End of an era rental farm

IA Roy · Mar 5, 2017

Our family started farming the 160 acre farm across the road in 1963. The landlord then bought another 80 acres a mile and a half away a couple years later. Some years ago my dad arranged for my brothers to rent the 240 from the landlady so they could get a start farming instead of working for wages. A couple years ago dad rented his land to them instead of crop sharing. The landlady died last summer and the farm was sold a couple weeks ago. The older of my younger brothers was born the year we started farming it in May. Our family farmed it all his life and 3 years longer than the youngest brother has been alive. They are almost 54 and 51 years old. The landlady's husband died back in the mid to late 70's. She was 98 or 99. They had no children, but 9 nieces and nephews as heirs. Of course a couple of the BTO's were bidding on it. The brothers that got it have another farm halfway between the two parcels. They are from about a dozen miles away, but bought the local farm 30 plus years ago.

NY 986 · Mar 5, 2017

Circumstances sure can work against you at times. I came of age during the 1980's and nobody wanted to talk about giving credit financially to do things. It really put me behind the eightball in terms of farming. I've always been working from a position of catching up so to speak and as a middle aged man I have just about a bellyfull more than I like to deal with. If I could have seen ahead to today from the mid-1980's it might have been enough to give up on farming. Guys in much better positions have done much more and accomplished more but this area has seen a steady decine of jobs since I was in high school. Yeah, the new casino is not that far away but you can not plan 10-20 years ahead with a service sector job.

rrlund · Mar 5, 2017

We'll see what happens with one of mine. My aunt passed away this morning at the age of 91. I started farming that place in 1975. My cousin says they're gonna sell it when they get everything cleaned out and settle up. I've got some others that have a questionable future because of owners age and health. I have one that I'm renting from the grand daughter of the person who owned it when I started working it. Another place where the owner's in his late 80s,one where the owner's my age,but has had a hard battle with cancer twice. If he gets it again,I doubt they can pull him through it. Good thing I'm near the age for Social Security.

Dave H (MI) · Mar 5, 2017

That's a tough one. I have been on the other side of that coin. I purchased land 5 years ago that had belonged to an elderly lady and was rented for decades by a local farmer. My acreage was maybe 10% of his total farmed land. The estate had tried to get him to buy it, but he declined. Same with the neighbors. I spent two years off and on working a deal with the estate until I finally bought the place. Tough negotiations. I let the tenant stay on the place for three years, but I did raise his rent from the 1970's era amount he was paying. Third year I took one field and did it myself. Next year I took the rest of it over. We parted friends and I could call him tomorrow and he would be out in the Spring if I decided to stop. I was not thrilled with putting him off land his family had farmed for so long but times had changed, and a new generation with bigger equipment was having trouble working around my old tree lines. Took some heat from the neighbors but that has settled down. Actually had a guy stop by a few weeks back said "thank God you bought this place...".

NY 986 · Mar 5, 2017

Does misery love company? I don't think so. Which is to say I hope you can make out as well as what can be expected. With the competition for land that is not all that good here I need to start hoping for the Powerball as SS is a ways off for me. Sometimes I wish that I was not so prideful in terms of carrying on but as said previously the employment picture is bleak here. I've done the service sector thing before and got it stuck in my behind so I am not eager to play that game again if I can help it.

IA Roy · Mar 5, 2017

The last I was involved was in the early 70's. Dad was not big enough to hire help. I had 4 younger brothers. The next 2 worked for Dad a couple years. They have passed away since. I went to community college and spent more than 40 years working in Drafting, Design and Engineering jobs. Currently I am driving over the road. I often wonder how things might have been different. The landlord and his wife moved to Florida after they had both retired. He had a heart attack and died within a very short time. She stayed down there. She was like family to us and us to her. My next oldest brother and I both thought we should get her to adopt us. LOL.

NY 986 · Mar 5, 2017

I wished often that I could master the advanced math necessary to become an engineer. In about any other way I could have been very capable but calculus never came to me when the time came to apply it. Performing advanced math opens a lot of doors in today's world.

55 50 Ron · Mar 5, 2017

I had trouble with integral calculus until I got in a class with a very nice old lady math professor. She had the whole class up to the blackboards working problems and would walk around the room watching. When she saw some one in trouble she would stop and explain further and come back as many times as necessary. Bless her heart, I got it and went on to become an electronics engineer.

NY 986 · Mar 5, 2017

I had a lot of good instructors during high school and my four years of college but sadly there was not that person there like in your situation. It seemed when I was in a situation where something did not come naturally that the instructor was fairly hard nosed. A recurring theme seemed to be that the bottom quartile of a class was never going to make it in that profession anyways so a person might as well hit the wall now and get into something they have a better chance of succeeding at.

Ozlander · Mar 5, 2017

(quoted from post at 17:10:00 03/05/17) I wished often that I could master the advanced math necessary to become an engineer. In about any other way I could have been very capable but calculus never came to me when the time came to apply it. Performing advanced math opens a lot of doors in today's world.

I took every math course they had in college.
Worked 40 years as a electric/avionics engineer and the only college math I ever used was algebra.

hd6gtom · Mar 5, 2017

Dave H --sorta similar situation here. Dad sold his cows in the early 1980's. He and mom rented the 320 acres of pasture to one man up until dad died 2 years ago. Just too much for a 90+ year old mom to wory about. The decision was made to sell that farm. We did everything we could do to sell it to the fellow that rented it all those years. He turned it down and it was auctioned off. We thought it was a good idea to auction it. If we had to do it over again, it would have been listed with a land agent.

notjustair · Mar 5, 2017

I played that game this year. Rented the 222 acres around the home place for years. It was put up for sale last year and we made an offer. It was declined. It was on the market a year while I continued to farm it. I got a call several months back that it was being auctioned on the courthouse steps. I took a deep breath and offered again to buy it after knocking a good chunk off my other offer. They accepted it rather than auction and it was finalized this last month. It's nice to have that worry gone. I hated to do it with commodity prices as they are, but you just don't get to have the pasture across the road and the land surrounding your home place come up for sale often. With the increasing I can do in herd size I can offset the current crop prices. I'd been wanting that pasture for years.

paul · Mar 6, 2017

Just a year ago bought some land, only 55 acres.

Elderly neighbor passed away, a very good neighbor family had rented his 160 acres since the 80s, maybe before.

They couldn't swing buying the whole 160 acres in this ag ecconomy, so they asked if we wanted to buy some? Well, wasn't really on my list, but if we bought 55 or so, they could swing the other 105 including the old homestead. They have 6 kids, figure one will end up there.... If we had t bought any, it would have gone to auction, and I'm sure someone with. 4000 or 40,000 acres would be new neighbors.....

I think our elderly neighbor who passed would be happy that the land stayed with neighbors and friends of his.

I wish it had all stayed with the family renting it, but glad it worked out this well.

Land can have so much meaning to a farmer -owned or rented-, it's hard to put that in words.

Paul

IaLeo · Mar 6, 2017

Not exactly on thread but you engineers, did you ever need or use calculus in your work? I found other math very useful. Leo

End of an era rental farm

IA Roy

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NY 986

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rrlund

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Dave H (MI)

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NY 986

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IA Roy

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NY 986

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55 50 Ron

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NY 986

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Ozlander

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hd6gtom

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notjustair

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paul

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IaLeo

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