It was time to slow down anyway

rrlund

Well-known Member
My aunt passed away last year and the place got sold to the Mennonites,so I didn't have that place this year after working it for 43 years. The plan was not to breed any heifers this year,but still cull about the same as always and cut back to around 60 mama cows from 75 or so. I got a letter Thursday from the son of another land lord on a place I've been working for 40. He said my current lease expires at the end of the year and they don't plan to renew it. He's trying to be a big shot real estate agent and has talked his mother in to selling the tillable ground so he can collect the commission. I started renting that place from his great grandmother. Apparently after so many generations,all this land is to people is a pot of money.

I guess I'll cull to 50. Everything will be alright this year,but getting enough feed next year to finish out all of this years calves might make it tight if the weather doesn't cooperate.

I can get my Medicare in two years and my full Social Security in three,so I'm not concerned with starving. I'm just glad I'm not any younger. If I was,this could be a big problem. I've still go a few places rented. I've always had a goal of someday getting down to just working my own ground and still doing alright. Looks like that day's coming sooner rather than later.
 

It is always tough when you have to rely on someone else. You might find that their great plans fall through, and then come back to see if you will rent again. Good timeto lower the rent.

Good luck, this might even be a good thing in the end.
 
I reminded him what a miserable he11hole that place is and that I had given it up 5 times in the past,but always took it back when the other guys walked away after just one or two tries. I reminded him too that his dad had come to me and told me that if I'd give him $23 an acre,pay the rent every year and do something with it,that was fine with him. I also told him that if I sold off cows because I couldn't feed them,that would be the end and I wouldn't take it back again. I said that if they wanted me to work it next year,they'd better let me know before I sold off that many cows.

I told him that if somebody else tried to farm that swamp,I wanted to be sitting there with a six pack to watch the show. His great grandmother told me 40 years ago that the only way to work that place is to live there. I do,and I've made it work,but it's an awful short growing season. I usually can't plant corn there before the first or second week of June,then it'd better be chopped and off of there before the fall rains start or you won't get it. It'll flood,then get ice on the water so if you try to pick it,you break through the ice and go down in the mud. I got it in the day after Memorial Day this year,but it flooded and I'm still waiting for it to dry up so I can replant it.

I told him right up front that I won't lie for him if anybody asks me what the ground's like. It's gonna be entertaining.
 

After hearing what a nice piece of land it is, I am betting on the six pack show. Amazing how some people can't see the forest for the trees. Guess he's gonna learn the hard way. You will be fine. Enjoy the show.
 
I know the feeling of the cards falling not in your favor for a while now. Been able to make it because prices have been decent if not great but that could all change for the worse as time goes forward. At some point I will need to pick up ground and to be honest the chances are very poor that I can do that. The big difference between you and I is I probably will starve to death as retirement is a ways off among other factors.
 
I think the local hardware store had better be careful about selling rope to his uncles and his mother's cousins for fear of being involved in a lynching. They're all hunting fools who have stands and shacks all over that place and have hunted it all their lives. The first thing that crossed my mind was the beat down that they were gonna give him.
 
I will never understand why this generation wants to dump family farm ground that has provided them an income for genrations for one lump sum. I have seen people in my area do it time and again. That land could provide for their family for the forsee let future. Not getting rich, but living comfortably with minimal input if the rent it. But they want that giant pay out, and that money won't make it more than their kid's generation before it is gone and subsequent generations are broke. Plus, if their kids or grandkids should have the farming bug, they will never be able to get that land back at a startup price.
 
It's not like his mother even needs the money. His dad was a partner in a string of lumber yards,and he sold out to his partners a few years before he died,rumored for a million dollars. Then the boy talked her in to letting him sell her custom built home that his dad designed. Now he sees another payday in the land. One of her brothers and one of her cousins built new homes on about the only corners of the place that would perk,so they'll be the first to be hunting him down.
 
