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Noah Newman:

Welcome to The Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, the first of 2023. Great to have you with us. Thanks to our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. We'll have a message from them momentarily. My name is Noah Newman, Associate Editor. On today's episode, our good friend Julia Gerlach sits down with independent crop consultant Jeremiah Durbin for our conversation about the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of soil health and how he uses his mechanical background to help troubleshoot some of those issues in the field. Let's get right into it. Here's Jeremiah and Julia.

Jeremiah Durbin:

My name's Jeremiah Durbin, independent crop consultant, currently still based in Southern Ohio. I consult in six states, Ohio, a little bit of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and a little bit into Georgia, so I'm no stranger to the highway. I get around and get to help with multiple different crops, different seasons, different everything. Seems like things are always changing. I do that on an independent basis, just working with the client where they're at. When I first started in this industry and then on my own is, what, end of 2016, beginning of '17, conventional because that was what was right around me before I started to outward grow in different states. 

As time has gone on, I felt like I don't have all the answers for the chemistry side of farming, but I knew that we were missing something, and that was the biological side, so I started searching towards that regenerative. I worked with conventional to regenerative, small grain, pastures, cattle, high-production vegetables, things like that, hemp and other things. Even dabbled helping with marijuana with the soil and the water and hydroponics and things like that, helping with the nutrient side. That's kind of what I do with the independent consulting.

For TACD on the off time that I have, because I have so much of it, I work with NRCS, USDA, and soil water, a partnership, and so I help farmers build cover crop programs, help them work on their soil balance, but then also do a lot of Haney testing. I've had a great privilege of building a relationship with Dr. Rick and Liz Haney and they're like family to me, and so I've learned that test in and out, understanding how that works. I feel like I have a gift for taking things from a PhD and putting it into a GED, and so a lot of farmers, they're willing to try new things because farmers are the biggest risk-takers there are, whether that's a fertility type, a seed type, whatever. 

When you can start to help them unlock for themselves, that's the hardest person to win over is yourself, right? I can talk to you till I'm blue in the face, but if you don't understand it or don't believe it, I'm not going to change you. Being able to work with those guys and help them in that process and that journey, because every farm, every production is different, so I'm able to work beside them. Where I work side by side with USDA and NRCS with that job, they know the programs and I know a lot of them now, but I don't hone myself in on the deadlines. No, I do with helping guys with termination, grazing, whatever. Yes, I do that, but I'm more focused on helping them understand soil health, that three-legged stool of the physical, the chemistry, and the biology.

Okay, so unlocking that secret, it's not a secret, but it's a secret until you know, that part is what I do best, helping people understand. I travel the whole state and I have a set amount of time I go and do that. Then, on the off time through relationships, I build a lot of new clients. Tennessee's definitely became a home. In the process of getting moved there myself, so spend a lot of time on the road-

Julia Gerlach:

Okay.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... as you can probably imagine-

Julia Gerlach:

Yeah.

Jeremiah Durbin:

.... but I'd say in the very near future here we'll be in... Our new home will be in headquarters, Tennessee. I'd like to tell you that I'm a T cross and I dotter, but I would be lying to you. I'm like your 20-mile-an-hour corn planter. Somebody else is gong to have to be the combine.

Of course, bring everything together, my wife helps me a lot keep this thing together. I've got some other really great friends in this industry, Mitchell Hora, TopSoil, Continuum Ag, Russell Hedrick, guys like that. We build off each other, and so we're able to kind of keep things in line. I joke. Sometimes I... Carolyn, which is the Agronomist for Continuum, worked a lot with them in their top soil tool, and I think she's almost like a work wife because she's like, "Hey, remember, we have this meeting," and I'm like, "So thank you." I may be on the road sometimes I'll leave and be gone for five days and I hate it, but I know that I'm building the future for my family, and eventually I'm going to slow down in some areas and really hone this out because I have five children. I have three boys and two girls, and I want them to all grow up and experience life as I have. 

I guess I haven't really dug into my past yet, but found purpose. I want to say I had a second gift at life. I broke my neck and went paralyzed in 2015. Previously, I was a mechanic. Came from a split home, but honestly, it was a blessing. It gave me the opportunity to see the best of two different worlds. Dad farmed and construction. Mom lived in town. My stepfather was a chief of police, and so I got to see how to work with professional business in the city urban style, Dad, the country life and the family and the friends that we would meet.

One of my first jobs off of the farm with my Dad when I was 12 was a dairy farmer friend of ours, and so when Dad and I wouldn't get along or I needed to go do something else to get away from him, I could go work for the dairy farmer. He did tobacco and he grain farmed, did silage for the cows and milk. I had that well-rounded side. On Mom's I did things, too. I did that, graduated high school 2005. I had a full ride to Caterpillar School. I was the first one from Southern Hills Vocational School. I had an instructor, Barney Neal, that was a great supporter of mine. I feel like he constantly kept his boot in my butt because I was a little stubborn, a little ornery. 

Even growing up when I was in school, it was a vocational school there the last two years. I took ag industrial mechanics and he was the teacher, so I would cut tobacco for him of the evenings. Then, I'd get sick of him there and then I'd go to school the next day, but it was great because those guys pushed me. I didn't really know what I had ahold of. I felt like a wild horse sometimes because I was just running in any direction I could to make money and figure out how it was. I've always had a passion for trying to fix things and troubleshooting and seeing how things work. It just mechanically came natural.

Graduating high school, I had a full ride at Caterpillar School '05. Graduated in '07 with that Associate's Applied Chemical Science and emphasis in Caterpillar. Right out of the gate, I worked for Cat. Worked in Lucasville at that location, worked at Cincinnati. Worked at Columbus. I got married in 2007, so right after I graduated college I got married, and so I had that journey with my wife. It's been difficult because in those early years, mechanic and... there wasn't a lot of jobs that was going to pay anything close to home here, so you had to travel and with Caterpillar, you went where the work was, so most of your highway jobs and that. It kept me away from home as well.

Quit over the road. Came home, worked for GE for a small period working on aircraft engines. Wasn't quite my cup of tea. I'm not an inside kind of person, but it taught me a lot about process and paperwork and some of that stuff I hate to do. From there, I went to the County Highway Department, Adams County Highway. Had an accident March 18, 2015. Got hit with a tree in a bucket truck, 25 feet in the air. Destroyed C6, broke two teeth, went blind in my left eye, half of it, and lost function of my right arm.

