The Joe Paulson and Andy Hruby story

Joe

Paulson: Hi everybody, this is Joe Paulsen and Andy Ruby with the Ag View Pitch. And today we're going to— I guess, I guess we're going to try and expand upon the Andy Ruby and Joe Paulsen story. How's it going today, Andy?

Andy

Hruby: It's going good. How are you, Joe?

Joe

Paulson: Lovely.

Andy

Hruby: Another rainy day.

Joe

Paulson: Another, another rainy day.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, that's, uh, same here. You know, it's no point in even talking about how much rain we've got. It's, uh, it's just too much. So one of these days it'll all come together. Um, not too stressed out about it yet. We've been able to have a nice start, but, uh, just as the calendar days tick away, just feels like, uh, the pressure starts coming on that every— all this work's gonna compound on top of each other. But we'll, uh, we'll manage through it. We always seem to.

Joe

Paulson: Yep, yep. That, uh, that kind of feeling of pressure rising, pressure rising, you know, as the days click off and the rain forecast gets worse and, uh You know, 2019 wasn't too long ago. Yeah. I think everybody's got a little PTSD from that in my neighborhood anyway. Yeah.

Andy

Hruby: No, I think that's a good point. But, you know, Joe, you and I were talking after our introduction podcast with Chris and Shay that we thought it would be a good idea to, to go into a little more detail about ourselves and what our operations look like to help give listeners a little better perspective. So I think that's what, what we want to try to accomplish today is to kind of open everybody's eyes up to what we have going on and, and what our operations look like so we can provide benefit to the listeners in any way, or if there's any similarities or things that pique their interest in what we're doing that they know a little more and, and know who to contact to help.

Joe

Paulson: I completely agree. I think it gives better context of, uh, not that we're oracles of information, but we have some experiences that we're more than happy to share and, uh, talk through. I mean, that's the whole, the whole point of Ag View.

Andy

Hruby: So, correct.

Joe

Paulson: Yep. So we're gonna start, we're gonna start with, uh, uh, drilling you.

Andy

Hruby: Okay.

Joe

Paulson: On, uh, what all you got going on. And we're gonna start, we're gonna start with college. Where'd you, where'd you go to, where'd you grow up and then where'd you end up going to college?

Andy

Hruby: Yeah. So once again, Andy Ruby. I grew up in Fremont, Michigan. Which is western Michigan, about an hour north of Grand Rapids and about a half hour east of Muskegon. So Fremont's claim to fame is the home of Gerber baby food. So that's where Gerber baby food comes from. A lot of small dairies, 80 to 200 cow dairies. There's, there's a lot of them up in that geography. As time's grown on there, you know, obviously that industry's been progressive and they've grown, but when I was growing up, that was a rough size. And then a large variety of crops from fruits to vegetables to row crops, a lot of alfalfa also. So growing up, I wanted to milk cows. That's, that's what I thought I wanted to do. My dad milked cows and got out of the dairy industry when I was young, but we always had a passion for dairy. As I went through school.

The passion for row crop farming really came on in high school working for a cash crop farmer in the area all through high school. And that's when I graduated high school, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted a row crop farm, didn't have a family farm to go back to. So I had to look for an opportunity. I went to Michigan State, got a degree in ag business management, did a variety of things in the summers. But probably the one that got me to where I'm at today was I did an internship on a large cash crop farm here in northeast Indiana, spraying and scouting. That was my first summer internship, kept in contact and my senior year, they said, hey, we want a day-to-day operations manager. To come in and help us. Uh, my dad wants to slow down. I really don't want to fill those shoes. I want to bring in somebody young.

So I had the opportunity there to come down to where I'm at today and, um, still do some work with that operation and, and help them on a kind of the larger scale decision-making stuff, input procurement, um, still do logistics in the fall and, and field coordinating in the spring. That was kind of my introduction to production ag, I guess, would be, you know, full-time on the farm there. So that's, that's where it all started.

Joe

Paulson: So, so, so you basically went right into, right outta college into essentially farm managing. Yes. Yeah. What, what, what was that like?

