Ep. 270 In Memoriam: The Beginning of Our Story with Carroll Hoksbergen (Hoksey Native Seeds Founder)

Jul 13

It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the news of the passing of our founder, Carroll Hoksbergen.

Carroll was more than just the founder of Hoksey Native Seeds; he was the heart and soul of our mission. His profound love for the Iowa prairie and his unwavering vision to restore our native landscapes inspired everyone he met. Every seed we plant is a part of the rich legacy he leaves behind. We will miss his wisdom, his passion, and his guidance more than words can say.

Check out this episode of the Prairie Farm Podcast to find out more!

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00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;16
Unknown
Welcome back to the Prairie Farm Podcast. My name is Nicholas Luria, your favorite host. As many of you know, our founder mentor, teacher, friend and my dad passed away this past Monday. We are shocked and heartbroken, but are thankful for the life that he lived. We at Hoxie Native Seeds have ginormous shoes to fill, and we are going to do the absolute best we can for everyone who is tuned in for two episodes or 200 episodes.
00;00;30;17 - 00;00;50;29
Unknown
We are very, very grateful for you and my dad's legacy lives on through this podcast. Through the seeds we plant in the ground, and through all of you who are appreciating the prairie and the things you are learning on this podcast, we are very grateful to you, and we are very grateful to my dad for what he brought to this earth.
00;00;51;02 - 00;01;17;02
Unknown
This week, we want to rerelease his first episode so that we can learn from him once again. All of us on the Hoxie team have relisten to the episode, and there's a lot to learn there. And honestly, it was just really nice to hear his voice again. But before we get started with that, I'd like to tell you one little story that I think encapsulates my dad very well.
00;01;17;04 - 00;01;41;03
Unknown
Every morning at Hoxie, Native Seeds, we as a team join together and we pray and we take turns. And when it was my dad's turn to pray, his prayers would change. But there were always the same three things. He would thank God for nature and his part. He had to play in it. He would thank God for his friends and his family, and he would ask God to keep them safe.
00;01;41;05 - 00;02;03;14
Unknown
And he would thank God for his goodness. And despite his four and a half year journey with cancer every day, he would thank God for his goodness. He would start to cry. He would try to make sure that we didn't see or hear him cry, and he would get up and say Amen. And he'd tell us, thank you for the work you guys are doing here, boys.
00;02;03;14 - 00;02;27;25
Unknown
And he'd go outside and work. And I think that about sums up his whole life. Without further ado, Carol Hawkesbury, owner of Hoxie Native Seeds and this is the Prairie Farm podcast. I'm Doug Durham, a landowner trying to be a conservationist. I'm Tabitha Panisse, president of the Iowa Prairie Network. I'm Ryan Callahan, director of conservation at meat. Be here.
00;02;27;26 - 00;02;56;02
Unknown
Angela from Ax and homestead. Chris Selzer, the Nebraska director of science for the Nature Conservancy. Jen Mccollam from working class bow hunter Taylor Keene, founder of Sacred Seed Ryan Bryson Price and wildlife. This is Luke Fritsch, this James Holtz joy of and wine garden. Sam Philibert, Julie Meacham and you are listening to the Prairie Farm, the Prairie Farm, Prairie farm, Berry farm, Prairie Farm podcast, Prairie farm podcast, welcome to the Prairie Farm podcast.
00;02;56;04 - 00;03;22;17
Unknown
Nick, why are we're recording this episode? Because the one and only time that that ever happened was our first podcast where your mic took a dump on us. And whenever people listen to our podcast now and they go back and they listen to the beginning, which is what we named that first episode. Very fitting. Wow, you're you're Mike Scott Way Weber.
00;03;22;17 - 00;03;44;28
Unknown
You sound so much better now. Well, it was bad. I tried to re listen to it couple months ago. Couldn't do it. It was so bad. Yeah. Yep. So, it's such. It's our most important episode, honestly. And, I firmly believe that. I know Nick does. And and Carol wouldn't. Wouldn't say so because it's his story.
00;03;44;28 - 00;04;07;27
Unknown
But but it's true. It is our most important story. None of this would be happening without the efforts of of our founder, Carol Hawkesbury, and who is our return guest? And you've heard him on the podcast in other episodes, too. He comes along sometimes when he's when he's got a he doesn't really ever have free moments, but when he's got a moment that he can, he can spend and, and, share with us a little bit, he'll, he'll jump in.
00;04;07;29 - 00;04;30;03
Unknown
But, we know it took us like three months to find this free moment. That's right. Do this. That's right. But I've kind of figured we'd, we'd prime the pump here a little bit. And, you know, your life has been agriculture. It's been around agriculture. You know, you, Oh. Were you born on this? On this farm here?
00;04;30;06 - 00;04;54;26
Unknown
I was born right here on this homestead here and, raised here till I was 14. And then we moved to Pella a little bit and, spent ten years in Palo with my parents. And then I moved back to the farm, probably. And. Yeah, in 1980 or something like that. But then the whole time, you know, we still farm the farm.
00;04;54;26 - 00;05;22;01
Unknown
And then before I had license, did I think I moved to Palo when I was 13 or so and, and, my dad would bring me out here during the summer and just drop me off and, I would take care of the chores around the farm, and, yeah, we had some livestock and some cattle. Yet it's not cow herd, but mainly, you know, my dad had confidence in me that I would do all the cultivating and weed mowing and just whatever took around the farm.
00;05;22;23 - 00;05;42;23
Unknown
Keep it going. Do you think your dad noticed that you just had like that knack for it pretty early on. Oh he, you know, he knew that and just it just built upon him as I was getting older and, and and he had another, he had another full time job that he would go off and yeah, he was trying to organize farmers.
00;05;42;24 - 00;06;11;08
Unknown
You know, he worked actually for the NFO National Farmers Organization, where he would go out and, recruit new members and encourage farmers to work together, collectively bargaining for a price rather than, what do you give me? What you give me? He would, get farmers to pull their hogs together and pull their grain together, and they would go to the, supplier or the end users and say, hey, this is what we got from our farmers.
00;06;11;08 - 00;06;38;10
Unknown
We need this. And, and that worked pretty good. But then, you know, those farmers are pretty independent, and some people would, take advantage. So the, the NFL would hold grain off the market, you know. And then, cash market would go up. And the key was to keep it off the market till reach the point where you wanted to sell it, but then there's people who weren't members, you know, they would sell.
00;06;38;15 - 00;07;06;09
Unknown
So they had a bump in the price and kind of defeated the whole process. So they were farmers are always kind of independent and and didn't want to collectively, work together as an organization to, to work on, on a better price. Yeah. That's like the whole thing. Farmers never have to have a boss. Well, usually their parent was their boss, and, you know, they got a certain age and then, you know, don't want another boss.
00;07;06;10 - 00;07;39;04
Unknown
So they're always kind of competitive, you know, and if your neighbor would hold off and, you know, and, the next neighbor would sell, you know, so they didn't really work together so much as, as an organized group where they could have, you know, they could say, hey, we need we need this much. And, you know, my dad was pretty, you know, he could see the future, what AG was going to big production firms and, you know, and now, you know, the pork industry's all gone of that.
00;07;39;06 - 00;08;02;28
Unknown
And, so that's kind of. Yeah. How we got started farming in there. So he did work off the farm organizing people before he would, go out on the road. He would just bring me out here, and then he'd pick me up again about four, 430, 5:00, whatever it took. And I loved it there. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's very clear that you're doing what you're meant to be doing.
00;08;02;28 - 00;08;23;12
Unknown
And I think a lot of people eventually find what they're meant to do. You know, like, I feel like that eventually happened to me. It took me a while to get here, but but, but, you know, most I think we're not most, but a lot of people don't, you know, they don't they don't get that chance. And it's neat that your dad saw that in you.
00;08;23;12 - 00;08;45;03
Unknown
And. Yeah, grandpa told me you you started driving a tractor really young. When when did you start driving tractors? I don't know, quite young, I don't know, I can remember him. He would plow these fields out here, and, before I went to school, the bus would come around, I don't know, 8:00, and I'd be out there early in the morning.
00;08;46;07 - 00;09;06;16
Unknown
He wanted me to drag or pull hard across. Would he plowed so it would crumble, wouldn't get so cloudy. And the fields are so rough about, you know, you'd have to stand up on them tractors and drag that hard on around and around. And so I don't want to do it. You know I probably was ten I suppose or younger.
00;09;06;18 - 00;09;28;05
Unknown
Wow. That's awesome. And and being allowed being allowed to grow up quick a little bit in that way and have the responsibility and right away you had equity in the ground, you know, from your own efforts. So yeah. So it created a deep sense of value. Well, you know, you're already talking about some of the things that were different in that era of farming.
00;09;28;05 - 00;09;57;09
Unknown
And, and what's interesting is your if we looked at kind of almost like school, your age, class of farmers, they were in that kind of that when you guys were kids was kind of the, the last, what, maybe decade of, of kind of farming the, the farm and glory days, you know, here and. Right. A lot of, you know, I had a lot of classmates who I graduated in 74 from high school, and I had a lot of classmates who didn't go to college.
00;09;57;09 - 00;10;17;11
Unknown
They just guys like me. They were raised on the farm and went into farming, and I was the same way. And so we all jumped into, you know, farming then. And, so I was in the mid 70s. How did that work if their dads or getting their livelihood from the farm, how do they support, you know, another 20 year old?
00;10;17;11 - 00;10;37;03
Unknown
And I mean, it's fine when you're 18, 19, you still live with your parents. It's not a big deal. But when you're 24 or 26, you know, so it didn't work so good. You know, some farmers, stuck their neck out and expanded their operation, you know, rendered more ground by more equipment. And, you know, and and, you know, than high interest rates of the 80s kind of got them farmers in trouble.