I know how you feel. I'm about to loose two pastures over 600 acres total. Same deal changing generations and they think they have to cash in. I have to find some more I have too far to get to social security. Good Luck Tony
 
We'll make it. Tough part was telling my son that he would have to cull by half too. If I can barely make a living,I can't very well be feeding all of his to. Not that he isn't making a good living already with his machine shop,but it takes the wind out of his sails when it comes to building a herd of his own.
 
The wife was more upset than I was. She said she guessed she'd have to go back to work. I think we'll be OK without that happening.
 
Thats todays generation something for nothing give me un till the well runs dry. Had a guy do that to his mother. Sold the house his father built told his mother he was building her a new one on his property next to him. He didn't build the house spent all the money ripped off everyone he knew. Got pancreatic cancer wife left him mother went and lived in daughters house broke. He died a horrible death with no one around.
 
Another thing that gets me riled is the kids who inherit farm land for Scott free and then demand a huge cash rent to whoever farms it. The sibling who has farmed that land and increased its value through good farming practices Between the time when dad retired and when he passed away either has to pay the huge rent or get out.
 
That was the first thing he did. The year after his dad passed away,his mother told me to keep on working it like I always had,for what her husband had told me to pay. The next year,I got a letter from the son saying that he was just looking out for his mother's best interests,so he wanted a written lease where there'd never been one before,and he thought it should be worth more than what his dad had asked. We finally settled on $34 an acre on a five year lease,but I educated him thoroughly on what that ground was,and the trouble his great grandmother and his dad had just trying to get anybody to work it at all. But,his dad had been successful,so by simple genetics he was a genius who was a super negotiator and knew he could get a better deal.
 
I've read everything you've written and my conclusion is that your son will be hurt the worst. You know there a possible opportunity here. If it's a flood plain then it will not perk (which you said in one message) and that means you cannot build on it and it has way less value, also if it flood or is very wet spring and fall it cannot be double cropped or used for small grain (fall planted). Why don't you do a little checking with a TRUSTED real estate broker (I say broker not an agent) on the real value. IF (big IF's) your son really wants to get started and the hunters really want to hunt it (2 big IF's) you could make an offer with the hunters financially backing you. Some more big IF's You have to be willing to take on that much debt; your son has to be willing/able help make the payments the hunters have to willing/able come up with the money. If I chose this option I would make the offer to the mother and cut him out as much as possible.
Another option is for the hunters to buy it with you/son renting it.

Good luck
 
If it is as wet as you sat and it sits for a couple years un-worked it will have ca tails and DEQ won't let him do anything with it. Is it all zoned agricultural-residential, or is some of it zoned WR (WD?) wetlands?
 
Hear so much of that the last 15 years or so, the kids just want as big a cash windfall as they can get, no thought to the future.

Donno. People have gotten so far removed from their food and their family history.


What strikes me as odd is the kid wants the commission for selling it; his mom will lose a bundle to taxes and the kid will get a much smaller inheratence some day, most likely.

Locally, I haven't heard of land renting for $34 an acre in any shape since perhaps the 1970s, or earlier. For me that sounds 'cheap' but I do understand it is a here and there situation. Here they value a cat tail swamp at $2000 an acre that they don't allow you to farm, but it gets taxed at $20 an acre in property taxes.......

Paul
 
I'm not involved in zoning in the township,but I can tell you it's CLASSIFIED agricultural for property tax purposes. It'll grow up to willow and autumn olive in a hurry without a doubt. I'm not too sure about cat tails. It's not muck,it's just wet sand. The place was ditched.probably 100 years ago,but time has done a job on that and there's really no place to ditch it to now unless you can talk the county in to doing it,and since there's only just over 40 tillable acres there anymore,and nobody else would benefit,it'd be a tough sell. There used to be about twice that much that was tillable,but after the great grandfather got rid of the cattle,the brush started to grow up way in back and took over completely. There's no reclaiming that anymore. If it was 100 acres and a BTO wanted to get a right of way to tile it toward the lake it might be a different story,but he thinks it's worth $2500-3500 an acre,tillable and non,so to give that and go through the nightmare of draining it for that few acres wouldn't be worth it. That's not to say that some greedy idiot won't try.