Andy

Hruby: Was that where you're like, holy shit, this is gonna be, you know, Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I look back on it now and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. It's, uh, I think everybody kind of has those thoughts. You, you think you do and you learn a lot quick. Um, I was lucky enough that the operation I was with was patient. They're willing to teach me on a lot of things, mainly around people management. I'd say that was the hardest learning curve. You know, the equipment, the crops, you kind of learn that stuff growing up and in school and things like that. But managing people's what really makes the operation click. And, you know, we use the analogy a lot. It doesn't matter if you go around the tree to the left or the right, long as you get around the tree.

And that really applied for us is, you know, there's a lot of things that I did that they wouldn't have done them that way. But at the end of the day, it didn't matter. It got done and it got done correctly and, and nobody got hurt, most importantly. So yeah, it's, uh, I've spent the last 15 years in full, full-blown production ag and, um, and, uh, I guess it would've been a year outta college. I had an opportunity to pick up a Channel Seed dealership. So that was my kind of value-added business. First business I had started on my own. Still currently operate that independently from the farm. But, uh, I just, you know, I moved to an area I didn't know anybody. I had friends in the seed industry from previous internships and had a passion for talking with other farmers. So I thought, well, this is a great way for me to get my name out and to meet a lot of people in the area.

Joe

Paulson: Oh, 100%. And, you know, going back to that people managing part, I mean, you know, that's— and your employer being patient with you and allowing you to, allowing you to fail a little bit.

Andy

Hruby: To be a little bit of a butthead.

Joe

Paulson: Yeah. People, you know, I've heard that a lot from different farmers about their, their kids. Well, I don't want them to fail. Well, you don't want them to fail big, but, you know, having, having some fa— fail— failure is a fantastic teacher. And, uh, you know, um, that's, that's fantastic that they allowed you to, you know, kind of grow into that role and, uh, be patient with you.

Andy

Hruby: I mean, that's what an opportunity Yeah, yeah, it, uh, was a great opportunity right out of school and you kind of, you know, jump both feet in and, and learn a lot really quickly. So that's, you know, I think that's really helped me get to where we're at today and be able to, to manage all the balls we're juggling is just starting young and kind of getting those, some of those once in a lifetime. And I shouldn't say once in a lifetime, those failures, let's learn them young. And then we can rebound quickly from 'em when we're young. So I think that's a lot.

Joe

Paulson: That does help a lot. So you also run a custom chopping business. Where did that play into? I mean, that seems like that kind of came out of no, nowhere to a point.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah. Yeah, it did. So obviously growing up around a lot of dairies, I had been involved in help with silage harvest a bunch growing up. Um, about a half hour to the east of us, there is a large dairy, and I ran into the farm manager the fall of 2014, and they were very frustrated with the current custom harvester at the time. And I just said, what are you guys looking for? Just, you know, just tell me more about it. And, um, he went into a little more detail and December rolled around and they said, you know, this is something I would be interested in if you guys are, are serious about looking elsewhere. And so, yeah, it was just kind of a snowball from there was we, we'd sat down and we talked more about it.

They told us what their expectations were and, uh, we jumped in with both feet, bought, uh, bought 3 choppers and mowers and mergers and hired trucks out and they had the packing tractors and spring of 2015, we, we just jumped in and said, well, let's, let's figure this out. We brought in a key employee and one of my partners today on our collaboration who had a lot of chopping experience working on custom harvest crews in Texas. So that helped a lot. You know, he kind of grabbed the bull by the horns of, hey, you know, man the chopper, I know what this is all about, you handle mowing and merging and some of the logistics stuff behind that. And it's just really been a team approach. So, you know, we started with that one dairyman that had 3 dairies. So that was our kind of our first key customer.

And from there to today, we've grown to 8 customers and we're chopping in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Um, we're very close to all those state lines. So Our furthest dairy is about an hour and 15-minute drive in the truck. So everybody comes home at night. Uh, I think that's really important for us and just seems to help a lot with morale is that everybody can at least sleep in their own bed every night. Um, I don't know if we're done growing or not. We're not actively pursuing more chopping work just for the size we're at. You know, if the right opportunities come about, yeah, we'll, we'll definitely entertain them. But we've, we've just grown it to a comfortable size that fits well with the farm side and with the seed business and the chopping, kind of the three together. It's just been a, been a nice mix.