00;10;37;03 - 00;11;04;27
Unknown
And, you know, and yeah, I have several classmates that, were farming earlier and then the farm crisis cleaned them out. And sometimes their, their family operation too. So, so that was in the mid 80s and I was I guess I was kind of fortunate, you know, I was single and didn't really have to support a family. But if I had a supportive family and the income I was making back in the 80s, it would not work so good.
00;11;04;29 - 00;11;31;22
Unknown
I just a value that takes a little nickels. Took a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did, well. So. Yeah. How how did you get you just basically made no money and eat whatever you could. Yeah. Well, yeah, I just got just got by and, Yeah. You know. The interest rates kind of killed everybody.
00;11;31;22 - 00;11;51;14
Unknown
You know, we're talking 16, you know, 17% interest at the bank. And I was taking all the profit off the farm. And, you know, the bankers were getting kind of grumpy, you know, and. Was so when those interest rates came in where it was really hitting people, people's when they'd have to maybe get out a line of credit for their operational year.
00;11;51;14 - 00;12;13;13
Unknown
Right. Buy seed and and then you know year before it might have been down at, you know, seven, 8%, but then the next year it's just I think I was asking my grandpa about this because what's interesting is he's about let's see here. Well, he just turned 87 yesterday. So he's he's about 20 years older than you.
00;12;13;13 - 00;12;37;25
Unknown
So he would have been right. He would have been, you know, well into his operation at the time when, when, you were getting started. But that was so those were the guys that all had families. Unfortunately for him, he kind of just stayed the course with what he was doing. But but a lot, like you said, a lot of other guys that were especially in the situation that Nick brought up, which is really interesting.
00;12;37;25 - 00;12;57;27
Unknown
Their sons were getting to the age and they wanted to include him in the operation, and so they and confinements were coming along at that time too. And so they'd build these large confinement sheds or they'd they'd, buy more land, try and increase size their operation and boom, that that operational years. What was that? What would kill them?
00;12;57;27 - 00;13;21;09
Unknown
Just that one year basically on those really high interest rates? Well, I think it was, you know, to the mid 80s anything he did and in the AG, whether it's livestock or whatever, you weren't making any money. You know, you just kind of holding your weight and, and you're kind of, you know, running off the equity you had in land, you know, and land values were dropping.
00;13;21;20 - 00;13;49;19
Unknown
Farmers were foreclosing in there, you know, putting a lot of land on the market. And, and then the more land that went on the market that kept driving prices down on land values. So how did your grandpa survive? Well actually he had to give up a farm. Really. Yeah. He he bought one probably. So I bought part of this farm off of him and supplied some cash for him.
00;13;49;19 - 00;14;15;19
Unknown
And he wanted to reinvest in and land and a lot of farmers did back then. And so he did that and, and then the farm crisis hit, and pretty soon he had a private, contract with the original land owner. And pretty soon, you know, he started doing, appraisal on your land, and you still owe more against it than what you, that it's worth today.
00;14;16;12 - 00;14;37;15
Unknown
And then you have to sit back and reevaluate what you're doing here. So he decided, you know, take it and let Schwartz on that and just give the land back to the original owner. And the owners usually would take it back. Some of them didn't want to take it back or some of them would dropped. The price a little bit for farmers negotiate a little bit.
00;14;37;15 - 00;14;55;25
Unknown
But then so he lost all the money he had put into that farm. So it was kind of a sad deal. And you know, and he was getting up there and age two or, you know, he was getting tired of fighting it and, you know, the farm economy. And so he just decided to walk away from some of that.
00;14;55;25 - 00;15;15;13
Unknown
And, you know, if he could have just hung on, he probably could have. But, you know, he'd been much better off here, you know, today, if he were to be able to hang on to that land. Yeah, yeah. You never know the future, you know, you don't. It drops a little bit. You could hold on. Oh, it'll go back up, but it could drop for three straight years, you know, in trouble.
00;15;15;13 - 00;15;39;29
Unknown
But yeah. Yeah. And that can happen. Yet today it was on the high priced land. You know it starts dropping in. Yeah. Especially because we were just talking like three weeks ago. Corn drop basically plummeted from high fives to mid to low fours, you know. And then all of a sudden people have to figure out because that might not like a dollar might not seem a lot to people, but that is that's 20%.
00;15;39;29 - 00;16;03;21
Unknown
And start multiplying by bushels and acres. And yeah, it becomes a lot real quick. I mean, absolutely some farmers, it could easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh yeah. Easy. Well, I think when I think when my wife and I moved to this area back in 2021, I think corn was was around $7, maybe even better. And we just checked a couple days ago was down for 45 a bushel.
00;16;03;27 - 00;16;24;09
Unknown
That's right. You know, so I think, yeah. You know, and I think that wasn't even the highest I got. I think it got up to some 750 within a six month window there, you know, when it really spiked and, and beans were up real high then too. So you figure out how much money farmers. Right. And that increased, the rent and also increased, land values and, yeah.
00;16;24;09 - 00;16;45;19
Unknown
So now you lowered what that piece of, you know, ground can return and, you know, and then you gotta wonder, what am I doing here? Yeah. And the cost of equipment, that happened with houses two recently in 2021 when houses. So we bought our house right before it spiked. Yeah, we bought a house for $80,000. It spiked to 160.
00;16;45;21 - 00;17;01;10
Unknown
Right. So people would go out and they'd take out these big loans to buy boats or, you know, whatever. Maybe they needed it for medical thing, I don't know. But there are a lot of people who took out loans between that 80 and 160, and now you're probably capped at about 140 there. But then the prices simmered. They didn't go back down to 80.
00;17;01;10 - 00;17;23;11
Unknown
But like my house, I think is appraised at 132. Yeah. So, so if I had taken out a loan for all 160 and then it simmers back, you know that I kitchen deep doo doo. Yeah. I did not do that. Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's, it's a real application that I think people can that haven't ever farmed or maybe don't come from a farming family they can relate to in that sense.
00;17;23;11 - 00;17;57;06
Unknown
So it's it's a good example. So you know we're talking about it. We're farming. Farming is still going on the old way so to speak. At this time most. Well, let's just start with the first thing where there are a lot more farmers than, than there are now. You know, you go down the gravel road here and there was, you know, everybody was a farmer who had land and, you know, they were farming, you know, to maybe the big farmers or farming up to 4 or 500 acres, you know, and, and that was big back then in the 70s.
00;17;57;06 - 00;18;21;27
Unknown
And, so we were doing more tillage and so it took longer to plant an acre. Worked the ground and, and you know, to prepare and so I just it took longer so farmers couldn't really, farm anymore. Acres is due to the manpower and the time to, to plant that. So that's interesting. I, I never heard that point before.
00;18;21;27 - 00;18;44;19
Unknown
That's so yeah. Nowadays is you know kind of gone. No tell and herbicides and spray and you know and you know you talk in your 16 row planters and 24 row planters and you know, they can plant a lot of corn a day and, and seed tenders, right? Yeah. See, tenders would feed the planters rather than the guy on the end.
00;18;44;19 - 00;19;14;10
Unknown
Turn the bags open, pouring them in. Yeah. Carol, is the seed tender here? At Hoxie. How many of those bags of soybeans? I don't a lot, so I, Well, quick story is, let's start farming there and, mid 70s and 76 and, by 1980 of a start and looking at, no total soybeans.
00;19;14;10 - 00;19;39;22
Unknown
And so and I got that pretty well worked. And this before glyphosate Roundup Ready soybeans, which really made no tail beans and no till corn take off with those herbicide resistant, hybrids. But, so I started no tail dilly dallying around in that. And I, you know, I had a pretty good reputation and I knew what I was doing.
00;19;39;22 - 00;19;58;29
Unknown
And then I, you know, guys would ask me to know they're their soybeans and and corn stocks and, you know, I started that in 1980 and, you know, and I had a no till soybean plant business, you know, all through the 80s and early 90s, did a lot of custom planning, a lot of custom planting for people.
00;19;58;29 - 00;20;17;29
Unknown
And so I tore a lot of bags over. And I was younger then and, and, you know, did you just get sick of it after a while or, I did I think people got there was such a demand there for a while. People were very patient for me to get there. But, you know, I only had a that's a narrow window of time.
00;20;17;29 - 00;20;39;01
Unknown
So, yeah, you can just push it back to July. So a lot of guys stayed with me. And then pretty soon, you know, they land up, start doing themselves their own planters. You know, once I, they seen how good it worked. And so that was quite a hill to to, to, to go over is the transition from tillage to no till.
00;20;39;01 - 00;21;03;14
Unknown
And, and I had a lot of trouble with people in the 80s, you know, they would drive by just to look at those beans coming up in the corn stocks. A lot of people, you know, they just be rubbernecking out in the rubbernecking and seeing how how it looked. But, you know, but yet they wouldn't do their own grounding or just observing or, or some of these landlords would say we would never have a tenant do that to their ground.
00;21;03;14 - 00;21;19;26
Unknown
And you know pretty well most of them guys are of a and guys are no tilling like, you know. Yeah. Oh yeah. No big deal. So yeah, if a guy went out to do it with full tillage now, people would be like, what are you doing out there? Right? Yeah, I know, I see people on the tiller field.
00;21;19;26 - 00;21;58;08
Unknown
Like what? Why? Well, but yeah, it just shows that that, you know what you were doing was, was really well ahead of its time. It was. And I, you know, I, I worked with, BASF herbicide company and they made some post emergent soybean killers for grass and also, for Bradleys and, and I did some speaking at some of their winter meetings, you know, about no till and, and answer questions from farmers who were taking the goal that process of farming and, and, yeah.
