The Farmer's Greatest Asset Podcast
The Farmer's Greatest Asset podcast is dedicated to supporting and empowering farmers by recognizing that their greatest assets are the knowledge, experience, mind and health. Hosted by husband-and-wife duo Jesse and Dr. Leah, this podcast combines their unique backgrounds to provide valuable insights. Together, they explore topics that help farmers thrive both personally and professionally. Tune in for a blend of practical advice, real conversations, while having a little fun along the way as they talk about all thing's agriculture and family.
The Farmer's Greatest Asset Podcast
Harvest Readiness and Farm Wives Club Reflections Part 1
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We discuss final harvest preparations including our new grain cart scale app for improved inventory tracking, and reflect on insights from the Farm Wives Club event about finding joy beyond productivity.
• Equipment preparations complete with preventative maintenance thanks to our trusted mechanic
• New bluetooth scale app will document bushels hauled and storage locations for better inventory management
• Crop outlook good but not matching last year's record yields due to disease pressure from wet summer
• Farm Wives Club featured speakers on vulnerability, joy, and creating community through shared experiences
• Wealth extends beyond money to include time, health, purpose, and community
• Challenge for harvest season: finding balance between productivity and enjoying the process
• Breaking screen addiction habits by creating alternative evening activities like reading or journaling
• Last year proved slowing down during harvest led to better experiences without delaying completion
If you have questions or topics you'd like us to discuss, reach out at farmersgreatestasset@gmail.com or find us on social media at Farmers Greatest Asset.
Harvest 2025 Preparation and New Tools
Speaker 1the farmer's greatest asset podcast. We believe the farm's greatest asset is the farmer their knowledge, experience, mind and health. But welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2I'm jesse and I'm dr leah, dr Leah.
Speaker 1Welcome to fall and welcome back from the Farm. Wives Club babe.
Speaker 2Thanks. It was such an amazing weekend. Good Like words cannot even express so many takeaways. First, I would like to talk about where we're at right now.
Speaker 1Where are we at?
Speaker 2Well with the harvest and that's upcoming.
Speaker 1So, yeah, the harvest 2025 is upon us, or at least we'll be starting very, very, very soon, very soon.
Speaker 2Like today Possibly. Tomorrow.
Speaker 1Possibly. Yes, we are starting. Last few little tidbits on the combine Found a few minor little things we got to take care of because the neighbor found theirs. So thank you neighbor Bob and Dusty for pointing it out. So we inspected ours a little closer.
Speaker 2It's like a little bit of prevention, right.
Speaker 1Right. I don't think it has stopped us or you know, but it's one of those things what if something would have broken in the middle of fall? We could have prevented it. So we are doing some preventative measures at the moment. So should be finished with that this afternoon and got a new scale app on our grain cart. So we want to calibrate that and have it dialed in as close as we can, because it's uh that and have it dialed in as close as we can, because it's, uh, gonna help us document bushels.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think for me and also for you, like with all of the marketing, it was still. You know, we knew what the combine said, but it was kind of guessing like how much is left and how much do we have left and how much do we have left right how much do we have left Right.
Speaker 1So this app will it'll document actually it'll go down to how many bushel every truck hauled and where that bushel went to, so then we can have an inventory on hand of what's in the bins. So with us bagging as well, it'll give us an inventory of what's in the bags. So every time you start a bag, you can enter the destination. Essentially so it'll be. I'm excited to have it.
Speaker 2Actually, I'm starting to wonder why we didn't do it a long time ago right, because this scale came off of a piece of equipment we already had not well.
Speaker 1So the grain cart had a scale on it, but the scale head we had on had an extra one on a feed wagon that we're not using at the moment, so it's a bluetooth scale head and then it connects to your tablet and then you have the app on your tablet right, so it was like pretty much paid for already, which is awesome.
Speaker 2Yeah, I love it when we can find good uses for things we already own.
Speaker 1Right. But because we have that app and we want a really precise inventory count, we want to. It's going to take us a while to calibrate, so we're probably going to have to take us a while to calibrate. So we're probably gonna have to load a truck, go weigh it and then enter that number into the, the app, so probably have to do that multiple times, just so we have a good calibration set.
Speaker 2So I'm excited too, because we, you know it's something that I can keep track of in real time as well for our records, right?
Speaker 1It'd be good. We've got that going on. So, yeah, things are probably going to start this afternoon Once we get to combine back. Everything is ready to go at the moment.
Speaker 2So have we ever had that before? Have you ever started harvest and been like I think we're ready?
