Welcome to the Si Farmer podcast, podcaster. We talk farming, marketing, business tactics, strategy. If it's farmer to marketing, we're probably gonna talk about it all on the show. And today is no different, man. It's that time of year again. I love this time of year. It's springtime. We've just gotten past all the dog witch blooming. The last blooms are about to fall off the trees. I love that. And f afa, our alfalfa's grown. That is actually so far starting off, knock on wood, starting off to be a good year. Pretty excited. I'm behind on everything as usual. I still probably have three oil changes to do and, uh, filter changes and all that kind of stuff. Getting ready, still have, you know, equipment to get hooked up and ready for the field. And we'll probably be mowing next week or so. And it's, it's exciting. Good time. And I, I had somebody ask, they saw the podcast on YouTube and asked about my buddy here if, I don't know if you, if you see this, if you, if you watch this podcast on YouTube or if you're listening to it, but my dog sits right here next to me the whole time she's up here. You can see her in the video if you care to look, she's with me all the time, man. Good dog's hard to beat, man. Seems the more people I meet the bar, like my dog and<laugh>. Anyway, you know, I, I was, I was driving to store the other day and it's planting season so all, all of our buddies are out planting corn and soy, getting ready. Well, mostly corn. Some guys, some guys are trying to get soy in early. But, you know, I got behind a tractor and I got to thinking, I lived in Atlanta for a lot of years and man, traffic was horrible. It was horrible and I hated it. I mean, I got to where I, I learned, taught myself patience by learning to be patient and utilize that time. We've talked about it before, but you know, I had a buddy man, uh, he was asking about, you know, how I dealt with traffic and I was like, you know what? Worst traffic day that I get recently is, is, is planning season and harvest season when you get behind a a tractor. And, and it's a good time to talk about a few things about this that we can do as farmers to not only help ourselves, but help educate the cus uh, educate the public. And, but before we do, I wanted it to take a second and say, first thank you for following this podcast. We truly, truly enjoy doing it and really love talking to everybody. But during the hay season when we are so busy, like I said, we run a small forage farm, we're gonna cut back to every other week so we can keep providing consistent content. So with that, let's get into it.

I have a love hate relationship with marketing. Really, I've gotta do what all I

Wanna do is farm. Welcome to the Si Farmer podcast. If you wanna market your farm, farm-based business or craft food business directly to the consumer, this is the place for you. Welcome to the show. Today's podcast is sponsored by Little Tractor and Equipment Company. Now, I've worked with these guys for years. These are great guys and they really care about the small farmer carry a lot of lines of products, tractors and lawnmowers and all kinds of stuff. But one of the things they carry that's really unique is they carry used coyote tractor parts. So if you run an older coyote and are looking for an engine or a transmission for, uh, an LB 1914 or something like that, check these guys out. Go to little tractor.com and click on the used parts tab. Farm safety is a big, big deal, and I know a lot of guys in the, you know, that are grain farmers. They're talking about grain sa, you know, silo safety and that. And you know, there's guys like the millennial farmer out there who are big, big proponents of, uh, grain bin safety because it, it's a dangerous place. If you've ever been, if you've ever been in a, a, a, a, a silo with beans or corn or something like that, it can be really, really dangerous. But another place that it is really dangerous and it, it affects all of us farms. Like for me, we far, like I said, we run a forage farm. For us, it's transporting equipment. You know, our swather is 16 feet wide. You gotta move from field to field, and people get honked off a little bit when we're going down the road. And I mean, we're driving, you know, safe obviously, but you know, you're moving 25, 29 miles an hour trying to stay out of people's way while also getting our job done. And people do get honked off and they'll honk their horns. And I've had several, you know, creative gestures thrown my way, but we're just trying to do a job and we have to do it. And you know, people like to eat, so we do it, but it's, you know, it's a place that people who don't farm don't understand. And I mean, you know, when you get, you know, you're getting people who are honked off when you're just trying to move a piece of equipment a mile down the road, it slows people down and you know, and you, you try to, at least I do, I try to put myself in their position and understand they're in a rush. And when I come to a wide spot in the