00;21;58;08 - 00;22;17;11
Unknown
So that was quite a challenge to learn how to do that. And I put on several field days here and, but, yeah, I guess, good. The word kind of took me away from, row crops and got me into the native grass seed business. And Lord knows there's a challenge here on everything you do. Yeah.
00;22;17;11 - 00;22;36;23
Unknown
Yeah. That's right. And the no till beans and corns. You know, it's not really a challenge like it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well you know you're talking about those field days which I know we got a this is another rabbit trail here. But there's a great field day demonstration story that kind of shows you the character of of Carol.
00;22;36;26 - 00;23;13;29
Unknown
Can you tell a story about when you had the field fire and you had to go, and the guy that was burning up your break in your tractor at the, at the demonstration you had to go, go kick him out and show everyone how to do it the right way was a tough day. So, yeah, we were baling all prairie up in the spring and spent the 1st May, and we had mowed it down and were raking and baling it and, and, you know, Vermeer manufacturing, would come out in the spring and with some of their new models of balers and, and want to test them, you know, they've been sitting
00;23;13;29 - 00;23;36;19
Unknown
around all winter long, the engineers have with their new new balers and wanted to get some bales on them to see how they operated. So we had lined up a date for them to come out and, and they wanted my baler out there too, which was a previous model with the that they were testing to compare the size of bales and the tightness and just how they worked.
00;23;36;19 - 00;24;00;03
Unknown
And anyway, the bearing went out on my baler, I think it was about 11:00 in the morning. Wasn't much to do. I got started early and vermeers were coming about 1:00, and, the bearing land up start in the field on fire. And, so it was going down a windrow underneath my tractor. I looked back and seen fire back there, and I got the tractor off the wind.
00;24;00;03 - 00;24;29;13
Unknown
Rhone and I got the fire out on the baler, and but the fire was still coming out of the south, and my windrows were running north and south, and and. Oh, no. So it was going down that windrow and that had been baling. And so I thought, well, maybe I can get this thing put out. There's about, I don't know, 30, 40 yards ahead was a dirt lane we had across the, the wind windrow.
00;24;29;13 - 00;24;50;24
Unknown
So there was nothing growing there. So I went up there and, scratched off all the hay off that old dirt windrow. And I'm going to use that for a fire stop. And, so that worked quite well. Stop the fire right there on that dirt track. But still, the fire was wanting to go left to right of the windrow that time.
00;24;50;26 - 00;25;13;03
Unknown
So I was stomping that out and trying to get that from going into the next windrow and anyway. But then a wind came along and started the couldn't, couldn't keep up with the fire that was going left or right with my stop with your. Yeah. My feet were getting hot and, I got in another windrow and, I decided to call the fire department.
00;25;13;03 - 00;25;51;12
Unknown
And anyway, long story short, the fire department got put out, and then I called Vermeers and I said, hey, I got such and such a bearing. Went out. So, yeah, no problem. We'll bring a bearing out when we come. And so they, I said, well, I'm going home and get the smoke out of my hair or my eyes and, and take a look at my feet and so yeah, I come back probably, you know, we had the fire out by noon, I guess I come back after 2:00 in the afternoon and yeah, Vermeer's had my tractor and baler up and rolling again and, and or tractor and bale and they're baling like mad, but,
00;25;53;02 - 00;26;19;19
Unknown
they had an engineer in my tractor. I should man, you know, stand to next to another engineer. I said, I think that tractor mine's pulling awful hard and and I looked at the engineer I was standing next to. I said, you know what? I think he's got my perc brake on it. Oh, so I ran over there and, got him out of the tractor cab, and I said, my feet might be burnt and my butt's okay.
00;26;19;21 - 00;26;40;23
Unknown
I sit in the seat and bale. So I did that the rest of the day and bailed and went all right, lanta getting pretty severe burns, blisters on my feet. And yeah, I had to go to wound care. That one you, let's see. You're in the, you're in the picture at this point. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00;26;40;24 - 00;27;03;16
Unknown
Nick was playing soccer. I was playing soccer. Yeah. And and never got a bowl of water ready for it. You remember that? Yeah. I remember that. If you hear that story or not. Oh, yeah. You better tell it anyway. So I think it was. This happened all on a Friday. The fire was on Saturday. We went back out there, moved all the bales off the field and outside, still hobbling around.
00;27;03;19 - 00;27;31;27
Unknown
And then, following Monday, Nicholas had a soccer game. And Paris city or Monroe someplace. Something, right? Yeah. We went to that and get home that night, and my ankles were starting to swell up, and Nemo, my mother in law said, hey, you might get infection in that thing. You know, you better get to the doctor. So we made called a doctor, made an appointment for the next day to go see him.
00;27;31;27 - 00;27;59;02
Unknown
And time being, she rigged up this concoction of, Epsom salt and hot water. Told me to soak my feet in. Not knowing is Epsom salt. I plop my feet down in. There was raw blisters on the fire, man. I jumped out of the chair, rolled across the bed, go the wife. Never see the guy's so much pain before.
00;27;59;05 - 00;28;28;07
Unknown
I didn't know why I stuck my feet into and I tried to get over the shower to rinse that off. That hurt like the devil. Oh, I bet. And, were you hoping that, Oh, remember that all? Yeah. Well, the the whole story just. I mean, the reason I bring it up, because it shows how Carol's been there, for the farming community as a whole, for a long time, whether it's demonstrating equipment like it was that day and going through the extra worked.
00;28;29;06 - 00;28;52;15
Unknown
You know, you might I don't know. You know, I never heard the compensation side of that story, but maybe you got, you know, a nice little check, but still time away from getting your other stuff done here. And and but you've been willing to participate in that stuff because you know that it's important, and you care about farming and you care about about, leaving things better than than you got them.
00;28;52;19 - 00;29;16;29
Unknown
And, you know, I think that that that is most evident when people come out here to Hoxie. And now we have demonstration day every year called Prairie Appreciation Day. And people get to see that that vision that's happened, you know, in it, I have to be careful sometimes because I like to romanticize about those old days of farming.
00;29;16;29 - 00;29;39;22
Unknown
And I got just a little glimpse of it when I was a real little guy and grandpa was still because he was from that, you know, he was that was a dying breed, a farmer when I was a kid, you know, these were the guys that were now retiring and, and and getting out of it. But I see they seen some glory days and farming and, you know, in the early 70s, corn got to three bucks and, you know, and guys made a lot of money on $3 corn.
00;29;40;20 - 00;30;05;27
Unknown
And they got gung ho and, and I didn't think corn ever go down a buck and a half. And three years later it did drop half its value. Some are still today. So yeah. Yeah. And and you know so those things changed and and you know when my, when my grandpa was was really young which I think it'd be fun to get him and his brother on the show sometime to talk about some of the stuff.
00;30;05;27 - 00;30;42;23
Unknown
But they were still doing planning with horses, you know, and it's easier to think back to those days and wish it was all that way. But from a conservation standpoint, just like with the no till practice that you adopted, there were a lot of things that were done in that era that were not good for the land. And absolutely, you think of, you know, some of the runoff issues with, with livestock, some of the that goes back to the days when I, my dad would drop me off here and do the field call for baiting of the corn, you know, and I still remember, you know, we had a pretty hard rain a
00;30;42;23 - 00;31;02;15
Unknown
few days ago, and it was, you know, getting June in. The ground was drying pretty good. And I started cultivating, and I went down this little, hill. And down below was a grass waterway. And I'm going to raise up the coal later and go to the other side and notice there was a lot of dirt in there.
00;31;02;15 - 00;31;24;01
Unknown
Wells off slip dirt. Oh, no. I got in there and it was just wet and not dry. And I buried the tractor and the cultivator. Oh, and because it all run off, you're saying. And they run down the hill from. That's the problem with, cultivation with, creates those grooves, grooves and give a channel for water to run.
00;31;24;01 - 00;31;54;16
Unknown
And that's why they want farmers to control, you know, keep that water from going down that row groove on the elevator shank. So we had some you know we didn't have real steep hill. So it really did make sense to counter that. But but it did wash down there from the earlier cultivation and I guess I was just trying to, I didn't know, I was just trying to close up some of those gullies and then get down in the bottom of that waterway, and it was slip dirt.
00;31;54;18 - 00;32;18;18
Unknown
And I knew that was not right. And I couldn't keep farming like that. And it's losing our soil down here. So that kind of, you know, start thinking me about better ways of, farming rather than do that full mechanical tillage. Yeah. Worked, to plant a crop and harvested. Well, and that's the that's the power of paying attention, you know what I mean?
00;32;18;18 - 00;32;37;07
Unknown
I mean, that's pretty. Observe what's going on. Sure. For a young guy to be like, hey, there's not more of this being made up upstream from this right now, right? This is this is it. This is our scrape all the mud out from around the tires and and the fenders. It was really bad. Yeah. I'll never forget that.
00;32;37;09 - 00;33;00;15
Unknown
But yeah. So so I mean, there were stuff like that. And then what about the attitude towards, like, wildlife and habitat did what did farming was there, did did the average farmer care much about that stuff back in the the old days of farming, or was it? No. They kind of, you know. Kind of, I guess we kind of took it for granted.
00;33;00;15 - 00;33;27;07
Unknown
The pheasants and the wildlife and the quail and, you know, farms were so diversified with hay and oats and, you know, corn and, and guys wouldn't raise much soybeans if they were going to raise soybeans, you know, they would always put that on their level or ground. Flat ground and just do the rotation, hay, alfalfa and oats on the other.