Speaker 1No, usually that's one I'm pretty excited to get to, so usually everything's ready.
Speaker 2Dialed in yeah.
Yield Outlook and Crop Conditions
Speaker 1We always talk to our mechanic. Thank you, bill and Megan. We always talk to him fairly early to get the combine inspected. So because Bill's very good and very particular and he's inspected every combine we've had since I can remember he used to work at the dealership when our family owned it and then he went out on his own and we have continued to use them. So it's good when you can have a good inspection done by somebody you trust. And he's very thorough.
Speaker 2And takes care of everything.
Speaker 1And that's his comment Take care of the little things right now. So then in the season not to say that nothing ever breaks in season but you can avoid a lot of small problems that cause a lot of big downtime during the fall.
Speaker 2Yeah, and we had a big old old hole in our corn net. That got all patched up and ready.
Speaker 1And corn was so good. Last year we rubbed a hole in the sheet metal, started dumping it out the bottom. What the heck had to feed the deer.
Speaker 2I remember that day.
Speaker 1It was weird. The yield monitor was running crazy high and all of a sudden it's like we're losing 50 bushel right Right now. What happened?
Speaker 2Yeah, so ready for the fall. And I thought, you know we've had some cooler, cooler weather and we were kind of going more down that path and here we are, it's going to be hot again. I mean, we knew it was coming, but I guess I had hoped we were in the fall for good indian summer, I think they call it.
Speaker 1You know it gets hot late, but things are turning fast. The southern rust and all the other northern and the other funguses are drying, drying the corn stock down. So my concern is stock quality is going to go downhill quickly. So I would suggest that you can, if you got a dryer and you can handle some 25% corn, to try to get some out, because if you wait too long there's anthracnose there, so it's the stock is going to break if you wait too long, and picking it up off the ground is no fun.
Speaker 2So that makes for a very long fall.
Speaker 1Right. So luckily enough, we have a dryer system and that's why we put in a dryer system to get a good start and get some taken care of early.
Speaker 2What are your outlooks for the fall? What? What are you seeing, what have you heard and where do you see it all ending?
Speaker 1in terms of yield yeah it's good.
Speaker 1It's not as good as last year and it depends where you're at too, if you sprayed fungicide, didn't spray fungicide. Talking to some people and they travel around it's from southeast iowa to central iowa up to wisconsin. Fields are brown everywhere, just like they are here, and that's just disease pushing along a little quicker. So because of that we're going to take we've definitely taken the top end off, but it's still going to be good. I don't think it's as good as last year. Last year was a record year. I've pulled some years and it's still really good.
Speaker 1Our ear weights are, I mean, good, I don't know, I guess we'll see. I'm not going to say we still have as good a course last year. Just cause all the the disease, just the wet summer, that it helps breed disease. But we've done a lot of extra measures, done a lot extra sugar, sugar, little extra boron, just a lot of extra foliar stuff to try to mitigate the it drying down so fast, because everything got so dry last year, even corn. By the time we were done it was 12 percent. We're trying to retain some moisture. I would like to think we're doing that. You get out in the middle of the field. There's still some green stock in there and the earweights are still pretty good. Give me two months and I'll tell you.
Speaker 2This is the exciting time right. It's the anticipation of what's out there. I think farmers live for this time of year because they have been cultivating and planting and tending to their seed.
Speaker 1This is the payoff. We have done a lot of extra things and with those extra things we haven't spent extra money, honestly. So it'll be an interesting year, Excited to get out there.
Speaker 2Just one more year in our experimentation called farming Right.
Speaker 1Yeah. So you said has there ever been a year that we're ready? Uh, in the recent years, two years ago was the one year we probably weren't quite ready yeah, that would be an understatement.
Speaker 2That year you were really ready to get out of the house, but yeah, right.
Speaker 1so equipment wasn't quite ready and that was when I was hurt in 2023. But I do remember we got that lift put on the combine and we got up there or I got up there and ready or not, we were going and we picked some corn that afternoon. Not much, but we did it.
Speaker 2Well, and I think that it was actually a very important lesson learned. Like everything, it doesn't. You don't have to have everything in order and already all the time. Not that getting it ready is something you shouldn't do, but you. I think we all learned how we you can really figure it out as you go along.
Speaker 1That was a year of just survive. Do what you got to do and survive, and we did it. We got through it.
Speaker 2And here we are. It was really amazing to me. I left Friday afternoon and got back Sunday evening when I went to Farm Wives Club. The change in the corn in those two days was tremendous. So it was down in troy, missouri it was, you know, two and a half hours from here. It the change.
