We are being featured in Progressive Farmer Magazine!!!

As I stated before I haven't had the time to keep up on my posts until we can get blogger working more consistently on my phone.  However, we are being featured in an article in Progressive Farmer magazine in October!!!

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2019/09/10/young-couple-restores-soil-builds

This makes us very proud of all the work we have done to get to where we are and extremely excited for where life is taking us in the future!

Please read and enjoy and I will once again check to see if Blogger is working on my phone yet or not.

Have a great day everyone!

Quick update

Hello Everyone!

I haven't posted in and while and I'm finding it hard to get time to sit down and post regularly.  I do post to our farm page on facebook due to the ease of doing so.  Blogger has not made it easy, even with the app, to post on the go. 

So, moving forward I will be posting to my blog a couple of times a year.  You can find regular updates on our facebook page.  Just search for Conser Run Farm on Facebook and find us there!  My wife and I regularly post there and it is usually quick updates and lots of pics. 

If things change and I find more time to do so I will begin blog posts more often again but at this time it is just not feasible. 

We hope to see you on Facebook soon.  Also, keep an eye open to progressive farmer magazine.  We will be featured in an article there I believe in September! 

Have a great week everyone and thank you for following me all these years!

Additions to the equipment lineup!

I want to start with a post I found online recently that is actually very accurate for our area and most of the midwest!  The 11 seasons list is below and we are finally on third winter so spring is finally around the corner!  We just have to get thru Mud Season to get to it!

In a review of the last 10 years on the farm during tax prep this winter I noticed a trend that I was happy to finally see developing in our revenue stream for the farm.  We originally started farming to grow our own meat.  We quickly realized we could cover the costs of raising our own beef and pork by raising and selling extra of both.  So, when we started getting our own equipment to harvest and store feed for our animals there was always a plan in the back of my mind to eventually perform custom harvesting to pay for the necessary equipment needed to feed our animals.  While we have been doing some custom work for many years now we are finally seeing a sharp increase in this portion of our farming business as well as our hay sales.   

This brings to notice a limiting factor in the growth of this portion of the farm.  Since we first started all of our farming activities have been performed using one main tractor.  We added the Farmall several years back but it really is only used for carting wagons around and the occasional tedding, everything major fell on the one main tractor.  Last year we had multiple times where we turned down custom work due to not being able to get to all of it at the same time as well as a considerable amount of product that wasn't harvested at the end of the season that cost us in a product that we could not sell.  

That being discussed we decided it was time to add another tractor to the farm to see if the custom portion of the farm will continue to grow or if it is a short term burst of work.  We were fortunate enough to team up with Sterling Farm Equipment and get a tremendous lease deal on an M7-151 that Ohio State University / OARDC campus had on a summer only lease with really low hours.  We decided it was the size and the pricing we needed to roll the dice so we made the deal last month and the tractor was delivered a couple of weeks ago.  

Below are several comparison pictures of our M110GX and the new M7-151 side by side!   

This picture says it all as for the size difference!!!   The power difference is just as noticeable and I cannot wait to see this baby running in the field mowing and baling!  The M110 has hauled bales for me for several years now from my rental fields home and it has worked its butt off doing it.  The new one works about half its power to haul the same load!

A close up look of the rear ends is another clear example of the difference in size and capabilities.  

With the growth we have seen lately on the farm we are in the process of starting to rotate crops in the fields to build soil tilth and organic matter to boost production.  This requires the addition of a seeder to the farm as well as a side custom seeding option.  The seeder we demoed in the fall is great but the M110 just wasn't big enough to really run it and handle it correctly.  If you take a close look at the rear of the M7 you will notice that the lift cylinders are big enough to put the entire M110 lift cylinders case and all inside of the M7's!

We also got the kids their Dairy Beef Feeder calves in January and they are growing very well.  They have almost doubled in size since these pics when we first brought them home!

 The pictures below were taken just after new years in one of the fields I seeded with the new seeder.  It was seeded really late and really wet but we still got a good cover on it and I am excited to see how it produces this spring.  

I am excited to get this growing season underway as we have made so many exciting changes this winter that will hopefully pay of well quickly!  My brother has started helping/working on the farm as well so the opportunities are tremendous, we just have to jump on them as fast as they come!

In addition to all of those changes my wife recently took on a new career with SmithFoods Inc. and just finished up her second week!   She is enjoying the new challenge and her new workplace.  It is a longer drive, close to an hour, but worth the drive.  This new opportunity is also giving us a chance to start putting things into motion to build our new home in the woods on top of the hill in the back of the above pictures!  I can't wait to start that project!!!

 More pictures and updates as spring settles in and calving season starts in April!  The guys are finishing up the shed that we start constructing in November and should have the last of the metal insatalled later today.  I will need to update everyone on that when completed!

Have a great day everyone and hopefully the next post will have me typing outside at the picnic table in a T-shirt!

Kenny

Happy 2019!!!!! 2018 in review!

Good morning everyone!   I hope the new year saw you all safely out of 2018 and into 2019! 

The other day I was looking up photos online from past posts for the farm and found my self reviewing my past New Year's Day posts!  It really sparked some great memories as well as memories of struggles that we faced in the past.  I realized at that moment that while I do not keep a diary in a traditional sense I have been keeping one in a different format that my Grandma (who religiously kept a diary) couldn't even imagine!   In thinking back to conversations with my father over the last few years I am now realizing that many of my grandparents, great-grandparents and many other family members kept diaries of their time on this earth.  It is humbling to understand where this drive comes from to documents and share our experiences for future generations to read ad review.  I just hope that in the future this documentation is not lost!

