Why Your Greatest Asset Might Just Be You!

This episode highlights the profound connection between farming and personal health. We explore how farmers' well-being directly impacts their productivity and farm management. 

• Introduction of Jesse and Dr. Leah Steffensmeier 
• Discussion on how a farming accident revealed gaps
• Importance of transferring knowledge and creating procedures for farm continuity 
• Exploring functional medicine and its relevance to farming health 
• The broader agricultural community’s shared struggles and support system 

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Transcript

Introduction to the Farmer's Greatest Asset

Jesse 0:14

the farmer's greatest asset podcast. We believe the farm's greatest asset is the farmer their knowledge, experience, mind and health. Welcome to the very first episode of the Farmer's Greatest Asset. I'm Jesse.

Leah 0:40

And I'm Dr Leah.

Jesse 0:41

We're here to talk about something we're really passionate about.

Leah 0:49

Connecting agriculture to health and my love of farming and helping farmers. I'm Dr Leah Steffensmeier. I practiced obstetrics and gynecology for 17 years in rural Iowa. I retired about six years ago and my focus now is connecting agriculture to health and wellness and improving the health of farming families.

Jesse 1:08

I'm. Jesse Steffensmeier, I , grew up on the farm right here, three miles down the road from where we live at now in West Point Iowa, went to college, got a degree in kinesiology and athletic training, did my master's work on sports psychology and got a job then with an orthopedic implant company and, doing that job, moved home and since have come back full time to the farm while doing that job. And here we are we're raising three kids on the farm. We both, at least I think we both moved home to the area because we wanted to raise kids the way we were raised on the farm.

Leah 1:48

Well, I thought I would be like a lonely Spencer lady, so I moved back. I thought I'd be single the rest of my life. But I met you, honey. It was wonderful. You changed my life. And here comes the sun, here comes the sun.

Leah 2:03

You changed my life and here comes the sun. Here comes the sun that is right on your face.

Leah 2:09

Yes, it is Wow that was. I know what's God trying to tell us.

Jesse 2:15

Wow, hi God, that was pretty amazing. Actually, it was a spotlight right on you.

Leah 2:23

I know, here it comes again. I guess, what am I supposed to be telling everyone?

Jesse 2:29

Something yeah, wow.

Leah 2:31

So I am very much passionate about functional medicine, which is teaching people how to heal their bodies through nutrition, physical health, sleep hygiene and also stress management, and I truly believe that if we give the body what it needs and have the right mindset, we can heal anything within ourselves. So I want to help teach people how to do that.

Jesse 2:59

And I myself just obviously moved back to the farm because I love it. So then, with you know my degree in kinesiology, athletic training and sports psychology I just have a deep I guess not a need, but I just a passion for helping people. But I also love farming and I know as well as you like what we put in our bodies is put good in. You get good out the farmer's greatest asset. How did we get here and how did the farmer's greatest asset come about? So we've been farming for 15 years, full-time, basically.

Jesse 3:31

You know, just been on cruise control and plugging away and farming, and in July of 2023, I had a farming accident where I got stuck in a trailer with some fat cattle and long story short is that, with a dislocated hip and a dislocated hand and probably a head injury shouldn't say probably I did have a head injury we learned a lot about what we didn't have, because farming it's all up here in my head. I tell you all the time. You need to read my mind, figure it out, right. So we learned the hard way that we don't have the proper systems in place for somebody else other than myself to take off with the operation, right?

Leah 4:16

Yes, because, if God forbid, something worse would have happened to you. We would have been completely lost. God really wants you to talk right now. I know I feel like I need to start dancing or something in the spotlight. You know me.

Leah 4:35

I love to dance. He's really shining on you, babe, I know I'm like.

Leah 4:39

oh, he must know I need the healing energy.

Jesse 4:42

This is the first podcast we've recorded, but we've played here a lot in this spot and it's I know I feel like we chose I must have something really important to say we chose 11 30 am to start recording this podcast, and he is shining right on you yes, download to me, I'm ready to speak it into existence so the story goes that I was laying in the hospital in traction waiting to have surgery to fix a dislocated and fractured hip and wrist and you were sitting on the you know my bedside and we had to do our crop certification because it wasn't done on july 10th it happened on a sunday, july 9th.