By the grace of God, I got it all back. Life still goes on, but I started looking at things in a little different fashion that I didn't want just two people or 12 people in that funeral room with me when I finally die. I'd rather it be a standing room and not be a funeral, be a celebration of life and friends that were able to be built through this journey of what I have left of life so that it brought people together and that they can enjoy that. Hopefully that's the legacy I leave and helping people be sustainable and successful in the same token. 

In this journey, so I guess I got to keep going here. I keep going back and forth. I broke my neck. I spent a lot of time with Ronnie Bonner, Bonner Farms, and a great mentor. I mean, the guy just... He's been there for me, ups and downs of life. We all have them. He never had a problem wanting to put a boot in my butt and tell me what I needed to quit doing, but he didn't give up. He didn't walk away and badmouth me and continually badmouth, so I got to tell you, I have a great love for that man. I wouldn't tell him because his head would probably swell. Really it wouldn't. He's a super humble guy, but he helps a lot of people. 

While here and being able to come because I was in a neck collar and different medications, so I didn't have the ability to drive and do things, but I spent a lot of time in watching his operation. It's about 45 minutes from here to where I live and seeing the farms and I know the people and how they've handled it and how they manage it. I'm like, "Man, some of this stuff's snake oil." They're continuing to do the same thing expecting a different result, and that's the definition of insanity, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Life goes on. I didn't know yet what I was going to do. I wanted to get back into ag. Well, because of my experience and working on the road, and I've worked with a lot of different equipment dealerships, John Deere, Komatsu, Cat, worked with a lot of different equipment. I sold for Company Wrench. I was East Tennessee salesman, so I covered from Jellico to Chattanooga, all the way to Johnson City, so the whole East Tennessee, and I had five counties in Southern Virginia. My job is to go around and work with these equipment guys, and I was supposed to be selling new equipment. I sold Kobelco. They're a good product and everybody has their place and their color and brand.

I found that I was building relationships and I was selling more parts and service because I would come into these clients and I'd more or less introduce myself, find out what they do. Pull from what they're doing and maybe something I would see or I've heard them say more than two or three times, something of a need for them, and then I would connect those dots for them. It's funny, one day one of my clients at that time was Tennessee Valley Resources, which supplies a lot of the East Coast in dolomitic, high-magnesium lime. Well, I'd rent them a little piece of equipment for their own farm and operation and build a really good relationship with these guys. Jay was the grandfather, and then Jake was the man that hired me, and they had a son Jared and two more sons. 

They gave me the opportunity for a job so I could be home, only travel one week out of six instead of every week because for a full year I lived in a camper or hotels except for the weekends. I took it. It lasted about a month and I'm like, "This is not for me. I don't want to sell rock dust." I don't feel like there's enough... that's just not enough to help a farmer be sustainable, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Because if lime was the only answer, I didn't want to sell something. I wanted to help people think and teach them to think, not what to think, if that makes sense.

Julia Gerlach:

Sure.

Jeremiah Durbin:

I Googled "independent crop consulting." I found Joe Nester, Northern Ohio, Nester Ag. At that time, it was Brookside Laboratories, and I called him. He didn't know me from Adam. I didn't know him. He said, "Yeah, I'll meet you at such-and-such date and a time." We got to talking and he said, "Yeah, I'll take you in," because with Brookside, it's a highly esteemed lab, very high credentialed. Somebody has to bring you in or you have to have great academics and things like that to get in. Here I am, I got started. I got Joe, but Joe's like three hours from me where I live, and so we would talk. I started an ag leader. With my experience with Caterpillar and Trimble, I did a lot of mechanicing with GPS, setting up grade and recording and all of that stuff. Of course, started in the '90s and made its way through. 

I had the mechanical side, the electronics side, the troubleshooting, and from that, it grew. I think one of the best things that I could have said when I started this company was, "I don't know, but let me find out. Somebody on the other side of this black box does." As technology has progressed, I started this in the worst of times for rain events, but the best of times. There's no perfect year. As I work with clients, I try to pull more samples in the spring versus the fall, unless they're just getting land or something like that, because I'm not chasing combines and working with frozen soils and that sort of thing.

Did a lot of that in the beginning, so it taught me the school of hard knocks. I learned what worked and what didn't. I grew with my clients, and from Brookside I met people like Mitchell Hora and Continuum Mag, and so I met the Haneys and just those relationships grew. Mitchell and I have done a lot together and he's way ahead of me by light years, but being able to bring these people together... Brookside now is going to Amplify, and so they have peer groups and connecting farmers, connecting consultants, pushing them, motivating them to make changes.

The biggest problem we have is we never set a date to do something. "By this date, I'm going to put new shutters on the house," or, "By this date, I'm going to get new tires," or just dumb things like that. If you don't challenge yourself, you're not going to change. It's too easy to sit here and stay the way you are, but if you want to grow or if you want to be more sustainable, you got to set goals and hold each other accountable.

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm, so let's talk about those three soil characteristics.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Three legs. I call it the three legs of the stool, and so the first are the physical. Okay, a lot of times we think we need a test or to spend big money to find an answer. False. It kills me. We've got farmers with half-a-million-dollar, million-dollar pieces of equipment, GPS and all this, and they don't even have a shovel in their truck. Well, if you want to see what the nature of your soil looks like, take your shovel out there and dig it up. Does it hold water? Does it infiltrate? What type of soils do you have inherently? Is there soil aggregates? You see any fungi? Earthworms? I mean, in the spring, man, you better be full of earthworm. I mean, you can look at the coverage on that soil. There's just so many things you can look at and very relatively inexpensive other than your time and a shovel and a little bit of fuel to get there.

That to me is the physical side. The ability for that soil to infiltrate, to store. In a drought time, if you wonder, is that crop still got moisture? Dig down. You're able to see where your hardpans are at. You're able to see where your moisture's at. I mean, there's just so many things. We've been in a drought and it rained an inch. Well, how much of that did my soil get to capture? How much did I send down the road? That's the physical side. 

The second leg to that is that chemistry physics, that's that soil testing. That's that full panel balancing. I've kind of went all towards just using Haney, but there still is a place for Mehlich-1, Mehlich-3, maybe in your area a Bray-1, Bray-2, Olsen, but you've got to look at your base saturation balance, your calcium, magnesium. If you can't keep the soil lattices in balance and nutrients available or stored, that's half the battle, or a third of the battle because the other third is if you can't get water to saturate those and solubilize those and get water biology. Can't work, right?

