FFOD326 : Heck, I Did It

This week I’m sitting down with the guys from Great Plains Ag to talk summer food plots. Folks tend to overthink it sometimes, but the truth is it doesn’t have to be complicated. Heck… I did it.

We’re talking timing, planting tips, mistakes to avoid, and ways to make your property better without turning it into a full time job. If you’ve been thinking about putting in a summer plot but weren’t sure where to start, this one’s for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Fistful of Dirt, the official podcast of Monty Oak Properties. Whether you own a small farm, lease land, or just love hanging in your backyard. We're all about the outdoor lifestyle and how to get the most from your time in God's great outdoors. Now here's your host, Ronnie Cuz Strickland.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Semi-live from the original Camo Cage.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Semi-Live.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I told you we would get through turkey season. There's some people still turkey hunting. I guarantee you Dave Owens is somewhere. I think he goes up into June.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

He just keeps going.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah. If they ever get him on the moon, we'll see him up there one day.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Yep. He'll be buying a tag.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

But we're done. Big time done. But uh changing gears has been uh kind of fast for me. I got a uh I got a podcast coming up now with uh two guys I met I don't know, probably a year and a half ago. And they're with uh Great Plains who makes big time farm gear. Cranky and Matt were impressed because they have Great Plains stuff on their farming simulator.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

They love that game.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Great Plains is getting into uh smaller units and all, of course, you know, you gotta address the food plotters and the weekend warriors like me.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

But anyway, I said, you know what? I try I I kind of stuck my toe in the water last year on a summer plot and it didn't work. And for all reasons, the main reason was uh I guess operator error on my part, but too much too much rain. But I said, you know what? They uh they call me, they're uh launching a new podcast. I don't remember the name of it, it's not out yet.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

And they asked me if I'd drive up to their studio, which is up there by Grenada, and be on their podcast, the new one. And I said, Sure I will. And I hung up and I got to thinking, I said, I ought to talk to them. Because they're I mean, they're that's this is what they're educated in. Food plots. I said, I'm gonna talk to them about summer food plots. And I called him back, said, Hey, what if I bring some of Laurene's gear up there and we knock me one out? Sure. And I did. And again, I was nervous as I could be till I got back and gave you the SD card and you said it's in there.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Everything's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

But I wanted to talk about that because there's so much movement going on in that food plot world. Right. And I've been watching video after video after video, and I really didn't talk to them too much about this, about drilling through last year's food plots because I don't mow mine. Now, we don't have turkeys out there. Occasionally you'll get a picture, but it's pretty rare. But it's like my method's always been wait till whenever at least July before I run a mower through there.

SPEAKER_05 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Get it ready, till, till, till, and plant your food plots in the in the fall. But I was like, you know, this year I think I'm gonna drill I'm gonna try to drill through that with some other stuff and see, you know, because you see people cramping and I I don't have a crimper. But anyway, I said that'd be something good to talk about. It's too early to talk about just food plots, but summer planting stuff is a big deal.

SPEAKER_05 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

And you don't have to own land. We discussed that. You know, if you do if you're in a hunting camp.

SPEAKER_05 3:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

You know, he he he made a point during their podcast, he knows a hunting camp where there was like 14 guys went in and put up some money and they bought their own drill and they do this and that.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, and anything you can do to improve the habitat, and I can tell you this about using a a no-till, um whatever it is, uh a drill. It's way less work.

SPEAKER_05 3:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

And way faster. So we're gonna talk about some summer plots, and I think the timing for that's absolutely perfect. But anyway, we're gonna visit with a guy some great planes and talk about stuff you can do that is affordable that might make your little, you know, piece of dirt more heavenly. So let's go visit. But I didn't have to drive far. We were with uh Justin Henderson and Nathan Hood. Am I got that right? Yes, sir. Glad to be here. Look, I got history with both of these guys. They're with uh Great Plains. We're gonna talk about Great Plains. We're here to talk about no-tilling. But before we get into that, I happen to know that both of these are homeboys, they're big rednecks, they're hunters. So I'm gonna start with you, Nathan. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up and how you ended up where you're at.

SPEAKER_06 5:02

Well, first off, that is a 100% accurate description of me. I grew up in Calhoun County, Mississippi, uh, but you know, on the Calhoun-Webster County line. Uh, been there all my life, uh moved down to Jackson for a couple years when my wife was in uh grad school, but came back as quick as we could and and got back in the woods. Uh been a hunter, fisherman all my life.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Well, that makes sense. And you and what about you, Justin?

