Quality of life, strip till, and fishing in Canada

Narrator: Hey podcast! Today brothers Ben and Brant Field discuss quality of life with Chris in a special episode from Canada on a rainy day. If you have any interest in strip-till, farm transition, collaboration, equipment LLCs, and perspective on making your life better while farming, this is an episode for you.

Ben

Fehl: Enjoy!

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to today's episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today I've got with me my two brother-in-laws, and we are actually at the lake. And so I wanted to kind of catch these two guys, and they were real happy to talk to me. Actually, they were a little reluctant, so we had to pull them in when it's raining pretty hard here at the lake. But just wanted to introduce these guys. As I said, they're both my brother-in-laws, and they farm together in La Porte City, Iowa. So they farm Oh, about a half an hour away from where our farm operation's at, and I just wanted to kind of get them to talk a little bit about their farming operation as we're going to be doing more of that with our clients and that kind of thing. So let's go ahead and get the conversation started here. I'm going to start with you, Brandt, because I know Ben just can't wait to, to be interviewed here and talk.

So give us a little introduction to yourself and, and where you guys farm and, and a little bit about your operation.

Brandt

Fehl: Okay, so I'm Brant Fahl. Like Chris said, I farm with my brother Ben. In the past 4 or 5 years, our dad Dean decided it was time to retire, hand it off to us. We farm or we grow corn and soybeans. And right now in La Porte City area, things look really good. We're starting to get some rain. And when I left home to come to the lake on the 14th, we had tassels starting to shoot and beans were all getting to the point where we had a fair amount of flowers at that point.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. I'm going to come back to you and pick on you a little bit more here in a minute. But Ben just can't hold himself here. He wants to talk really bad. So Ben, give a little introduction of yourself and kind of how long you've been farming and whatever you can think of to tell us.

Ben

Fehl: Yeah, kind of the same as what Brant said. I started farming in 2003, working a town job. Dad let me come back in 2005, if I remember right, full-time, and have been there ever since. Like Brant said, things look really good. Ha, I got a shot of rain last night. Climate tells me anywhere from a tenth to a little over an inch, and then another shot today, maybe a little breezy but not too bad. But I expect things to look really good when we get home despite the 90 to 100 degree temps.

Chris

Barron: What's the date today?

Ben

Fehl: I have no idea.

Chris

Barron: It's a quiz question. 17th.

Brandt

Fehl: I just looked at my phone.

Chris

Barron: Okay. Yeah, I looked at my watch. I know, I was just sitting like, what is the date? We're at the lake and we don't really keep track of the date too much here, do we?

Ben

Fehl: It's Wednesday.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, it's Wednesday. It's beer 30, and yeah. So Ben, tell us a little bit about your guys's operation. You guys strip-till, and in our operation we've learned a lot from you guys about, about, you know, your strip-till operation. Your dad has done it for pretty much your guys's whole life. You guys don't know anything but strip-till. So don't need a lot of major details, but just tell us a little bit about how that system works for you and and why it works. And I think a lot of that too, real quick, just a comment from me, looking at what you guys have done this year, it allowed you guys to get out there and plant early. And you guys, you know, are sitting there with some really nice crops because you were able to get everything in the field in a timely manner. But that's just an observation from my end.

Tell us a little bit about kind of the system and some of the benefits and challenges.

Ben

Fehl: Yeah, we generally, we do all the strip till in the fall if we can and Hydrasand dry in the strip. Sometimes we don't do dry in the strip for various reasons, but always in Hydrasand. We got about 20% of our strips done last fall, which is pretty abnormal. We usually don't get them all done, but 20% is low. So over the winter bought a Yetter Strip Freshener. As a strip maker, a high-speed tool, just in case we weren't able to get much done this spring and knowing that the anhydrous situation was going to be dire. So the plan was as soon as we get backed up with anhydrous this spring, we unhook the big strip-till bar and we hook on to the 3-point Yetter and we go to work. And that's exactly what happened. We got about another 40% done. So that gets us to 60% or a little higher. Uh, unhooked the strip-till bar while everybody else was waiting in line, and we went and planted corn.