Well, you can't sit in a two-legged stool, or you can, but it's going to get awfully awkward. The three-legged stool you can sit on, and that's the biological side. All right, we can really scale that now. For over a hundred years we've used chemistry physics soil testing, but we never gave credit to living, breathing ecosystems or biology. Well, now we can scale that with a Haney test. We can look at CO2 respiration. We're able to use H3A acid, which is a humic acid, that has a greater average acidity that our plant roots would put out for release of nutrients, where a Mehlich-1, Mehlich-3 is very acidic. It's a nitrogen-based [inaudible 00:15:38] and it doesn't mimic nature. We're looking about nutrient release for a plant that is never going to get that acidic and you're not even mimicking nature.

Again, let's go back to that biology, and every soil, every context is different. Just like in school, every kid has a different learning curve. Well, we're able to scale this down to feed and exercise and to grow the biology in our soil and can have continual living roots, diversity. Keep our CNN ratios in context for our area. In the soils that I work with, Tennessee and that, we're looking at 12:1, 14:1 carbon-nitrogen ration, but that's good with us. The amount of heat units we get, the amount of rainfall we get, the amount of the soil temperatures for growing, if we feed, we can do well. 

You get out more towards Iowa, out that way, out Minnesota, they're a little bit different. Iowa's definitely different than Minnesota, Wisconsin because you guys freeze a lot more, but probably 8:1, 10:1 because of the amount. They have a lot more storage than we do because our exchange capacities are different. Multiple things there in that three-legged soil health tool, but we can scale it, we can duplicate it, we work with it. We can make money with it. 

Another big problem, so most farmers don't have a shovel. Okay, number one starter kit. Number two, you can record all you want. It's just data. It's just a bunch of stuff, but until you can make actionable changes with it, it's just ink on a paper or an email. Okay, so one thing I like to use a lot for me and I've got my producers using it, technology's grown and we have a lot more cell service and internet. A lot more people are able to just carry around their phone or iPad and not a book that's going to cure insomnia looking at nutrients. I use TopSoil tool. I love it. It allows me to interact with my clients. It's all web-based. They don't have to wait for me. As soon as it comes, it's there real time.

We can scale that. We can run over years, over crops. We can scout with it, pinpoint. We can really put everything we've done into it. Okay, like everything, the technology is still continuing to grow evolve. I don't really like that word, but it's growing. It's still keeping up with demands of the market and changes and new things we're learning. Like soil health, it's not been round as long as chemistry physics testing. We can scale all of that, and a farmer can take that and that's actionable data that he can use to make him more profitable.

Julia Gerlach:

Now, what about tissue testing, SAP analysis, that sort of thing? There's stuff in the soil, but if it's not actually available, then your plants aren't taking it up.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Let's talk about that. Again, the biggest thing that everybody's always chased if it wasn't P&K in season was nitrogen, right? We're-

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... always thinking nitrogen's a problem. Well, in the beginning years, I tissue tested them and there's an algorithm , there's address as they call it of acceptable nutrient availability that will still produce a crop in that stage of growth where yes and no, it doesn't make sense, profitability. As a consultant, you can build these algorithms. I'm away from it. I'm not saying nitrogen's not still important, but at the end of the day, I'm getting tired of seeing so many people thinking that they're doing it all when biology's still doing a lot of it. I've been away from it, from tissue. I'm doing more SAP.

Julia Gerlach:

Okay.

Jeremiah Durbin:

The cool think about SAP is sending in leaves at different stages as well as soil with it, we know it's in the soil, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Durbin:

What should become available if we get the rain, the biologies function, so on and so forth? With the sap, you're looking at xylem and phloem. You're looking at uptake of that plant. You're looking at new leaves, which is the immediate release of that nutrient because all of the nutrients are going to come to the roots of the new leaves and then go to the old. Being able to do that, we're better able to scale through weather patterns, fertility that we know that's out there, soil balances, soil health.

We're able to say, "Okay, this is a weather pattern event," or, "We're still having issues because we're not able to look at mobile nutrients in that plant at different stages, as well as knowing what's in the soil and better determine, do need a foliar spray? Do we not? Can we go over the top? To me, that's a better tool in my belt. I'm not saying there's not a place for tissue. People still do it, but at the end of the day, we're able to use new technology. Nobody walks around with an old dial rotary phone in your pocket.

Julia Gerlach:

Right.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Right? Nobody dropped that in their pocket and lost it. Now we have smartphones and they keep getting even more smart, but we need to be able to take in this new change and start to accept it. Not because it doesn't make sense, because there's actionable data with it. It's not like it's just a coding fad. I use it. It doesn't matter what crap you're using, there is a nutrient uptake availability for that crap and it's going to continue and we're going to be able to take that data. The same with what the Haney started. It took years and data and different testing. You got to compile that, but again, we were able to take it and actionably use it. There's a difference. 

I'm really pushing for the sap in the scouting program. For me, my producers, I don't have giant fields. I've got some big fields, but at the end of the day, a lot of mine are still 40-acre and under and we may have a 600-acre, a 400-acre here and there. There's always different advantages of flying drones, things like that that we can do, but right now, I'm not. I'm going to do other things. There's so many different data points that we can use, so-

Julia Gerlach:

What is your general recommendation for sap analysis? I mean, talk me through how a farmer goes through doing that or-

Jeremiah Durbin:

I use New Age Labs out of Michigan, and so I try to do it at least two or three times. Really, I need three different growth stages to see if I've had a mobility of a nutrient overall. Was it a genetic in that seed? Was it a weather condition? It really lets me know, "Does this continue to be a problem or not?" I've had my soil with my sap. You're going to take 10 to 20 of your new leaves, 10 to 20 of your old leaves, depending on how intense you get it, and you're going to ship them at the same time. You're not going to freeze them. You're going to keep them cool. You're going to ship them next day because they don't want them froze. They want the nutrients still mobile in the leaves. They'll test them and they'll get you a report.