SPEAKER_07 5:31

So I'm Nathan's counterpart uh here at Great Plains, and I reside in our Murchie, Georgia, born and raised there. Uh in Rome, Armurchie. Um all my family's there, both sides. Uh grew up, grew up with uh grandparents and dad in the woods. Um dad was a real big beagle hunter. He loved hunting rabbits. Um and you know, later on up in middle school, well, really it was about high school, about we talked about the driver's license earlier. About the time I got the driver's license, I started hunting anything I could. You know, so the so the rabbit hunting eventually turned into chasing some turkeys when I could and wasn't playing baseball and all the spring sports and stuff in high school. And then uh, yeah, kind of like Nathan said, I just found any opportunity I could to get out of the house and get in the woods and hunt something, fish something.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Well, y'all were both climbing higher on my total pole. What part of Georgia were you in? North Rome. Where's that? Is that north, south, central?

SPEAKER_07 6:30

Northwest of Atlanta, an hour due south of Chattanook, Tennessee. Floyd County.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

You ever heard of Washington, Georgia?

SPEAKER_07 6:37

Yes, sir. I just came from there. Got a good friend that lives in Washington. Really? Yes, sir. Who is it? David Revel.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah. I was just last week's podcast was about that hunt I went on over there, which was maybe one of the coolest things ever. I'm not gonna spill the beans if you heard the podcast. You need to go listen to it. But out of all my running around and everything, I think that was the first turkey hunt I ever did in Georgia. And I've been over there on a lot of events, but I went over there with a 79-year-old grandpa, his grandson wanted me to go with him. It was the coolest thing ever. And the big mistake I didn't encounter that I made, well, first off, I had to drive through Atlanta. And I went over on a Friday, Talladega was letting in. Oh no. So that was that was bad. All right, enough of that. That was last week's podcast, but it was pretty special. All right, I'm gonna let y'all fire back and forth, but I want I want to know a little history on Great Plains, because you know, I I've been I've been trying to do some no-tilling. I was on y'all's podcast. We're gonna talk about that at the end, but I want to know a little bit about this company because my grandsons, when I told them I was coming to visit with y'all, I was like, Pop, they're on farming simulator. That's huge.

SPEAKER_06 7:49

Yep. So uh Great Plains started in 1976 uh in central Kansas by a man named Roy Applequist. Um, Mr. Roy, who's still in the ag industry now. He uh he went out and took some uh some information from some farmers, you know, trying to figure out what the industry didn't have that it needed. And uh he came back and and figured out that it was a 30-foot drill, folding drill that you could transport loaded with seed down the road behind a pickup truck. And uh he went back to his factory, his little homemade factory, and then made one and took off after that.

SPEAKER_07 8:28

We still got the serial number, it was one or two. Serial number two is still at home office in Kansas, in Salina, Kansas, still got it there on display.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Had it at the National Farm Machinery show this two this year, I'm fixing to say, y'all making a little more than seed wagons now, I think. It's uh yeah. My my grandcons kind of they kind of educated me, you know. They're I told them, I said, y'all need to get off the farming simulator and come out here with me and do some real farming. And and they do. I'm just picking at them. I matter of fact, my middle grandson, he planted all the corn year four last. And the way I do it, it's uh it ain't quite as scientific as you guys do it. But the reason we're here, I I've I have been up the road and down the road looking at drills and all this, and I have I I got a question I want to I want both of y'all's opinion on this. Why has it gotten to be such a big deal? And I ain't talking about ag guys because that's a whole nother level. I follow this guy called the Millennial Farmer up there in Minnesota. And I just like to watch the tech on that, but why is no-till getting to be such a big till in this this this gamekeeper deer hunting world that we live in?

SPEAKER_06 9:43

Um one of the main things driving it or started driving a few years ago was money. Um no-till became a big deal with the soil and water conservation offices with erosion, started becoming a big problem we were seeing. So they started pushing no-till, you know, especially in the ag industry uh with cover crops and stuff, just pushing no-till and cover crops to fight erosion. And they were paying some pretty good money depending on what area of the state or the country you were in, to plant that. And then we started seeing the actual benefits of it, you know, you you're not losing those nutrients when you're turning the soil up, um, water retention, especially down here in the southeast, where if if you break that ground up with a disc, you just lost all your moisture. And when we're planting food plots in in September and October, moisture's a big deal because you ain't getting much of it that time of year. So that that's where I see it, it getting kind of started. Um, and then just the ease of it. You're buying one piece of equipment where otherwise you would need a rotary cutter, uh, a disc, and then a spreader, and then you waste the money with seed, and some people go buy a cultivator or something like that, too.