00;33;27;07 - 00;33;51;21
Unknown
And then they had livestock. So that kept, you know, some cover for, you know, the nesting and that kind of thing. And, yes. And, you know, we didn't have a problem with no birds. We had plenty of pheasants and plenty of quail and today we don't. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of a thing that was taken for granted.
00;33;51;21 - 00;34;13;24
Unknown
And now in a large way a thing that's been forgotten, you know people. Right. And people don't remember those days and, and I guess you know, people like to hunt pheasants more back then and you know, the young guys, did, you know in high school I can still remember, you know, we'd get a group of guys together, go out opening day and, and, do some fashion art.
00;34;13;25 - 00;34;31;28
Unknown
And today you don't hear too much about that, or you just wanted to do that. Yeah, there's a few out there that do it. Yeah, but it's very rare. And, that, that was, I think, you know, we've talked about how hunting and conservation go together. You know, sometimes people will say, we talked about this to our good friend Doug.
00;34;32;01 - 00;34;54;23
Unknown
You know, he doesn't like the phrase that a hunter is a conservationist. He'd say some hunters are, you know, and, and, but but what I think hunting helps with. So it doesn't automatically make somebody a conservationist. I don't think it, but it puts you in connection with the land. And you start to observe those things and see right and have that value.
00;34;54;27 - 00;35;24;09
Unknown
And when it comes to starting Hoxie, that's I mean, that's our that's our logo, the pheasant. That's kind of how it got started. Right. You had a friend was named Larry. Yeah. So yeah, I started farming there and 76 and, and met Larry Molder. He was, he's from Minnesota, Renville, Minnesota. His dad started, tractor reconditioning company called Cain and manufacturing and Farmers.
00;35;24;09 - 00;35;48;26
Unknown
Yet today we'll know about cane and manufacturing because they got into recognition. There's tractors and stuff around here. I've always wondered, oh, yeah, I didn't realize that. Was that Larry's company? So Larry was, he's from Renville, Minnesota, and he moved to Pella, Iowa and kind of run a, region down here in Iowa and Zuri in Illinois.
00;35;49;01 - 00;36;12;19
Unknown
He would run a route and call on machinery dealers and, and take orders and deliver seeds, whether it was an old embassy that they reconditioned or whether it's, a late model tractor, and they had all the seats, they would go for those things. But anyway, I got to know Larry through some City League basketball games and, yeah.
00;36;12;21 - 00;36;41;27
Unknown
And, he was on our team. And then afterwards we'd get together and do a little wine down, maybe have a beer or two and, and just talk about things and become very close. And he had a little Brittany dog. Called Brett's. He's a Hoxie again because he called me Hoxie all the time and, got any place we could hunt and, you know, and and so, I don't know, we we were corned beef and everything.
00;36;41;27 - 00;37;19;08
Unknown
I really didn't have any habitat for him. And that always kind of bothered me because, we were such rural crop farmers back then, and. But I would notice after sitting out the old house here, I would notice, south of my driveway and, we had a cornfield, and to the east was a highway. But anyway, those pheasants at night, it's, you know, close to sunset, they start jumping up out of my cornfield and fly across my road ditch on my side of the highway, which was east of the this cornfield.
00;37;19;11 - 00;37;40;27
Unknown
And they fly across the highway. Then they would land on the other side in the ditch. Then on the other side of the fence, on the other side was another cornfield or soybean field and just couldn't figure out what, what why are they leaving every night? And, you know, so I start looking at their cover on the other side.
00;37;40;27 - 00;38;07;20
Unknown
And when they graded this county blacktop here, probably in the I think it was late 60s Jasper County, we started to experiment with native plants and grasses for roadside ditches. So the graded road they had, reseed the ditches. So my side of the road, they seeded it with Brome and. Yeah, and whatever else. But it had to be right across the road for me.
00;38;07;28 - 00;38;51;15
Unknown
Was, some native prairie throughout there. And, you know, I, didn't really know what that native prairie grasses was. And I start telling the old story to an old retired veteran veterinarian. And Linville called him Doc Fitzpatrick. And he said, well, says they got native plants, the county seed them out there. And there's two places between this homestead here where I live and, and, Lyndale named thrown out native plants, native grasses and built one of them was right across from the house where I lived.
00;38;51;18 - 00;39;24;12
Unknown
So I was observant to see those pheasants going over there every night and and, look for cover. Yeah. And then they would come back again in the morning and feed in corn stalks and cornfields. So then I, said, all right, where can I get some of this native grasses and and Doc Fitzpatrick, he's a playing around with, big bluestem and little blue for doc was kind of retired from the medicine and he had a still had a small scale herd.
00;39;25;08 - 00;39;50;27
Unknown
And he was using, big blue and little blue and Indian grass to, to feed on his, his stock cow herd cause the native plants would stay green during August when all the other cool season grasses would be gone dormant. So he kept his pastures produce some food for his cattle. So he connected me with the company, out of, Nebraska.
00;39;50;29 - 00;40;21;09
Unknown
And, so, I one of the favorite grasses I seen growing in the ditch across the highway, there was Indian grass. So I started out with Indian grass. And, so this has had to be 1981 or 82. The government had a set aside acre program going on for farmers. In order to be eligible for government subsidies, they would have to idle 10% of their corn based.
00;40;21;09 - 00;40;47;06
Unknown
So every farmer had a history based corn base, and they would have to idle 5% of their corn base. So they had a 100 acres corn base and a 200 acre farm. A hunter was, had a history of being, per year, of corn. Then to be eligible, you would have to idle. Sure. Five acres.
00;40;47;08 - 00;41;11;02
Unknown
So. All right, so there were some rolling ground down by my pond there, as you guys know. And there's pasture down there. I said, well, maybe I can get to stuff growing on this set aside acres. And then, also kill out this, cow pasture, farm crisis was coming on, was making money with, stock cow herd.
00;41;11;02 - 00;41;41;22
Unknown
So it decided to get rid of the cows. I did, and and then, create some more habitat for the pheasants to hang out. And roundup was just coming out then, and, and, so I went in there and sprayed the, the old cow pasture with glyphosate or roundup and killed it. And, got some of this Indian grass from, Nebraska and an old doc, he offered to help me get that plant and get it started.
00;41;42;08 - 00;42;11;28
Unknown
And he was kind of a rookie to how to get it grown. But we I made every mistake in the book. No problem. And so I tell to ground even the cow pasture that tilled it as in distance several times and had a really lay and nice and level and and then doc knew where I can get a native grass seed drill from the county conservation board, Jasper County Conservation Board, where he had borrowed a drill from earlier.
00;42;12;01 - 00;42;33;13
Unknown
And it was just like a little five foot drill, took forever, but so we planted that, and and then doc would follow me up with, his old Johnny Popper. Yeah. I'm going to interject here. You can see a video of that exact tractor. I'm going to have Nicholas posted on Instagram after this. After this. But, his son, Sean.
00;42;33;13 - 00;42;49;28
Unknown
Right. Sean. He came to our prairie appreciation and he's like, hey, I know who you're talking about. That's my dad. And I still have that tractor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he drove it up and it. Man, those kind of tractors, they sound like they're dying. Or it's, like on the Johnny Johnny Popper. That's the best name for it.
00;42;50;03 - 00;43;08;25
Unknown
Yeah. They they had a miss. Yeah, yeah. You ever heard someone, like, an older person cough and you're like, whoa, this might be it for them. That's it's that. But in a tractor form. Yeah. When those old Johnny Poppers are pulling hard, you think they're going to die. You know, it's like, yeah, one big step to the next compression stroke.
00;43;08;25 - 00;43;40;24
Unknown
I mean, he lost far in the hole, and my God, that thing's still alive. It. And you had to start those little diesels with, a gas pony motor. Yeah. This one, he had a diesel. Whether it was at 70, 30, I don't know what it was. I can't remember, but, Shannon would know, but, so I had a little pony motor gassing pony motor on there, and they had had to start first, and that was their starter motor for the John Deere because they had such big cylinders in there.
00;43;40;24 - 00;44;04;00
Unknown
Yeah, they needed a pretty good starter to crank them things over. So they. Yeah a little gasoline thing. Yeah. Doc Fitzpatrick, he followed me around the field and and he car packed it. Okay. Oh, so you dissect it up, you put it in the ground. And the cold fact he was rolling and packing and. Yeah, that exact thing would tell people not to do that.
00;44;04;03 - 00;44;26;27
Unknown
Well, I like to see him anymore. You know, for my experience to call a pack before they planted. Right? Yeah. Because we planted it and we got the seed into deep, and, it never came and never came. And, and, so we had a lot of foxtail coming, and and I finally had to, I'd done a dormant seeding in during the winter and snow.
00;44;26;27 - 00;44;53;22
Unknown
I got the old, you know, native grass drill back and bought some more Indian grass and went over it to, light layer snow and replant it. And then some of that came, but, so it come about, I 84, 85, 1984, 85, I, started getting Prairie showing up. And the government said, all right, you know, farmers, we're going to subsidize you.
00;44;53;23 - 00;45;19;28
Unknown
You don't have to idle any ground, and we don't have to you don't have to control your supply, because that was part of the reason why we ground would take some of those acres and short to the bushels that would actually come in on the market, that would raise the price. Why did they what was there? What was their goal of taking away the, actually it was, our secretary, but yeah, he was kind of gung ho on big farms in the early months.
00;45;19;28 - 00;45;42;21
Unknown
Yeah. Get big or get out. And, what was the point of that. Why did they need more corn? I don't understand why they were opening up global markets. Right. I was hoping to sell in Russia. And I wonder if that, if that relates to when Cargill was getting huge because Cargill is like the seventh biggest company in the world or, or biggest private owned company.
