How'd I Get Away With That? | The Granary
Step into The Granary for a no-holds-barred conversation with farmers as they reveal the wild ride of farming’s evolution. From the “What were we thinking?!” moments of flinging fertilizer like it was going out of style, to today’s tech-filled tractors with massage seats, they’re dishing on everything they’ve learned along the way. Curious how they turned those old-school methods into today’s high-efficiency operations? Pour a drink, grab a snack, and find out—because this is farming like you’ve never heard it before!
00:00 When people say, looking back, I wouldn't change a thing. You always think, really, you wouldn't change a thing. 00:00:05 I'd change lots of things. So I'm gonna ask my friends, Matt and Temple, looking back 20, 00:00:09 30 years ago when you started farming, what'd you do then that you wouldn't even consider doing? 00:00:13 Now, what'd you do then that set the foundation for today? More importantly, what'd you do then that you're kind 00:00:17 of surprised you got away with? That's what we're talking about in this episode of the Grainery on a farm. 00:00:23 The work's never really done. We're calling the day anyway because my friends from extreme ag are coming over. 00:00:28 You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? And the best part, you are invited, 00:00:34 support yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the grainery. Hey guys, 00:00:50 I simply heard the question, what are you doing today that you look around and say, good god, I didn't do it like this 20 00:00:57 or 30 years ago I started farming. How'd I get away with that? I guess honestly, Damien, I I don't really know how to an, 00:01:04 that's a really loaded question, right? So, I mean, how, how do you answer our question like that? We started off a long time ago 00:01:11 and think about where we were then. We were tradition farming. Yeah. We were doing what our grandfather did. 00:01:16 We did what our grand, or you know what my, his grandfather did. Not a lot changed in those years other than from horses 00:01:23 to tires, you know? But you're talking about plowing. Yeah, you're talking about nothing That was conservation. You know, look at what we're doing now. 00:01:33 We're cutting back on fertility. Yep. We are cutting back passes in the field. We're return, we've got a be we have a lot better grip on 00:01:41 our ROI than we had long time ago. Wouldn't you agree with that, Matt? Oh yeah. Alright, so you go to farm meetings, Matt, 00:01:47 and they'll say things like, the average farmer gets 47 seasons or something like that. Right. That you're gonna farm for 47 seasons. 00:01:55 50 40. 45 crops. 45 crops. Alright, well, you're in your 30th, Right? I'm actually on 00:02:02 35th. You're in your 35th, so I hope I get a little more on 45. All right, Let's, can we go at 55? All right. 00:02:08 At 35, what are you doing differently than you did in your 1, 2, 3, 4, and 00:02:12 Five? Well, a you know, a lot of my story's a little bit different. Um, you know, we, we got back, 00:02:20 we got out farming, we were in farming. There was poor choices made. We got outta farming. Uh, things happened for the better we got back into farming. 00:02:28 So, you know, it, it, it was a constant struggle to rent land, you know, for, for my dad. Uh, when, when Timble said, you know, 00:02:37 we don't quite do things like our dad, our dad does. My dad was kind of a revolutionary guy that didn't have the tools to, to do the job. 00:02:46 So once, and part of that was his fault. So once he got his s**t together mm-hmm. I don't know if I can say that might get edited just, 00:02:55 but, uh, you know, once he got his s**t together and he figured it out and he got an opportunity, and I always takes an opportunity. 00:03:02 So, so you take my, my dad ground zero. Now I'm third gener, fourth generation farmer. Okay. But I was removed from that 00:03:11 and then interjected back into that when I was 12. So with a guy that made some bad decisions, but here, yeah. 00:03:20 I mean, he kept, he kept his checkbook balance in his head. Mm-hmm. So I had a smart person to start with. 00:03:26 So with him being revolutionary in the eighties helped me to have that mentality. But what we had to do then was we had to 00:03:36 make better than the neighbor. I we're sharing rents. We had to make better the neighbor better than the neighbor did to be able to rent. Alright. 00:03:43 So I, I posed in the introduction temple, I said, what is it that you did 25, 35 years ago that set a foundation for today? 00:03:50 I just heard there, uh, you gotta be better than the neighbor because you're trying to expand 00:03:56 and you didn't come from generational wealth. That's what I just heard right there. So that means you gotta really perform so 00:04:01 that you can pick up ground. Um, that's one of the things I just heard right there. Uh, I also heard, uh, from Matt, he says, all right, 00:04:13 we we're not doing things like, like grandpa did. You said that also, what are you doing today that you're set your foundation? 