Written by Trevor Enerson
I’ve had to come to terms with something this fall that has been sitting in the back of mind for a while now, but I really didn’t want to acknowledge it: I’m the impatient one in the family farm operation.
As an operation, we’re usually pretty relaxed and level headed when it comes to getting into the field and getting out there when we see “fit.” My grandfather despises doing anything in any sort of conditions less than dry and my father and brother are a degree more aggressive than that. I on the other hand, apparently have some deep seeded desire to see something get stuck or broken. Luckily for me (and everyone else involved) this desire has not yet been granted. However, I’m also the one most averse to breaking things. I’m always the one asking far too many questions about this or that to ensure that I don’t break anything, so that someone (I didn’t get the mechanical gene that seemed to have passed down to everyone else) has to fix it. The cognitive dissonance here is quite astounding as I sit and write this.
You may be reading this now wondering who’s right when these decisions are made. I will let you in on a secret: It’s not me. I wanted to try combining beans two days before we actually did and when we did start, they were 13% and tougher than a two-dollar steak. I highly doubt things would have gone any better two cloudy days earlier. If we weren’t going to take out beans at that point in time, I wanted to take out a field of corn I had some concerns about as far as standability. Again, wrong. We are currently taking that out and putting that directly in a bin and it’s standing perfectly fine. What about this spring? You may ask; well, I thought we should plant a couple of fields of corn early on. We only had to replant a lot of one of those fields and the other has a reduced stand so I was only partially wrong. We’ll call that one, a push for my self-esteem. Besides, everyone else was planting so it wasn’t entirely my fault. We all know the first one to go is crazy and the second one is a trendsetter.
“When you quit learning, it’s because you’re dead.” That’s a saying I’ve heard numerous times from my grandfather over the years. “You might laugh at him, but he’s going to be right far more often than he’s wrong.” I’ve heard this a number of times from my dad in reference to my grandpa also. “You can’t compact dry soil.” Again, my father. I’m still in the process of fact-checking this one but early analysis says that’s pretty accurate. “Trevor, get off your phone and pay attention.” That’s not really a relevant one I guess, but I hear it a lot so maybe I should listen to that one too.
I would be well served, I think to listen to the elders as we go through this natural progression of a family farm and hopefully, in the future, my kids and grandkids will use some of my quotes to help lead them through life on the farm. If that’s going to happen, I think my brother and I better keep listening as they both say “We’ll get it all done. We always do.”
Trevor is a Seed Sales Agronomist in our Estherville location and has a Bachelor degree in Agricultural Business as well as Economics. Prior to working at Asmus Farm Supply he was a crop consultant in southwest Iowa for a little over a year. Trevor was raised on a family farm near Estherville and continues to help out there as time allows. He enjoys the customer interaction that comes with this career, and looks forward to helping growers maximize profits through making sound seed decisions.
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