We started on the 15th of April, finished with a short day on Easter Sunday, and that's honestly the best looking corn we have is what was planted on Easter Sunday. But everything looks really good, rolled right into beans the next day, and, uh, I think we finished— it was on and off for beans. I think we finished beans on May 18th. Just did what we could do and got done as timely as we could.

Chris

Barron: You guys have a lot of experience in the strip-till program, that's for sure, and have seen a lot of benefits from it. And like I said, we've been copying what you guys are doing. We got a little learning to do yet. And one thing I've noticed is the fields that we've had in that system for now, we're going on into our fourth year, we've noticed the system improving. Getting a little better. I mean, what's your comment on that as far as, you know, the longer you do it, the more of an improvement you're going to see?

Ben

Fehl: There's no question that there's an improvement. It's probably hard to quantify. It is hard to quantify dollars and cents wise, but I— we can plant early. How should I say that? We plant early because we can. You know, we don't need to wait for the first, for everything to dry out. We only need our 8-inch wide strip to be dry 2.5 inches down. That's all we need. Yeah. You know, and have a light footprint on that. You know, so that's one of the things that the traffic lanes between the strips carry the weight of tractor, sprayer, planter. We don't have a pinch row effect. Which some people would be concerned about. And we've proven it to ourselves multiple times over through various means. It's like Chris said, it's all we've ever known, but there's no way I'd do anything else. You know, the only way I would do anything else would be to go to straight no-till.

And I just, we've tried some small patches. It just doesn't work as well as the strip-till does for various reasons.

Chris

Barron: You're in an area where you've got, you know, really good high-quality soil and it's pretty consistent. So you guys—

Ben

Fehl: it is consistent and, you know, we have a high enough clay content that we get some sidewall smearing with the no-till. If we had some lighter soils, we would probably no-till more.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. All right, so now it's your turn, Brand. I'm gonna pick on you here a little bit. So You guys, another thing that you guys have done in your operation, so I learned some of the strip-till stuff from you guys, and you guys have kind of watched some of the collaborative efforts that we've done both with ourselves and some of our clients, putting machinery together, thinking of new ways to kind of run our business and not spend quite as much money. And I, you know, as you know, Ben talked a little bit about the strip-till. I know in our operation we saw an economic benefit to it immediately because we we didn't have all those passes and all the extra fuel consumption and compaction when you shouldn't be out there and that kind of thing. So we saw an economic benefit there, plus putting the fertilizer right where you want it had a huge value as well.

But talk to me a little bit about your guys' collaboration, 'cause you guys formed a collaboration here a couple years ago and you've been, improving it, working more together with a neighbor, and you have a machinery and equipment company set up kind of the way we do with a lot of our clients. So you really know where your costs are at. Tell us a little bit about that.

Brandt

Fehl: So in the past, since Dad has retired and when Dad was still farming with us, we all worked together at that point. The majority of the equipment Dad owned and Ben owned a fair amount of that equipment. I was able to purchase some of the equipment in the meantime, or since then, about 2 or 3 years ago, Ben and I approached a local farmer and who has a very similar farming operation as us with no-till strip-till operation and realized He needed labor, we needed labor. How can we make this work for everybody? And since then, it basically the past 6 months, we've formed an equipment LLC and got all of our equipment together. It seems to be on the bookkeeping side. Ben can attest to this. It's a much easier operation. On the—

Chris

Barron: how do I pause it? No, I'm not going to pause it. I'm going to go over to Ben. He's like, let me think of another— on podcast, we just get to do it live. But Ben, you do the bookkeeping side of things, and you did the bookkeeping side of things ahead of time. Before there was any organizational understanding when you guys were sharing equipment and partnering, what's the benefit now that you have it in its own company?

Ben

Fehl: It was a gigantic pain in the rear. It was, I own stuff, Brand owns stuff, Bart owns stuff, we own stuff together, different shares, and it just turned into an absolute nightmare. And so we put everything together, just, which was very simple, whatever your equity position was in your equipment, You know, take the 3 of us, add them up, divide your number by the total, and that's how much equipment you own, or how much of the LLC you own.

Chris

Barron: Um, and then you can just establish a rate.