The great grandmother told me way back when,that when her husband would get done plowing it,he'd turn around and start plowing furrows toward the ditches,but by the time I started working it,those ditches really didn't go anyplace anymore.
 
When I started working it forty years ago,I was giving $40 an acre for it. The year after I planted silage corn in there on July 8th because that was the earliest I could get on it,was the first time I gave it up. Every time I took it back,it got cheaper. His dad just didn't want brush taking over the whole thing. Most ground rents for $40-70 around here for non irrigated,but this ain't most ground. When I told him I wasn't interested,I asked him where he got his idea for his price? I told him I'd been on township board of review and had lived and farmed here all my life and that I could tell him first hand,there's not any other land like that around here to compare it to. He just said he'd gotten it from sales of other farm land. I don't know who's gonna have to give him an education. He doesn't want to listen to me. Anything I tell him probably just sounds like sour grapes.
 
One of these places has been in the same family for almost 160 years. Since this part of the state was settled. They even incorporated a few years ago and when the brother died one side of the family made it hard enough on the rest that they gave up. Yes we will get through this but all three of my kids want to ranch also. They are making a start on their own but I would be more able to help them if I wasn't loosing country. Tony
 
Trouble is the Mennonites and most likely the Amish are in the area and are notorious for vastly over paying for marginal ground. Also, if the current owner's family sees it as a hunting paradise then perhaps somebody from the big city with big money sees the same thing. As one poster said it stinks when you have to rely on outside resources such as land to make a go of farming.
 
There's one other buildable spot on it back in behind the uncles house,but it's so low around the south side of the uncles land that building a road would cost a fortune. That spot is a stones throw from the main road running in front of it,but there's a sink hole just to the west,and back in the late teens or early twenties,they had to curve the road over on to some land that I own now. Sometime later in the thirties or forties,Lawrence,who owned the land I have now,sold the land between the old road and the new road,to Art who owned the place to the west of the one that's for sale now. Art owned the place where the sink hole was. Over the years,Art's son built a house on that little sliver of land,then his niece put a trailer on the east end of it. Now that niece's daughter and son in law own that land and won't sell it,so that land locks that one buildable spot.


Like I said,the boy just sees dollar signs without looking at what he's actually trying to sell.
 
Ya,I know for a fact that this place goes back at least to the great-great grand parents of the kid who'd trying to sell it now.
 
That's something I had to remind the kid of too,part of that place actually lays inside the village limits. Any city slicker who wants to get away from it all and go hunting isn't going to jump too quick at the chance to buy something that has a row of houses along one side of it. The ground right across the road is where the farmstead was,and over the years,family members have used that ground up building homes for themselves,including the custom home that his dad built.
 
When i rented mine i never asked how much rather what would you do with the land then i went and looked at there farms. I was at first wanting a young small farmer to get this place. The first kid i rented to wouldn't even bother saying hi he basically hobby farmed with dad's equipment and collected government payments only wanted to pay half what it's worth and expect to be given free to him when i die. The next kid could well be classified a bto farms with his dad and uncle always comes up and says hi does a lot for charity and pays good rent .There diversified and have always full time employees plus some are in there 60's and 70's.
Now that i have extra money to work with i have been able to help several smaller farmers. I think the choice well be clear to what happens to my farm when I'm gone to make sure of that it's spelled out in a will plan and simple . I know of one farmer that never wanted one person to get his farm he went into a coma and while he was unconscious they gathered lawyer and judges went to his hospital room and declared him incompetent and later when he came out of his coma he found out what happened and gave up and passed away shortly afterwards. In my own case when the bank forged papers to get the farm one paper that was found was one i don't remember signing was a piece of paper giving the bank the right to decide who would buy my farm. That is why it's in a will that the renter has in his possession .
 
This one would be a good place to pasture cattle. The last member of the family who owns it,who farmed it,had a few milk cows and a herd of 20 or so Herefords. He was a rural mail carrier and they always made a decent living. Trouble is,for what he wants for it,nobody starting out in the cattle business could ever afford to buy it and pay for it running no more cows than it would handle. It's not contiguous to my pasture land,so it's worthless to me in that respect too.

