Dad's wisdom with Gary Monson in Colfax, Washington

Chris

Barron: We are grateful that you are joining us for another episode of the Ag View Pitch, as we know that your time is very valuable. Our team at Ag View Solutions is always here for you for any questions or comments that you may have. Please feel free to reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. And now, here is your host, Chris Barron. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We are getting ready to have a Dad's Wisdom here. We are in Washington State in the Palouse area. We are south of Spokane area, so that kind of gives you an idea, kind of the region that we're in. I'm about ready here to introduce the farm operator. The dad of the operation has a couple of sons that, like I said, we just got done with a peer group meeting. And I'm going to go ahead here now and introduce Gary Monson. Gary, how's it going?

Gary

Monson: Really well. It's a little dry in this part of the world, but it's, you know, you gotta expect that.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So we're, we're recording this, as we speak right now, in the early part of June and, it's dry in a lot of parts of the country, but, it's one of those things as farmers we get to deal with. So maybe I'll ask you about some, some of your years of experience, if you've ever seen dry weather before. I bet you have. So, So, but anyway, what I want to do is, um, start out and have you give us a little background about yourself and kind of what, how you got started farming and, and, uh, we're going to dig some wisdom out of you here today.

Gary

Monson: Well, I came to this country in 1966 and, uh, to go to school at WSU and graduated from college. Then I, uh, worked for some area farmers who were friends of mine, and then we, I, uh, A man came to me with a lease offer, and so we got a lease in 1978 in the fall and then started, started farming at that time and been in the farming game ever since.

Chris

Barron: Well, it's interesting. So your wife Diane, she was a big part of that, right?

Gary

Monson: Yeah, my wife is raised in this country and she, her family farmed. And I worked with her dad some, and then her brother and I were in a partnership together for a number of years.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. And so, um, I guess what I want to do is, um, have you give a little bit more background of kind of how things progressed. So your two, your two sons farm together, they're brothers. Um, so that's kind of a cool deal. Um, you know, they're, they're working together. You've got one that's a numbers cruncher and one that's a mechanic, and they, they really complement each other. Tremendous amount, Kent and Jason Monson. And so, um, two brothers, we've worked with those guys for a long time on a lot of different things. You guys have been very successful, um, really well respected in the community. I want to ask that first, what does it take for, for a farmer that's maybe listening to this, from, from your perspective, to, to gain the respect of not only people in the community but maybe other farmers as well?

Gary

Monson: Well, I guess the, I guess the main thing is, and most, I think most farmers are that way, is, is, uh, if you say something, you're gonna do it, you do it. And that's what I'm, part of my philosophy is I don't promise anybody anything that I can't deliver on, or at least try to.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. So, so let's, um, let's, let's back up. You know, we talked about the respect thing. Um, tell us a little bit about, you know, how you grew the operation and, you know, you said you got that first lease. Um, talk a little bit about, you know, how things developed from there and some of the things that you learned along the way as you grew it to where you are today.

Gary

Monson: Well, after leaving or after getting the lease and then, uh, my brother-in-law and I worked together and And then we actually, my father-in-law bought some ground. And we got the lease on that together and farmed it. And then in, oh, I guess until 2007. That's when we went our own way. And, you know, with I had the boys and that wanted to farm, and he didn't have anybody that wanted to farm. He does have a son and two daughters, but none interested. And so we kind of went our own way. And he— we divided up the ranch, and he got the home place where he was raised, and we got this, what I call a lower country. It's west of of Colfax.

Chris

Barron: Okay, yeah, we're in the Colfax area, and I think I mentioned this at the beginning, but, you know, with having a peer group here and getting the opportunity for 7 other farm operations that we work with to get to see the hills and the slopes and the stuff you guys operate on, it's pretty crazy. You know, you guys last night did ride and drives with a combine and a sprayer and quite an eye-opening experience. Um, you, you originally started in, in, uh, um, Minnesota though, didn't you?

