Bad news today!!!

We have a rented farm that we(myself/wife and my sons) have rented since 1970. Actually back to 1958 if you count my Grand Father renting it. The farm has changed hands from one generation to the next in the same family as far as ownership.

The current owner lives in Northern Wisconsin. HE usually came down to the farm several times during the year while he was working. Then after he retired we made a small finished room inside one of the barns. Running water, heat and a bathroom. He would come down for days at a time in the summer/fall. He loved to "help" haul in the crop. That was a mixed "blessing" as he is a CPA. LOL had a few mishaps over the years but all and all he is a great guy.

He came down last winter and told me he had prostate cancer but the treatments had it under control. By the way he is 80 years old now.

He called me this morning. He told me he more than likely would never see the farm again. He has terminal cancer and has weeks/days to go. I really hate that.

He has been a long time friend. Best landlord a fellow could ever want too. He liked the farm kept in contour strips and the steeper ground in pasture. (He loves to watch the young calves playing)

The farm is farmed almost just like it was when we first rented in in 1970.

His wife will kept the farm until her death. Then it goes to his five kids. Two girls are real hard working ladies and three LAZY sons. I am afraid that that will be the end of the family owning the farm. His sons already talk about how much the farm is "worth" now. Constantly complaining about how small of a return the farm makes.

Current owner(Father) wants the barns kept up, the fences maintained, the contour strips and erosion controls kept working. Those things cost money.

Just a sad day with a lot of uncertainty for the future of that farm.

Sorry to hear your dilemma.

How's his wife's health?

Let's hope that things may change for the better before the kids take it over.

That is bad news.Could you buy it now and give the wife a life estate?He surely knows of his sons wishes/intentions.I'm sure he'd want the place intact,rather that split up/subdivided.Maybe you can deal with him while he is still able.

Steve the wife's health is good for a 79 year old woman. I am not really concerned as far as the farming aspect but more from I hate to see these smaller farms destroyed just so they can be "big" fields.

The first farm/house that my wife and I rented, after I got out of the service, was completely knocked down and buried this spring. A local BTO bought it and rather than selling the building and a odd shaped pasture he tore it all down and buried it. The odd shaped pasture was there because of limestone rock at about six inches down. The corn he planted on the pasture is about two foot tall and yellow as the sun.

He has the farm in a trust right now. He is not interested in selling it. He thinks his family will still keep it but I am sure the kids will sell it. They never really had any reason to bond with the farm as it is 150 miles away from them.

The current owner's Uncle farmed the farm when he was a kid. He can remember helping work on the farm. So it has "meaning" to him.

The farm is about 360 acres but only about 220 are tillable. Of the 140 left only maybe 100 of it is very good pasture. The rest is hollows and bluffs.

Even with all of that it would still bring in the mid 5K per acre range right now. What the sons don't see is how little they would actually get after all the taxes and a five way split.

They would get about $15K each ,after expenses, in annual income if they keep it. That would easily be more than a 5% return compared with what they would get after taxes.

The sisters MAY buy out the brothers. That is how the current owner got sole ownership.

This is a common problem around here anymore. There is a lot of land in older peoples hands. Their children rarely want to keep the land anymore. FAST bucks cloud their view.

Guess he is getting what he deserves on the pasture ground.

We have just come through what may have been a rally for the ages in terms of commodity prices. Do you buy in the mid 5,000 range or is this the point in time where owners should expect things to go the other way. The US used to be the king of agriculture but other countries are trying to find other producers to supply them. One of these days somebody is going to find a way to stabilize Ukraine even if it is split then the grain will come pouring out. What I am saying is our position as a consistent producer kept land prices propped up and even growing at times but we are in a new era where nothing is guaranteed in terms of market plus we have the ability to drench the domestic market even in a poor growing year.

OK...let's not be so quick to discount the CPA there buddy. I am a CPA for (bleep) sake! And I'll stand toe to toe with anyone when it comes to my abilities on the farm. Especially with all my mentors on the various forums here helping me out in the areas where I am weak. God bless the lot of em. Seems to me you fall in that group, come to think of it.

It is TRULY sad about your landowner. He clearly loved his place. Heartbreaking to find out you cannot/will not go back. His one mistake was not to find a way to instill that same love in his children. I think those of us who are custodians of our land have a duty to do that...or try at least. I have two kids, both girls but that hardly matters. I will never forget the first time my brother brought his wife to the farm. She looked out over the place and proclaimed that "this would make a great housing project!" I didn't miss a breath when I informed her..."Not in my lifetime." What really caught me was my older daughter muttering behind me quietly..."not in my lifetime either." I was the only one to hear it. What a blessing to know two things I love in life will go on together!