Julia Gerlach:

Awesome.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Wait 10 days, sometimes sooner on that depending on what you pay for, and they can usually get turnaround. When I do sap, I want to ship it on a Monday morning. That way, I can get there by Tuesday and they're more or less going to have it done before Friday, depending on what the load and time of year is. We can get them back pretty quick, and then, again, they always say if you see a problem in a field after a heavy event, give it seven to 10 days. Walk away, come back in a week. Let's look at it again. Nobody ever does that, but usually if there's a nutrient problem in a plant and it was a weather condition, it's going to come out of it and you're going to see it within less than a week depending on climate.

Again, spraying, getting in the field, let's say for instance for nitrogen over corn, I'd like to be able to go out, if I was going to pull nitrates, a lot of times I'm using Haney for my nitrate now instead of doing regular nitrogen testing looking at nitrate and oxide nitrogen. I'll go two weeks prior to when I can do my last application of nitrogen. Whether that's Y drops or whether that's knifing it in 28, 32, 30%, that sort of thing. That's the way we try to do two to three weeks before our last application just to make sure we don't run out of gas in the nitrogen department if nitrogen's our limiting factor.

Julia Gerlach:

Weather has been a big issue for farmers all over the country this year, but it sounds like you guys around here, it's been pretty good.

Jeremiah Durbin:

What I call home, we've had excess rain for the last couple of years, whether that's a planting, whether that's a harvest. What that means is it's harder to get it in the ground, harder to get it out without drought, or not drought, without water damage, replants, and then again, getting it out of the field. I mean, we haven't been... I can remember years when we'd have hard freezes and be shelling corn 20 degrees, 25, 28 degrees because we had to get out of the field. With corn, as long as the ears drop, it would stand. It wasn't as crucial as beans with pods popping and losing yield. That's been huge, but for the guys that have started with, of course, no-till, minimal till and bad spots after bad years as far as ruts and things like that, waterways, implementing covers, they've had less issues.

Now, I will tell you Ohio is getting there. THey're doing a great job. This is my home state I grew up in. The climate has been the difficulty here, but there's also been some great success here in Ohio with cover crop guys. Just working with the farmers and they've got to believe in it, because I'll tell you, when you switch to covers, it's like marriage. The first year is the honeymoon stage and everything's great. It's a new thing and cool, I'm doing it. Then, the second year, things don't quite go as expected. The third year, things are tough. I need a support group to help me out here, and by year five, I've found covers. It really starts to show.

Farmers get their aha moment, and if they'll stick with it for five years and stay in a positive, if I want something to fail, keep giving me negatives because I'm going to get in my head that it's going to be a negative thing. If you'll stay the journey, you surround yourself with like-minded people, I don't care where they're at, they'll help you. One thing about the soil health family, they are shirt tail riders, they are naysayers, and then there are true, genuine people. I've been blessed and thankful to be in a group of them. 

This week, Lawrence Steinbach, a great friend of mine, Western Union, Iowa, he's got a field day, but Lawrence's been a great one. Russell Hedrick, all these people that were early in this, they've helped mentor me. They've made me think, and the thing is, yeah, one guys says it, yeah, maybe two guys, but now I've got to see, "What are they doing? Why is it working?" How, when, what, why, where. English class, so those are the things that I scale and I look at because if there's anything that a new guy's going to ask you that's smart is, "Okay, you told me all the good, improved soil function, improved soil saturation and nutrient storage and soil temperatures, but tell me the bads."

Somebody can sit there and bull crap to you for hours, but when you can strategically say, "Hey, this years I did this and it tied up all my moisture," a lot of guys will plant cereal rise and all of these grasses because they need to get their carbon number up. They've already got their nitrogen for all these years of beans and lots of nitrogen applications with corn, but grasses love water. You got a green grass, you probably got a good crop. It's going to be green as well, but initially if you don't have that organic matter, you don't have that biology functioning of continuing release of nutrients, water holding capacity, them grasses are going to hurt you. Even though soybeans can grow inside of those other grasses if they're a legume and you can terminate at a later date, they will take away all the water that those soybeans still need.

What we've experienced here in Ohio is a lot of rain, okay, which the grasses water probably helped, but then we might hit a drought spot, and if we're still sucking up water, everybody wants to say it's a nutrient problem, but I bet you if they take their shovel out, they're going to find out it wasn't necessarily the nutrients was the problem. It was the ability to function and cycle water. Those are some of the things that when guys are cover cropping and starting out, they don't know, and then they hit that and they just want to quit. Or they sign up in a program with NRCS and USDA, and I'm thankful those programs are there because some guys wouldn't even get started in it without that. Then, as they start to learn the journey, they're like, "You know what? Yeah, I'm going to take some farms, but you know what? I own this. I'm going to do it for me. I don't necessarily need that program. I'm going to do it on my own."

It's just kind of that starting off with training wheels and learning how to ride a bicycle. Eventually you take the wheels off, and so a lot of guys will continue on and do it their way and make crazy mixes and play with things. That's one thing Tennessee has given me the opportunity to learn a lot about is they say 40 in Tennessee is the diving line for temperatures. The Holy Grail, we get south of Adam Daughtry in Coffee County, he has got an amazing area. Now, it's not from a lack of the community working hard, working together. Adam's striving this to work with these guys to get them doing cover crops, give them diversity, working with Haneys, working with these different labs, doing PLFA and these things.

They're warm a long time and so they're able to grow more. The more that plants can grow, the ability to cycle nutrients, capture sunlight, release more reoccurring nutrients, they're just able to build their soils faster. Where up here, we're going to be frozen. Used to be from about October until March. Okay, that's kind of changed. Up Wisconsin, I'm sure you guys are frozen a lot more than that-

Julia Gerlach:

Yeah.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... so your ability for covers in that are still there, it's just a longer process due to your freezing and thawing. Working with the context of where you're at and being the support group for those that are trying to get into it. 

Julia Gerlach:

Yeah, so I've heard that in the South where it's warmer, those warmer temperatures really cycle everything faster, and so that can actually be a detriment in terms-

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yeah [inaudible 00:28:54].

Julia Gerlach:

... of building soil, so talk about that.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yeah, so you can actually have it too rapidly where you can't store it. You can get your predator-prey out because you get a lot more humidity, moisture, things of that nature. You got to keep that in balance. You go from one extreme all the way to the other, having too much, not being able to cycle it.

Julia Gerlach:

What do people do in that case to-

Jeremiah Durbin:

Oh, to-

Julia Gerlach:

... not burn it up so fast?