Gary

Monson: That's where I'm from. Yes. We, my family farmed there. My dad and mother farmed there. And, uh, right in the Red River Valley, just south of Fargo-Moorhead on the Minnesota side of the river. And, uh, dad sold in, uh, 1954. And he moved to Vancouver, Washington. And my sister and two brothers were older and they, well, they just, they never came out there to the West because they were kind of on their own.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, how old were you at the time then?

Gary

Monson: I would have been just starting my teens about 12, 13.

Chris

Barron: Okay, interesting. And so, you know, and then, you know, like I said, you grew up, went to high school here, went to college. I guess what I would like to ask you right now then, because there'll be a lot of younger people listening to this, and by younger I mean probably under 50, you know, and so, you know, what if you could go back and tell your younger self something? And let's start out with 25 years old. If you could go back and think about, okay, when I was 25, ish or something, what would you have done different? What, what are some of the lessons that you've learned along the way that you would, you would love to go back and tell yourself something?

Gary

Monson: That's a little bit of a tough one. I don't know. It's just, you know, getting an opportunity to farm is really, is really tough in this area. And I don't know. I, uh, I was almost reaching a point where we weren't making enough money to actually get ahead, and I was considering either quitting farming or, uh, you know, working for other people or going, trying to look for maybe something, maybe in the Midwest again and going back there and see if I could get a job that was, you know, paid more and I could raise a family and everything. Uh, it took quite a while. And so I was 36 when I got a chance to farm by, by myself. And it took a while to, you know, to build it up.

Chris

Barron: That's one thing I think a lot of us, um, in today's world, things can't happen fast enough. I remember my dad always telling me, just be patient. It'll come. Things will, things will change and stuff's gonna happen faster than you can ever possibly imagine. And then I think you can probably attest to that. You know, what are some of the challenges you can remember, some things that, you know, maybe didn't go quite like you thought maybe they should, and any comments on that or things that you learned along the way?

Gary

Monson: Well, things that my kids do now that I probably did wrong, I probably didn't I didn't probably trade equipment like combines fast enough and kept overhauling stuff. And of course, all of my life I run crawler tractors, you know, with the metal tracks and everything. And so I, you know, we overhauled everything and that. And so in that respect, I think it probably hurt us. We, I should have, uh, gotten newer equipment, faster tractors, faster combines, you know, bigger combines I should say, and made things happen faster. Maybe we had gotten more opportunities.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, that's interesting because I think that's one thing, you know, equipment, I always tell our listeners, uh, machinery and equipment's the second largest line item expense of your budget. And it's one of those things that I think a lot of times is is difficult to manage too, because it is so capital intensive. And, and then you have to manage debt and there's interest rates and all those things. So I'm going to ask you a little bit about that, you know, what do you think held you back from doing that? Was it not wanting to take on debt? Or was it interest rates? Or was it just unknown productivity? Or what are maybe some of the things that might have held you back?

Gary

Monson: Not so much productivity, I think that I never worried about that too much because this country is pretty forgiving and we usually always have a crop. Probably the thing that made me the most nervous was expanding the equipment line and the amount of money it took to get it. And I think that's what held me back. And now the kids have done, you know, they just, They just roll the equipment. We don't hardly work on tractors. If we have to, it's under warranty. And so, uh, I don't know, it seems like that's expensive, but it's expensive to keep a tractor and overhaul it too.

Chris

Barron: So, yeah, exactly. Um, as far as land purchasing, so, you know, um, when did you buy your first tract of land or how did you make that decision? How'd you manage that and talk a little bit about that?

Gary

Monson: Um, the first tract of land that I bought was, uh, let's see, the first year— I can't quite remember the year, but, uh, interest rates, of course, in the '80s, or when, when I was getting started, was very expensive. And right here in this area, it's hard— land wasn't trading. I mean, guys have been here for, oh, many, many years and the land never traded. Now it's, uh, in the last few years it's been trading and you can buy land. Of course it's gotten expensive, um, but I don't know, I figure if I can pay for it and just— I'm thinking of one piece that's, uh, just east of us here, joins us, that I bought, uh I bought for $1,250 and you, I wouldn't sell it for $2,500 to you right now.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. And that's, that's the thing. Land is a long-term investment, right? You know, it's a, it's a generational thing. So that's a good transition to the generational thing that I want to ask you about then too, which is raising the family. You know, you've done a great job of passing a lot of education. Both your boys have business degrees, and I think Jason's got his master's in business. And so, you know, you guys run a business and you happen to farm. And I think that's one of the things that sets some of the operations we work with apart from others is they don't think of the farm as a business. They think of the business as a farm. And And I've watched that with you guys. But on the same token, you've been able to not only run it as a business, you guys have, have made the family a priority.

