Memento Mori
R.I.P.
This week, I learned some sad news about a high school classmate passing away.
Wasn’t feeling well.
Went to bed and didn’t wake up.
Thirty-nine years old.
Wife and kids left behind.
Shit doesn’t seem right.
Out of respect for the family’s request for privacy, I won’t mention names today.
He and I were never the closest of friends, but I’ll never forget that first year when we consolidated with a long-time rival school, and he was one of the few who made me feel welcome when I was struggling with the transition.
We hadn’t seen each other in years, but the memories remain.
My heart goes out to all of those left behind and grieving for my classmate this weekend.
A Part of Life
A few weeks ago, I was riding in the combine with a fellow farmer when the topic of death arose.
Seems like all we do is go to funerals, my friend told me with a hint of frustration as he folded the auger back and sipped his midday coffee.
No kidding, I thought as I mentally tallied the funerals I’ve attended this decade.
Too damn many to count.
Forrest Gump’s Mama told us that death is a part of life.
Though accurate, it sure doesn’t make it any easier, Mama.
Stoicism and Death
Death hits each one of us differently, so I can only speak for myself when I say that it hits harder when it’s somebody your age.
Somebody with whom you shared the high school halls.
Somebody who grew up right alongside you.
It makes you look at your own life and wonder when your number will get called.
I hate to sound morbid, but it’s coming.
There is no escaping the final dirt nap.
Since losing my cousin and close friend in 2021, I’ve been following stoicism and using it as a road map for my life, and I write about it often in the FFT.
This summer, I started wearing the Memento Mori signet ring seen in the picture below:
You Can’t Stop What’s Coming
The Memento Mori ring reminds me that everything is fleeting.
Nothing lasts forever, whether life, a case of the trots, or cold November Rain.
This is all going to end.
Each one of our flames will be snuffed out.
When worrying about piddly things like whether or not I’ll have enough taco funds this week, Memento Mori reminds me that one day, tacos or no tacos, I’m going to die.
We all are.
You appreciate your tacos more with the subtle reminder that any taco may be your last.
The clock doesn’t stop ticking.
Memento Mori.
Live each day as if it were your last.
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” Seneca
Stuff You Should Use
This week, I want to highlight three tools I’ve found helpful on the farm in 2023.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the following products or services.
I wanted to share stuff, products, and things I would recommend to my kids or grandmother if they wore bib overalls and ran a farm operation.
I hope you find them to be as valuable as I do.
In the words of the Grand Tour’s Jeremy Clarkson, here we go:
Nutrien Ag Solutions Daily In-Depth Weather Reports with Eric Snodgrass
This past summer, when we couldn’t buy rain, and what little crop that had come out of the ground was rooting to China and trying not to cannibalize itself, this man kept me from pulling my last seventeen hairs out.
Snodgrass. Eric Snodgrass.
James Bond wouldn’t sound this cool reading about the Madden-Julian Oscillation or the Pacific Meridional Mode.
Nothing against local weather gypsies like John Wheeler or Too-Tall-Tom Scymanski. They were my childhood heroes and still do a fabulous job. The constraints of television hamstring their ability to live up to their full potential.
Snodgrass is your man if you prefer to keep the last of your hair or want to go deeper into the weather weeds than traditional television meteorologists.
Harvest Profit Farm Business Software
How many of you know your cost of production?
Many guys have a general idea, but I’m talking about knowing your numbers inside and out.
I’m talking about knowing your costs so well that when a bum nuts salesman like me comes to you and says you need to spray some Envita on your crop because Envita allows your crop to fix its Nitrogen from the atmosphere when the crop can’t get it from the roots, especially you sugar beet farmers who had to leave beets in the ground.
After all, without Envita, those leftover beets will tie up Nitrogen and rob your yields next year; you’ll know if you have room in the budget because you know your cost of production to the nickel.
Harvest Profit, the farm management software built a few years ago by a young wizard named Nick Horob and his team out of West Fargo, ND, takes the stress out of farm finances.
Horob is a solid follow on Twitter (X) as well. He shares a lot of valuable information and insight.
When considering inputs and investments on the farm, one should base decisions on the Return on Investment (ROI), something Harvest Profit solely focuses on.
This software is so good that John Deere bought the company in 2020.
Harvest Profit connects to the John Deere Operations Center, but you don’t have to run green equipment to benefit.
After spending a few weeks with the software, I can’t see why farmers don’t ditch the spreadsheets and Quicken and move to Harvest Profit.
They offer a fourteen-day test drive. If you want to impress the banker by knowing your farm finances better than your accountant, take Harvest Profit for a spin.
The Ol’ Summers SuperChisel
I’ve yanked around my fair share of chisel plows over the years.
I can’t say I’ve tugged a Bourgault, but I’ve chiseled with green ones, red ones, and even a blue outfit or two.
Like a ‘60s Hippie, I’ve seen some things, man. Done some stuff, too.
John Deere 610’s that broke bolts if you so much as looked at them wrong.
