Farmerjan's journal - Weather

Miss @farmerjan,

I am so glad you got your brakes fixed! I'd hate to be reading about you having plowed into another car or a tree because you couldn't stop!

Being a farmer is definitely hard! I read about so many farmers struggling to pay the bills, getting old, younger family members not wanting to take over because they see their parents struggling and not wanting that kind of life. It's sad. I see you and your son having to struggle. Thank goodness you two are strong. But since time waits for no one, I am glad you will be able to cut back on some of the work and get more rest. All of us want you around for a long time!

Senile Texas Aggie

Thanks @Senile_Texas_Aggie ; I told my son I will be around to tell him how to do it, or what he is doing WRONG, when I am 90 !!!!!!
Yeah, glad to have the brakes done. Usually when you have a problem like that, you will have front brakes if you keep up the fluid in the resevoir, but these faded out pretty quick. It was just the replacing one line to have the other blow out that was aggravating.... usually doesn't happen "pow" like that. Oh well, on to the next project.

Went by and looked at the one house that was for sale. Needs some TLC on the outside, painting at least... didn't get out as it was "raining" (gee whiz never would've thought that) and maybe some siding replaced. I want to see the inside... gonna have to call a friend that is a realtor, as I do not want to see it with the listing realtor. It is on a little quieter side road, and there are 3 acres. Might make a nice one to get into, get fixed up, and then rent out if I find something else.... Not sure that I want it to be my forever home but it's a possibility.
The other one, that is a small farm, has 3 billboards for income. The house is fairly close to the interstate. My son went by it on his way to Lexington. That doesn't really endear it to me, but they have dropped the price by over 100,000; from 300,000 down to 186,000. He wants to research the income from the billboards. They don't bother me, but being close to the highway would, with the noise. However, Va passed a law years ago and no more billboards can be erected as it detracts from the countryside views.... so they are in demand here. These are pretty big, so what, and have never been empty. After all we are going through with the cell tower, and learning how well they pay, it would be a way to pay for this place and have a place to run some cattle. Bears looking into.
I am going to get with the realtor to go look at the house here, this week if possible, and just see up close if it is worth considering. I want to do this too, before I slow down at work, so my income is favorable. I know what I can pay, and where I can skimp and save, but sometimes a bank doesn't look at it the same way.


We are going to try to sell some heifers this next week.... seems we have been saying that for a couple of weeks. But after this "arctic blast" temps are supposed to go back up to the 40's/20's and guess what... possible rain AGAIN on Thursday...
Anyway, that will give me some money to pay off the credit cards I was wanting to do a month ago... which will help my score, which will help a loan app.. I expect that I can pay it off in less than 10 years.... or sell it and make some and then do something else.

Whats going to happen is the coorperations will be taking over the growing if our food. In a sense, farmers will be serfs and be answerable to thier cooperate owners. The day of the family owned farm is going to be a thing of the past.
With big businesses like Monsanto, now Bayer, even what kind of food to be grown will be decided by them. Prices will be pre-determined. Thats why, in my opinion, its even more important for people to grow their own vegetables using heirloom or non GMO seeds, as well as raise thier own meat. This year, Im also going to get some meat chickens to process.

@Rammy you are pretty much right. It has already happened for a big part in the poultry and hog industries. It is going that way in the dairy with these huge 2-5-10,000 cow dairies that are really just milk factories. They are trying to push it in the beef industry too. But the problem with that is it takes allllll the small 25-50 cow/calf beef producers to get enough feeders to go into the feedlot operations. And with the cow/calf operations, they have found out that the calves just don't do good if not "grown" on pasture and such. They can be put into feed lot operations older and if well managed, will do okay... but the young animals do not adapt well to confinement type operations. So therein lies the catch.... with this meat that is being "grown" in the labs....
The sad thing is, the next generations coming up will not care much about it, all they care about is IF they have food to eat. With increase global populations, the issues will be making enough food... not growing enough.
When our generation goes, and then my son's generation, there will be few that will want to even do the work to "grow their own".
Remember the TV program "the Jetsons" ???? sure it was a cartoon type, and pretty fanciful for the times. But that is what we are coming to. Food will be in the form of something that has been created in a lab, it will all be specifically made for perfect health and nutrition.