00:04:20 What do you look at at Chestnut Manor Farms and say, you know what I'm really, really damn happy about? I set a foundation by doing this. Well, 00:04:30 My father is kind of like what he was talking about. I think when you're talking about setting the foundation, you know, our ancestors and, 00:04:38 and our background, they're what set the foundation for us. Right. You know, my dad was one of them guys 00:04:43 that he changed everything and he wasn't really traditional thinking. Um, he didn't mind. 00:04:50 So when, when I got to the point where I was, you know, 16, 18 years old and I wanted to grab a welder 00:04:56 and I wanted to take a brand new piece of equipment, I wanted to rip something apart and I want to completely change things, 00:05:02 he was all about those things. He understood those things. So you gotta have that person behind you if you're gonna, 00:05:08 if you're gonna start making him changes. Matt had that on his side. I had it on my side. So I think that kind of set the stage for me to be a guy 00:05:17 that constantly thought way outside the box. So, you know, where normal people think maybe a little outside the box, the guy's an extreme ag think 00:05:26 extreme outside the box. And that's why we all get along so well. And that's why sometimes we don't get along. 00:05:32 That's exactly right. With Others. Your dad probably got made fun of by a certain group of people. 00:05:36 You better believe it because he was a revolutionary guy. Yep. Some of the things my dad did, they were, you know, 00:05:41 they'd make fun of him in a coffee shop. There could be another Reason me, sometimes you guys get in each other's throats. 00:05:45 It's called too many roosters in the same pen. But anyway, that's a different Story going. That's 00:05:49 True. Alright, so, um, I think it's kind of cool to talk about this because, uh, what is it that you think, okay, looking back, damn, I'm surprised I did that. 00:06:01 Like, I've had people say, you mean you were 25 years old and you quit your job to dress up as Bill Clinton 00:06:06 and you'd never had any showbiz experience in your life and you made it? I said, yeah. And I said, I didn't know any better. 00:06:11 I didn't realize that you were supposed to have had acting classes. You were supposed to have done any of this. 00:06:16 And so I look back like, I guess I kind of pulled something off that, uh, I'm not sure I can try that now, but it sorta the same for you. 00:06:22 What'd you do that you look back and you're like, I'm kinda surprised I pulled that Off. I 00:06:26 I just took a lot of chances. I mean, financially we didn't at the, my dad died in 2000, so, and he owned 80 acres. 00:06:33 Yes. You know, so it wasn't like, you know, and so when he died, I was, it was kind of like, you know, when you throw a kid out an ocean 00:06:42 and say he is either gonna swim or he is gonna drown. And, and that's what happened to me. So I started taking what some people thought 00:06:49 was crazy chances. Mm-hmm. Leveraging myself in places that, uh, you know, people would say, that's crazy. 00:06:55 You'll never make that work. And, and so that's what I did that I can't believe I'd done, which worked out. Yeah. 00:07:02 Well, there's a lot of people that are young guys and young gals in agriculture and any small business where they get a little over their 00:07:08 ski financially because they have to, and some of 'em don't make it. Did you get over your fees ski financially? 00:07:14 I think I'm still doing it today, but that's part of being a risk taker. You know, I mean, risk versus reward, you know, you gotta, 00:07:21 you gotta be able to do that. I mean, I think good data now keeps us from making the mistakes that we would've made years ago. 00:07:28 I mean, think about this. Mm-hmm. My dad, um, every night, every day when he gets up in the morning when he's sitting 00:07:35 at the breakfast table with mom, he's 85 years old and he scratches in his diary mm-hmm. Every day at, at breakfast 00:07:42 At we still keeping your diary At lunch and at dinner. And he writes something in there, something that happened that day, what we were doing that day, 00:07:49 what work we were doing, what accomplishment we've had, the prices, the rain, all that stuff. That was his data. That 00:07:56 Was his operation Center. That was his operation center. That's exactly what it was. So he has that and he goes all the way back to 1957. 00:08:03 Okay. So he's got every book. I've seen those, I've seen those journals. I asked the question or posed a question when we started 00:08:10 this that you hear people say, looking back, I wouldn't change a thing and I just think you wouldn't change a thing. 00:08:17 I'd change a lot of stuff. There's a lot of heartache and restless nights and, and, uh, stress that can be avoided by changing things. 00:08:23 For most anybody, I imagine there's things that you wouldn't change, but there's a lot of things you would change. 