There was another. I can’t remember the number, but entire harrow sections would fall off like hay bales scattered across the field.
I’ve pulled some junk.
But I’ve also had the pleasure of working with newer stuff. One guy I worked for traded chisel plows every year. The guy went through chisel plows like I go through tacos.
As lovely as it is getting a new piece of tillage equipment, the old saying still stands: They don’t make them like they used to.
Not like an old SuperChisel, anyway.
I don’t know what they made these things out of back in the day, but I don’t think a Tannerite cocktail with a twist of atom bombs would scuff the paint on this thing.
Other than having to replace two tires and a short hydraulic hose this year, all we had to do was keep it greased.
A few cracked hoses and tires are to be expected. After all, this SuperChisel is as old as Alabama.
I’ve seen a few newer models running around the area this year but haven’t heard if Summers is still building them with the same rigidity as a Sherman tank, but I hope so.
What a rugged piece of machinery.
Take care of the Summers SuperChisel, and it will take care of you.
Keep on Diggin’
Life doesn’t happen to you; it happens for you. - Tony Robbins
Yeahhh, after you finish that field, park the tractor at the farm and don’t plan on returning.
I won’t need you anymore.
On the drive home, as his words penetrated my spleen, reality set in. Tears drizzled from my sockets as I began doing the maths.
How long would our forty grand in savings last?
Twelve years. Twelve crops. That farm was my world.
Learned most of what I know at that place.
It was gone quicker than a fart in the breeze.
How could he do this to me?
For years, that farmer promised me the world. Since he didn’t have his own sons, he would hand the farm over to me.
There was only one thing in the way.
He needed just one more crop, one more season under his belt. After that, he would retire and begin his succession plan.
That was back in 2009. It was 2016, and I still hadn’t farmed an acre. Farmer kicked the can until he’d made enough to retire and then walked away.
Washed farming from his hands.
Why didn’t I get anything in writing?
When I got home to share the devastation with my now ex-wife, she shared news of her own.
She was pregnant.
Now, how long will that forty grand last?
Not very damn long.
For the next six years, I bounced. A job here. A gig there. It didn’t matter where I went or what I tried. Automotive Service. Car sales. College. Crop scouting. Uber. Door Dash.
All the things. Nothing stuck.
After my 2020 divorce and subsequent bankruptcy, I took a hard look at myself, reflecting on my patterns.
Maybe it’s me.
Perhaps my life’s problems are because of me.
One day, two angry customers in the service department tore into me about a mistake the parts department had made.
That’s the day something inside me snapped.
No more.
I’m done with this shit.
Done with mediocrity, with only the scraps.
I was done with every waking thought about the job I didn’t want to go to the next day.
Done.
I jumped and trusted that the universe would catch me.
And catch me, it did.
I went to work. I faced the things I didn’t want to meet. I got comfortable being uncomfortable.
I returned to my agricultural roots, co-owning a seed company and farming with my best good friend.
I started writing, and for the past few months, I’ve shared a weekly newsletter about what I love: farming.
None of this would have happened if I still had that job. The one I was sure I couldn’t live without.
The job I let define me.
Weaving through the seven layers of hell in as many years taught me who I was.
Wading through the waste showed me what was important.
Losing that job and my identity was the best thing that ever happened to me.
We all follow a path, and often, they are littered with land mines.
We’re going to step on a few along the way.
There will be blowups.
The good news is these land mines don’t have to destroy us.
Instead, they leave us with a choice.
We decide.
It’s up to us whether or not we let the shit suffocate us or dig our way out.
Looking back, I’m glad I grabbed a shovel and kept digging.
Black Friday Bum
After finally getting a window this week to catch up with our fieldwork and a relatively uneventful Thanksgiving with the fam (no flaming turkeys, fights, or severed limbs), I took a day to see if I could match my high score in laziness, previously set on December 17, 2022, when the Vikings came from a thirty-three point deficit to embarrass the Colts.
I don’t remember if I got off the couch that day.
Black Friday didn’t earn me that new high score, but I was able to rest up for the final corn push next week.
Call it a win.
Anyway, I’ve had a couple of comments from readers regarding the day of delivery of this here weekly pamphlet. I’ve bounced back and forth between Friday and Saturday for a few weeks, mainly delivering on Saturdays because some weeks the farm consumes my time.
With that, please take a moment to answer the poll below, and after tallying things up, I will stick to delivering on the day that works best for the bulk of you.
Also, if you’d like to see more or less of something in the FFT, please mention it in the comments section below.
As always, thank you so much for reading. I hope you all enjoyed a festive Thanksgiving.
Finally, here’s that survey:
If I had the lay of the land that you do I would ridge exclusively
A true chisel, at 8 to 12 inches deep with a seriously high rate of speed leaves the ground in Ridges. If you’re going to tear up organic matter, leave it in Ridges. North south is possible. They warm up so much faster than flat ground. Also, moderate moisture far better.