Joe

Paulson: There's some diversity there. Yeah. Yeah. I like how you got talking to that dairyman and, you know, it's amazing if, if you give a person the opportunity to tell you their problems, they will. And, uh, you know, if you can provide solutions, there's generally money to be made there. And, uh, you know, that's awesome that you were able to, you know, seize that opportunity and then grow it some and, um, you know, add some diversity. Yeah.

Andy

Hruby: And it's, uh, it's really opened the doors for a lot of other things too. Just, you, you meet other farmers in the area and start a working relationship with them. For us, you know, we don't hire, or we hire almost all our trucking done. Actually, this year we'll only have a couple trucks on and the rest will be hired out. And the majority of those hired trucks are other area farmers that just from a timing standpoint, works out good. They can come help us for silage harvest and we wrap that up right before they'll start grain harvest, provides a little extra income for them and we don't have to, to put all that capital and equipment and come up with employees for 3 or 4 weeks of, of a super busy push. So that's, it's been kind of ironic how that's worked out.

And it seems like as we keep going down that road, more and more people reach out and say, hey, you know, if you ever need a truck or if you ever need a tractor to pack or something like that, you know, give me a call.. And, um, we've even, we even got one farm that, uh, had their own chopping business also and just said, hey, we took on a dairy in '22 that was more than we could bite off and just said, hey, you guys just wanna run together. Let's just, let's work together at this. And, and it's been great and we continue to do that today. So, um, a lot of, a lot of, uh, alliances, I would say, you know, they're not, not full-blown collaborations, but definitely a lot of alliances and working together with a bunch of operations.

Joe

Paulson: There's huge value in that. Kind of like you said, the not having to— well, you're, you're building this community of, you know, hey, we're all— yeah, we're competitors to a point and maybe some places, but that doesn't mean that we can't work together and can't benefit. And like you said, I mean, to have that many trucks to meet all your needs, you know, to hire all those people and then all that outside capital. It's like, you know, let's, um, you know, there's something to be said for, you know, when you hire somebody to come in, it comes with the machine, the man, the fuel. You know, there's a lot to be said for bringing people in. Exactly.

Andy

Hruby: And I guess, you know, to give a little perspective on that, we're running We're running 5 choppers and, and in the heat of corn harvest, it's 35 to 40 trucks every day. So there's, there's a lot of people involved. So that's, that's, it was, some of it was done out of necessity. Actually, I would say just about all of it was done out of necessity, but what it, what you do out of necessity, sometimes it's crazy. The relationships that are formed and what it really turns into.

Joe

Paulson: Oh, yeah. So, you also have, just here in the last year or two, correct? You've, you've formed another collaboration, you know, beyond the original farm that you, you know, originally went to work for. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, so an area farmer across the county in 2020 had a full-on transition plan. I mean, his plan was in place, had some great guys in there. Um, one of them gave him a 15-month notice that he was going to go farm with his in-laws, just a, you know, kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he couldn't pass up. And then the other one was, was hit by what Chris would say, the beer truck, and, and passed away unexpectedly. So, so here he was, 73 at the time, 70 '72, '73, and his transition plan was gone. We knew him, we'd harvested some of his crops that he had sold to a dairy farm that was right next door that we, that we custom harvest for. So we knew the operation some, we actually knew the junior partners a lot better than we did the senior partner. And so yeah, so Darren and I, and Darren's the one that helped us get the chopping going.

And he's, he's my partner in the collaboration up there. And we just went to him and said, hey, we, you know, we're interested, we're young, we want to, want to grow our personal farms and we want to work together somehow. And, um, I had met Chris at TPAP in the past and, and a few other meetings. And I, you know, I just thought, hey, let's, let's bring somebody like this in to help us figure this out. And so we did that right from the gate and, and we laid out the structure in 2020. And then I guess it was '21, we laid out everything and we took it really slow. So '21 would have been our first year farming up there on a very small scale. You know, he rented Darren and I each a couple hundred acres, said, hey, let's just test the waters. Darren worked for him hourly. Just to learn kind of the mechanics of the operation of Ozark. How do they operate?

Everybody's got their own little quirks and things they do a certain way. And just to kind of see how everybody would get along. And then '22 was full-blown collaboration. That winter of '21, we got everything legal done and entities set up and, you know, um, purchase to the equipment company and things like that. So yeah, it's, uh, it's been great. It's definitely where my passion is to grow the farm. It's just, we, we get along great and it's a good, good team, good communication and transparency that, um, everybody's kind of got each other's back. So, With that, I guess I'll kind of lead into the next step of where I'm at today was with the way that our chopping business has grown and this collaboration that I'm in, I realized that I need to step away from day-to-day stuff with my original farm employer.