Ben

Fehl: Yeah, we establish rates and on per pass basis. Um, you know, and on some smaller stuff, you know, a box scraper, uh, this or that, you know, we're just gonna— if you want to use it, it's $100 a day or whatever. You know, we still need to establish some stuff. But it's just going to be simple, and if, if you want it, fine, and, and go use it. But I mean, it was just— it was beyond bad the way we were doing it. Um, it's way better the way it is now.

Chris

Barron: We almost get information overload with all the numbers trying to figure out how do we make this fair when we're sharing equipment, not to mention insurance and a whole bunch of other fun things.

Ben

Fehl: The numbers are easy enough to come up with, but it's You know, when you had 5 different situations trying to make sure everybody got the right amount, you know, I worked for hours and hours and fretted to make sure, you know, that everybody got what was theirs. But, you know, I didn't want to get more than what was mine, you know, being the bookkeeper that, you know, I didn't stay up nights thinking about it, but when I was sitting at my desk, I hated it. And so, you know, So here we are now. It's easy. We each own a percentage. If there's a profit, we split it out. You know, we're not to that point yet, of course. But, you know, working together to make equipment decisions has been easy. I am over 50% majority owner, but I don't, you know, some— I'm not going to rule with an iron fist because I can. But You know, and I'm not sure— I'm losing my train of thought.

But, you know, we're all going to work together. As far as I'm concerned, we're third owners, you know, right? And if somebody's very adamant that no, this should not happen, well, I'm not just gonna say yes it is because I can't, you know. And that's, that's not the way to run things. Um, so anyway, it's way better than it was. I mean, just infinitely. You can't even compare it. My office time is way down.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So, well, and that's the thing in any of these collaborations, the key thing is having the right people too. The partner you guys are working with, you guys get along really good with, you see eye to eye. Um, talk to us a little bit about the efficiency pickup. Did you see much of efficiency pickup with you guys working together, sharing with the labor, and having everybody sort of on the same page, or So what I've seen the most is quality of life.

Brandt

Fehl: So Ben has a boy that plays baseball, football, all this stuff. I have a little girl that plays T-ball. Bart works in town at another job, so we're able to share our labor and Ben can go to football A little lightning here. Pretty serious thunder and lightning going on right now. But, uh, but we're able to share our labor so that Ben cannot miss a football game for Sam, or I'm not going to miss a T-ball game for my daughter. Bart can do what he needs to do, but at the same time, when we know that we need to be there, we show up. And everybody works so well together. So it, for me The efficiency is great. The quality of life is more important.

Chris

Barron: That's a big part.

Brandt

Fehl: The biggest part for me.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, we've worked a lot with growers collaborating and I appreciate you guys sharing your story because I think that's gonna be the wave of the future for a lot of operations. 'Cause when you look at the cost of a new combine or the cost of a new planter, and if you're not spreading those expenses over those acres and staying efficient from a cost management standpoint, that's a big deal to keep us in business when the margins are tight like they are and trying to manage all of this stuff. So my hat's off to you guys. You've done a great job on the collaboration side of things. And so the other thing too, I meant to ask you guys in the beginning part, what's your age, Ben, first?

Ben

Fehl: What's your age? I'm 41.

Brandt

Fehl: I'm 38.

Chris

Barron: Okay, so you guys are pretty close in age too, and you guys are at about that prime age to be making good business decisions and growing the operation and doing a good job. So the other part of it is, is we're sitting here in the cabin and it's downpouring rain, and you've probably heard the lightning in the background, and these guys keep looking outside and watching the downpour come, but Tell us a little bit about the work-life balance. You talked about, Bran, about, you know, being able to go spend time with family and stuff. You guys have come up to the cabin here. Tell us where we're at in Canada and kind of your experiences up here.

Brandt

Fehl: So technically, I think you'd call it northwest Ontario. We are about 40 miles northwest of International Falls, give or take, as the crow flies. We're on Clearwater Lake. Our parents have a beautiful property here, and we're just sitting here watching it literally fill our boats full of water right now. We'll have something to do after this.

Chris

Barron: Yep. So, Ben?

Ben

Fehl: What do you want me to say?