road, if there's a couple cars behind me, I try to pull off and let them go around. But there are times when that's just not possible. We run one field that, oh, we've gotta run down the road a little bit and there's no place to pull off. So once you get going, you're on that road. The fastest way to get people by you is to get to your field, get to our field as fast as we can, and then, you know, that's all you can do. There's no wide spots in the road. It's, you know, there's waterways on both sides. You can't pull off, can't do anything. So you, you, you just gotta do it. But people don't understand that and they get honked off and they give you, you know, you get some rude creative gestures, we'll call'em. And I don't get mad about it. I don't, you know, I don't get mad, don't, don't, don't reciprocate. I just wave at'em and kill'em with kindness, I guess. But I, it's important that people understand that it, it's a dangerous job when you're moving equipment between field. If you have a car running up on you at 50 miles an hour. I had a guy last season, not this season, haven't had the swather out on the road yet, but I've had, I had a guy come flying by me in a situation where had guardrails on both sides of the road. So there's not a, there's not a shoulder. I mean, this guy went flying by me, past me on the guardrail, and I'm running a really wide piece of equipment and had no concern for my safety or anybody else's safety on the road. And, and it, it, it's not just farm safety in, you know, we teach our kids and if you farm, you do too. You probably teach your kids, you, you gotta be safer and you don't wear things that hang around your neck. You don't wear jewelry when you're working on equipment you don't do, you know, we always wear, you know, uh, sa you know, you wear leather boots, you wear the right clothing. You, you know, you do all the typical farm safety stuff. But I think the general public also needs to know that, look, this is dangerous and we're feeding you. Give us a little bit of a break. And I think we as farmers and you know, people, when you're marketing your farm, you're on social media. This is an opportunity to, in a friendly way, remind people that you know, yeah, I know we're slowing you down for a couple of minutes, but we're also feeding you and we're trying to do it as safe as we can. We're trying to be as respectful as we can. At least most guys I know are, and we want, the last thing I want to do is, is make somebody mad warning, I, I'd rather wave at'em and smile and say, hey, sorry. And they wave back. But you know, you get those people that are for whatever reason, they have bad day, they're running late for work, whatever, and we're in their way. And I understand, but doesn't mean I can do anything about it. And I mean, the, the old adage is, you know, your poor planting doesn't constitute an emergency on my part. And that to some extent is true. When I'm trying to move a piece of equipment, I have every right to be on the road that, that they do. And this season, especially during planting season, when you have all of us out there, I mean all the green farmers are out there, we're getting ready for first cutting. So we're moving equipment around. Um, and you know, we have the right to be out there. I mean, there are roads too. We pay taxes on'em just like everybody else does. But when people get, you know, picture yourself, if you ever worked a day job, you, you get up and you're, you're going through your morning and it's a selfish time cuz you're thinking about what you have to do. When you get on the road, you're still in that mode of thinking what you have to do and what you have to do. And sometimes it's easy to forget what other people are going through. So, you know, it's a good, it's a good opportunity to not only, you know, communicate with your customers a little bit, but also if your customers are not other farmers, it's a good time to communicate. Hey, we are doing our best. We're out there trying to be as safe as possible, trying to be as efficient as possible so we're not on the road multiple times. We're being as efficient we as as possible. Not only for selfish reasons because every time we move a tractor down the road, it's costing fuel where and tires, but it's also time. So we're trying to be as efficient as possible. We are not trying to get in your way, but this is a good time too. In, in the course of marketing our businesses remind our customers that hey, we're doing our best. We're trying. And this is educating, you know, we talked about it a a couple of weeks ago about educating our customers a little bit about the process. And that's a good thing. We want people to understand our business and we've talked about, oh, our larger responsibility to market our business, but also to promote agriculture so that people understand where their food comes from and how it's done and their, you know that whether you're an organic farmer, which is fantastic, it's a wonderful thing if you can do it. Not everybody