00:08:29 What thing do you look at? And they're like, I tell you what, I I would've never done this 00:08:33 because it just, it was too stressful or it didn't pan out. What's the one thing that you think I would, I'm, 00:08:38 I absolutely, I would never do that again. You got one? I, I think, yeah. I'm gonna hear you first. I, I think, you know, take what we know today right? 00:08:50 About how we apply fertility and what we do all those years ago, what did we do? We listened to somebody else. 00:08:57 We didn't have an agronomist that was helping us out. We were flying by the seat of our pants. We just assumed we knew what we were doing 00:09:04 and we flung it all out there. Think about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we wasted over all those years. 00:09:11 If I had to do something over again, taking back knowledge, I'd love to take that back and bring that forward. 00:09:17 We'd be a lot further today than what we are. There's a guy that's a comedian that has, in one of his books, a chapter of his book, says, 00:09:23 owe the money you will waste. And by the time you get to a certain point in your career in life, you look back like he just said, say, you know, 00:09:30 I threw a half a million dollars out there. That didn't make me any money. Mm-hmm. You got that probably. 00:09:35 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's happened before. I, you know, I, I feel sometimes I would use the word blessed 00:09:41 because I, you know, I, there's not a lot I would change. I mean, from my family to where I had a lot 00:09:48 of different opportunities in sports and different things I could do. And, and I, my mom passed away too. 00:09:53 And, and so I was looking at different options. I could, I could look at and, but looking back today, if I'd have took any 00:09:59 of those other paths Yeah. Then we wouldn't be sitting here today. Uh, as far as actually on the farm, you know, a lot of 00:10:05 what temples say and I, I feel like I'm a better environmentalist today Yep. Than I was then. You know, 00:10:11 we're all better at that than we were then. And you know, I I, it has, because I'm 55 years old, I've got grandchildren now. 00:10:17 So I'm looking at what can I make it better for them. When I was 25 years old, I was looking for whatever would be better for me. 00:10:24 So I guess if I could change anything, it would've been a better conservationist, I think's the way you say that. 00:10:30 Okay. When I was in my twenties and not waited till my fifties to get there. What about on your situation? 00:10:37 You know, we're, we're all a product of our, you know, everything up until today. Do you sometimes look at your kids 00:10:45 and say, you know what, I'm gonna protect them from making a few of these mistakes? Or do you think No, it's okay. 00:10:51 They need to make a couple of, they need to, they need to fall down a couple of times once getting their knees. Um, I'll be honest with you, you can ask my boys. 00:10:58 You can ask any one of 'em. You can even ask the girls. I am one of those people that wanna throw 'em to the wolves and see what comes out. 00:11:05 That's what my dad did with all of our, all, all my mom and dad with all of our children, me and my sisters. And, you know, it, those are life lessons 00:11:15 that you can't just, they're learned, not earned. It's very, very different. So I'm all about throwing 'em 00:11:20 to the wolves. He did that with lame. Yeah. I wish Lang was here to tell that story. 'cause the first farm he rented 00:11:26 and he was still finishing up his ag degree at the time. And I think he thought in his mind 00:11:31 that when he rented a farm, I was gonna be there to help him every day. Yeah. And, and, and I threw him to the wolves. 00:11:36 And, and four or five years later he is like, I, I can't believe you did this to me. You know? But, but it worked. Yeah. 00:11:44 Well it made it, it made it, it makes you what doesn't kill you. It makes you start stronger kind of thing. 00:11:48 So is there a thing though, that you look at and you say, Hey, I got away with this son, daughter, but most people don't. 00:11:56 So the one thing I'll advise you against doing is this. I got it. What is it? Paperwork, Book work, um, data collection, 00:12:07 all those things I struggled with. Yeah. I was good at certain things. I'm good at rolling in the dirt. 00:12:12 I'm good at getting under your skin. Yeah. You're, but I'm, I'm good at certain things. I'm good at mechanical stuff. Mechanical 00:12:17 Stuff. You're good in the field stuff. You don't wanna be an office guy. I don't wanna be in the office. And Matt's told me, 00:12:23 had told me a lot about this and Kelly as well, but Matt especially has sat me down before and said, your money's made right here in your office. 