Speaker 1I couldn't believe there was so much change in the crops in two days so kylie epperson put on facebook sunday, monday, tuesday, something like that, and she literally said it was the pre-party for. Harvest because they're combining beans.
Speaker 2So Farm Wives Club. It was an amazing weekend. First, I want to thank Kylie and all of the speakers that were there. It was a truly memorable experience and, I would have to say, life-defining for me. It felt so good to be in such wonderful community with a bunch of women who live the life that we live. Although every farm is different, we all have that common ground. Probably one of the things that was very obvious that I never really thought about was how many farmers are married to teachers and healthcare workers. I there were. There were a couple of ladies in there that you know are in the financial world, but most almost everybody was either a farmer like the wife farmed as well or was in the ag field, and then it was, I think, healthcare workers and then teachers.
Speaker 1Interesting.
Speaker 2Yeah, I thought that too.
Speaker 1I wonder what the correlation is there? A lot of ag schools have nursing schools and teaching departments.
Speaker 2I think it actually is. Maybe more the personalities that go into that field are more well adapted to living the lifestyle, because those are similar lifestyles and especially healthcare. Healthcare is a very similar lifestyle to farming, so I think it kind of flows together. It was interesting and I think teaching, you know like there's a lot it isn't like the whole education process kind of is very much related in the farming as well. So the egg field really leads to a lot of that. But it was that was it was that was fascinating to me. Lots of teachers like Kylie was a teacher. One of the other ladies that helped put on the business portion, emily, she was a teacher. Now they are doing their own thing and stepping into their own abilities.
Speaker 2But Friday night we had a wonderful speaker, devin Fenner from Fenner Farms. She showed tremendous bravery and vulnerability and got up and shared her story of farm life, how she really got into a bad spot with herself and then how she found some deep faith not only in God to reach out for help, but she found the faith in herself to step through all of her vulnerabilities and really grow into such an amazing, beautiful person. It was a wonderful talk and I don't know that there was a dry eye in the house that night, like she put herself out there in a way in that community that was it touched my heart forever. In that community that was it touched my heart forever. It was awesome. So thank you, devin, for sharing that. And then Kylie Epperson she's the founder of Farm Wives Club. She talked about bringing your unique experiences and building community through delving into your own battles and your own experiences and sharing that with the world, because we all need to see that we are not the only ones. It was. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1that was a lot of fun so there's a I mean what she is doing and what we're doing is we're all trying to help farmers together.
Speaker 2Grow community.
Speaker 1You've been glowing since you've been home, I mean it's just been good. Good to see that there's other farm wives out there and you connected with them.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was fun, you know, sitting by different people and we had to interact with each other and get to know more people. So you know you didn't just go there and be all introspective, it was a lot of sharing as well. So that was a lot of fun, Just really seeing. I wouldn't say there were some games that were played to see how much you have in common with someone else, but then how unique you are in and of yourself as well. Right, there was a speaker, coach Kaya. She talked about the quest for joy, and my greatest takeaway from her was and I'm going to read this because it was so powerful Our capacity to feel joy and happiness is directly related to the capacity to feel all the hard stuff, the grief, the sadness, the anger, the unworthiness that we have in our daily life, and by that it really showed me how closing yourself off and trying to compartmentalize all of those that stuff or even for me, like right now, numbing out with television or Instagram or those types of things how that keeps me from my joy.
Wealth Mindset Beyond Just Money
Speaker 2And even in trying to break those habits like we get in the habit of at night we're all tired, so we either have the tv on or we're on our phones or we go into a quiet room, and how. It has made me see how we need to be begin disrupting that pattern. Why not start a fire on the back porch and we draw or color or read or journal?
Speaker 2get a book and read a book, relax, yep and I think that's a huge thing that we need to change in our family because we are although those other things, like we may be mentally, physically, emotionally fatigued and how you feel more quote unquote relaxed getting on a screen I know I do I love watching TV.
Speaker 1We do, I mean I do.
Speaker 2But it doesn't fill your cup.
Speaker 1No, your phone's always right there. It's convenient, it's. I've found myself doing it while you were gone and I wanted to sit down and just watch some football, cause I don't get to sit down and watch football a lot, and then all of a sudden I'm staring at my phone. It's like well, put the phone down. It's become habit, it's become an addiction.