I hope you find that one or more of those kids is not so worthless after all and that the place continues on. By the way, I don't assist my tenant unless he asks me. I do my part and he does his. Sometimes we stand under a tree and pass a word or two.

Time marches on.

My sister and I each owned an undivided half of the family farm. It would have been impossible to divide it fairly, with timber on one end, a farmstead with a rental house on the other, etc.

Over the years, I'd often thought I wouldn't want to subject our daughter to sharing the farm with my sister's dysfunctional kids so when my sister suggested we sell the farm, I went for it.

Kinda hated to do it, 'cause it had been in the family for 109 years, but as I said, time marches on. People and situations both change over a period of many years.

JD,

It is the way here in Iowa, a BTO will purchase the farm.

Dave This fellow has done some interesting things to equipment over the years.

1) Forgot to put the JD 4440 into park in the barnyard. Not a flat spot in that yard either. LOL IT rolled down the drive and hit the rock foundation on the barn. Smashed the fuel tank, radiator, hood and knocked the corner of the wall out.

2) He has upset at least four gravity wagons over the years. He "forgets" that you NEVER turn up hill while loaded.

3) HE has wiped out many fence posts with the disk or finisher. Liked to get "close". LOL One time he knocked out the post and then drug the barbed wire around for a round or two. It acted like a rake and had a pile of weeds big enough that I had to get the tractor and loader to spread them back out.

Like I stated the nicest guy you could ever want to meet but not equipment inclined at all. He did start out on horses when he was a kid. I think that is part of it.



To his credit. When we where just getting started out and things where tight he split the rent payments up into each quarter so I could make them with my hog money and not have to borrow more high interest money in the 1980s. He also sit and watched the batch dryer run many a weekend when I still worked in town. I mean all night too. He would dump the dryer and refill it so I could get some sleep.

There is a funny thing about him coming and visiting. My kids would asked me after he left each time what he had hit/ran into this time. LOL

HE really likes my oldest son. My son would help him run the equipment when he was little. I mean 5-6 years old. My son would be telling him how to do things. It was funny watching a forty something be "bossed" around by a little kid. LAMO

I will miss him and his visits.

Sorry to hear about your friend, If possible I'd go talk to him and his wife before he passes, if nothing else to give you one last visit with him and it would probably mean a lot to him too. Get he and his wife to talk about what HE wants for the farm. It's in trust now, see if they want to ad anything to the trust, like maybe a long term lease? Add agricultural practices he wants continued in any lease agreement? Idea would be to set it up so the wife could tie the farm up for a few years after her passing preventing the kids from flipping it over to a BTO who would ruin what the current owner wanted done on the land. A longer lease might diminish the sale value, idea would be to reduce the big pile of cash the kids could get immediately, giving you time to let the kids get used to collecting rent and maybe learn that they can do that for a long time and over the course of their life collect more than what they would get from selling it and have something to leave to their kids to collect rent off of. Might also arm the wife to set down with the kids and explain how holding the farm and taking rent might be better than selling and squandering the cash, maybe even setting the kids down with a lawyer to explain the tax consequences of selling and what percentage of the sale price they will loose if they sell it. Maybe the wife/mother could explain to the kids how the rent shes collects is making her retired life much easier. With the fall in corn prices I suspect land prices will fall soon unless commodity prices recover. If nothing else get the kids to hold the farm until land prices recover, as in don't sell now because you want to wait until the price goes back up, or if the land prices held or are going up convince them they don't want to sell now as it'll be worth so much more in 2 or 5 years and look at the rent you've collected while waiting.

But then a lot of what I said is really family business and it might be wise to keep your nose out of it, I guess it all depends on the relationship you have with him and the family. Friend of mine had a farm he bought in the mid 60's, the city grew in around and up to it and it became quite valuable. He refused to sell it, wanted to leave it to his kids. One day he sat down with his oldest son and they talked, the son explained as the executor of his estate when the Dad died he would do everything possible to hold on to land that had been in the family for generations but this particular farm would be sold within 30 days of the dad's passing. The father conferred with his other children, none of them wanted this farm. To make a long story short the father sold this one farm then took the money and did somethings he wanted to do and bought substantially more land out in the country.