00;45;42;21 - 00;46;04;28
Unknown
Yeah, I think that, but mid 80s, I don't know when Cargill actually started down there anymore. I I'll but you know, that wasn't our market first. Our market was local elevator. Adm a lot of corn went to Muscatine Iowa. ADM I think at a plant that GPC now they call that. Now what are they, what did they do with it.
00;46;04;28 - 00;46;24;08
Unknown
But actually they would put it on barges and send it out to city for well export. Yeah. No I think you're right. I think I might be 80. And the GPC is another company that buys a lot of corn, and they I think they they process it into corn products, but there's still opera operating there too. I always, I was joking with my friend who's a who's a farmer.
00;46;24;09 - 00;46;47;28
Unknown
He does row crop. And we were joking that farmers, single handedly keep, keep the corn market alive with how much Mountain Dew they drink from all over there, right? Yeah. But anyway. Sorry. So, yeah, they, open that up. So I was either I just got my Indian grass granny set aside acres, and I had to, you know, to get some revenue off of that.
00;46;47;28 - 00;47;08;06
Unknown
I had to put her back in the corner beans, because it was it was not like, you know, you wasn't getting the program money or wasn't getting any money. You know, I didn't get any benefits. I don't that ground now. I'm, you know, they just treated it like hobby Acres for you basically. Right. And I was creating a habitat acres into Pheasants Star.
00;47;08;06 - 00;47;32;01
Unknown
Now I had it going finally. And I'll tell you a quick little story about after I got it going, you know, Doc Fitzpatrick said I had to put a fire to that. You know, I get you know, it does a lot of good, you know, and in year three and four of again it established. So yeah, me and Roscoe went out there and good friend of mine I didn't know Roscoe was there for the fire.
00;47;32;02 - 00;47;56;11
Unknown
Oh yeah. Just me and Roscoe. We didn't have to do that next, next next time I see him I'm going to ask him about that. Yeah. Bah. Blame me. Worries on cancer today. Poor guy. He's he's struggling with cancer a little bit. Anyway, he had a big heart, so he helped me on that fire. And he's actually a volunteer fire department for the Lynn Beal Fire Department over here.
00;47;56;13 - 00;48;25;23
Unknown
And, so we started a fire in there. And, when I originally killed out part of that cow pasture, there was part of the pasture that had been overcome so thick with native cedar trees that, you know, it was only about a third of an acre, maybe a quarter of an acre of that whole pasture that. So I kind of didn't go into that part of the cow patch for the trees growing, you know, 20ft tall cedar trees.
00;48;25;25 - 00;48;45;10
Unknown
But when we got the fire going, the fire got in them cedar trees and, just lick right up them top of them thing. We had like 40ft flames above them, cedar trees. Man. I mean, just those eyes just got kind of bitter, I don't know. Well, there's one of Carol's favorite lines Nick and I were just talking about.
00;48;45;10 - 00;49;06;05
Unknown
Or one of our favorite lines of Carol's. That's not good. Yeah, that's not good. Oh. Yeah. That's great. So you just had to stand by and watch these trees. But it turned out to be good. Yeah, that was amazing thing about it, because, after the fire, we went in there and, I cut off all the trees.
00;49;06;05 - 00;49;31;09
Unknown
Ground level. Had to deal with all them stumps. Yeah. And I said, well, just cut them off flush with the ground. And, you know, when I get enough seed to harvest off this Indian grass I just planted, I'll throw some back out there, get that part seeded down to my low and behold, that very fall, I had native grasses coming up, and, I've never planted them.
00;49;31;09 - 00;49;55;14
Unknown
It was like big blue and little blue and a few plants of Indian grass and some court grass and some, some few wildflowers in there. So that kind of got me excited as I says, man, this stuff was here. It's I was all through this cow pasture, but I went sprayed everything and killed it all out. But these plants stayed alive underneath.
00;49;55;14 - 00;50;24;24
Unknown
So cedar trees and of those cedar trees there. Oh, they I mean, those things were old. They were old. They had the ground shaded underneath them. And the dropping them needles that none of the cool season pasture grasses would grow underneath them. Wow. So it eliminated the cool season competition. Competition was cool season grasses. The roots are shallow with them, and and they can't take, you know, that kind of, situation year in, year out.
00;50;24;24 - 00;50;48;21
Unknown
Those eventually die out. So these native plants that came up that very following year, you know, they had root system that was deep in the ground and you took away the competition of the trees. And, the cool season grasses, and they just blossomed. This came alive. Had those, cedar trees been there since you were a kid or, they, they just start coming on thicker and thicker.
00;50;48;21 - 00;51;10;13
Unknown
And it was a cow pasture. And the cows, you know, would go in there some, but they didn't like going in there. Yeah. And they weren't cows back then or not. Not like the buffaloes who like to go in there and scratch and rub on them cedar trees to, to take them out. Yeah that's true. So that's what happened there.
00;51;10;13 - 00;51;36;00
Unknown
So I got excited over that, that, you know, I had, native native plants here that, I didn't plant there. I got to that area register with the state of Iowa as being a remnant. And then I was able to do my seed collection for big Blue and Little Blue out of there, and so I we big blue and a little blue plant that's on this farm today.
00;51;36;00 - 00;52;04;03
Unknown
The seed came from that little prairie remnant. That's awesome. And first I had to go in there and hand collect it by hand, pull the seeds out of there. And, things in the prairie industry, when I started planting Prairie, it was big. Bluestem was big blue. Any grass was any grass. And then about, you know, mid 80s is starting to realize there's big bluestem grown in Texas.
00;52;04;03 - 00;52;33;04
Unknown
And so some grown up in Canada all through the tall grass region here. But it had different maturities of what zones it came from and through the United States. And the dirty elm. I was starting to get big and putting native plants in there. Roadside vegetation and say, hey, we want source identified seed. We want know where the source of the seed came from, because not all big bluestem the same has different maturities.
00;52;33;29 - 00;52;58;20
Unknown
From different parts. And depending on where it is, it'll get a different height and or different length of life of the plant. Yeah. So they had stuff in Texas has takes more heat units to get it mature. So you can plant it up here and get it up. But our frost date might take it out due to our early frost and seed even mature maturity yet.
00;53;01;01 - 00;53;26;28
Unknown
So then I started my big bluestem off of that and a little blue and and, it took a long time because I think every time I collect seed off of that little remnant, I have enough. Maybe a plant half an acre, big bloom, less than that little blue. And, so I finally got that up and growing and, and industry was going to source identified seed, and I wanted to sell this Indian grass.
00;53;26;28 - 00;53;58;15
Unknown
And I originally planned, but the source of that, I didn't really have other than it was Nebraska source. Right. And so I found another prairie remnant not too far south of here in my house county along the dirt road, and had a lot of Indian grass. So in their hand collected Indian grass. And for Iowa Crop Improvement Association, who inspect your fields for purity or seed where you got it.
00;53;58;17 - 00;54;26;07
Unknown
And they also check for isolation. So you can't just take Indian grass from a county Iowa and plant right next to its Nebraska staff because they wouldn't certify that because I was worried about cross-pollinate. Sure. And you might have a off breed there. So I had to keep about a quarter mile isolation. So I started that on the south side of this farm along the Caroline Road here, the new Indian grass roots do Indian grass.
00;54;26;09 - 00;54;45;11
Unknown
And then, eventually I had to kill out all that Indian grass at me and Fitzpatrick planted in me, and rascal tried to burn up and, and then I put it back to row crop and then finally got everything switched back to this Indian grass from my house. Cam a big boost dam and little blue was okay, but.
00;54;46;10 - 00;55;03;18
Unknown
And since then I expanded into other things that were you sell into at first because they didn't have like the robust CRP programs that now the, not so much the rule. No, there was not the head Conservation reserve program. Go on. But it wasn't really coming from the the native species. They didn't care about brome or.
00;55;04;04 - 00;55;31;26
Unknown
That's what they basically wanted people to put in. So I was selling it to my custom seed service. From Walnut, Iowa. They, I sold them a bunch and they would sell it to a couple other projects around and, you know, but, not an unidentified source of seed like Indian grass wasn't bringing near the value source I'd seed.
00;55;31;26 - 00;55;51;17
Unknown
So it was it was a hard product to sell. Yeah. So, yeah, that's interesting because now we get calls all the time, you know? Hey, you got seed, you got seed for my yard, for my field, for my acreage. And but I can't imagine people back then calling you up one the seed. No, it was it was is relatively tough, you know.
00;55;52;24 - 00;56;17;06
Unknown
And. Yeah. So it's, that's the one of the things about prairie, you know, you can plant it your production field, for example, Indian grass, but you might not get a return off of that for 3 or 4 years to start expanding your acres and hit the market. So just yesterday, I had a gentleman that, called because he wants to get into, native seed.
00;56;17;13 - 00;56;35;03
Unknown
He doesn't care whether he's growing it or he's helping plant it. And and he's out in a different state. But, I told him, I said, well, unless you got a bunch of money sitting around or a lot of land equity sitting around, your probably your best bet is an acre or two of forbs, you know, not very much.
00;56;35;03 - 00;56;52;06
Unknown
You know, something that if you lost 1500 bucks on it, you'd be okay as opposed to plant 40 acres, right? I mean, like, you know, for this, the, you know, I have to wait two years before I get any money. Yeah. I couldn't, you know, I wanted to get in the grass seed business. My friend Larry, you know, he like to hunt.