Jeremiah Durbin:

... so you can back off your CNN based on your cover crop programs, whether that's a grass, legume, what you plant, maybe carbon nitrogen-neutral. The big thing is getting pollinators out there. I think that's the next step that we're really getting, and Tennessee is buffer strips, pollinators, identifiers, getting more of that living, breathing ecosystem, the biology all working together along with birds and insects and bats and getting that diversity.

You need that balance, but being able to scale that because, yeah, we can pump a lot of carbon with cereal rye and things like that really quickly, but we can also go the other way and tie up, so we've got to keep that balance. Keep I want to say every year testing, depending on how detriment that field is. Maybe next three years until I now that soil is functioning properly. Then, maybe go to one every other year or, "Hey, I'm wanting to change something up, so let's go through and rescale it again."

Again, looking at nitrogen, everybody just wants to look at the ammoniated and nitrate testing, but they don't look at that, "Well, how much organic do I have?" Then, based on that organic number I can look at... It used to be Solvita. Okay, in soil health we used Solvita, and now we use IR gas to measure that CO2 to look at that community of biology and CO2 respiration. We're able to look at based upon how much they're decaying, how much they're breaking down, how much their waste, which is WEON, water extractable nitrogen. We're able to see what they're going to produce for us.

I don't think it's free lunches. It is free lunches, but you have to invest in a soil and invest in that living and breathing ecosystem before it can give back to you. There's a balance there as well, but they're working for you when you're sleeping, and there's nobody out there that doesn't like to make money when they're sleeping. 

Noah Newman:

Let's burn a timeout and share a quick message from our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. The 2984 Strip Freshener from Yetter gives you flexibility within your strip-till system. You control the level of tillage performed to create the ideal seedbed. Strip Fresheners can also place liquid or dry fertilizer in the strips. Use it ahead of the planter to facilitate consistent soil warming and bring existing strips to life. Use the Strip Freshener in the fall, in the spring, or in both seasons, you decide. Visit yetterco.com, that's Y-E-T-T-E-R-C-O.com for more information. Now, back to the podcast.

Julia Gerlach:

That's the underground biology. What about above ground? I mean, what do you think about the animal integration? As some people will say it's critical, but others are like, "Yeah, not [inaudible 00:31:57]. 

Jeremiah Durbin:

Can it be done without it? Yes it can. I have great friends. Lawrence Steinbach is one of them. Mitchell Hora is one of them. They don't have livestock. Okay, everything is a context. Now, can they speed it up? Are there things where there's more animal integration using fulvic acids and these different things are not as much needed, but they're still very important? Okay, but you're getting more of that diversity, the saliva, the urine, the poop, really feeding that immediate nutrients for the biology. 

You can do just as great a success without it, and that's still an argument. I'm sure it can start an East versus West fist fight, but again, it comes down to, what's your baseline? What do you believe in? Again, every day you get up and you stand for something, whether you know it or not. Your operation, your home, your farm, the way you handle yourself tells a lot about you. I encourage people to try something new. Maybe not too many things at once because you can't really scale that unless you can really monitor each process, but take a year and try something new, so...

Julia Gerlach:

There's been, I think, pretty good no-till on cover crop adoption in Tennessee over the years. I'm just wondering why has that location been so successful?

Jeremiah Durbin:

You know, the temperatures were huge, the support group. They just had the climate for it and they took off. There's a lot of smaller, I mean, there's still big farmers in West Tennessee, cotton and [inaudible 00:33:30] and they've deteriorated their soils a lot with cotton and green beans. They're great, bountiful crops, but they suck a lot of carbon out of the soil, so having to fix that, repair, reheal their soils. We know if you stay with a monoculture crop for too long, that predator-prey biology, you're going to have a lot of issues you didn't have before. That's why a lot of this crop integration of rotation came in. If you're in Ohio, tobacco, there's so many things with black shank and different biology that we had to get out of there. Introducing this new crop, we were able to bring in new biology players to the game.

I think a lot of it was a little bit of degrading of soils, but also knowing that they needed to fix their soils. East Tennessee is mostly cattle, a lot of hill, Now, there's tomatoes. Granger County's huge for tomatoes. Mossy Creek Farms is probably the largest no-till cover crop farmer in all of East Tennessee. They do a great job out there. I had the opportunity to work with them and just great people, but most of that is cattle. They're kind of a step ahead because... Now, I hate to say it, but most cattle farmers don't invest in seeds in their soil. They want to buy new gates and new waterers and more feed. Those that do grass fed and grass finish, they know that they have to keep their bricks up, keep their total digestive nutrients up. They need diversity. Cool season, warm season for grazing.

They also know that that cost for every pass of fertility and things is expensive, so if we can fix soil with living roots, let's do it. Again, working with NRCS, USDA, bringing those incentives in, and I'm telling you, the techs and the districts and the area guys that go out and really promote this, I mean, they're like soil soldiers. Even though the government's backing them, they're out there. They have to build a relationship with that client. Yeah, they're going to have a contract, but they have to work with these people, and these people are very standoffish. I've got some that they're either going to do it their way or not doing it at all and have others that need help and they've seen success from other people out west different places, so they're adapting this.

I'm very thankful to be able to be in Tennessee. Mike Hubbs, my predecessor ahead of me, great man. He actually worked in Iowa as well with soil health and I learned a lot from him. He's retired and went in from soil health to now human health and does his own personal training business, so he's going full circle. It's pretty cool, but he and I get to talk. I just talked to him the other day. We're going to sit down and have coffee soon and just talk about where he was at. I've heard stories and how he would work with producers, and sometimes you'll find when you work with people, I call it the bell cow effect, is I can talk to these persons till I'm blue in the face, but they may listen to somebody else.

A herd of cattle, if you can get that bell cow to come, the rest of them will follow. Well, sometimes working with these producers, if you'll find the main guy in that area and they understand and they believe in it, the rest will follow. Mike's taught me a lot about that stuff and the dude is a book genius. I don't have the soil science that he has. It's crazy. I never went to school for agronomy, just had a passion of farming and troubleshooting and just cutting the crap and getting where we can get more to understanding what we can control, what we can't, and be better managers, better stewards.

Julia Gerlach:

You mentioned tobacco, and I was just kind of curious, what's the process for transitioning from tobacco to another crop? How degraded are the soils are the soils after?