That being stated this time of year brings pause to the moment for me and triggers me to question where we are, where we are heading, what we have overcome, and what we have yet to do!  Each year I look back and think to myself how did we do that?  If you were to go back in time and ask me on 1-1-2018 if I was prepared to start an entirely new career, reorganize and grow an entirely different business, overcome almost losing my life, all while growing the farm business by 30% at the same time ..... would I have said yes?    If given the option, would I have chosen to avoid any of these things or change the direction of the future...  I cannot say.   While a few of these things were very difficult to experience and overcome I feel that the experiences were irreplaceable and there is no way the future would be the same without them and I am glad that I was not given the option to skip or avoid them for that reason!

2018 in review

We grew tremendously here on the farm over the last 12 months.  My brother has come on board to help when needed and he and I are considering paths to grow the farming business together and how we can do that as two separate entities but keep the family aspect of it.  His help coupled with my new career path is allowing the flexibility to really see how far we can push this thing and what it can give back to us and our families!  

To begin the year I was firmly planted in a long-term career with a company that I honestly thought I was going to retire from some day.  As the winter gave way to spring it was becoming clear that something had to change.  My workload was growing disproportionately to those around me and the successes gained were not worth the time I was losing with my family and myself.  By mid-summer, it was clear that it was time for a change.   Either work needed to change, or I needed to change work.  I tried to effect a change at work before vacation with no reciprocated effort on the other end.   We went on vacation with a heavy choice on my mind and a mind and heart full of a myriad of questions, concerns, and fears.   

By day three it should have been clear to me and my family that I wasn't present in the moment and while I was with them at the beach my mind was elsewhere concerned with many things that it shouldn't have been concerned with.  This brings us to the tipping point of the year, being sucked out to sea without a life vest or flotation device of any kind.   I never ever under any circumstances want to come that close to death again until I am old and gray and it is my time.  The days following that experience were rough and would not have been possible to process without the help of my family and my new extended family in Hatteras.   As our vacation came to a close and we were driving home my mind was finally clear of all of the fodder of worry and uncertainty that had clouded my mind since early spring.  I was no longer afraid of the unknown and was finally free to take the step that needed to happen for so long and put my family and our future first.

After one last final discussion the day following our return I turned in my resignation and began the journey down a completely new road.  I went from a very firm regimented schedule with a vast workload for someone else to setting my own schedule and working in a tremendously more relaxed environment!  The first week away from my long-term career was eye-opening, to say the least, in the vast amount of my time that my previous job was consuming and the tremendous stress load that it put on me.  It took me about a month to realize that I had only begun to tap into my potential in sales and running a business and had never really been given the opportunity to do so in my last career!

I am now helping turn around a business that has plenty of work coming in and simply needed some solid direction and change to become very successful.  It is fun to get to use my skills and talents and actually receive the appreciation and benefits of using those skills and talents both financially as well as on a personal level!   I do not regret my past and what I accomplished at my previous job.  I would not be able to do what I am doing today without those experiences.  I genuinely am a little saddened that what I was capable of was never noticed or fully appreciated.  However, that eventually set me free and has allowed me to take a giant leap towards my personal growth!

2018 saw both of my kids grow even more into individuals with their own lives beginning and an entirely new set of daily trials and tribulations!  They are both doing very well in school ... even if they get into trouble from time to time ... which I am hoping they will move past soon!

Throughout all of this, my wife has been an anchor in keeping me grounded and helping me get thru everything that has happened this year.  I, nor many of those around me, would be where we are today if not for her guidance and help in my growth.   Because of the career change, I was able to take her on a much-belated honeymoon this fall.  We went back to visit our extended family in Hatteras and spend a week just relaxing and fishing.  It was something we have wanted to do for many years and we were finally able to make it happen.  We hope to make this an annual trip but how that will play out each year is yet to be known!

Several years ago I posted about looking out into my pasture and what I saw growing there.  This year we literally reseeded the pastures, both physically, and hypothetically!   I tilled the pastures this year to rejuvenate them and give them new life and better production and product for the cattle.  My hypothetical pasture as well was completely tilled, weeds removed, and reseeded in a more productive product with a much greater level of production and growth!  Now we just need to fertilize, nurture, and harvest in a timely manner and we will have everything we need and hopefully some of what we want as well!

In closing, please cherish and value each day.  Do not get bogged down in the daily struggles and worries as in the end, they mean nothing!  To begin my capstone course in the last quarter of my college career my professor, Dr. Peg McMahon, had us each write our own eulogy.  I encourage everyone to do this if you haven't.  It is not an easy thing to do and will really change your way of thinking.  During my experience on vacation this past assignment came to mind and is part of what made the decision to leave my long-term career a much easier decision.   If I had not made it out of the water alive that day none of the worries I had on my mind would have mattered.  Work would have gone on without me with little concern to the future of my family or any of the things I had not finished in my life.  The worries of not having the income to cover bills or if we made the wrong decision on what to plant wouldn't have mattered either.   What really matters and what is most important is that we are each genuinely living in the moment and getting the most out of each day.

If tomorrow never comes for you will not know, only those around you will.  

What will they remember about you and the way you lived your life and spent your time?  

Did you leave the world a better place than you found it?   

Did you help those around you grow their pasture when possible?   

Did you live each day to the fullest? 

Don't wait till your final moment to take that day off to be with family or try something new to eat or start a new path!  Be present in the moment now cause once it has passed it will never come back again!

Happy new year everyone!

May 2019 bring each of you the benefits of what you have sown in your pasture!

Kenny