00;56;52;06 - 00;57;16;25
Unknown
And once we got it going here, he encouraged me to get into the seed business and try selling it. And whether it was to Pheasants Forever or whoever that start expanding on that. And, so he encouraged me to start the Hoxie seed business and, and there again, like we said, there was the pheasant that, caught my eye on his, on his habitat where he wanted to go at night.
00;57;17;21 - 00;57;39;04
Unknown
So I thought it was fitting to put him as Yeah. As an icon for our business here. Absolutely. And that's what he helped start get going here. So it's been very challenging. You know like you said, Nick, the market wasn't out there really for the seed for other than a few diehards, you know, like me.
00;57;39;04 - 00;58;00;26
Unknown
But but things have turned, you know, they start putting in crp acres, you know, and creating demand here and for that type of seed. And so yeah. And I you know, at first, you know, I, you couldn't see down much of this farm I still had raising corn soybeans. Yeah. You had to make income. Yeah I had a farm payment.
00;58;00;26 - 00;58;21;25
Unknown
Yeah. What. Sorry. Oh. Oh what was your first flower. Because you talked about starting grasses. And I don't think we covered this last time we went over to first flower I think round headed bush clover. Really. Yeah. And black had to. Oh, man. What. So what you were like. Well, I'm doing grasses. I'm hearing all this about wildflowers.
00;58;21;25 - 00;58;42;04
Unknown
I should give it a go or. I just was interested in trying it and one of the neighbors guys up here, his name was Harold Kurtz. He was an old guy. And he'd stop in here once in a while, and he's excited about what I was doing. And he kind of introduced me. He had this, you know, at home wanting to harvest his stuff, whether it was big blue or Indian grass.
00;58;42;04 - 00;59;05;11
Unknown
He kind of said, hey, I got these old, chambers 66 combine, and he had one. He had one that was in perfect shape. And Harold, he he would clean up a harvest a lot of, red clover in the fall. And he'd use this old AC combine to harvest that little. Was it already old by the time.
00;59;05;14 - 00;59;30;10
Unknown
Oh, yeah. Oh, man. But it was in good shape. He kept it inside and kept it in really good shape. So he, showed me how that worked and, you know, showed me those 101 green shirts on him. Yeah. That's right. Yep. I'm the white collar greaser here at Hoxie. Short story is kid showed up one day or a white shirt first five degrees to come by and I thought, oh, degrees.
00;59;30;10 - 00;59;54;11
Unknown
That old car. But it was old. 60 sixes. And he came back with grease all over his shirt. So I start calling him the white collar. Yes. That's right. Yeah, yeah, I left the white collar world for the blue collar that. But I kept my shirt degrees. Yeah. The book title one day. Yeah. That's right. Well, it's so neat to hear about all these people.
00;59;54;11 - 01;00;24;08
Unknown
I got to think, you know, when I'm out in the field, like, I can see you know, when there's, you know, a species that doesn't belong somewhere and like, oh, I got to get rid of that, you know, or or that needs home or sprayed or whatever. But I imagine when you see red clover out there, you think of your old friend Harold, or you see if you, if you, if you see, you know, some Roundhead bush clover growing somewhere, you think of those first years or do you, when you're out there.
01;00;24;15 - 01;00;49;19
Unknown
I think that's part of owning land that people who who maybe don't own land or who aren't connected to the land in some way, to those faces, come flashing back to you all the time when you're out there and thinking about the years of of Hoxie and oh, they sure do. They got my, you know, thinking about these native species and how to harvest them and, and, like, for example, Harold, he never harvest.
01;00;49;20 - 01;01;14;02
Unknown
He might, I don't know, he harvest some switchgrass with that combined for Lindell Seed Company, the Tourister boys out of Lynn ville here, they had, they run a seed soybean business and a grass seed business, but, you know, and they raised a lot of crown batch around here. But, Harold, they had a switchgrass field. So Harold went out there with that old AC 66 and harvest switchgrass for him.
01;01;14;02 - 01;01;36;04
Unknown
And it worked good. So, yeah, I think about that. And, yeah, I'm very thankful to Harold land up. Give me an at combine him for a gift. Yeah. For the new I put it to good use and I have and I've. I still got it. Yet today I'm not so quite sure I can point it out. Yeah, yeah.
01;01;36;04 - 01;01;53;20
Unknown
If you come back to our parts department sometime, you'll understand. Over the years, I've collected a lot of the old 60 sixes because you can't just go get parts for them anymore. Nope. Yep. And we use them. I mean, we yeah, we go there just. And I've, I've seen stuff that's been harvested in other ways and it's just not as good.
01;01;53;20 - 01;02;23;10
Unknown
And no, they were definitely, you know underneath that 66 logo on the back in the combine also said all crop 66 all crop and they could they were an all crop thing. You know, you can harvest all crop whether come to small vegetable seeds or whatever, you know, interesting. And the other thing too, that because I used to think this before I understood, why don't we just try and get everything through a big self-propelled combine?
01;02;23;10 - 01;02;50;17
Unknown
But the problem with that is some of these flowers, you're dealing with such quantities. There's a lot of machine loss and a big combine. Like, absolutely. The bigger the machine, the more opportunities. This all stuff Carol teaches me while I. I mean, when you're hoping for 10 pounds, right. You know. Right. And so those those it gets lost in the machine and yeah those little all crops they, they help cut down on that big time and they're easier to clean out.
01;02;50;23 - 01;03;12;13
Unknown
You know. And you know, you know a while as I do our, you know, maybe our wildflower flower field might not be any bigger than two, three acres, you know. And take you know, 15ft head in there with a big combine. It's just, it's just a hard thing to thresh out. You can do it, but it's just.
01;03;12;15 - 01;03;35;00
Unknown
Yeah, it's not as efficient. Not as efficient as in things can be. Yep. Yep. That's that's one of my you know, there's places to the people who have who've come to know Hoxie and, and come to be a part of the story. You know, a lot of you listening in, we just heard the other day, from a guy who stopped by to get some seed shout out to Pete.
01;03;35;24 - 01;04;08;20
Unknown
He heard it. Heard about us on the podcast. You know, he was. He was just enjoying being here. We had another guy, former coworker back when I was a regular, just white collar person. Right. Aaron, you know, he came by and pick up some seed, and there's just there's to to see all the old equipment to be seeing it used and to be seeing the diversity of cropping and how in-tune you have to be with what's going on out here, you know, Carol tells me all the time, you know, can't you're gonna have to work Saturdays sometimes because when it's ready, it's ready.
01;04;08;27 - 01;04;26;12
Unknown
Yeah. And that's true. And we did that a couple times this fall where we just had to hit it because we had a big wind kind of day coming in the next day or something. Yeah. So these are native plants and, you know, when they're ripe, it's they're calling to, to drop and, they're not like genetically modified.
01;04;26;12 - 01;04;48;25
Unknown
No. Right. So sit on there for a long time or. But there aren't there are few species that hang on for a while, but right now there is a few, but very, very few. Yeah. And right now, here's, you know, three full time employees here at Hoxie. And that's hard to say on a farm our size. You know, we're we're one of the bigger farms, I'd say.
01;04;48;25 - 01;05;10;11
Unknown
And the native seed business. But compared to the corn and being operations around us, you know, we're we're minuscule. And if you had a loan on the farm, the amount of acres we farm a family couldn't live off of, right. In that crazy. Yeah. And so I say all this because Carol's built this and he's put his.
01;05;10;14 - 01;05;34;12
Unknown
I made many mistakes along the way there, you know, and for one example I can think of right now as my first little bluestem field, I was gone, I harvested it, and, had quite a chunk of seed enough to expand the little blue stamps field. So excited about that. And as a lot of, you know, a little blue, it's very fluffy.
01;05;34;12 - 01;05;54;03
Unknown
It's got a lot of, you know a little fluff on it. And that kind of slows it to go down to the native grass trails because it's just so fluffy and kind of planet by itself. It, it doesn't want to go down drilled out. So all right I'll put that to the, the beard and and beat it up.
01;05;54;05 - 01;06;14;28
Unknown
It's a process. We used to take some of the fuzz off the seeds, whether it's Indian grass, little blue or big blue. To allow it to go through the screens on seed cleaner so it doesn't get hanging up by the, the fluffy part of the seeds. So I hammered it in that, big bluestem and got it all beat up.
01;06;14;28 - 01;06;42;28
Unknown
Good. And send a germ test back to the lab to check for purity and germ with a purity was good, but my germ was just, like, zippo. I couldn't figure out what the Dickens. And a little, So I called the lab and said, well, it's got all broken emeralds. A little blue stain. Has a long embryo in there and very fragile.
01;06;43;00 - 01;06;58;10
Unknown
And I hammered it so much that I broke the, embryo in half, so I didn't have a chance to germ. I don't know, I never told you this story. I don't think so. On the the little blue. I mean, you've you've warned me of that about, you know, having stuff sitting there too long. Yeah. In there too long.
01;06;58;24 - 01;07;18;04
Unknown
I broke the emeralds and, and so I had no seed to expand and just junk seed big bum. So those are mistakes I made and you know. Yeah they hurt. But I learn from that too. And you know that's that's what I like about the this business is you know being able to run some of this older equipment.
01;07;19;02 - 01;07;44;02
Unknown
And and to keep it running to modify to be able to learn from my mistakes and make a go of it. So it's very challenging trying to grow the stuff. Nobody would teach you how to grow it or sell and how to, how deep to planted and, you know, been fighting that over the years. And what about crop insurance on if yeah, there's no insurance and you stick your neck out there.
01;07;44;02 - 01;08;16;11
Unknown
We try to do a crop insurance thing. Yeah, yeah. They had, the FSA office had a program for when they call it for, alternative alternative farming crops insurance, take out some of the risk. And it got to be so much red tape paperwork. And we finally had a claim on switchgrass once we had a beating storm knocked off of that and, and, you know, and then he had to prove how many pounds you got off for the past.