There's a seven acre field in back that's pretty much land locked too. I told him that when he started jerking me around on the rent and just reminded him of it again. Way back when they farmed it wit horses,they hauled rocks in and made a small road through a swamp to get back there. Ray farmed with a Ford Jubilee and a D14 Allis toward the end and was able to get back there with those. Shortly after I started working it,I tried getting back there with my 4040 Deere and chisel plow. The road gave out and since then,the only way to get to it is to come in from the farm behind it. I rent that one too,so I've just always grown whatever I was growing on the other farm,in that field and worked it all at once. I've told him twice now that I won't let anybody else run my crops down to go across that place to get to it.

It's a unique piece of property to say the least.
 
Who knows, you might be able to rent the second piece of ground from the next owner.

The value of farm land is down some from it's peak, but its still priced high enough that most farmland cannot generate enough income to pay for itself at today's prices. There is still a lot of room for farmland prices to fall further.

One way to look at it is if you have been renting land for forty some years, that means that the family has not been farming it for at least that long (almost two generations). After that long time, there should be little surprise that the family has no connection to that land any more. It still hurts to loose the lease on it though.
 
I've had places come and go that's the way its works if I don't own it anything can happen and land is just money to many people nothing wrong with that I can see, like a car or tractor if they don't have use for it they sell it to buy something they want more.I have use of a few places the land is actually a liability the owners they pay taxes and have no use for it at all
but because of minimum lot sizes (21 acres in some cases or less then 42 they can't split it) if they want to live here the land is part of the deal.But at any rate I can't see expecting landowners to make decisions on what is good or bad for my farming operation.Doesn't make them bad people or whatever just doing with what they own what they want to do.Works the other way too I picked up a real nice ex Alpaca farm with great fences,sheds and a nice barn to use for free to keep the land in farm use and because the old lady likes seeing my goats on her place.
Of course that could change anytime for various reasons so it goes.
 
Randy you have the land to put the cows/cattle on. Rather than your son selling his herd just have him buy part of the needed feed. Heck most years around here you can buy hay good enough for brood cows cheaper than you can raise it. Corn is under the cost of production right now for most people. So unless your over applying manure to your current land you will have more to use on your ground. By supplementing feed year round you can really up the density of cows per acre.

My youngest son does not have enough pasture ground for his cows. So he is running 100 cows on maybe 45-50 acres of pasture. Zero hay ground. He feeds ground hay and wet gluten feed year round to them. In the winter he adds ground corn. We figured his actual cost per cow/calf pair and it is lower than mine is. He buys low quality hay. As long as it is dry and tree/brush free he can have it ground and just use it for his fiber source. Then use byproducts to built the nutrition they need.

Also I have found that the ground may not leave and often when it does other ground pops up. I posted last year about how I was unable to buy some ground we had farmed for around 50 years. Well we rented 3 times as much "new" ground that is better ground. So losing that was actually a good thing since it sold for too much money. We already have been approached by several landowners with additional ground for the future. Seems a lot of them like getting paid on time every time over fishing for the MAYBE BIG fish rent payment.
 
Have to go outside the box on that one .It's starting a little around here guys from the big cities are looking for land to go hunting on build a cabin etc. I think a lot of that happened in New York state.
 
He is a real estate agent and is going to list it. As the listing agent,he'd get a commission and that's what he's after.
 
Ya,like I said,the goal is to get down to just working my own and collecting my Social Security anyway. Loosing two of them in a row in a two year period is quicker than I thought it would happen,but we'll be alright.
 
Yes I understand he is the listing agent, but if you get another agent to work for you , he would have to split he commission , and your agent will work on your behalf to make the sale, and get his cut. Just putting an odder in through another agent should make some smoke come out of this greedy cousins ears,lol
 
Just because it's for sale doesn't mean it will sell. Offer to rent it until it sells. If big city hunters buy it talk to them. They might have you farm it so they don't have to put in food plots.
 