Jeremiah Durbin:

Tobacco, you know, tobacco, it is a great crop as far as opening up soil lattices and things. Tobacco's got a big root system, and really I love tobacco. I love the smell of it. It's different in the East Coast. I work with a lot of flue-cured tobacco, which is totally different from burley that I grew up with. We would hang tobacco in barns and dry it or in the field in standing racks and just trip it by hand. In the East Coast, they'll grow it and they actually have processing machines that can cut the leaves or they'll use migratory workers or locals and they'll pick it by hand. Then, they put it in these they call them buck barns, but barns where they dry them down and that sort of thing, but a lot of times, they'll follow a tobacco crop with a corn crop because there's a lot of nitrogen and a lot of potassium in a tobacco crop. They want to utilize that in their corn crop, and then they'll follow it with soybeans, and then sometimes they'll go corn, wheat, double crop soybean, and then back to the tobacco.

That way, if there' any liming that needs done, they have time because their number one money maker is that tobacco. They have lighter soils, less exchange soils. Now, there's still one or two of those farmers that went at it a different way, first-generation farmers that have really changed the paradigm of that, but the guys that have been in tobacco for years are going to tell you, "That's my cash crop. That's where I make my money." From there, the second thing that they're going to make their most money on is corn, and so working in six different areas in North Carolina, all the way from the Blacklands of the East Coast over the mountain range, expectation of yield's a little bit different. That's usually how they rotate to keep and to get rid of this pressure from black shank because it is big.

Julia Gerlach:

Is that a fungal disease?

Jeremiah Durbin:

A lot of times it is, yes. 

Julia Gerlach:

Okay. 

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yeah, black shank will flat just eat the root system, kill it, and then the plant dies and you're in bad shape. Now, I will tell you out there that they're doing some no-tilling, but it only lasts about two years, maybe three because when it goes back to tobacco, they have to till the soil. Their soils are so sandy, they make mounds. They make beds, raised beds, and then they'll plant their... They'll set their tobacco and then they'll come back through with a reed bed shaper and throw more soil back on top of that soil. One of my clients in Vernon Hill, they put out, I don't know, 200 acres this year and maybe had an inch of rain since April. 200 acres of tobacco, that's a lot of money, and so we went out there and it hadn't hurt it. It never got really tall, but with tobacco, it's not always height. You need leaves. Leaves is what pays the money, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Right.

Jeremiah Durbin:

We dug down the shovel. Now, we didn't have a lot of moisture, but we still had moisture in them beds surprisingly, and then they finally got some of these last few rains from this hurricane and their tobacco crop was just bumpered. By all means, a lot of people that don't understand tobacco call tobacco a weed. A lot of people give it a bad rap because of what it is, and really, it's a beautiful crop. It's a great crop. It's grown a lot of families. It's raised a lot of families and it's helped a lot of this industry, so even though it's still small, it has its place and its purpose.

Julia Gerlach:

I want to make a little transition here and ask you about your thoughts on the carbon markets.

Jeremiah Durbin:

All right, so Wild West. It's like when hemp came to the Carolinas and Tennessee, we're still building that. I think we're getting closer. I would really have people hesitant on signing a contract with somebody right now, and the reason being is don't put all your eggs in one basket. You don't do it with farming. You don't sell your grain on the same day. Don't do the same thing with carbon, so let's watch this continue to unfold. There is getting there, but it's still walk slowly and cautiously when you don't know. I do think we have some parameters definitely set in ways we can scale it and use it, that data, to have actionable cost and what it's worth. My fear is a lot of guys, there's always early adopters and then there's those that follow the bell cows that end up dying when they cross the river, but we're still unfolding, guys. It's not all there.

The cool thing with using TopSoil, too, is I can scale what I've done. You know, I think it's good and bad, but early adopters of cover crop, people, you don't get carbon without living, growing roots, organics, so the grasses, but the guys that were early adopters, a lot of them aren't getting the incentive now that the government's given for these new guys. Now, some of them are getting it for their crop insurance, but I think it's crap that we're not giving value back to these farmers that said, "You know what? I'm going to do this because this is the right thing and I believe in it." Again, they're getting slapped, kicked in the teeth and I think it's wrong. I think we should still help them and give what they deserve. If we can give it to Joe Blow that's continuing to do it wrong and send phosphorous down the stream and we got algae blooming and all these other issues, we ought to be giving credit back to these guys that started earlier and early adopters. 

Julia Gerlach:

You also mentioned hemp, and I'd just love to hear you talk about what the hemp market is doing these days because there was a big boom real quick in 2018, 2019-

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yeah, you know-

Julia Gerlach:

... yeah.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... I had 32, 36 clients at one time, two states, and it was beautiful. Fr the tobacco guys, it's still going. I'm still going to tell you it's still growing. It's not as strong. There was a lot of those that fizzled out and died. When I first started wanting to be new in the industry, again, Wild West cowboy style. There wasn't algorithms as far as... Now, there were because hemp and marijuana, I mean, they're both in that cannabis family as far nitrogen, expected nitrogen removal rate, phosphorous, potassium, things of that nature. 

Now, there is some different with the minor nutrients and different things we have to look at, but you still had to have balanced soils. It's a great rotation. It has a great root system. Everything I've read and even seen with people that have used it, the oils and things, the problem was is I don't think the industry was set up on how to use it and how to look for quality, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremiah Durbin:

Before you go buy food, cereal, whatever, you're looking at, well,  what's in it? What are the nutrients? What's the quality? How should I expect to use this? What fits for my weight? Or, you know, all these things, and I don't think it was a great education program with it. Yes, it's in every gas station, smoke shop from here to wherever you want to go, but it's really fell off. It's still there. There's still purpose. It's still good for human health and animals and everything else. I mean, it's a great, well-rounded crop, good rotational crop. Right now, I think fiber, if I had to guess, the fiber industry right now is booming. 

I've got a client, two clients we're going to do some in Tennessee next year. I'm not going to say there's not been fiber in Tennessee before. I just don't know about them, but they can use that for so many different industries from clothes to door panels in cars. You know, we've sent so many jobs across the pond that need to be back in this United States. I guarantee you when you came to me today, you've driven through towns and you're like, "Is this Deliverance? Or should I listen for banjos? What's going on?" It's because when there's no industry, the community dies. They have no purpose. They'd rather just sit and draw a check. "Well, I make more money sitting at home." Well, for one, that comes down to the integrity of the person and the purpose-driven life they have, but there's nothing for them to do if they wanted to go do it because there's no incentive to grow.  