SPEAKER_07 10:53

So Yeah, well said. I mean, I I'd pretty much echo everything Nathan said. I mean, I like like you, I think it transited maybe the messaging from large ag you know down into the food plot industry, and these guys kind of caught up kind of caught on and was like, hey, you know, not this will be kind of be a loaded statement here, but not that there's a one pass deal, but if we can make one pass in your food plot, do a little tilling, do a little planting all in one, you know, and saving saving our saving our uh moisture that's in the soil, saving the nutrients there, and not having to, you know, take sort of slash and burn approach just to get a food plot planted is I mean that's a well-in-one deal.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

I'm assuming this technology came from the ag world, though. All the testing, all the figuring stuff out. That's where you guys live mostly is in that ag world.

SPEAKER_06 11:38

Is that a fair statement? Oh yeah, for sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

And I follow enough farming on YouTube to know not everybody does it. A lot of people do, but more and more people are trying it.

unknown 11:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Some of these these farmers, these big farmers I follow, I follow one of them over in Alabama, and they're they're they're sticking their toe in the water now just because, like you said, moisture's such a big deal. Like I've been through two or three droughts on my farm, and it's like, man, I got plenty of time in April. It's green, and there's more you look at the weather forecast, and every three or four days, and boom, that spigot gets cut off. Well, and how how long will moisture last on the ground if you if you don't disturb it? And and you and you say you drill a crop, maybe it's just w, you know, wheat or ri whatever it is, how how how much difference is it than turning that ground and then just dropping that seed now that was disturbed? Does that give you two more weeks or three more weeks, or does it will it sit there dormant for a month? How how long?

SPEAKER_06 12:41

If if you've got some kind of thatch or cover on top of the ground and it's not just bare dirt, that moisture will be there for months without rain. And it may it'll go deeper and deeper, obviously, but you're always gonna have moisture below the surface of the soil. Whereas when you till it with a disc or cultivator or something like that, I mean you're you're down to hours or days when you lose that moisture.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

I'm gonna give you my recipe. Here's my before I was not satisfied until my bare dirt looked like the top of a pool table.

SPEAKER_06 13:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

It had to be perfect. And that may take three trips with the disc and two trips with a tiller. Can you imagine? I was on their podcast. Go ahead and tell me the name of y'all's podcast and when it's gonna launch and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_06 13:27

Uh right now we're calling it the Stealth Pro Podcast or the Hunt Starts Here.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Stealth Pro Podcast. The hunt starts here. Is it out? Is it on?

SPEAKER_06 13:35

Is it ready to go? It's not yet. We'll be releasing it very soon. We're banking up some episodes right now.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Um which is smart.

SPEAKER_06 13:42

It's it's smart. Yeah, we're trying not to get ahead of our skis, but uh got some really cool guests, and I'm excited for it to get out and for everybody to take a listen.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Go heavy on the food plot stuff and all that. Here's my recipe now. And I've I was on there, I recorded a uh a podcast for them, and I'll keep y'all posted when that's gonna come out. I used a no-till drill the first time during a drought. I had given up. I was trying to water two little hidey holes, as Grant Wood would say, with a sprinkler. And uh I had bought two of them big plastic square tubs with the rails around them and filled them up with water, had me a pump on there, and that sprinkler was like that. And this guy from the professor from Mississippi, I posted it on Instagram and he threw back his comment, which was the mathematical equation of how many gallons it would take to equal a half inch of rain over a one-hour period, and it was 28 or 30,000 gallons, which you know I'd kind of let the air out of my balloon. But anyway, I learned anyway. I drilled it, forgot about it. We didn't get rain for a long time. But after by the week after Thanksgiving, every one of those food plots looked great. And I I couldn't believe it. I said, I'll never turn another piece of dirt as long as I live. But this is what I've come up with, and you can tell me if I'm right or not. I I let the food plots go. I don't do anything. And just in case there's a phone or whatever, I uh it takes me a long time. And I'll go in and I'll raise, I got a big drag behind Bushhog, and I'll I'll lower it to about a foot, and I'll cut those food plots to they're about a foot high. This is just how I do it, and it may be right, it may be wrong, and because they're pretty tall by then. I'll cut them down to about 10 inches, and then I'll I'll wait. I usually put a little roundup on it, glyphosate, whatever it is, and then when that's good and dead, I'll go back and mow it again, and that thatch is on top of it, and I drill through that. And boy, it has worked great for me. Does that sound like something? I know there's a better way to do it, but that works for me.

