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Sanilac Co. Michigan | Well, here's the deal. No, I never borrowed operating money, but I have had a small off farm income stream, and my wife had a job that provided health insurance. I started pretty small and worked my way up. Rented ground nobody else wanted (either blow sand or soggy ground where I had to run the muskrats off first) and bought 80 acres with the savings I'd accumulated over the previous ten years. I've never been a corn grower so I suppose I never had the same kind of operating expense guys in a corn/soybean rotation have. Pretty much soybean/dry bean/small grains/hay in some sort of rotation. And, I suppose I'm pretty small compared to most on here at @ 300 acres.
For equipment I started out pretty simple. Rented a no-till drill until I could afford to buy one. Had Helena or CPS or some other farm service do my spraying until I could afford a used sprayer of my own. I had a old 3020 gasser to pull the 10' drill and used my old half ton pick up to haul my assortment of old small rickety gravity boxes to the elevator. Almost forgot my CII Gleaner with 12' head to do my threshing. Believe me, nobody ever drove by the place and became envious of my equipment! All in all my capital expenses were and have been pretty insignificant and frankly still are.
My goals were pretty small I suppose. Accumulate some more land and improve/tile it and pay it off as fast as I could. Grow crops that ought to turn a profit. That meant producing crops suited to the land I had to work with, contract a profit on the bushels I forward contracted, and insure the crop sufficiently in order to recoup my input costs should the unforeseen take place. Over the years I've sold a lot more soy's for less than $6.00 than for over $12.00, and there have ben years where I was just happy to wash out even with my costs.
So, like I said it's been a series of base hits with the occasional home run or strike out and a lot of plain old luck. The last six years or so have been very good to most all of us. The question is did you use the profits to reduce debt exposure or did you use it to buy more "stuff"? | |
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which would the banker rather hear?