01;08;16;11 - 01;08;35;18
Unknown
And, and we land up getting basically nothing. They wouldn't cover much of it. So we said that's enough of that. And, you know, I told Fred was in here, my father in law and, you know, I'm just going to have to stay on top of things and do the best we can, without insurance, because it's just not worth the red tape.
01;08;35;18 - 01;09;01;09
Unknown
And paperwork that went with it. And so, yeah, and the challenge of, you know, modifying the combines and, and the sea cleaners to handle the, the situation. And so that's where I was very fortunate to, you know, have those skills. And, to observe how the machines work and how to modify, you know, mechanically to get it to work better.
01;09;01;09 - 01;09;44;10
Unknown
Yeah. And, so that's been very rewarding. You know, I probably could have made more money, corn bean and things, but, it's I have a, you know, desire for prairie and, you know, and my interest back in the 80s, you know, when I first got started was kind of a stepping stone to where Prairie is today and how the explosion is going off with, the pollinators and, you know, and the environment and what it does for the, the runoff for water quality and for the, you know, the habitat for, you know, nesting birds and, and deer and that kind of thing.
01;09;44;12 - 01;10;23;23
Unknown
So that's where my true interest is. And right now I really don't care that much about corn. Soybeans. Yeah. Yeah. You. Yeah. Yeah. It the amount of good that this farm does. Is it's impossible to truly measure that. Yeah, well, we could try as if it was just another, you know, several hundred acres of corn and soybeans in, surrounding, you know, hundreds, thousands of square miles, millions of square miles of of, corn and soybeans.
01;10;23;23 - 01;11;00;21
Unknown
The amount of good being done here would be nothing. You know, it'd be a drop in the bucket. So, yeah, that's what I was looking at, you know, after I got through the, you know, land crisis of the mid 80s and had some ground here and I really, you know, had my feet burnt a little bit, sticking your neck out to buy ground or ground and thought maybe if I could just do little specialty crops, stay little closer to home and, try to market, that would be the way to go rather than, you know, rent more ground, stick your neck out there and, you know, buy bigger equipment and, you know, and.
01;11;00;21 - 01;11;23;08
Unknown
Yeah, so last ten years probably been good for the big ag or big farmers. They also get the big subsidy check, and I don't know whether they can make it go. We weren't getting that back when I was rural cropping, but. And I don't get any today. Yeah. But yeah. So I'm sure the guys are asking right now.
01;11;23;08 - 01;11;45;18
Unknown
You know what the corn prices dropped down to, you know, 450. You know, all the inputs have gone up, said corn goes up or soybeans go up, all the inputs go up and farm equipment goes up. And, you know, sure, them guys are going to think it over pretty good, you know, and ask them the question, you know, who are we working for?
01;11;45;18 - 01;12;05;01
Unknown
Am I working for myself or my working for John Deere? That is we had a farmer come in corn was 750 is two years ago. Turn right. I remember this guy and and I said like, well what? He's like 50 acres this year. Why? He's like, well corn might be up, but we farmer we don't make any of that.
01;12;05;01 - 01;12;24;04
Unknown
He's like, I'm just going to pay more to, to Monsanto. And five more expensive equipment. He's like, the margins just aren't there. And he just he just thought it through and he's like, wait a minute, this isn't working. Yeah, but we also had guys sign up for, contracts in conservation reserve and backed out because corn get prices, guys.
01;12;24;05 - 01;12;51;04
Unknown
That's true. Yep. And yeah, I decided, you know, I'm going to take the easy money was here. But, you know, time being all that, money that they, you know, had make off those acres, you know, they're now going to, you know, the big ag machine equipment, equipment dealers and, and, big chemical companies. Okay. That's something I don't understand.
01;12;51;04 - 01;13;09;16
Unknown
So you buy $150,000 planter. Why do people cash them in and then get in? Like, people are continuously, like, paying for leases. Why doesn't someone just buy it? Yeah, maybe it's expensive to pay it off like you'd pay off a house. And now you've got a planter that you don't have a payment on. Why do people keep work?
01;13;09;18 - 01;13;31;08
Unknown
Use it. Well, you know, a lot of the farmers nowadays, you know, they have shops, but they're they're kind of what I call polishers. They're not in they're rebuilding these planters. They are some. Yeah, but they want to stay. You know, I got so many acres to cover, they want to stay on top of things, new designs and planters.
01;13;31;28 - 01;13;48;01
Unknown
And they also have a warranty program that goes with that when they buy it that they can, call the, the dealer and come and fix it. So when that warranty runs out, they're like, get this out of here, I want another one that basically they don't want to. A lot of times they don't want to work on it.
01;13;48;01 - 01;14;09;01
Unknown
They want to they don't want to work on it. And they you know, they're their drivers. They you know, they don't even want to drive anymore jeeps. Autosteer. Yeah. So even when I was in high school, there was a kid in my class. I was like, yeah, I finished my math homework while planting corn last night and was like, oh, awesome.
01;14;09;04 - 01;14;39;07
Unknown
So they went on, you know, with combines two, they just want to keep updated on new stuff and the old stuff, you know, if it gets too old, you know, there's not a market out there for, 24 row corn planter. Or because they will computers gold before axles do can't. Now we're just talking about this and yesterday's podcast is so like, you know, the the actual mechanics of a planner might be good, but your computer's crapped out, and that's half the thing anyway.
01;14;39;12 - 01;15;02;09
Unknown
That is, that's big tech on it. The same thing with new cars and trucks now too. Oh yeah. So, yeah, we have a neighbor up the road, Jim Milligan does a lot of my repair work, and he's, you know, he's looking at retiring here as a mechanic for a local machinery dealer. And, yeah, the tech thing is just start driving you crazy after a while, you just get tired of it.
01;15;02;24 - 01;15;31;03
Unknown
And, and that's part of the problem with farmers too. They, they can't do that tech, you know, like the, the young farmer is literally software. Yeah. Gotta have a computer. Yeah. And that is a sad thing that, you know, that the small farmer can't fix his own stuff anymore. I can say it, most of it goes into the tech part of the breaking down.
01;15;31;06 - 01;15;59;14
Unknown
So yeah. And you know I think when I talk about this stuff with, with other farmers, I think most people wish it wasn't this way that are still either in farming or connected to farming and or if not most, a lot of them, you know, wish that it didn't it didn't become this. But I think they also they also feel like they're stuck in the, you know, in the system they got into, they got into a, a lane.
01;15;59;14 - 01;16;23;04
Unknown
And now you got to kind of stay in your lane. And I think that that's one of the, the best things about when you made your decision to, to. Nah, I'm going to I see where this is going. I'm going to get I'm going to try and maintain control of my own destiny, so to speak, with farming. And I'm going to, I'm going to do something different.
01;16;23;07 - 01;16;45;20
Unknown
And, I think it's the like all those challenges that you had along the way that's really. And those dollars don't necessarily show up on the bottom line, but you have control of what's happening here at Hoxie. You know pretty well, except for some of the weather things, challenges, except for when those, when that, autosteer goes out on the 185.
01;16;45;20 - 01;17;19;28
Unknown
So. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're always like or Nicholasville Road. No prob was had more hydraulic oil. That's, it's a staring back. Right? That's right. Those are some problems. What's the biggest high you felt? Big. As high as oil, big highs. Have you two guys show interest in the business? I guess, and the new generation coming on, you know, and I get to the point, you know, I been beating the door on this prairie thing and, you know, blowing the smoke about it.
01;17;19;28 - 01;17;54;03
Unknown
I mean, how important it is. And and see you two young guys coming in and had the same desires and and now and values of what Prairie actually does for our environment, whether it's water quality or or conservation or, or habitat or whatever, just seeing the values of native grasses. And, you know, even this past storm, we had, the values of prairie, you know, for, live snow fans, what it does to catch.
01;17;54;08 - 01;18;16;05
Unknown
Yeah, snow. And it's quite obvious right here, south of here, where we have a east west road and a prairie along part of it, and there's no snow on the road, but you get up there where I have, that new field of establishing field of, Virginia wild rye, where I mowed it all year, and the snow just blew across there and drifts shattered.
01;18;16;05 - 01;18;41;01
Unknown
They got snow pushed up on both sides. So you guys would have to look at that. And for the future of Prairie, you know, and for the where it would go, I would think, you know, do some control. You know, live snow fans you know, for along the fence to where there's problem areas. Yeah definitely even between here and power where you see that's on those corners.
01;18;41;01 - 01;19;07;14
Unknown
Where is that snow. Why not deep there. Why not put the guys in on some kind of, grass program there? And I guess what I would like to see happen in the prairie industry is, farmers, all getting subsidized now, and they don't do any supply management like it was back in the 80s when we had idle.
01;19;07;16 - 01;19;31;15
Unknown
Right. You know, 10% of our corn base to be, eligible for, the subsidies. They would do that again and get farmers to put in some more habitat, maybe on some of their poor ground. And maybe a longer road and order for them to get that subsidies, they would have to idle some ground to do and that would control supply a little bit again.
01;19;31;15 - 01;19;56;11
Unknown
So that was a good program back then till they decided to go fence row, the fence row and, and you know and that's hurt. The habitat. Oh yeah. And snowdrifts. It you know road roads they have to plow to keep the snow away so they can put a little prairie along the road, ditch and catch the snow before it drifts on to the gravel road.
01;19;56;11 - 01;20;21;02
Unknown
And or are they on a back heel or that, like, it's not very productive. Put it in the prairie. So I think there ought to be some connection between, benefits of a farm program and what they're actually doing to be eligible for those subsidies. They got to be shown they're trying to show some conservation and, idle some stuff.