SPEAKER_06 15:53

I I tell you what, last year, and Justin was there to help me with this, we did some food plots and kind of did them different ways at my place. Um, cut one up with a disc and then still planted with the drill, and then no-till drilled one, just as it stood, didn't didn't mow it, didn't do anything, and then had one I'd sprayed with glyphosate. And then the last one I did, which was the day after he left, it was uh some old hay ground that had kind of grown up, had been flooded for a little while, and the flood came off. But anyway, that that stuff was up about waist or chest high. And I drilled right through it, just like it stood, and then came back in with a rotary cutter and cut all that stuff and just let it lay on top, let it lay on top of it. And that when uh it was clover, oats, uh, and brasscas, and that stuff came out of the ground like it had jet fuel behind it. Really? It sure did.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

We got a boy uh one of the gamekeepers podcasts, Dudley Phelps, does something similar to that. You know, he he he just mows it and lets it fall on top of that. But uh, and he has good luck with it. But my my wife is like, she's on me hard. My next thing to get rid of, other than that that heavy iron I've been using is glyphosate, and I ain't quite got to that point, but I'm getting close. So I'm glad I'm glad you told me that. It's uh that's that's one thing I do want to get rid of. You know, I went to the Turkey Symposium in Asheville, South Carolina, like three years ago. That's all scientists and Bob just I don't know why I was asked to go there, but anyway, I was. And I kept my phone, I was in the back, I kept my phone on thaurus the whole time trying to figure out some of them words. Anyway, I learned so much. And one of the you know, it was about turkeys, and you know, everybody had they were going over these programs, what's wrong with the turkeys was and they were doing these studies, and we did this in North Florida and South Georgia and all that kind of stuff. But one thing, one of the recurring things came up was the like lack of insects, and and some of that was related to different kinds of chemicals and all that. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes sense to me. Because, you know, the two or two years ago, whenever it was we had uh cicadas so bad, the turkey hatch was magnificent.

SPEAKER_06 18:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Because they had all them insects. So now I'm trying to raise insects.

SPEAKER_07 18:12

You're getting the cicada business.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Yeah, whatever. You know, I'm not gonna be like the guy that got caught putting out 5200 crickets, you know.

SPEAKER_06 18:19

I was just about to bring that up. There's a guy down in southeast Mississippi goes around to all the little fishing lure places and buys all the crickets he can and turns them out.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah, well I I ain't going that far, but I'm gonna try a couple of things different this year, and I may try to just go right through the food plots. I don't like to mow anything right now because you know, fawns they'll start dropping at my place late June and July, and and they'll put them out in the food plots and that nice stuff. So I I just try to stay away from that. Now, I want you to explain just we're talking to people that may not ever do this, they may think about it, they're fixing to talk about it. Explain the perfect process for planting a food plot with no till. And you can you you don't have to worry about if it's Kansas or Mississippi or Alabama. What perfect conditions, what what what when will it work best to drill in your food plot seed? What needs to be going on?

SPEAKER_06 19:16

Well, you need to make sure where your moisture level is. So if if if you scratch the ground back and you've got moisture at a half an inch or an inch, that's about where you need to put your seed, depending on what seed it is. You know, obviously clover seed, you don't want to put it an inch or or more deep. Um so at that point, if your moisture is lower than an inch or so, you need to you know try to plant around the next rain event. But it's all moisture dependent. So uh that's the big thing. And like I said earlier, if you've got cover on the ground, it's not just bare dirt, and that helps too. Um thermal heat is is a big deal, and there can be a a 30 to 40 degree difference in ground that's bare and then ground that's right next to it with cover on top of it.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Really? Like I say, I follow all these farmers and stuff, and that f finding where your moisture is ain't rocket science. They're out there with a pocket knife sometimes digging down. He said, There it is. And I watched these guys in Alabama, and he said, Last year we planted our corn at whatever, two inches. This year we're gonna plant it at two and a half, and he just dug it up with his pocket knife. That that part ain't rocket science, but it's all about that moisture. But I learned, like I said, that you save a lot by doing that. So that's uh that's a big deal.

SPEAKER_06 20:32

And your moisture may change, you know, depending on your forecast. If you've got rain coming within the next couple days, your moisture obviously is gonna come up. But if it's gonna be dry for the next week, then then you need to plant a little bit deeper than you normally would.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Yeah, I was gonna plant my corn yesterday and I didn't get around to it. It rained today, but I I know I I'll be fine because I hadn't done anything down there. But I man, I watch the weather now like I got a, you know, my whole life is a crop failure. You know, it's like it just worries me to death and ain't that big a deal. Are there any circumstances where no-tilling just won't work? Like if it's the ground's too rocky or if it's not, you know, what is there is there some people or some places where it just won't work?