And so at the beginning of '24 is when it took effect, but I, you know, I don't really have any day-to-day employee responsibilities, they report to somebody else, I help them in the spring and the fall with, with, hey, these are the fields that are ready to be planted, this is where we should think about going for harvest. I'll make sure that we have a grain storage plan, a crop plan, inputs are in place. You know, your, your whole chemical list, here's, here's the mixes that need to be sprayed. So I kind of just work on laying out the plan. And then they execute it. And so with that, and I do the same thing in our collaboration, really, it's, you won't see me in the tractor there. I'm more in the background and working on the marketing and input procurement and all that stuff, office stuff, which is what I like to do. And that's allowed me to free up a lot of time to work with Ag View.

Which was something I really enjoy, the equipment side of it, the profit manager stuff, and maybe even more importantly, the peer groups and, and being involved in a peer group, which we started in '21. Yeah, I think it was '21 that we started that. So the, what that peer group has done for our operation and for my wife Abby and I personally has been huge. So kind of want to pass that forward and help, help other groups and other producers in that process to, to bring the most value back to their farm as possible.

Joe

Paulson: Help people get where they want to go.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah.

Joe

Paulson: Or, or at least figure out where they want to go.

Andy

Hruby: Yep.

Joe

Paulson: Is there anything else you'd like to share about your story that you think you would, would, would be valuable?

Andy

Hruby: No, I, uh, I don't think so. I guess the only thing I'd add real quickly is I am a first-generation farmer. You know, my dad, he milked cows until the early '90s. And then he got out of it and took a job as a farm manager for Gerber, actually. So there was no operation or nothing in place for me to go back to. So from day one of graduating college, and still to this day, I said, you know what, I want to create the opportunity for our three boys to come back to the farm if they want to. But more importantly, if they decide they don't, we want to have an operation that we can pass on to the next generation. And that doesn't have to be family. If our kids decide, hey, we don't, we don't want to farm, let's, let's pay that forward to, to another young guy at the time or gal that, that wants to because that's what got us to where we're at was the collaboration that we're currently in.

And without that, you know, we we'd still be struggling more to grow and find opportunities.

Joe

Paulson: That's awesome. Totally awesome.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah. So I guess let's, let's transition into you. So let's, uh, we can start from the top. I think similar to how you did with me was, was college. So, you know, give a little background on, on your education.

Joe

Paulson: Yeah, so I, uh, graduated from high school in '98, and I, uh, you know, got accepted to Iowa State. I moved out there, um, you know, the fall of '98, and I, uh, went there '98, '99, did okay, hated it, absolutely hated college, and, uh You know, the first semester I was there, I started working for a farmer out in Boone and, uh, just, just loved it. I mean, I, um, you know, grew up on an 1,800-acre farm and, uh, we had hogs and cattle and, uh, you know, like any farm boy, just was absolutely addicted to operating. I just loved to operate, you know, that was, and I did a lot of operating for them. And, uh, so after my sophomore year, I just— I kind of had always done what my parents thought I should do. And I had this epiphany. I was working for Seneca Foods running a pea harvester, night shift.

And one night, in the middle of night, I just had this epiphany that I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do what I wanna do. And, and I quit college and I went to work for this farmer full-time that I was working for out, out there in Iowa. And, uh, that lasted through the fall. And my dad, uh, you know, had always told me that there wasn't really room here at the farm. You know, yeah, we had 1,800 acres, but it was, it was all cash rented just about. We had a small land base that we owned. It was all elderly landowners or mostly. And, uh, he just, he, he didn't want me to invest my youth into something that wasn't gonna turn into anything. It was, it was, it came from a good place. But after working on that farm out there, he goes, well, if you're gonna work on a farm, you might as well work on this one. He says, why don't you come back home and, uh, we'll just see what happens.