01;20;21;04 - 01;20;52;04
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, I, I wholeheartedly agree there. It's and and the beauty of it is it's not like it's money that's not already being, being put out there. Right. And it takes and it'll always it takes work off the farmers because those perennial plants, they'll more or less take care of themselves once you get them planted. That's right. And so if it's going to be, you know, as kind of a safety net out there for the farmers will make them put a little habitat in.
01;20;52;07 - 01;21;14;20
Unknown
Yeah. And then they're eligible for that safety net. And, and even on really crappy acres where farmers are netting $70 or net negative. Yeah, I know there's a lot of I mean, let's say, let's say on a crop acre, you net $100, right? Or you can put prairie there for $200 and no work. You know, that. That's like, wait, what?
01;21;14;23 - 01;21;35;07
Unknown
What where's the thing there. Yeah, you're getting more corn, but you're spending extra money to get that right. So there's acres out there that's not very productive, especially with the cost. Today's inputs to get that acre to produce high crops. Well and the you know, there's great there's a great phrase out there. There's no solutions. There's only tradeoffs.
01;21;35;10 - 01;21;58;18
Unknown
And the trade off to okay, I'm going to continue farming those acres in corn, even though I know it's a net zero. It's just easier because then I don't have to get another piece of equipment out here. But when you're manicuring that with with fertilizers or with with, you know, different pesticides there. Yes. Some of that goes and does what you want it to do, but some of it also doesn't.
01;21;58;18 - 01;22;19;20
Unknown
And it stays, you know, nixing out the water quality episode coming on with, you know, the, the role of nitrate leaching into our water and stuff, you know, whereas if you left those acres, we have 10% less of our corn acres being treated with, pesticide or, or nitrate. Right. And we don't get those and then we don't get those negative it right from that 10%.
01;22;19;20 - 01;22;43;01
Unknown
And we also control and supply management there. You know, of the corn. We don't really need all of that. And the it's worth saying we wouldn't have 10% less nitrates because a lot of that prairie would go right around water. We'd have 50% less now because it would catch a lot of it. Yeah. Where that low yielding ground is, is is associated with greater losses of.
01;22;43;02 - 01;23;09;23
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So but that yeah that's good. Yeah. So I think in that, you know a big part of what, what we do is we, we, you know, we do business within the CRP program. And, that's been a great thing. If you had one thing to encourage people on CRP enrollment and anyone who's maybe considering doing some CRP.
01;23;09;23 - 01;23;26;25
Unknown
Yeah, I know, it kind of goes along the lines of what we were just talking about there with idle ground. But but can you maybe, just, kind of say what, what you, what you think of crp and how that's changed over the years and. Well, I think it's a great thing. You know, those are low protective ground.
01;23;26;25 - 01;23;52;28
Unknown
And, you know, I'm sure people who got crp these, they see the wildlife in their the whether it's a pollinator or whatever the bees and, butterflies, you know, it's it's a bigger picture than just us raising corn, soybeans and, and then manicuring the ditch. Yeah. And, you know, it's a bigger picture than that. More things going on.
01;23;52;28 - 01;24;18;16
Unknown
It's more complicated than that. We need other things growing out there than just corn, beans and nice mowed ditch. So we need it you know. So that's why if those kind of farmers are out there, you know, and if they had a kind of a long term safety net and that's have them also put in some, some habitat, and whether it's CRP or, or whatever.
01;24;18;19 - 01;24;47;07
Unknown
And I think that would help a lot for our water quality or pollinators or wildlife. And actually get people seeing what it's doing that to their environment on their farm rather than it growing on somebody else's farm. So in other words, a more or less forced to, to grow some prairie, some habitat if they're in a corn bean rotation.
01;24;47;07 - 01;25;12;04
Unknown
But yeah, but it's hard to convince those guys who consider those strips where they're a prairie strip for, for, you know, runoff control. It's hard to convince them. It's so much easier with a twin for a little planter to just to plant through those areas and not have them strips there rather than to farm around them.
01;25;12;07 - 01;25;33;02
Unknown
I see it's a nuisance. But, yeah it's actually a nuisance what they're causing for. For now that's a good point. I don't know that I've ever made that connection in my mind. You know it seems pretty much, you know benign to have bigger and bigger equipment. Okay I get it. You know, you're farming more acres.
01;25;33;02 - 01;25;54;19
Unknown
It makes it faster for you. But there's a cost from the habitat standpoint, too. And, oh, we used to be able to fit through with our eight row planter through and between that, you know, wet spot and that field terrace there. But now you can't fit through there. We something's got to go. We're going to put a tile line and a drain in that wet spot, and we're going to drain it down to the creek.
01;25;54;19 - 01;26;15;08
Unknown
And maybe there's a tree on the fence line over there. We going to take it out up through there. Yeah. And yeah I, I've seen a lot of that on my, my own, my own family's farm, you know the as Carroll likes to say, the only deer welcome around here is a is a green and yellow one. But I but that's you know John deer disease.
01;26;15;10 - 01;26;37;09
Unknown
Yeah. That's right deer disease. Yeah. That's you know that's that's that's part of it too is when, when we go whole, you know, head over heels into that model, there's not only financial implications to that and loss of control that we've talked about in previous episodes of podcast and, and, and, and those things, the vulnerability from the cost.
01;26;37;11 - 01;27;03;21
Unknown
But also, you know, it's a loss on the land too, when right when we go head over here, there's, there's all these different costs. And, you know, this has been great, hearing the story again and getting it recorded, hopefully with a lot better audio for everyone tuning in. And it's such an important story that, we wanted to throw in there one last little fact that I really want to work into this one.
01;27;03;23 - 01;27;30;06
Unknown
How many acres of prairie do you think you've planted through the decades? I told you we could try to, to figure out the impact he's had. I mean, not that there's a lot of secondary impacts, but, it's. I don't know, I would just make a guess. 20,000, 20,000, 30,020 000. What? I actually planted myself. Yeah. With a ten acre or a ten foot drill.
01;27;30;06 - 01;27;51;09
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but several years I've done, you know, eight at that, 800 to 1000. Yeah. And Nick. Yeah. And then you always do several hundred in the fall. And those are not the easiest acres to plant either, believe me. Oh yeah. Watch 20,000. Probably 12 of them was the worst acres you've ever seen, right. But.
01;27;51;12 - 01;28;11;10
Unknown
And I would from from my time here and seeing what we, what we've been doing, I would say that's a conservative guess is right. I would, you know, if you took the seeds that grow on this farm and put it out on the acreage, you know, that'd be quite a few over the years. Yeah, probably hundreds of thousands.
01;28;11;12 - 01;28;34;27
Unknown
So that that's kind of, you know, good sense of accomplishment, you know, to do that for getting the acres back into something that, you know, our heritage here and I was is is, the prairie. Yeah. Not so much corn beans as everybody thinks it is. Yep. Yeah. Our seeds are going to outlast us. Which is right.
01;28;34;28 - 01;29;16;16
Unknown
Which is an amazing thing to consider. That's not going to be the case for corn and soybeans are, you know, there's going to be roadside ditches. My grandkids are going to drive by and they won't know it, of course, but. Right. Like it could literally be plants that I clean the seed on. Right, you know, helped to harvest or Carol planted, you know, the original seed stock on and and and Nicholas put the order together for you know like that to think of that that permanence and what we're doing that's you know there is we we all three of us have probably faced levels of criticism over, over, not making, you know, the
01;29;16;16 - 01;29;41;17
Unknown
getting in line with the system, so to speak. But these are the things that there's no dollar, there's no dollar amount that could replace what we get out of it. Right. Yeah. So I'm very thankful for you two guys in this office and you know, and what, efforts you putting into conservation and help grow this business on your marketing, whether it's on this podcast or YouTube?
01;29;42;12 - 01;30;04;24
Unknown
Your approach is, is very stat satisfying to me. And something I probably would never have sprung off into without your guys's help. We're honored. We're honored to be a part of it and honor to work here. And and, feel like we're doing what we were meant to do. And you've given given an old, biology teacher didn't know how to grease a combine.
01;30;04;24 - 01;30;30;12
Unknown
The chance is, just got by the white shirt. Yes. Hey. That's right. Keeping grease and. That's right, that's right. Well, thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in to this. Of course you know it. This podcast is sponsored by and presented by Hoxie Native Seeds. And, I hope this story helps you connect to what it is we do and makes you want to be a part of it in some way, shape or form, of course.
01;30;30;26 - 01;30;55;08
Unknown
That is through putting seed on some of your own dirt. You can find information on that at Hoxie Native seeds.com or the Prairie farm.com. And, you can get seed that comes from, genetic lines that go back to the very remnant prairie here on, this farm or even just from our other production fields that we have, we grow.
01;30;55;10 - 01;31;25;11
Unknown
Nick and I counted him the other day. He got 50 species. We, we have here in production on, on, hogs. Those are source identified seeds here to for a mile, right. Yep yep yep. So, so 50 different species. All part of Carol's legacy here at Hoxie. Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. Just as, has been the case for Carroll and all of his friends who helped him along the way, and for Nicholas and myself, you can see it very clearly.
01;31;25;18 - 01;32;01;02
Unknown
Conservation happens one mind at a time.

Hoksey Native Seeds

Ep. 270 In Memoriam: The Beginning of Our Story with Carroll Hoksbergen (Hoksey Native Seeds Founder)

Podcast Transcript

Ep. 269 (Coffee Time) Ticks, Limes Disease, and A Hunter’s Guide to Staying Safe in The Field