“These are the times that try men's souls.” | NEIndiana, I read you tag line and saw you quoted me from sometime back. However the credit for that quote should go to RPC from Stock talk here. He and I got acquainted a long time ago on here. I've valued his words of wisdom, and one of our conversations, or emails Ron told me that quote, well it stuck to me and really made me think about my family and our situation over the years I was getting started farming and ranching. It also made me think on how I was going to handle my transition of land and assets to my boys.
“If we own the land more than 30 years ourself we are denying the next generation the chance to come in and improve the farm and lead their life to continue the family legacy.” -Russ in Idaho
That had such a profound impact on me when Ron told me that. I began to think of all the families I knew personally that the father still controlled all the shots, even signed all the checks when they were in their 60's plus and the son's never could make any decisions. I didn't want to be one of those fathers, I so want to be the one taking orders from them as soon as I can. I want to be the father that says son grease and have equipment for ready for me and I will run it for you.
I've watched family's over the years use sweat equity to pass assets over, seen some made kids buy at reduced rates, some at market value. Some just willed property at death, in my opinion sometimes that's too late if they weren't given the right to run and prosper from that said land before the death of the parents.
Then I've also seen kids that were given land and assets that couldn't handle the pressure of owning and making decisions. I recall a talk with a neighbor kid that had been gifted a smaller farm, equipment and grazing rights. Everything but the cattle, but by 3-4 years the kid was wanting to sell parts of it. He asked me if I would buy grazing rights, I told him no. I told him our community needed young people, I told him to suck it up and make his payments(they were affordable) on the cattle. But he in turn felt pressured and was begging guys to buy it. A lot of them told him the same as me, he finally sold them to neighbor that he ran those cattle with. But nobody was beating his door down to buy them, because we all knew we need younger people to continue on.
Just my thoughts tonight as I can't sleep, going on two weeks of rain here and I'm loving it. We don't ever get this kind of rain, I read about everyone else getting flooded out, crops not put in. It distresses me to read all that, I just can't even imagine not being to get to high ground and save livestock and assets. In fact it makes me sick to my stomach to see pictures of the devastation. I don't think I will ever cuss a range fire or dust storm ever again after seeing those flooding pictures. |
NEIndiana, I'm flattered but the credit goes to someone else....