Guys this has been going on for more than a few decades. Seen it with my wife's extended family and others back in the 70's. Heard old timers talking about this happening long before that.

Part of this problem years ago in the so called "good ole days" was because farm kids were working hard at a young age. Get up, do chores, go to school, do homework if there was no field work, do chores and off to bed. Heck of a lot of those kids dreamed on an 8-5 job in the city with evenings and weekends off. So right after graduation they were gone. Few short years later when dad passed they sold the place because they had no close connection to it.

Now here is where most of us unwashed non investing folks get messed up. If the seller takes the money and invests in the markets they stand to earn far more money than they will ever get renting a piece of ground out. Are there folks out there that take the money and blow it. New car/truck/boat/vacation ECT? Sure. Most likely most. But those wise enough to invest stand to take 100,000, 200,000 or more and do pretty good with it. According to a local real estate guy our property is worth about 1 million as recreational land. Now I'm 63, that's a lot more than I could make in my lifetime renting it. Wisely invested that one million would pay more per year than rent too. I ain't worried about the money. I let my nephew farm the tillable land for free.

Rick
 
Plus if you turn the land into cash you don't have to pay taxes on the principle every year like you do with real estate,no having to have a liability policy etc etc.Plus there are times to cash out I know of some older people just held land for no good reason died flat broke on a piece of acreage worth over a million$.How crazy is that? Developers want to buy my place
I keep telling them its for sale they just haven't hit a high enough number. I can sell my place and easily buy another farm 100-200 miles away that's nicer and larger for half the money
I get for this place because of where I'm located.Its been in the family for generations and all that but as soon as I'm gone it'll be sold anyway so I may as well benefit from it.Land is
a private possession just like a car or tractor what the owner does with it is their business period as far as I'm concerned.
 
yeah the amish are bad for bidding up ground here regardless of how good it might be. That in turn raises the price of all the other land for us "Yankees" or "English" folks.

a couple dutchies paid around $22000/acre for an "ok" farm last year. included so-so house, barns silos, parlor ect and you could probably still milk there if you wanted to.

when the economy slows and all these rv companies start slowing and laying people off (already started slowing down) the prices should ease a bit but there is still too much amish $ out there to buy it up.
 
It's always gone on but that does not lessen the blow when it happens to you. Also, we all have a point of view and understand that the family that owns the land has its
own priorities. Sure, Randy could just buy the feed that was lost from losing the acreage but I have a feeling that there is more to the story. Perhaps the person who is
selling the property was less than gracious about what was going to happen. In any event Randy gets the benefit of any doubt until events dictate otherwise. Randy will
always be a friend of those here while the guy selling the ground chances are will never be apart of this community. Unless a person is directly involved or affected
friendship will usually come before business and I for one am thankful for that.
 
I guess I have a little bit of ground lined up to lessen the blow. Not as much as I lost,but enough to take off the pressure of being able to finish this year and last year's calves. That was more a concern to me than culling the cow herd. I have most everything in the neighborhood so that what I don't own,and what I rent makes it contiguous. There was one place I didn't have. It lays between my home place and the one I'm loosing. The guy had hobby farmed it for a long time,but hadn't done much since his kids have grown and left home. He brush hogged it every few years,but that was about it. His health is real bad now.

His oldest daughter and mine have been real close since they were in elementary school. She was at my daughter and son in law's 25th anniversary open house Saturday. I was talking to her about her dad and said I needed to get ahold of her mother and see if I could rent it from her next year and get a crop in there to keep the weeds down. She said she'd see her the next day and would put a bug in her ear. She contacted my wife this morning and said she was all for it. I'll put it in to corn next year to get the silo full,then seed it to alfalfa the next year.
 
With your situation and all of the input, all I have to say is that the only person that you can count on is yourself. Been it that position several times before.
 
Yep,that's why I want to get down to just working my own ground. At least it'll be stable.
 
When one door closes another one opens. I've always believed that to be true. A couple years from now you will look back and realize this was the best thing that ever happened to you.
 

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