I make no guarantees. I can't rent you any land. You're going to have to drive truck and you're going to take over all, all the spraying. He hated spraying. So that's, that's what I did. I, uh, moved, moved back home. I enrolled in the local junior college, ended up loving that. I mean, got along fantastic there, uh, good people, met some, met some fantastic individuals, went two-part semesters and Got my associate's degree in ag business management. And then continued to work on my own farm or, you know, work on the farm here. Did, trucked for the local grain elevator. Drove a lot of semi and, and then in '06, we had a friend that just decided that he was going to retire. And so he, he, he came to dad and I and He rented me, uh, 800 acres and that was my start. And we, we just kind of evolved from there. And I got lucky, got really lucky.

That was the right at the beginning of the ethanol boom. So I had a, a nice tailwind and, um, you know, kind of helped me put some, you know, be able to put a little bit of a foundation underneath me the first couple of years. And, uh, and then eventually, um, eventually I, I, uh, bought my first self-propelled sprayer and I, I, I started doing some more spraying and, you know, started doing a bunch of custom spraying. I have a, had a, a neighbor that, that's about 10 years older than me that was a good friend. You know, he was a good friend to me right off, right off the bat when I first moved home. And he, he was doing a lot of spraying and he started giving me a little bit of work here and there. And I kind of got a taste for what that custom spraying was like.

So then I started spraying a little bit more on my own and, you know, then a few more things kind of came up with the farm and we started adding some more ground and, you know, things, things started to kind of take off.

Andy

Hruby: Gotcha. So, so talk a little bit about when you rented that ground in '06. How did you guys structure that? Meaning you and your dad and you were, I mean, you were working for him full-time. You get this opportunity to rent a significant amount of ground and be a good, you know, a good starting base for you. How did, how did you guys work through that?

Joe

Paulson: Yeah. Excellent question., quite simple actually. He, he said my, and, and this was my dad's idea. It was a fantastic idea. He says, I tell, I tell you what, um, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do you the same favor that your grandfather did for me when I started farming. And he goes, uh, you get to go find your own damn money. And, uh, Yeah. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, yeah, you can go find your own money. And, and he says, I'm going to help. He goes, I'll help, help you out a little, little, little bit with the machinery. So I did. I went and got my own operating note. I was able to use— at the time they had a program through the FSA office. You could go through your local lender. He was a preferred lender. They got a 90% guarantee from the FSA office. So it was basically the FSA cosigned with me basically on the note.

I was actually eligible for some interest assistance. You know, the first 5 years I farmed, I don't think I paid over 3/4 of a percent interest. And then on the machinery side, what my dad did is he goes, I'm going to pay you your salary. Throughout the year so you don't have to borrow your salary. And then at the end of the year, you write me a check back for your entire salary, and that'll be the machinery. And it worked out to about— I forget what it was— about $75, $80 an acre, I think, is what basically I, I, you know, ended up paying for the machinery. And I think at the time you know, Iowa State all in, all out was like $110,000. So he gave me a nice, you know, you know, I got a discount on the machinery. And then, and then the next year, we were, you know, we'd grown, you know, and kind of outgrown the 16-row planter we had.

We were running that sucker about 22 hours a day trying to get everything done. So I bought our first 24-row planter. And then I ended up buying our first front-wheel assist tractor. We had all four-wheel drives before that, row crop and tillage tractors were all four-wheel drives. And, and then, and then he stopped paying me my salary. And then I kind of started standing on my own. And, and then our, you know, we started weaving our terrible web of machinery., you know, uh, like every other farm, you buy this, I'll buy that, you know, we'll just make this kind of come out in the end. And, and we tried a whole bunch of different ways to do it before we landed on, you know, the Machinery LLC. Yeah.

Andy

Hruby: What was, what was the straw that kind of broke the camel's back on that? Because I think there's a lot of operations, including ours, that you start out that way. You buy this, I'll buy that. We'll, we'll work together, we'll swap, we'll trade. And then it, I think everybody gets to that point of like, you know what, this is such a mess. I don't even, can't even hardly keep track of what I own and what you own anymore.

Joe

Paulson: Yeah. Well, I guess what happened was 2013-14 timeframe, you know, when machinery values really tanked.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah.

