Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Going to the Bank Today.

I'll carry in some numbers, with hat in hand, and hope to farm another year.

Good luck. Hope the rate is lower and the terms are easier. (They won't be but it is the thought that counts.)

The wife is getting started on that too Richard.


Good luck!


From the looks of your operation, I'd say you have nothing to worry about!

The older I get, the more I hate doing that.

I don't like owing.

Got a couple small things financed because the deal was right. All my tractors, and cows are paid for. No land payment.

Might not be "big", but I know those that are, and sure wouldn't want their bills.

Knew a couple of farmers that committed suicide when it rained too much to get their crops out...

No thanks.

Well folks, in Iowa they don't give farmland away.

Jim, thanks, if things get tough enough, I may have light my .25. cent cigars with a check written for 14 cents. Not them hundred dollar bills like some Montana, and Texas ranchers do.

I'd love to get of debt, thing is, I just keep spendin' money.

Richard, I remember back in the late 60s when a farm between A.C. and Newell went for $4000 per and people were wondering how it could ever pay for itself.

Right John, my wife, and I paid $2600, and it was a local scandal.

No way stupid me would make that work.


Farm land will almost never pay out at prices at the time.

I know the feeling good luck..

I hated those days when I had to go and try to get an operating loan. I was the world's worst at doing that kind of business. Thankfully those days are long gone. My cattle, equipment, and land are all paid for, and as I look back I see a lot of missed opportunities, and wish I could have some of them back. I'd loved to have bought more land, but those days are long gone as the price of land here is sky high, and far too rich for my blood, especially at my age.

I just thank the good Lord for what He has blessed me with, and given me the opportunity to have.

I'd have more hunnert dollar bills iffen I had some drillable oil on this ol' land. Jed Clampett, and a few others I know do pretty well that way..

Back years ago, there was a company that came in around here and started drilling wells, for gas and oil. They hit mostly gas, and some folks were told that they were going to be able to hook their homes up on this "free" gas, plus get a royalty check. Never panned out, and all those wells were soon abandoned. I have a 200 plus feet deep well on one of my places that was dug back in the 1940's, and I put a pump in it years ago to water livestock with. It was sulphur water, and at times a black oily substance was in the water. Always made me wonder what would have happened if they'd kept digging. Who knows, I might have been like Jed Clampett.

I did get a pretty decent water well in NM from an old oil well drill.

They didn't find oil, but the water we pumped out of it was suitable for livestock.

My stock loved that sulphur water.

Sulphur can kill cattle.

It can, but what I've seen, is you run it into a holding pond or stock tank, and the sulpher dissipates pretty quick.

I'm watering some cows from a pretty good sized pond that I fill with an irrigation well. When it comes from the wellhead, it's stinky as all get out, but after a day on the pond, you never smell it.

The sulphur in water is more a bad taste and smell than anything else. It's not going to hurt at all. There are two kinds of sulphur wells here, black and white sulphur. The black stuff is awful, and will eat up pipes, tanks, and pumps. I have a white sulphur well here that we used for our water on this place for a long time. We used it for everything but drinking. I finally laid 1/2 mile of line and hooked up on county water.

The Sulphur in dried distillers' grain with deep well water can be toxic to cattle.

What isthe difference?

Wabi, the farm here where I've lived since 1985 was previously owned by a family member, who watered his cattle and hogs out of this well. This farm has always had a shortage of water, since the creek dries up in mid summer, and the ponds didn't hold much water. I use county water when the creek isn't running, or when I'm rotating pastures. My horses drink the well water 365 days a year.The well on the adjoining farm that I also own is sulphur as well, and I used it for many years to water my stock on there. There are also a number of other sulfhur water wells in this area.

Maybe there's a difference in the level of sulphur in wells, and that's why it happens in distillers grain. But, in my soon to be 69 years here on this earth, I've never heard of a problem with it here.

It's not the water alone. They use Sulphur in the distilling process to lower the PH of the mash. They use sulfuric acid to clean the machinery.

If the Sulphur content of the DDG is high, and the well water is also high, some dead cattle is the result.

We did not learn this the easy way.