A lot of, you know, you guys are, you know, very faith-oriented, very, very tied into that, very tied into the family. Talk about the importance of family and what that takes to get to the next generation.

Gary

Monson: Uh, well, the family is— yeah, it is very important to us. Uh, and, uh, we've been blessed with 3 sons. They've all got, you know, 2 of them are farming and the other son is in the financial world and he's done very well for himself. And, uh, I don't know, we just— I, I don't know quite how to answer that, but I always took the boys with me. Uh, and they would, you know, no matter what I was doing, I would— if they wanted to go, I'd take them. And, uh, and I think that kind of helped. They see what I was doing, and then I would, uh, and then I'd let them do it. I would, uh, you know, maybe in a tractor, you know, when they were young, I just let them do it. I'd sit on on the side of the seat and let them drive and do the, do the work. And before you know it, they, they knew how to lay out all the land and they knew how to do, set the whatever, you know, cultivator or whatever.

And so I, and I just turned them loose. They just, I never had any trouble.

Chris

Barron: So that's one of the things I think that's really hard for a lot of people is giving up that control. Is, you know, letting, you know, whether it's your kids or a young employee that's coming on board, how did you do that? And were you able to not micromanage? Or how did you do there?

Gary

Monson: I, I tried to watch that. I don't try to— even now, the boys make the decisions. I don't really have much say in, in what they're doing. And I let them manage it. It's I wasn't ever into the micromanaging and because I've seen that working for other people and stuff and I've, and that's not good. It just stifles the other person. Let them grow. Let them do their thing.

Chris

Barron: Let them, let them make a mistake.

Gary

Monson: Yeah. They're, they're plum capable. They're, it's surprising what they can do.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So with that said too, then there's another part of the, another generation coming on. So So Kent has a couple of kids, Garen and Cadence, and they're pretty special kids. Cadence just graduated from high school this year, very involved in a lot of different things in school, very involved in the farm, can run a combine, can run a grain cart, can, you know, kind of ran a hay crew last summer, just very, very involved. But in the interview today, she's very interested in the financials and very interested in the books and and that's what you want to see. And I think Garen, you know, he's younger and, and we'll see, he's, he's kind of following in Kent's footsteps, his dad's footsteps, and really likes the machinery and the equipment and stuff. So, so you probably have another generation coming along.

And the one thing that I noticed that, that both Jason and Kent have done, Jason being his uncle, is treats them like they're his own kids. And so, you know, communication is really good because of that. You know, their, their communication is phenomenal. They're their work ethic that they've been able to teach the kids is really strong. And you started that. Talk a little bit about what you see and kind of what you've seen with the grandkids, if they've grown, and some of the things you'd like to see them accomplish yet.

Gary

Monson: Well, yeah, we just— like with Garen, I can remember I'd take him with me and And I just put him in the driver's seat and sit in the buddy seat and I could ride with him for whatever. And, you know, sometimes it'd be an all afternoon and I'd let him cultivate and I would just sit there and watch him and maybe help him a little bit. But you'd be surprised, they pick it up really quick because they're watching you. And they know, you know, they know what's going on. And in this country, it's not going back and forth because we got the hills. So we farm on the contour. And they know how to lay out a piece of ground now. And that's one of the first things we teach them so that, that, you know, they aren't going up and down hills. And so I didn't answer the—

Chris

Barron: No, that was good. Well, Mm-hmm. Okay. And so, um, a couple other things I wanted to ask too, as far as, you know, that's the operational stuff that you've taught them, but, but you said one key thing there that I, I just took away that is that they're watching you, right? And they're watching you not only how you do field work, but they're watching how you communicate in the community, the things you do, you know, your, your decisions, your honesty, your, relationships with other people and stuff. Do you see anything there? I mean, you know, one of the things we talked about in the peer group too was, you know, do they need to go off farm?