is in that situation that it's even possible for them because there's financial commitments and, and all of the things that we all know about. It's difficult and it's not possible for some people, but it takes all of us, all kinds of producers to make, make it work. So I, in promoting agriculture, we have to remember not to run, you know, just because I may not farm like you farm doesn't make me wrong or doesn't make you wrong. We're just different. We do things differently. As long as we're, you know, we're trying to do the right thing, we can all promote, you know, we can all agree that promoting agriculture helps us all and helping the, the general, the general public. Um, got a friend that calls him civilians, but he says helping promote the, the of what we're trying to do helps us all. And one of those things is during this time of year especially, is safety, understanding that, hey, give us a break. There are places, you know, when you drive, if you drive a car, you know, when you look in all your mirrors, you have a blind spot or two, remember an old car. My dad had hated driving that thing cuz you could fit a semi in the blind spot and you know, when you've got a tractor, actually you don't have as many blind spots, but you do have'em. And when a car runs right up, like I was moving my swather last year and there was car rode right up under the back end of my swather. Didn't, didn't hit me. And I mean, he probably wasn't as close as I thought he was, but I couldn't see him. There's places my mirrors don't quite reach when he slowed down a little bit, all of a sudden I saw his back there. I mean, you don't realize how fast that big machine will come to a stop and you know, it's hard to drive. I mean, people think that driving, oh, you're just driving a tractor, but 25 miles an hour, tractors are big pieces of equipment, they're moving as fast as they can move. They're, they can be a little challenging to drive. Most people don't realize that. It's like if you pull trailers, how many times have seen people cut you off in a trailer, not even thinking that you can't stop in 60 feet. Right? People don't, don't, don't think about it. I mean, if you, if you truck, if you're, uh, an o t r trucker or you, heck you drive a truck in on any type of a route, people can, people who drive cars can be just, just blooming idiots. They'll pull out in front of you, they, they'll cut you off. Not realizing that you've gotta, you know, what's a normal stop for a car is you're slamming on your brakes in a truck. And I think when we can talk about some things like that and use our, our marketing platforms where, you know, social media are saying that it, that's a good opportunity to say, Hey, just wanted to let you, y'all know, give us a break out there. We're, we're, we're working hard to get this stuff produced for you and it's hard work. Be a little patient with us, show us a little patience and in return we're gonna feed you. And that is an important, an important message that needs to get out to the public. And we can do it in a way that we can get that message out there. And that idea of promoting agriculture, promoting our businesses and helping all of us buy, just maybe helping somebody who has never farmed before, understand the challenges we're dealing with and maybe just, maybe they're a little more patient when they're behind us when we're moving a tractor down the road or we've got a planter on the back of our tractor and we're, you know, we're doing 20 miles an hour and they're in a rush. Maybe they give us a little bit, you know, slow down a little bit. They don't try to pass us in a, in a dangerous spot, you know, just maybe and those things that, that, that extends a little bit. It helps us, I honestly believe it helps the general public, the people who don't farm those, those non-farm people, it helps them because it makes them safer too. But maybe we use it to promote our business. We use it to talk about these things. Farm safety's really important and it's not just on the farm safety, which we are, we're always trying to teach people, but it's also how the, the the, the general public interacts with us when we're moving these large pieces of equipment around. And I don't have, I don't have, you know, some of the, like some of the grain farmers I know, man, they've got some huge equipment, huge tractors. And I know when it's planting season, when it's harvest season, when they're, you know, they're moving combines around a combine even without a heads 12 foot wide, 14 foot wide, you know, they're, they're really, it, it's, it can be dangerous for them, especially dealing with, you've gotta use the public roadways field to field. And it's beneficial for all of us. Had a, had a guy come out to our place not too long ago, and he's from Canada and he was here on some other business stuff, uh, with one of our other companies. And he had never seen a horse in person, had never seen a cow in person, saw him on tv, never seen one in person, had no idea. Walked