A lot of these guys still have all of this equipment out there for tobacco that's sitting around that we can still reutilize. We're not wasting, we're reusing, recycling that and we're putting the industry back to work, so I'm all for it. I'm all about working. I probably sound like a workaholic, but you know what? At the end of the day, I'd rather go to bed tired and know I've made a difference or at least did something than sit at home all day and have tons of energy and can't sleep because I didn't do anything.

Julia Gerlach:

Well, and I gather, though, part of the problem with industrial hemp for grain and fiber has been a lack of processing facilities, so are we making headway in that regard?

Jeremiah Durbin:

No, we are. You know, Canada's still really trying to get in that market strong. The United States is starting to get there. I'm still learning more of the processing plants on that. It's not hard to grow and process. If you've ever baled hay in your life and you've driven a combine, your head's up, man. You're already a leg up in this industry. It's really easy to manage. Again, the biggest problem with hemp, it's very labor-intensive. It's like tobacco. A lot of people, fiber not so much. You drill it, you grow it, you're able to harvest it. You bale it. You're going to have your pre-purchasers.

You know, a lot of the guys that I work with, and I learned this through struggles on my own on getting paid and it wasn't because they didn't have good crops because they couldn't sell it, it's a lot of the people who jump in these markets and grow it hoping that somebody will buy it. I think if I'm going to tie up that much money in risk, I think I'm going to lock in 60 to 80% of it to at least cover my costs, right?

Julia Gerlach:

Right.

Jeremiah Durbin:

At least break even, but I think that's what made most of these people drown-

Julia Gerlach:

Right.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... is they didn't have the foreknowledge or the foresight to say, "Does this pencil out? Worst case, where am I going to break even?" Everything keeps getting more expensive, so nothing's getting cheaper and profitability's getting smaller.

Julia Gerlach:

Right. There's also the problem with the THC testing, though, right? They couldn't do it timely-

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yeah, so [inaudible 00:46:22]-

Julia Gerlach:

... and so they were getting hot crops.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... yep. That's ramped up and with fiber, now, I will tell you, when you put genetically and based on the nutrients and you treat these plants, there's good seed out there. In the beginning, I'll say with hemp seed, you had to have your paperwork for it to be certified, but I'm going to tell you, there was a bunch of, I think, low strand THC marijuana that was sold for hemp seed because there was a lot of stuff that went hot and everything was imbalanced. You're like, "Something ain't driving here." There's a lot more... The ability for testing those things for THC and the process turnaround time, totally different, and when to scout it and how to do it and the farmers being able to do it. Not waiting on an agronomist to come do it. Or would they be able to get their own agronomist? Just so much has been able to change.  

Julia Gerlach:

Okay, good. Sounds good. All right, so I also just wanted to ask, as I'm sure you know because you're working with the USDA and everything, Biden Administration wants to have 30% of U.S. lands and waters in conservation by 2030. I'm just kind of curious from your perspective, we're at something like 12% right now. All of this is supposed to be voluntary. I'm just kind of curious what your perspective is on that. Is that something that soil and water districts are going to be pushing for?

Jeremiah Durbin:

Well, I'm going to tell you right now, those are the soil and water district and USDA and NRCS that believe in this, that are go-getters. They're already trying, but I'm going to tell you that a lot of people early on jumped on the bandwagon. They didn't have support groups and they got out. A lot of those acres that were in it before have went back the other way because they didn't have good education or good support to continue on the journey. Am I hopeful? Yes, but I can tell you this, it has to be either pain or a financial gain for people to change, and I think those that are doing that have more nutrient-dense crops should be paid for their efforts. Again, most of these farmers are going to make a change for money because the cost of the equipment, the cost of hauling that grain nothing but going up, the quality of our food, everything's full circle.

If we just look at the sicknesses and the different things, one thing that I'm very discouraged in is in this whole COVID, and I'm not going to get in this because that's not what I'm about, everybody was talking about the scare and wear this and wear that mask, or did this shot, but nobody talked about maybe eat healthy, exercise. Take care of yourself. They're waiting for the antidote after the screw-up instead of trying to prevent it before they got there. I think with those two things in mind, standing behind what you grow, better quality, there are a lot of people that have seen the light, and even though we were segregated, a lot of us are just now getting around to see a lot of loved ones and friends and these events, the want to change is there. They just need to know. They need help to understand how to use what they have to get there.

If this Biden Administration wants to push that, they need to give credit to those that were doing it and that have already been doing it, and then build the education groups for the others because there's going to be tough times. I said earlier, it's like marriage. There's good years and there's bad years. You just got to learn how to what works for you and overcome it. I mean, there's so many challenges, but there's so many good people already doing it that if people get over their pride, that's the biggest thing. "They can do this and we can." 

Now, again, I'm not getting into politics, so I'm going to let that die, but is it achievable? Yes, but the hearts of the people are going to want to have to have it and with that the financial gain. I think that's rewarding those that have already done it and continuing to do it and continuing to aid those that are doing it. I struggle with an insurance date when it comes to planting because planting any cover crops and planting without cover crops is two different types of farming. With tillage and things or minimal tillage, they want to get on that field fast. The soils may warm up faster, but I guarantee you those soils are going to dry out faster or going to flood faster than the ones that have covers because they can cycle water nutrients and the others can't.

I struggle with that, too, and I think these guys that are in covers, they should let off a little bit on the dates because I've seen crops planted at the end of June, beginning of June in covers that have flat, I don't know, double, triple-lapped conventional tillage plants, but yet we're writing that big insurance farming. This is going to sound horrible, but Trump did something right when he cut back the insurance on farmers, it made that farmer think more about him putting that seed in the ground. He wasn't just going to go two, three times replants. He was probably gong to make sure that when he put that seed in the ground, it was at the best way he know how.

Now, I understand logistics, and you and I talked to this earlier. I think sometimes farmers, they're more worried about the acres they farm and getting the quantity than they worry about the quality. If we get back to quality farming and get out of this corn, wheat, beans house rotation, I think we can get this back. It kills me. We want to put in more infrastructure, bigger culverts, bigger roads, but that just means the water runs off the field and gets down there and floods Mississippi, Louisiana faster. Why don't we give better surface area for that water to function and be able to take in and absorb and use what it needs and then release it properly?