00:12:30 Yeah. You have gotta do a better job of this. And I agree with that. So, you know, when I'm thinking about the next generational farm 00:12:37 after me, I would like to have multiple kids involved. Not just one of them. You know, Alexander, little t, Madeline, 00:12:45 you got somebody maybe doing the financial, yeah. You got operational guy and you got a mechanical guy. If you have those three, you got it pretty locked down, 00:12:53 you know, and then maybe you throw in one that maybe gets an agronomy degree. Like, like temple's working on right now. 00:12:59 You throw them in there. That's a pretty powerful team. Right. So when you say the thing that you didn't do 25 through, 00:13:06 well, he's has 35th year. You're just much younger. Well, you, you take this, you take this back 15 or 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, 00:13:14 you could do those kind of things. And you could hot dog and you could cowboy and you could send it out there 00:13:20 and you could not worry about his bed because in your mind, just like his dad did, he has it in his mind. 00:13:25 His checkbook balances in his head. Yeah. And he was probably pretty good at it. Mm-hmm. But you take huge chances like that you could do it then 00:13:34 where you can't do it now. Money's too big. Money's too big. Operations margin, you make one mistake. Margin margins 00:13:39 Are too thin functions then, I mean, margins are way too thin to screw in today's world, if you screw up, you could screw up 10 times 00:13:46 when Temple and I started. Yep. And still be okay. You know, we're in today's times where, you know, if you screwed up this year, if if a guy was 00:13:53 behind till starting this year in my area, he might not have a, he might not be able to form the following year. 00:13:58 When you look back, so this is what you're 51, 2, 3 53. So 30 30th or so, 32nd season what? 00:14:10 32nd season. 30. Start Farming Season. Um, I started farming when I was 15 years old. Oh, okay. So you've been at, He's up there with 00:14:17 You're almost 40 season. 30 season. Yeah. Alright. One thing are you still doing today that you're like, you know what, I've evolved on this, 00:14:24 but by golly I I had the right, I had the right uh, idea then. Is that the conservation? Is that what you're going with? 00:14:30 No, I was aggressive then. Um, making changes when I was younger. The only thing I wish that, 00:14:36 I wish I was a little bit more aggressive when I was young. 'cause it becomes a little hard 00:14:40 to be aggressive when you get my age and you Start to get a bit more comfortable. Yeah, You're right. 00:14:46 All right. So the, I wanna get a couple last thoughts on this. We said, looking back, looking back, what thing, 00:14:52 when you look back, have we not talked about that? You look back, is it nostalgia or you look back and say, man, I feel really good about this. 00:15:00 You know, where you say, looking back, I'm glad I did this for me, I'm glad 00:15:05 that I quit corporate America and went off on my own. I have, I've never regretted that. Okay. But Daisy regret it. But not a whole year. You regret it. 00:15:14 What do you look back at and say, man, I'm glad 33 years ago I did this. Oh, I say it all the time. Anytime, anytime I can. 00:15:22 And, and temple's heard this a hundred times, but when you can work with the people you love mm-hmm. You can work with your family versus going to corporate, 00:15:30 like you're talking about, it's not really a job. And when you wake up every morning, even in the times we're in the day 00:15:36 and you're still like, I wanna go do this now, is there times that I don't wanna do it? Yes, there is. But in general, you know what I'm doing, 00:15:44 occupation I'm doing is the greatest rewarding. It's not the most glamorous, but it's the most rewarding family type. 00:15:53 Yeah. Career you could have You, So I'm gonna go with, um, when I, when I got done high school, I was already farming. 00:16:03 And, and at that time, dad had lined me up and he, he put me in the right place. And I was probably tilling, I don't know, maybe 00:16:11 a thousand acres, maybe 1200 or something like that. By the time I went to college, when I went to college, um, I agriculture's not what, what it is today. 00:16:23 What it was then when we were then, when it was way back when people were embarrassed to be a farmer. 00:16:29 We were, we were embarrassed when I was a kid. Well Come out, I didn't, coming outta the eighties, it was more, it was more 00:16:34 that you just felt like you'd been a dog had been kicked too much because it'd just been a rough Well, 00:16:38 You were just a, I don't know, I don't know how to say it, but you were, you know, you, 00:16:42 you were treated like a dirty dirt poor redneck. I mean, is that fair to say, man? Well, The straw had no overall. 00:16:48 Yeah. I mean, and that's, that's the, it wasn't the cool thing to do. Well now it's cool. Yeah. 00:16:53 Like you got kids that are dressing to be farm life. You got farm charm, you got all these different stores popping up, you got farm 00:17:00 to table stuff and it's all cool now and it's great. What taught me how cool farming was is when my parents made me go to college and when I went to college 00:17:13 and I had to live in that environment and I learned Yeah. What home was. Yeah. 00:17:18 And when you got away from home, I took a whole different appreciation because it was like, when I came home from college, 00:17:25 it was a light bulb went off and a door swung open and I saw things in a whole different light. Well, that's the only thing in the way. All right. 