You know, Cadence is going to go to college, you know, and I think there was some discussion about, you know, do they need to go someplace else and work for a couple of years and get some experience someplace else, or should they come back, or what? And And, um, I'll, I'll let you answer first and I'll kind of tell you some of the things that, that, that were discussed in the peer group. But I was interested in what you, what you think is, you know, should they come back right away or should they get some outside experience?

Gary

Monson: Oh, I, I, I want 'em to go get some experience with, uh, other farms or whatever, some other experience so they see how other people operate or whether it's a farm or business or whatever, they can understand what they go up against, and they got different problems than we got. And, uh, I think that experience would be really beneficial to them, to both of them.

Chris

Barron: So, um, as we get closer to wrapping up here, I wanna, I wanna go back in time a little further than where we started. And you talked about your, your parents and you talked about growing up on a farm, and this might take you a second to think of, so I'll give you a second here to think of the question or think of how to answer the question, but What's one of the key lessons that your dad taught you? What's, what's one of the things that if you look back and say, that was a pretty darn good lesson and what he said or, or how he acted or something that he did that, that you took away?

Gary

Monson: Uh, my dad never communicated a whole lot with me. Um, I don't know if he did with my brothers or not. They're both You know, there's several years between us. But one thing is just watching him. He was, he was hardworking and worked hard all his life. And he treated other people nice, fairly. And so that's one thing, just watching him is how I learned. But as far as him communicating much to me, he never did.

Chris

Barron: That was kind of the silent generation, I think, right? He was part of that generation. With that said, you know, too, you talked about, you know, some of the things that you got from your dad. What's one thing that you want to make sure that your sons, when they listen to this or other sons listen to, what's one thing that you want them to kind of remember as they grow their business and as they raise their family and that kind of stuff? What's, what's one thing that you'd like to have them make sure that they, they think of?

Gary

Monson: Okay. First of all, of course, our family is based on faith. And, and then I think one of the things I've tried to instill in them, that if they treat other people the way they want to be treated. And, uh, and be fair to people, treat them right. And if something goes, goes wrong, just fess up, tell them, you know, we, uh, sprayed something we shouldn't have, or we, you know, did something we shouldn't have and didn't mean to, but, uh, own up to it.

Chris

Barron: Honesty and integrity, right? Um, couple of, couple of really good things. Yeah. So, um, I guess, um, I can't think of too much more other than, um, you know, I really want to thank you. Um, I had another question, but I can't remember what it was right now. So, and I'm sure you never ever forget anything, right?

Gary

Monson: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: No, that's good. So, but no, with that said, um, I really appreciate your time. This was kind of a short interview, but, uh, um, we did definitely, we got a couple Modelos here. We got to finish drinking too, right? Yeah, that's right. So anyway, well, again, I really appreciate your time and you've done a great job with your family. You've got a, you know, beautiful family and grandkids on the way that are doing this and you still run the combine. And so you were out there last night giving people rides in combines on how big of a slope that looked like, about a 40% slope.

Gary

Monson: Uh, when I looked at the screen one time, I can remember it was 33%, but I've been on a lot steeper than that.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Well, you just didn't want to scare anybody too bad.

Gary

Monson: Yeah. I was afraid to take them higher on that hill because it does get steeper.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know there was a couple of people that said that it was fun, but they didn't really want to do it again. So, all right. Well, again, uh, this Gary Monson, um, a farmer in Washington State, just in south of Spokane, Washington, and kind of gives everybody kind of a geographic location, Spokane, Washington, and great family, great operation. And I hope the information and the wisdom that we were able to dig out of Gary here tonight and this afternoon and gives you something to think about for your operation and some things that, that maybe you can do to always improve your business and your operation. With that said, appreciate you listening to This Dad's Wisdom, and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.