up to, uh, we've got a little a hundred horsepower tractors. Our smallest tractor walked up to it and you would've thought he was staring at Mount Rushmore. He said, you can drive that. Had never seen a piece of ac equip, you know, been up close to anything like that. And it, it got, it gets you thinking that, you know, we don't all have that same experience in life. This guy grew up in a city, very rarely ever left the city. When he traveled, he went to other cities and stopped by here on his way from one city to another city, wanted to talk to us about business and stopped at, you know, we were sort of in that path. So he said, I'll just stop by and visit you and I well you're more than welcome. Come on out. Um, and had just never been around anything. It gets you thinking that general public doesn't really have any clue how, how difficult some of these things are to do. And we don't think about it. I don't think about moving a tractor down the road. I'd jump in and say, okay, let's move it. But the general public doesn't even realize. I mean, this is a hundred horsepower charger. That's a six series John Deere. It's not a big tractor. I mean, I guess it is, but it's not, you know, you're not talking duals, you're not talking, you know, huge tractors like we see now like some of the, the articulating some of the big tracked tractors. And this guy thought, you know, you'd have thought he was looking at Mount Rushmore and that, that it was just an opportunity for me. And I, I took the opportunity and I said, yeah, come on out. Look at some of this stuff, this stuff. So I got out, I actually fired a tractor up and took him for a ride because he had no, no idea. He said, man, you've set up so high. He said, yeah, but I can only run 25, 20 mile on that tractor. I can only run 18 miles an hour. And that's as fast as I can go. And you know, when you come up in your, your little hybrid or ev car and you're flying, you don't realize that, man, I can't stop on a dime. I can't, you know, this isn't an indie car. I can't, I can't turn a corner on a dime. Give me a little, just show me a little bit of courtesy. Stay back a little bit cuz I, I, I wanna keep you safe and I wanna stay safe and if you ride up underneath me, man, neither one of us are safe. And so I took him for a little ride and talked to him about the farm and you know, and he came away with a, what I hope was a little bit of an eye opening and we're, like I said, we're a small farm compared to some of the big grain farms around here. And I took him out in the middle of a field. He said, this is one field farm, about 15 or 20 this size. And he's, I've never, you know, there's most of the parks where he's from aren't that big. Yeah, I understand. Takes a lot of ground to be able to produce product, food, hay, which our hate goes to dairies and goes to cattle barns and goes to horse folk. Takes a lot of ground to do that. And he just was blown away. But that education that that, you know, it probably took me 20 minutes of time that I wouldn't have spent. And this guy, I think he's now a proponent and he'll tell all of his friends about, wow, man, I spent a day, I spent an afternoon on a farm. Wasn't expecting it. Had no idea, man, you can't believe how big these tractors are. Well you know what, that helps next time. One of those, one of those people who like to eat, you know, people who like to eat when they're driving through the countryside, maybe just, maybe they'll slow down a little bit. Give us a little bit of a break. And that's, I mean, if every one of us does that a little bit, marketing our farms when we're communicating with the, with the gp, the general public, educating them just a little bit, helping them understand that we're not, you know, I don't get up in the morning, get in my biggest tractor or piece of equipment and go drive down the road at 10 miles an hour just to make you mad. I don't do it. In fact, I work really hard to not do that. But a little bit of education maybe that understanding helps the person, the GP helps them have just a little bit of an understanding, maybe just maybe a touch of respect, just maybe a little bit of patience, which makes us safer, makes them safer, makes everybody just a little bit safer. And if we all take that, that time, that little bit of extra time when it, when the opportunities arise, when it's planting season, when it's harvest season, when it's hay season, which it's always, you know, in the summertime it's always hay season. But if we take a little bit of time to do little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit of education, it goes a long way. It goes a long way. And we can help ourselves, help others and in, in the end it makes our jobs easier. I mean it's one of those real win-win situations. If we do just a little bit of education just a little bit and every farmer does just a little bit, maybe just maybe we can make it safer for all of us. And with that go out in the world and have a blessed day. Good luck and God bless.