00:17:32 This is my last question of both of you. I think that, uh, I've, I've said it before and, and, uh, and I, I believe this, um, 00:17:39 too many people get rose colored dentist. Good old days. Good old days. Good old days. One thing that I like about extreme ag, 00:17:44 and I like particularly about you YouTube, you might say, oh, it was neat farming with dad, or it was this, 00:17:50 but I've never heard Oh, the good old days. The old days. So when we say, looking back, I've never seen you guys look back 00:17:56 and somehow have this rose colored lenses where you are silly about how it much better it was then, because I'm not sure that it was, 00:18:06 and I think that you guys would both agree with that. You don't, you guys don't do the rose colored lenses. You look back, you learn from it, you move on. 00:18:13 I guess I really respect that about you, but am I missing something? Do you get, do you get a little rt Do you get a little 00:18:18 too nostalgic about the old Days? Well, I'm, you know, I was always told, if you look back, you're backing up. 00:18:22 You know, I always look forward and, and, and every day be a better person and a better farmer than you were the day before. 00:18:30 So I look back at memories Yeah. And cool stuff like with my dad when he was alive. But as far as looking, no sir, I'm, I'm, 00:18:37 I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I'm just trying to get to it. I think for me, the only rose colored glass part of it is, 00:18:43 is with all this data that we're starting to collect now and all of the, the accomplishments that we've had over the, 00:18:49 over the past, you know, five or six years that you and I have known each other. When you look back at that 00:18:54 and you look at the accomplishments and how far we've come, when you, especially when you go back 00:18:58 and you study the data, when you look at that, that's a little nostalgic for me. Because, because you always 00:19:05 Beat me. That does happen. Yeah. Right. Every Year. But when, when you look at how, what you look at our growths 00:19:12 that we've done better every year with our own operations. We're not talking about extreme ag. Yeah. 00:19:17 We're talking about our family operations, that we are helping each other with our family operations. That means a lot to me. Yeah. Yeah. 00:19:24 That's pride. That's, that's a prideful look back and a sa it's a sa it's a, it's a contentedness but not complacency. Well, 00:19:31 And I would say the things we've done too, and Tim's the same way. Most of the guys that I deal with are, you know, we're not, 00:19:38 this is not, if we do gain knowledge this year, we make 10 bushel better on something. Yep. We're not going to hide that under a lamp 00:19:45 and not show it to anybody. We want everybody to see that. We want our neighbors, we want our friends, we want everybody to know, hey, 00:19:50 this, this, this works. Yeah. And, and the, for the betterment of agriculture in general. 00:19:54 Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, I don't think that that what you described is, is, um, looking back and sort of the, the misery of, oh boy. 00:20:04 It's just not like it used to be. I don't, I've never seen you guys do That. Uh, 00:20:07 it's not, that's how you are. Well, it's proven. In fact, it's not better then than it is now. I mean, look at how we live, what we drive, what we do. 00:20:14 Yeah. You know, the things we can do and still farm equipment we drive today. I mean, my picker has a massaging, 00:20:20 heated seat every day at three o'clock. I got a massage. Wait a minute. I don't look back and wish I was on an old nine cab picker. 00:20:25 Geez. If that's what you're asking. I get a massage every day at three o'clock during cotton harvest. 00:20:31 I can't talk to him anymore. I don't even know what to do with him. Alright. We talked about looking back 00:20:36 and the things you'd changed, the things you wouldn't change, the things you're glad you did, the foundations you set. 00:20:40 And more importantly, are you looking back, uh, with prideful, with prideful nostalgia? Or are you looking back with, uh, hostility 00:20:46 that somehow things were so bad today? The point is, you know what, you can join us here and pull up a chair at the Grainery. 00:20:52 We're gonna be doing this a whole bunch, and we want you to come and join along for a ride. So, you know what, as we always say, pull up a chair, 00:20:58 grab yourself a snack, uh, pour yourself a drink. And, uh, we'll see you next time here at this very table in 00:21:03.245 --> 00:21:03.725
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersMatt Miles
McGehee, AR
Temple Rhodes
Centreville, MD