I very sorry to hear of your friend's failing health.

I am also some what surprised by the newly found concern about the uncertainty of that "family farm". It sounds like what is now happening has been your friend's plan for a long time, his plan is simply being carried out now. Your friends instructions are basically that the children should to stay out of their dad's farm business, and only dispose of it the best they can after he and their mother are passed away. That is the estate plan of many farms today.

It reminds me of the problems a friend was having with his kid constantly playing with and loosing his tools. He kept telling the kid to "leave dad's things alone", "don't touch my things". He finally had to lay a good beating on the kid before the kid would leave his dad's tools alone. Later, when the kid graduated from high school I overheard the dad say he was concerned about his kid, he was so unhandy and didn't want anything to do with tools. I could only roll my eyes.

"The farm is farmed almost just like it was when we first rented in in 1970." If you've been renting the farm since then, that farm has not been a "family farm" but rather a "rental property" for 44 years now, that's almost two generations. The decisions to exclude the children from the farm operation and rent it out was made forty four years ago, probably when the kids were choosing careers and leaving the nest. Those children are now in their 50's and early 60's, nearing their own retirements. After being excluded from the farm for so long you can really expect them to take much of an interest in the farm now? Your friend has had forty years to bring one of his kids into his farm as a partner, but he didn't want that.

If some of the children do step up now and take an interest in the farm will you accept them or will they be criticized for it? Suppose one of them reviews the lease and updates it to match current average rentals at an additional $150/acre in his mother's favor, wants the crop rotation changed to less profitable crops for better control erosion, and wants supplies and chemical purchased from a supplier that gives the family a rebate, or hires a farm manager to keep an eye on things for them. Would they be considered responsible landowners looking out for their mother's best interests or would they be outsiders and interlopers meddling in things that are none of their business, only ruining what was a sweetheart deal?

I've seen both sides of this deal, when a landlord passed away, and when my dad passed away.

Again, I am sorry about your friend's health, but what is happening is the plan he made.

Did that guy ever help on a farm in Western New York? Not the same events(damage), but the same type of results.

Pretty good post, SS.

Sorry to hear of the failing health, but that really wasn't a small farm of any sort in the past 40 years, just another rental property with a little sentimental value.

The CPA comment was funny, I understand that. does not apply to all, but enough so as to be funny.

And kids looking to see how fast they can divide up the property, see that a lot. Looks like that is dads plan here as you say SS, but seems kinda sad too.

Paul

SS55: This is not a sudden concern of mine. I have wondered for years when the farm would be put up for sale. I have even tried to buy it several times.

I also take some offence when you basically accuse me of paying lower rents than what the ground is worth. The farm is totally rented. ZERO crop cost to the owner. Rent is all paid April 1st each year and has been for over twenty years.

This farm has an average CSR (Corn suitability rating) of under 50. So it is not the best ground in Iowa. He is getting over $350 for the crop ground and over $150 for the pasture. That is not a sweet heart deal. It is market price or maybe even a little more than what I could have bargained it down to.

For the average larger scale farmer to farm this farm he would have to bulldoze all the pastures fences out just to get to the "farm" ground. It is one full mile from the road to the back field. You go through five sets of gates to do that. There is 13 acres in that back field. In one place there are two rock bluffs you drive between that are just 16 feet apart and 15 feet tall. large equipment just do not work on this farm.
I will not share crop a farm anymore. If the landlord wants to "play" farmer then let him take all the risk.

As for the farm crops being changed for erosion control. That is what I am currently doing. There is 160 acres of corn on that farm this year. There are over twenty different "strips". Some are under an acre is size.

My concern is that the kids just read the papers about how land should be farmed and want that done on this farm. This is not an average grain farm in anyway. If the contour strips where taken out the fields would not be farmable for very long. I KNOW this for a FACT!!! It was farmed that way before we started farming it.

That back 13 acres had gullies that a D-8 Cat fit level in. It took us working on it for over en years to get it straightened out and stabilized.

As for the current owners "plan" yes it is working now. I am talking about how reality is different than what he and I have talked about over the years. He thinks his children will keep it forever just like he has.

Also he has lived over 150 miles away since he got out of college. He never has lived on the farm full time. So there really has never be a viable way for his kids to "bond" to the farm. He basically has held on to his childhood life of visiting the farm.