Barn Talk

Tommy Wheeler told his farm credit banker he wanted to grow rice and lose about $250 an acre doing it. The banker called it the dumbest business plan he'd ever heard. Tommy's answer: he was already losing $500 an acre on corn. Tommy spent 27 years in NASCAR without ever being a race fan. He started at Hendrick Motorsports for $12 an hour as a Davidson physics student, was the third employee when R...

Garth Gatson is 33 years old and doesn’t own an acre of ground. He raises cattle for a living anyway, on his family’s place in Missouri, buying heifer calves and selling them as pairs into the biggest cattle market anybody alive has ever seen. And this summer, while walking his pastures, he wrote the book on how we got here. It’s called Abel’s Rally, it’s named after the first stockman in the Bibl...

Dale Earnhardt Jr. liked Christian Koch's grandpa's no-sugar beef jerky so much he bought into the company. Grandpa never wanted to sell it, so Christian found the recipe in his mom's family cookbook and built the business himself, from a 12 tray dehydrator to 210 convenience stores. Christian chased music for 13 or 14 years before it ended. Getting USDA approved took 17 months, and his first food...

Neil Koch walked away from a good job 4 miles from his house at almost 50 to go full time on YouTube. His channel, Dig Drive DIY, sits at 348,000 subscribers, and it started with videos of a backhoe he was trying to sell on Craigslist. He drove 6 hours from northeast Indiana to tell us the whole story. DIG DRIVE DIY ➱ https://www.youtube.com/@digdrivediy Neil was a farmhand at 14 on a culti-mulche...

Corn is over $5 and beans are near $13, and a lot of farmers still won't make any more money than they did at $4.50 corn. Every time the grain price goes up, something takes it back, and the front half of this Hot Topics episode is about what's doing the taking. Diesel is $6.13 in Iowa. One Illinois farmer spent $1,000 filling a single semi. Anhydrous is close to $1,000 a ton, up 25% from a year a...

You can't out-yield your way to profit anymore, so Will Cannon is chasing margin with 2 or 3 bucks an acre of homemade compost instead of $40 an acre of bugs in a jug. Two Iowa corn farmers came to the barn this week: Will, an Iowa Corn Growers director from near Prairie City, and Paul Gieselman, president of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, from near Morning Sun. Will has run cover crops on 100 per...

You can't out-yield your way to profit anymore, so Will Cannon is chasing margin with 2 or 3 bucks an acre of homemade compost instead of $40 an acre of bugs in a jug. Two Iowa corn farmers came to the barn this week: Will, an Iowa Corn Growers director from near Prairie City, and Paul Gieselman, president of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, from near Morning Sun. Will has run cover crops on 100 per...

You can't out-yield your way to profit anymore, so Will Cannon is chasing margin with 2 or 3 bucks an acre of homemade compost instead of $40 an acre of bugs in a jug. Two Iowa corn farmers came to the barn this week: Will, an Iowa Corn Growers director from near Prairie City, and Paul Gieselman, president of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, from near Morning Sun. Will has run cover crops on 100 per...

Tork's dad lived to 99, flew fighters, practiced law, and paid for a farm. In July 2018 he fell down the basement stairs, and Tork brought him home to die in the same house he was born in. No guest this week. Sawyer and Tork each picked three days that changed their lives, and this is all six. Tork sat up alone that night giving the hospice doses every few hours, and his dad passed around 5:30 in...

He grew up with kiddie pools in the attic catching roof leaks and frost forming on the inside of his bedroom wall, and today 1.33 million people watch him drag dead cars out of Iowa fence rows. Kevin Brown runs Junkyard Digs out of Ames, two hours up the road from the barn, and this one is mostly about what being broke actually builds. The house sagged corner to corner and the ceiling collapsed wh...

He stacked every FSA beginning farmer loan he could get, went from about 100 cows to 550 in roughly a year, and when the balance sheet finally settled he was positive by $278. That is the number this whole episode hangs on. Luke and Natalie Kovarik run Kovarik Cattle Co., a first generation Angus seedstock operation out of Ord, Nebraska, selling around 100 bulls a year in a January sale that start...