Joe

Paulson: Um, my, uh, my dad, of course, all of his stuff was brand new, like, or, you know, or just about new. And, uh, he was, he was, he was pretty aggressively trading things. And, uh, you know, that stuff took a big hit. And, and, and we knew it and we talked about it. You know, we knew we needed to do something because what what we were doing is, you know, if I farmed, if I farmed 40% of the acres and he farmed 60, I paid 40% of the fuel bill, I paid 40% of the labor bill, I paid 40% of the repair bill, I paid 40% of everything. But we made our own principal and interest payments on our own stuff. Well, since I was a new guy, you know, and building, I had a lot of payments and, uh, but that still didn't represent like the— I didn't have 40% of the value of the equipment, you know. Um, and it wasn't 40%.

I was— the, the straw that actually broke the camel's back is I, uh, there was 500 acres that came up for rent. It's kind of far away and I rented it. And, you know, I went to my dad and told him after he got home from Florida, hey, I rented this 500 acres and that's really, really going to screw up our already big problem with this machinery. I'm aware of it. Let's get this figured out. So that first year, I think I just wrote him a check for a custom rate on that 500 acres on the stuff that he owned, I think. Yep. And then, um, and then, uh, you know, enter Chris Barron into the picture. And, uh, he, uh, helped us, you know, put everything in a machinery LLC so that the cost of that machinery was more equally distributed across all the acres. You know, every acre pulled its own weight. As far as the machinery went. And, um, you know, it just cleaned everything up.

I mean, like, we immediately had some clarity on, okay, this is what, this is what, what we have.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot, a lot of sense. Um, let's jump ahead a little bit and talk about collaboration and your custom spraying business. You kind of got a couple different things going on around those two areas. Why don't you, you dive in a little deeper in explaining what those look like?

Joe

Paulson: So, my neighbor, good friend of mine, you know, that kind of got me started doing the custom spraying. We, we would kind of help each other out, you know, if If somebody got a little bit behind or whatever, you know, he'd give you, you know, I'd give him a few acres to spray or he'd give me a few acres to spray. And we kind of worked back and forth like that. Well, of course, we both kept growing and it got to the point where the invoicing was getting to be— I was doing all my own invoicing. He was doing all his own invoicing. And you know, I, I, I had hired, uh, Sarah Werhane at that point, and we decided, hey, why don't, why don't, why don't we just work off of one chemical inventory? We'll just buy all the chemicals together. So that way, you know, because before he, he had his chemicals, I had mine. If he ran short, he'd come get some from me or vice versa.

And then you had to track all that and try and pull that all apart. It was a mess. So we, we decided that we're just going to buy the chemicals together. And we did that the first year. And we both did our, our own invoicing and then we settled up on the chemicals. And that was still not good. That was— that, that still didn't work great. So then, so then I came up with this idea, why don't we form an LLC that buys all the chemicals and then collects all the money. It does all the invoicing. It'll invoice us for our own spraying. It'll invoice all of our customers for the application and everything. And then whoever sprayed it gets paid for it. And And that's what, that's what we've kind of morphed into is doing, doing things that way. And that's actually working pretty good. We're in our third year here of that, of that collaboration.

And, you know, we, we apply nitrogen, we side dress nitrogen, we apply nitrogen with a floater, we do pre-emerge spraying, post-emerge spraying. And then, and then, and then we sell a little bit of cash and carry chemicals too.

Andy

Hruby: Okay.

Joe

Paulson: Okay.

Andy

Hruby: Mm-hmm. Where— what other doors has having your custom application business opened? Or, you know, what kind of— what's been your biggest eye-opener to, to the growth you've had there and the things that you've done?

Joe

Paulson: Two things. The first is, is the, you know, the volume, you know, volume. People like selling volume and they will throw good deals out for volume. So, you know, when we go in and buy 32%, you know, we're buying 2,400 ton, you know, you tend to get some, some decent pricing, uh, you know, for that. And, uh, so, so that's been huge, is, is just buying in bulk. That's, that's really saved us a lot of money. And then that money actually gets, uh, you know, we, we have a, we have a standard margin that we put on the chemicals, which isn't much. So then all of our customers also, get to, enjoy that larger, you know, it's the old co-op model, you know, right?

Basically, the other thing is, is that, it's opened some doors for, renting some additional ground, you know, you know, we have some, some guys that are getting up in years and starting to think about retirement and You know, we've already, by doing their custom spraying and nitrogen application, we've already, we've already established a working relationship. They already know us, they already know how we work. You know, there's a comfort zone there. And, you know, we've been able to rent some farms, you know, by, by just having started that relationship. So that's, that's my page.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, that's great. What, you know, kind of what else do you want listeners to know or things to be thinking about as we focus on your operation?