We wouldn't need the bridges and the overpasses we have. Now, maybe for people in transportation because babies keep being born, but the biggest problem we have is when we're worried about getting that water away than we are trying to figure out, "How can I get that water here to stay?" Again, that goes with some of this other incentive, and it's full circle. Give back to those that have been doing it, and I guarantee it won't take long for those to get on the bandwagon-

Julia Gerlach:

There you go.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... because an administration's four years sometimes. In four years, I've seen with these sign-up programs with the USDA, it'll last about maybe five, maybe, unless they see the benefit-

Julia Gerlach:

Sure.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... but if there's surrounded with a bunch of naysayers, soon as that money runs out, they'll be out there with a turbo till and a disk the next spring tearing it up. Now, I will tell you there's a lot of cover crop farmers and even NRCS guys that hated it when hemp come to Tennessee and even the Carolinas because they took fields that have been in covers for five, 10 years.

What's the first thing they did? They took a piece of steel and they drug the ground because of weed suppression. They had to turn that ground, so they literally took their bank account they had built and they turned it upside down. You get some bad taste in their mouth with hemp, not only because they can't sell it, but also because of how people manage their land. There's a lot of hemp being grown in covers now and people having great success, so again, it's all that adoption and change.

Julia Gerlach:

Right. Yeah, very cool. Okay. Well, to wrap this up, I just want to kind of bring us back to your business is Sustainable Legacy Consulting, correct?

Jeremiah Durbin:

Yes, ma'am.

Julia Gerlach:

If you want to just wrap it up with what your mission is and sort of what's your long-term vision for success for your company?

Jeremiah Durbin:

You know, I guess the first thing I have to tell you is people ask me, "What is it you do?" I don't sell anything. I sell myself-

Julia Gerlach:

Sure.

Jeremiah Durbin:

... and the network of people I know. I guess it's a three-fold again. I like the threes. Somewhere between an agronomist, a financial advisor, and then Dr. Phil. When things go wrong, you need somebody to help. That's kind of what I do, and I work all over. My phone's always on, emails are always there. My biggest thing is building new relationships and helping producers. Sometimes I'm not the answer, but I connect them with who that answer might be, and that's crazy coming out of my mouth. Well, isn't that money? I call it paying it forward because as long as you're building relationships and you're building integrity with these farmers, it's going to continue the legacy.

My company is a mouthful and that's why I say SLC, but I have kids, I have children and I have children that aren't my children as far as I have farmer friends, their kids, and they're all watching what we're doing, good and bad. We've all had things in life we had to overcome, but we can't expect the future to do better than us if we don't teach them where we fail, where we struggle, how we overcome, and why we do what we do. I guess my mission is just to bring the integrity, the good land stewardship, and the networking to these producers, and there are far, far smarter people out there than me, especially in the agronomist department, but I'm not afraid to say that. The cool thing is I became friends with those guys and they say the more minds, the stronger that group is.

I hope someday that Sustainable Legacy is worldwide, and if nothing else, yeah, they know the name, they've seen the goofy face. I love people. It really killed me when we had to go to Zoom meetings and Facebook Live because I want to see the faces because I can't see where they're at. I can't see the struggle in their eyes. I can't see the success, to be able to celebrate the joys with them, but also, like I said, I can't see when they're struggling to say, "Hey, how can I help you? I'm here." It used to be walk a mile in that guy's shoes. Go two, three, four miles with that guy. You may not financially get it back, but it might be somewhere else. I'll tell you, usually a business is going to crumble in its first year, third year, and fifth year. 

Now, by the grace of God, I'm still here, I've been in this five years, but if it wasn't for the other agronomist I work with and my farmers, there's days that I wanted to quit, but because I was there for them, they've been there for me. There's nobody out there that doesn't have bad days and good days, and if you'll be open for them, keep your door open for them, you'll keep going forward. I really think as much as I am a crop consulting, a soil consulting, a relationship builder is probably my thing. I'm not your great office personnel. I'm not your T cross and I dotter unless I have to be, and I can be, but I really like building new relationships with the people and seeing what other people are doing. 

If I only would have stayed in Ohio, I would not know what's going on in Iowa, in Texas, in North Carolina, and you don't know what other people are struggling with and why they're struggling with it until you've went through it with them. Again, looking forward to making Tennessee our home long term, new business foundation. I hope to expand this company and have other branches, and working with TopSoil and Continuum Mag. Very great friend, Mitchell Hora and their people, he's like a little brother to me. I got to tell you, even Brian, his father, and all of them, they're fantastic. 

In the beginning, they were so well-connected and still are, and I feel like I'm lucky just to be part of them, but through those relationships, I've been able to help my clients in the East Coast. Again, it's that back-and-forth relationship and I think just keeping that going, that's what SLC's future is is just building relationships and helping people do the right thing and helping them understand when they don't know.

Julia Gerlach:

Reminds me of a quote. "If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go together."

Jeremiah Durbin:

Exactly, exactly, and I'm not going to say this company... I've been really blessed. I had $14,000, which seems like a lot of money to start a company. Anybody out there that's listening to this podcast knows $14,000, you're like, "You're a crazy dude." I had $14,000 a pickup truck, a probe, and an iPad and a laptop, and there are days I didn't know how I was going to make it. I'm not going to tell you that in the beginning all I did was crop insulting. I would help do other things. I wore multiple hats, meaning you might mow grasses, you might do whatever, but I knew my passion was this, and if you'd never give up on your dreams, sometimes you have to fund that with other things. 

Julia Gerlach:

Sure.

Jeremiah Durbin:

You'll get there because people will see through that, but you can get there. It is achievable. My story of breaking my neck, by the grace of God getting it all back, doesn't happen for everybody, but there is life after being injured. Our war veterans, we couldn't be here and do what we do. Every time I have the opportunity, I give it back to our veterans. We wouldn't have the freedom to make a choice had it not been for them, and watching people that have been wounded, recover from drugs, from alcoholism, if it wasn't for seeing their lives and being touched by them, same thing hopefully I can do with my company, there's hope. Where there's hope, you can still find willful people and, again, multiple minds to be able to go a long way. As long as we keep that the foundation, our baseline, we'll be able to make it.

Noah Newman:

All right. That'll wrap things up for this edition of The Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. Thanks to Julia Gerlach and Jeremiah Durbin for that great conversation. Thanks to you for tuning in. As always, my name's Noah Newman, and remember, until next time, for all things strip-till, head to striptillfarmer.com. Have a great day.