta lean on people like Rodie that's, that's in the business 40:12 and you know, to know how to size these things. You, you know, you, you want to, you want your takeaway to be bigger than your input 40:20 and you want stuff to move flawlessly. You want you be open-minded. Yeah. You want, you wanna be op open-minded and, 40:26 and as a agribusiness man and women, when we're sitting down push, pushing a pencil and paper and, you know, sometimes that, that 40:34 that window will constrict a little bit when it comes to looking at the input cost in this. And again, that's why I fall back to what is your goal? 40:43 What is your end goal to do with that bushel of grain and let that determine where you want to go and where you need to go. 40:52 Rodie, I think you're right. Um, his resume will be on the way, but he is already kind of spoken 40:56 and I think he's ready to sign up. If you want to hear more about some, uh, about grain setup and infrastructure, we're gonna host a panel on this. 41:04 We meaning extreme ag and Chad's gonna be there. I don't know if Stuart is now, I'm gonna recruit him, but we're gonna be at Commodity Classic. 41:11 It's gonna be on Friday, March 1st, uh, Friday, March 1st. I'll look at my calendar. Yeah, that's at one 41:17 to 2:00 PM at Commodity Classic. If you're a member of Extreme Ag, you can go to Commodity Classic for free with our partners Natures 41:24 that's gonna make that happen. Uh, but you might have missed your timeline if you didn't already sign up. 41:29 Booth 1 0 0 7. We're gonna be there one o'clock in the afternoon. Hmm. Come by, hear us talk about things like, uh, 41:36 considerations when you're putting in your grain infrastructure. We we're there to help you, uh, learn from our mistakes. 41:41 That's one of the big things about Stream ag. Chad can tell you all the mistakes they've made, uh, he and uh, he and Stewart at putting 41:47 their infrastructure together. And then, uh, you can hear from Roddy, which I think we just heard. 41:52 The overlying expert says, uh, not listening to experts is the biggest mistake you can make. No, I like it all. Seriousness. Good stuff. 41:59 Rodie name's gonna change the color to Ben so that everybody don't make the wrong colors. Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, really good stuff. 42:05 Appreciate I being here. Stewart Sanderson, Chad Henderson, Rodie Berg. I'm Damon Mason. Thanks for being here. 42:11 If you wanna take your learning to the next level, consider becoming a member of XT Extreme Mag. It's only seven $50 a year. 42:16 You could go, uh, get free partner, uh, uh, offers. You get data at the end of the year and you get access to a question answer platform. 42:24 You can hear from the guys on a subject you'd like to go deeper on. So check it out. Extreme Ag Farm. 42:29 Also check out the new Extreme Ag Farm Show. That's right. I'm wearing the shirt right now. We have our 42:33 show and that's right. A show. It's awesome. It ain't reality tv. It's real tv and you're gonna like it. Extreme Ag Show. 42:42 Go to the YouTube channel, extreme Ag YouTube channel and hit subscribe. It's free. Or go check us out on Acres tv. 42:48 Till next time, thanks for being here. I'm Dam Mason. This is extreme ag cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 42:55 Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 43:02 Cutting the curve is brought to you by cloth where machines aren't just made, they're made for more. 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