Chris

Barron: I don't know. What do you want to say? I can, I could, you can tell us anything.

Ben

Fehl: I'll go a little deeper into the quality of life thing. We spend a lot of time, Sandy and Sam and I, my wife and son and I, not being home if we can. I can't be at home and take a vacation.

Narrator: I can't do it.

Chris

Barron: Speak just a little louder.

Ben

Fehl: Sorry, Chris. I can't really be at home and take a vacation. I don't work all day every day, but I always feel like the work is there and I need to get it done. So we go places and whether it be Sandy and I south in the winter, we try to get up here 2 or 3 times a year. That's not working as well with Sam's schedule now, which is fine. Chicago for a baseball game. We've got a couple concert tickets or concerts coming up in the next month and a half or two. Spending time with friends at a lake home they own. It's— I feel it's important. We have one son. We won't have any more children. He's going to be gone in 5 years. And I mean, that's what I— that's what I'm working for now is to make sure that we have fun together and do things— do things together and fun things that everybody wants to do. And in 5 years, it's just going to be totally different. And that's not very far away.

That's not at all. So, so that's important to us. Some people maybe think that we go too much and do too much, and quite frankly, I don't really care. That's just what we're going to do. Yeah.

Chris

Barron: So yeah, everybody's got to, everybody's got to do what's right for them. And, you know, you kind of got to do what, what's important. And, and family's probably, probably the primary reason we do what we do is So we can spend time with family and, you know, we don't work our butts off in the spring and fall and try to get a crop out of a field that's got 15 inches of rain on it in the last 20 days for the fun of it. Always. It's, it's a lot of it's for a reason. So any good fish stories or anything? You know, we wanted to go from the strip till to the fishtail, I guess.

Brandt

Fehl: Fish stories. Well, I'm notorious for not catching a whole lot of fish, uh, but this week I've caught a few, few decent walleyes. But one story that pops up to me on a lot of, a lot of times when people say, what do you like best? And I said, well, gosh, I really love it here in the winter. People think I'm crazy. It's cold, it's—

Ben

Fehl: and it's usually 30 below zero.

Brandt

Fehl: But this one particular winter, we came up with a group of guys there was 10 or 12 of us, and we decided to join the Polar Bear Plunge club. So we cut a hole in the ice with the chainsaw, about, I don't know, 6 by 8, and half a dozen of us jumped in the water. And it was an absolute worst decision I've ever made, but now I can say that I've done it and I never have to do it again, and I have pictures to prove it.

Chris

Barron: So if I heard that story one other time, I think maybe, and wasn't there one person that just about had hypothermia?

Brandt

Fehl: Yeah, so my best friend Josh, he went into shock a little bit and he stood behind the fireplace for about 45 minutes to get his body temperature back up, but he's kind of a wimp, so.

Chris

Barron: Well, you're definitely gonna have to make sure he hears this podcast. Yeah, I hope so. So sounds good. Ben, do you have any good stories or anything that you can think of?

Ben

Fehl: No, usually my kid outfishes me and that's just just fine. We were looking on the Fish Shack wall the other day and he's got all the biggest fish up there. And today he caught the biggest bass, an 18-inch smallmouth, and that's just fine with me.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, well, I can, I can attest to that too, because I've watched him since I've been here the last couple of days and he's kind of outfished you from what I've seen too. That's right. So, well guys, um, I think that's everything I had in my notes and I, I appreciate the conversation. I think our listeners appreciate just the conversation about what's going on in the farm. And I think our, our talk on the strip-till and our talk on collaboration and a little discussion on probably the most important thing, and that's the quality of life thing that you bring up, Brant, and Ben, appreciate that. And, and just being at the lake and being with family. And we hope our listeners can take some time this summer and enjoy themselves because we've had quite the year with a lot of challenges. And I know people have really been, been really stressed this year.

And so I think the kind of the message here is make sure to enjoy life, spend time with family, and we will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch. Thanks a lot.

Narrator: Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you've had a chance this summer to spend time away with your family, as we know how important it can be to a healthy farm operation. If you have any questions from today's episode, please reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. We'd also love to see or hear any good fish stories. We'll catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.