Jesse 5:23

And our crop certification, because it wasn't done on July 10th, it happened on a Sunday, july 9th. And our crop insurance guy. We were actually just talking to him yesterday, today's February 26th, so we were just trying to figure out crop insurance. Yesterday. He's like yeah, I remember that day I was, I was calling trying to get it figured out because I knew he hadn't done it. So the story goes mom had to bring this stuff to the hospital, so they flew me to Iowa city, which is hour and 15 minutes away um the university of Iowa hospitals. So mom had to bring the paperwork up and we had to muddle through it.

Leah 5:53

So then I we get home and so I will say like that we did not have it set up that I could go and handle it, cause you always just handled it and you didn't even. It wasn't just for us. You handled it for your parents most of the time as well, but they could go and do their own at that time. But you handled it for us and I didn't even have the capability of doing that, but I really was not going to leave your side to do it either.

Jesse 6:18

Right, but what was it like when I got home? I was non-weight-bearing so I couldn't walk. When you got home.

Leah 6:24

I was non-weight-bearing so I couldn't walk. When you got home, you were full care. Like couldn't get out of a chair on your own, like couldn't move Right Without two of us.

Jesse 6:34

Luckily we had a couple employees that were really good people and good employees. My parents are still around and then our kids, so they were able to just kind of muddle through the day-to-day stuff on the farm. But I remember Richard was his name.

Leah 6:50

He'd stop by every night and give us a report. It was wonderful he would stop and give us a report. It was wonderful he would stop and give us a report of what happened on the farm that day, go over things that they were going to do the next day and keep us informed, just to make sure that he was handling things how we wanted them to, because he knew at the time how our we were very much focused on jesse health.

Jesse 7:15

Right, but even at that time I guess you know better than I, cause I I don't remember a lot of it Was I even able to make a decision at that time? Like if he came over and said, hey, we got this problem, would I have been able to answer and solve it for him or tell him how to solve it?

Leah 7:33

Well, the big stuff, you know, that was routine. Yes, the deep thinking was more of a probably the the harder thing for you. And so he would come over and be like like kind of give his game game plan for the next day. And then it was like, yeah, and you would give.

Jesse 7:56

Have at her bud Right it was, you were.

Leah 8:00

I mean you were sleeping most of the time very unaware, and just you were. And I just kept thinking, oh, he's like in trauma response.

Jesse 8:10

He's still in trauma response and at the time I never thought he has a traumatic brain injury Right, I remember just being cold all of the time.

Leah 8:23

You were cold all the time.

Jesse 8:25

Wasn't eating.

Leah 8:25

You were not eating, so you weren't thermoregulating, you had no appetite and you slept all of the time, but it was not good sleep Like, because you were so uncomfortable we would have to move you from the chair to the couch, to the bed, to the chair, to the couch, the bed to the bed, to the chair, to the couch, the couch, the chair. I mean it was just every hour to two hours we were moving you, repositioning you. It was quite. It was quite the healing journey.

Jesse 8:57

So a journey. It was, um, and the journey has led us to this whole project, the farmer's greatest asset. Because we didn't have my brain on paper, we didn't have proper procedures and systems in place. Um, then there was also a friend of ours we lost, 54 years old, sudden heart attack. So his two boys were in the business, 21, 25, just trying to figure it out. They said they had everything planned but we've never asked. I don't know, I don't think they quite had it figured out, but anyway.

Jesse 9:31

And then ran into another gal, same thing. She lost her husband. He was 54 years old, unexpectedly and they have a teenage daughter. And I can remember we met her at a conference we were at and I just remember her saying I just wish I knew what he wanted, if he wanted us to keep farming. I wish I knew who to call for this, and I'm just trying to figure it out. And then we were on a Zoom call Zoom meeting with somebody and they looked at us and had no idea we ever that I was in an accident at all, like we were new to this whole group. We were in and they said Jesse and Leah, what would you do or what would happen to the farm if Jesse weren't here.

Leah 10:11

And I said well, it's funny that you asked that, because we came pretty close to that just this last year and, you know, shared our story and at that point it became very clear that the farming community I should say agricultural community not just farmers but ranchers as well.

Jesse 10:31

We got off of that phone call and you looked at me and you said we got to write that book. It was not a slap in the face, but it was like okay, okay, god, where's the spotlight?