UNLESS we get into some kind of major DISASTER, like a Nuclear Holocaust that basically destroys the world as we know it. Then people will be thrown back to survival mode and those that have parents/relatives, such as some of us are, with some basic survival/ self-sufficiency skills will be the ones to "save" the populations that survive it. I am not a doom and gloom person. But I watch this world go on and on and the way they are going will be the end of them. Think about the Roman Empire.... and how the lack of morals, debauchery, excesses, all worked to eventually bring it down. And I am seeing it happening now with the way things are going.
First off, let me say I do not hate gay people. But, it is not a "natural" way of nature.... and to go to the extremes that are done nowadays, to basically promote it as a "normal" way of life, is to undermine the basics of life. The Native Americans recognized that there were people like that; they were considered a part of the tribe, but were left alone to do their own thing. They were not designated to become the leaders of the tribe, and were not considered as the way to be emulated. They were accepted, perhaps better than we as whites had done in the past, but they were in the minority and were allowed to be a PART. No one else was forced to deal with them, they did not make the rules, they did not force their ways on others.
Today's society has gone to the extremes.... and the ones that practice and believe in the "natural order" of things, like traditional lifestyles, and traditional food growing, and eating real meat and vegetables, will be the ones that will save this planet if we ever do get to the point of something like a Nuclear disaster.
The Roman Empire fell, and it is acknowledged that it was in a great part due to the excesses and extremes that they had gone to. Our country is headed in that direction and I am not sure how it can be stopped until it collapses in on it's self. It is people like us, if we do manage to pass our knowledge on to the next generations, in the small pockets that survive across this country, that will be the saving grace.

Im looking for the I U. S. to fall at some point. Just hope its not in my lifetime.

@Baymule you said it is a shame that the ones that want to farm, that they cannot afford to. There are some programs that are offered to match up some of the younger ones with older retiring farmers, to keep the farms as "farms". But you also get into the problems of inheritance, and family dynamics, and the fact that the existing farmers have nothing but their farm to rely on for their "retirement". They cannot afford to sell it for a pittance of what it's worth has become, because they are setting themselves up for "retirement years" of poverty.

In the perfect world, there would be one of the children, or a grand child, that would want to take it over, and the farm would continue. The older generation would be able to live their lives out on the "homestead" and the younger would seamlessly carry it on. Like the "Waltons's", in ideal. But it just doesn't happen that way in so many families. And if an elder family member has to go into a care facility, the farm is all they have to "sell" and it has to be sold in order to satisfy all the rules and laws and such when it comes to paying for all that.

If everything goes perfectly, then you have to deal with INHERITANCE TAXES.... and that will cause half or more of properties to be sold just to pay the government. I've seen that happen in my family and I have so much anger at the government getting a BIG chunk of something that should pass on to a family member with NO ENCUMBERANCES like taxes. If a person pays taxes all his life, and wants to leave something to his next of kin, why do they have to be penalized for it? I should not have to pay for my relative's generosity... or sell off what they are giving me because the government wants a piece of something they have no business getting....especially if they paid their share of taxes all the years they were living.

There are some ways to do it, but for most simple farmers, it also goes against their "independent nature" to bare their soul to a "strange", lawyer, or someone, to set up what is theirs to give to someone else.
But the biggest thing is, most farmers don't have "retirement accounts", their farms are their retirement, and they need to sell it for the most they can, to insure they have enough to live on for whatever years they have left. It is also very hard to get into a working relationship with a "stranger" that wants to take over your farm, and trust them enough that they will take care of you in the end stages of your life. Granted, many "kids" do a pi$$ poor job of it...
Look at what @CntryBoy777 went through, taking care of his parents and how that worked out.... suppose it had been a "non-related" person.... they could have put the aging person in a home and that would have been where they faded away. And here comes another "relative" to take things away....

farmerjan said:

Almost put myself through the windshield the first time I used them because I had gotten used to them not being very good!!!

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Oh, best not to let them get that bad! Glad you got it fixed AND didn't lick the windshield from the inside.

farmerjan said:

It was just the replacing one line to have the other blow out that was aggravating.... usually doesn't happen "pow" like that.

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Seems like it isn't unreasonable. Like lights, the hoses are used equally, when one is old enough to be weak, the others are likely to be as well. If I have to replace a light bulb in a car, I replace all that are on at the same time.

"For 2018, the estate and gift tax exemption is $5.6 million per individual, up from $5.49 million in 2017. That means an individual can leave $5.6 million to heirs and pay no federal estate or gift tax."
Most small family farms aren't worth $5.5M and there is no inheritance tax.

many states DO have inheritance &/or estate taxes.

True, I was thinking only about the feds. My bad.

Tennessee had a death tax until it was repealed in 2016. Prior to 2016 the first 5 million was exempt.