Forty companies own 70 percent of the hogs in this country. Fewer than 100 plants slaughter 99.7 percent of them. Small farms running their own processing account for 0.3 percent of the pork on shelves, 2 percent of the beef. So when a menu names a farm, the math says it almost never is one. Greg Gunthorp is a fourth generation pastured hog farmer in Indiana, 400 sows on 275 acres, with a USDA-ins...

A rancher outside Kansas City put collars on 30 cows and went from moving them every two days to every four or five days on the same ground, at the same cow condition. That is double the carrying capacity overnight, and we spent most of this episode on how virtual fencing works and what it costs. The collar runs $280 plus a subscription. Users report getting back 8 to 10 hours a week. The GPS is a...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s Hot Topics episode, the conversation focused on what’s really going on across the ag markets and beef industry. The discussion explored the effects of recent government moves to import more foreign beef, the ripple impact of packing plant closures, and what all of this means for ranchers, feedlots, and rural towns like ours. One concept discussed was how these...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In this episode, Tork and Sawyer sit down for an open and honest conversation comparing their lives and mindsets at the age of 26. Tork reflects on his experiences coming up in the late 1990s from the financial pressures and risks of running a farm to weathering the collapse of the hog market. Sawyer, now 26 himself, shares what it's like navigating business, investing,...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In this episode, Sawyer and Tork are diving headfirst into some of the hottest topics shaping our world right now, with a special focus on the rapid rise of AI and its ripple effects across farms, industry, and global markets. From skyrocketing energy demands and oil market turmoil to the explosive growth in AI infrastructure and the controversial spread of data centers...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the world of barbecue, entrepreneurship, and rural revival with special guests Garren and Kelly Kirkman of John G’s Barbecue in Peachland, North Carolina. Hosts Sawyer and Tork sit down with the Kirkmans to uncover their incredible journey from humble beginnings in cattle farming and hospital work, through the all-night pop-ups...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In this special episode, the conversation focused on uncovering the traits and habits that set successful people apart—especially those who've visited the barn as guests over the years. Instead of the usual hot topics, the discussion explored the common threads among high-achieving farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and business owners, sharing lessons learned firsthand f...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! Today’s episode is all about Taylor Moyer, a guy who swapped the fast lane of NASCAR for the wide-open spaces of cattle ranching outside Charlotte, North Carolina. The conversation focused on Taylor’s wild ride from pit crews to pasture, where he’s doubled his ranch’s acreage, built his own family home, jumped into ag-tourism, dabbled in tech, gone viral on social media,...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, the conversation focused on the incredible journey of Grey Zabel, who demonstrates that you can make it to the absolute peak of professional sports while remaining a farm kid at heart. From growing up in Pierre, South Dakota as a fifth-generation farmer to his college football career at North Dakota State and being picked 18th overall by the Seattle S...

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we have an inspiring conversation with Rick Anglin, a fourth-generation dairy farmer from Arizona who made the bold decision to leave behind the conventional dairy business after 17 years and forge a new path for his family’s future. Rick tells the remarkable story of how he bet it all to start Fond du Lac Farms- a fully integrated raw milk operation...

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today’s guest episode, we’re joined by Nicole Glenn an agronomist, content creator, and founder of the Farm Company, who’s earned a dedicated following by speaking honestly about agriculture, soil health, and her experiences as a young woman in the industry. Nicole grew up on her family's Kentucky farm, traveled all the way to Australia to farm and explore new perspectives...

Welcome to another episode of Barn Talk! In this Hot Topics edition, Sawyer and Tork open up about what's happening in rural America and beyond. They kick things off by reflecting on an exciting month filled with outstanding guests and conversations, and they offer heartfelt thanks to listeners for making it all possible. Today's episode covers some of the biggest issues impacting farmers and rura...

Welcome back to Barn Talk. In today's episode, our guest is John Haskell, an accomplished rancher, business owner, and expert at turning struggling ranches around. John has spent years working on ranches across the country, building up his own herd, and helping others transform their operations from losing money to becoming truly profitable. As the founder of Ranch Right LLC, John is passionate ab...

Welcome to Barn Talk, where what happens in the barn doesn’t always stay in the barn. In this episode, Tork and Sawyer sit down with Zach Lahn, a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, entrepreneur, community advocate, and current candidate for governor. Zach shares his perspective on the challenges facing rural America, including the struggles of modern family farming, rising input costs, consolidation ac...