Jesse 10:43

right, I mean he was telling us we got to write, write the book to put the farmer's brain on paper. Um, because we're always like, yep, it's all up here, I know what I want to do. And because farmers also, we just want to put her head down and just do the work, because we pride ourselves on being hard workers, working ourselves to the bone. So we started writing the book mid December of 2024 and it is February 26th today. The book should be coming out.

Leah 11:12

I think April 1st.

Jesse 11:13

We're shooting for April 1st, so that's just a small portion of what the farmer's greatest asset is, but that's what brought us to the whole concept. So then it's evolving into so much more with. You have always wanted to connect agriculture and health together. Because of your extensive background, you've started studying functional medicine, so we want to tie those together with my background of sports, psychology and kinesiology. So that means I was an athletic trainer and also a personal trainer, so we know that health and physical fitness and exercise is extremely important.

Leah 11:48

We also know what obstacles we have to those things and how we some of the things that we are trying to do to overcome those obstacles as well, to help you all.

Jesse 12:00

Right, so then again we're at another conference. We like conferences. We've hit a couple of this year We've we've been.

Leah 12:10

We put in our fair share of traveling in the winter because we like to travel.

Jesse 12:14

We were at a conference and there were three influencers you know they're on a panel discussion and all three of them said they have had the opportunity to travel coast to coast, corner to corner, visiting farms and different operations, and they said the farms themselves are vastly different, but the farmers were all the same. That's kind of what we've been saying is like we all have our own struggles that we're trying to deal with. We're all the same. That's kind of what we've been saying is like we all have our own struggles that we're trying to deal with. We're all the same. I don't care if you're in California or Iowa or Maryland, all of us farmers are still the same. We all want to put our head down and work hard and we think we got to do all the work ourselves. You know we're going to have a peer group that we're going to start that will have online courses and one-on-one coaching. You know, just weekly.

Leah 12:59

Well, journaling is going to be a very important portion of it as well, to focus on your mindset. So we'll help out with journaling prompts, topics ranging from some nutrition or how to go grocery shopping to how to incorporate more physical activity into your life. And and it not. You know, farmers are not inactive, but it's a lot less activity than what our grandfathers did. And although we are out, you know you're getting in and out of the tractor and moving around. We actually still need to be doing more on top of that and really a lot more stretching and keeping our muscles, our muscles stretched so we have less of those aches and pains.

Jesse 13:52

So that creates good mobility and joint strength. So we're going to be Resistance training.

Leah 13:57

Yes, we're going to be doing webinars just on various topics from health, mindset, purpose, overcoming burnout and things that we're doing to change our mindset and releasing some of our limiting beliefs about what we actually can do on our farm.

Jesse 14:26

Through my whole journey of healing and growing. I didn't walk for nine months, so I had a lot of time to sit and reflect. You have done a lot of coaching and one-on-one work and a lot of growth mindset building. So, you would always say, to me became very apparent this is happening for us, not to us. So that made me think a lot, and then I would wake up every day and read this sign about basically being thankful for the day and being here. So throughout the whole Farmer's Greatest Asset and the podcast and everything that we're doing, we'll share more of our stories and what we have gone through, what has worked for us to grow personally.

Leah 15:08

And some of the pitfalls, some of the failures that we've had, because we all have them.

Jesse 15:12

Right you don't grow unless you have some sort of downfall. It's very rewarding when you get through the struggles and you come out the other side. Those struggles make us who we are really.

Leah 15:24

Well, you won't have growth if you don't struggle right. If you don't have some, you gotta have some pain to get some gain, and it is either you can stay in your struggle or you can grow out of it.

Jesse 15:38

So there'll be a lot more to come. There's obviously a lot more to share my journey, leah's journey, my, my healing I didn't walk for nine months, you know. So there'll be a lot that we talk about. If you get on the podcast and find us and there's something you guys want to hear about, talk about, uh, we'd love to hear it. This is brand new. It's all exciting for us and the idea is we just want to talk about farming and health and getting better and growing. We'd love for you to reach out. We're on all the socials.

Leah 16:07

We'll have a website up soon. This is actually just the beginning. We're going to go into what it is to be healthy, strong and really find your purpose within agriculture.

Jesse 16:25

Go, follow us. Hit the share button, tell all your friends, look us up. That's the best way to help us out, to help you guys.

Leah 16:32

Have a wonderful day.

Jesse 16:35

Thanks for joining us.