Joe

Paulson: You know, again, like, like I said in the beginning, you know, neither one of us are oracles of information., but, you know, we've had experiences and, you know, been able to work through some, some challenges and, and, and are interested in helping other people work through, challenges as well. And, you know, like with, with, with my neighbor that I have this custom applicating business with, we are similar size farms. And we've both are kind of bouncing on that, you know, maxing out a Class 8 combine as far as, you know, what you can comfortably do with that. And then, you know, you know, the next iteration to that is like adding a second grain cart to a 12-row combine, you know, so that the thing never ever stops. Well, you know, for each one of us to have 2 grain carts, we could just run the combines together. And then just each one of us supply a grain cart.

There's our 2 grain carts. We can harvest much more efficiently if we harvest together. And then I also do a lot of strip tilling. He enjoys strip tilling. I do strip tilling for him. He does some custom drying for me. He also, you know, pretty much runs the harvest show. Him and his stepson do an absolutely amazing job at it. And it allows me to concentrate on getting as much stripping done as I possibly can. And then I, I backfill whatever, whatever needs, needs to be done. Sometimes, you know, if it's raining, I'm not able to strip till I'm, in a truck or I'm in a combine or I'm working on something in, in the shop. You know, I'm just kind of a, a jack of all trades when it comes to that. But, you know, that's, that's, that's been huge. And, and, and we track everything. You know, if, if he does something for me, he gets paid for it. If I do something for him, I get paid for it.

Which we, uh, you know, we're kind of in that dating phase. Of collaboration. Our biggest challenge is management style differences, you know, uh, that, that's, that's probably our, our, our largest challenge. And it's something that you just, you know, it's like a marriage, you just always got to be working on it, you know.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, no, I think there's so much truth to that and so much importance in that, you know, quote unquote dating phase of let's, let's try this and see if it's going to work before we full, fully blown go into it. And, you know, I think, um, some of these previous podcasts that, that I think you and Chris had one last week on the 3% better, you know, that's kind of where my head went right away was think of the capital savings and efficiencies you guys have gained, you and your neighbor have gained just by teaming up some and working together. And, you know, it's little things like that that make a huge difference.

Joe

Paulson: Well, like even when I decided I wanted to start strip-tilling, I mean, that's like, to me anyway, it was literally like stepping off a cliff. And, you know, is this going to work? I'd never done it before. I had no experience in it. I had an old chisel plow that was just totally roached out, needed to be replaced. And, you know, I was able to, you know, sell the chisel plow and put all that money I would have done on that, put it into the strip-till bar. I still had this safety net of my neighbor had a chisel plow. If I needed something chisel plowed, he could help, help me with that in exchange for doing some strip-tilling for him. And I was able to,, you know, kind of streamline my equipment line. And he didn't have to buy a Strip-Till bar and go through all the, you know, buy all the guidance stuff. Well, he did.

I mean, he had for his planter that, that, that was a rough process of, you know, getting that all figured out. But in the end, it's, it's worked out pretty, pretty decent.

Andy

Hruby: Now, that's great. That's great, Joe. Is there any other last thoughts that you want to leave listeners with? Or I guess kind of as we wind down here, conversation between the two of us that we, that you think we need to add before we let everybody go?

Joe

Paulson: I think we're both open books. If somebody has a question or wants to talk through something,, you know, um, pick up the phone, send an email, you know, uh, we, we love talking business, you know.

Andy

Hruby: Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. You know, I think as, uh, as I got done, was interviewing you, you know, you think of just some of the stuff you've gone through and crazy stories and stuff we did and stuff that didn't work. It's, uh, we could go on for another hour. About, about each of our operations. But I think that's a good point of please reach out and let us know if you got questions or want more detail on exactly how we're doing stuff as we're here to be an open book. We're here to help. We've had a lot of help along the way and we're looking forward to helping others.

Joe

Paulson: Amen. Well, Andy, this has been awesome. And thanks, everybody, for listening. And we'll, uh, we'll catch you on the next podcast. Thanks, guys. Thank you.