Speaker 2Yeah, and something you don't even realize has taken over, like on your phone. It will tell you how many times you pick up your phone, Right? It makes me feel like I should put a watch on, not without any electronics, so because I'll be like, well, I'm just, I was, I'll find myself like what time is it? And then I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 1You forgot to look at the time. I do that all the time when I'm like I want to look up the markets today. And you flip up your phone and all of a sudden you're not even looking at markets. You're like wait a minute. How long have I been all depend on social media to promote us or put good stuff out there or whatever, but it sucks you in. It does.
Speaker 2So that is one pattern disruption that I would like to break with us and I think it will really help fill all of our cups and we will feel more connected because within our home. But we don't necessarily have to be doing something together, but we can be together. So thank you, coach Kaya, for that inspiration. The financial gal, sadie Schweers I may butcher some of these names, so if I do, I'm sorry. She really talked a lot about identifying your current money mindset. I thought it wasn't a talk on, oh, you need to make sure you market your grain at this or you need to invest in this. It was all about money mindset, which I have been aware of for years but is still an ongoing shift for me. But one, actually two big takeaways I have. Wealth is more than just money. More than just money. Look at wealth as a wealth of time, as a wealth of health and a wealth of purpose, because when you are looking for wealth in those areas, it will lead to the money.
Speaker 1You find what?
Bringing Joy Back to Harvest Season
Speaker 2you're looking for, that's for sure. Well, and if you don't really make good use of your time and good use of your health and good use of the true purpose for what you're here, it's always going to feel like a struggle because you're out of alignment and then you just push the flow of money away from you. It was, it was, that was. It was a really true nuance that developed to me from what she was saying. And another thing that she brought to us which I found extremely interesting is creating your own ecosystem of wealth, right? So how are you growing each of those things? Like what environment are you putting them into right? So, how are you and you know I love nature and the world so how can you create this ecosystem of wealth and and remove that whole money portion of it? But how are you nurturing you know it's like you nurture your soil how are you nurturing your ecosystem of time and health and purpose and community?
Speaker 1That's good stuff. Look for the blessings every day. I mean, you find what you're looking for. But when you use that mindset, that changes your perspective. I like that.
Speaker 2Well, and a challenge for us in this harvest season. You know where you're filling. Filling the bin is how to not get lost in the productivity of it. Like you and I, we are really always focused on more. You know, producing more, producing more, and that drive how can we?
Speaker 2You know, last year we took some definite positive steps in the whole resting, making sure that we were, you know, keeping on a good schedule. How do we bring the joy? You know we brought joy back in, but how do we bring the joy? You know we brought joy back in, but how do we really bring the joy back into farming and it not be about getting the crop out of the field so fast? And I think it's really. You know, as we were talking, I think it's going to be a real challenge because we are going to be on a time limit this year. You know, last year it was a lot more time because the yields were high, but this year we're going to have that pressure of dry beans. We did have that last year, but the beans drying but now the corn breaking. So we have to find that happy balance. I think that will be a challenge this fall.
Speaker 1Well, no matter. I mean the extra acre in a day doesn't change the end picture, honestly. So that's when I say you need to get after it.
Speaker 2it's probably starting sooner, not necessarily running longer and harder that happened since your rebirth of the injury, which I am so grateful for. It, like last fall, was pleasurable in ways that it had never been before, and I'm super I'm. I don't know that I've been this excited to step into a harvest before.
Speaker 1Really.
Speaker 2Mm.
Speaker 1Cool.
Speaker 2I think you and I are at much different places, even than we were last year.
Speaker 1We are for sure.
Speaker 2So much has come about and so much growth has happened, so I'm really excited. I don't know that I've been excited for harvest before.
Speaker 1You have never been excited for any field work season that's really great so, with harvest upon us, I guess one thing that I just want to say before we leave leave you today is that, uh, slow down a little bit, it's okay. Um, like we were just saying, last fall was completely different and that was because we slowed down. We had good meals. So meal prep is huge. Just get good nutrition in you and it's okay to stop a little early or earlier than you normally would it's okay to sleep or earlier than you normally would it's okay to sleep Right?
Speaker 2And calm your mind.
Speaker 1We have said it before Last year we didn't get done really any later than we normally would have and we quit at a decent time. So it'll help you get some family time, It'll help you get some sleep time. It'll just be all around, good for you, promise. So with that, thank you for listening. You can go find us on all the socials at Farmers Greatest Asset.
Speaker 2And if there is anything that you would like us to discuss, if you have any questions about what we talked about today, feel free to reach out. We appreciate everyone that has done so thus far. Our email is farmersgreatestasset at gmailcom, and with that it's a good day to have a great day. Bye.