SPEAKER_07 21:18

Well, kind of I don't want to sound like we're beating a dead horse here, but uh lack of moisture. Yeah, lack of emergence, basically. I mean it's it's it's it's about as simple as that. Yes, sir. Yep.

SPEAKER_06 21:31

You mentioned you mention rocks. I mean, these these openers on these drills are spring loaded, so they're made to go over rocks. If you hit something, a stump or whatever it may be, they're made to go over those obstructions out there.

SPEAKER_07 21:41

So And that's one of the you know, not to you know plug it here, but that's one of the uh uh huge benefits of these drills is you can take them anywhere. You know, I mean they're going to drill into practically anything, right? As long as we've got the right kind of moisture where we're not too dry. Like Nathan said, you know, they're built. To they're built to go into virtually anywhere, you know, as long as we've got some moisture and you know the word I'm looking for, but condition dependent.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah. I was uh you know, if you watch it, uh like I say, my my whole world revolves around trying to grow stuff now. And if you watch the farmers, they work their dirt, they work their dirt, they work their dirt. When they plant like I I like to plant corn, and I told you the reason I like to plant corn in Mississippi is if you can get it up when it turns brown, you can go down there in December and squint and you can feel like you're in Iowa or somewhere where they grow or Nebraska where they grow all that corn. But uh when I when I I was thinking about it, I said I'm not gonna buy a four-roll planter and all that. And there was nothing on YouTube about planting corn with a drill. And uh I called a buddy of mine, he said, Yeah, you can do it. He said, Corn ain't that that hard, but I was scared to death to do it. So with a Great Plains drill, say whatever, and we're gonna talk about sizes and all that. What all seeds can you plant with them? Because there's still a lot of people say you you can't plant corn with a drill. And I'll I'll I'll send them a clip of my video going, Well, that was a drill. But what all kind of seeds can you plant with a drill?

SPEAKER_06 23:17

Pretty much anything you can imagine. Yep. And even down to the the native grass stuff, that real fluffy type seed that you see blowing through the air on a hot summer day. We've got a native grass box that you can put on these drills and plant that with it. Um, even with the one at my house, I planted just this spring sunflowers, which is a decent sized seed, milo and clover all in the same day with it. So it'll pretty much plant anything you can run through it.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Anything. And and you just you I guess you have to there's adjustments to drop bigger seed than it is smaller seed. Without even but what you can get smaller seeds without changing the boxes, can't you? To a certain size.

SPEAKER_06 23:58

On the main box of these drills, you can plant anything. The seed cup is adjustable with three different seed size settings basically. The the the top hole is gonna be for your small seed, you know, it just closes the gap down. Then your your center setting is gonna be for your cereal grains and most seeds you're gonna plant. And then that bottom setting is gonna be for your corn, um, sunflowers, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

And my son-in-law, who's in this ag business, he'll remind me, Pop, you ain't a roll cropper. You're trying to grow some food for the wildlife, relax, just pour it in there, it'll come out. Because that was my first thing to overcome when I first started using a drill. I would go and go and it ain't going in. Because you can't see it.

SPEAKER_06 24:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

You know, like when you sling it on top of fresh, you know, packed down. And it I had the toughest time. I'd get out and look, get out and look. Well, I found one thing real quick. I was using a whole lot less seed. I was using way too much. That saved me a lot of money. The only thing he told me said, now don't run no fertilizer through this thing. It's it's too uh corrosive or whatever, but it's uh it's it's it's changed, it's changed the way I do stuff, made it a whole lot easier and a whole lot cheaper. Like I say, my next thing is to get off the glyphosate, and hearing you say you roll right through all that hay ground and all that stuff, that's encouraging right there.

SPEAKER_06 25:20

Well, one point real quick about glyphosate is is you're trying to kill weeds and stuff. Not every weed is a bad weed. Most of those weeds that come back, with the exception of like pigweeds and mare's tail and things like that, most of the things that are coming back, the deer are gonna prefer to eat those anyway. It's native forage.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

I try to, I don't know if I can pull this up, but while I got y'all here, I'm gonna I'm gonna see if I can get it up anyway. I took a a big chunk of my dirt and I I put glyphosate on it. It was back in November. I nuked it pretty high. You know, I use I used like healed and and this was some recommendations, and said, now disc it. And he said, Now don't disc it like you disc in your garden. He said, Don't drop it very far, and I didn't. But what came back was this stuff called they called it little quaking grass. You ever heard of that?

SPEAKER_06 26:15

Oh yeah.

unknown 26:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

And that's all uh because I was like, I'm gonna get some native forbs back and get some stuff and all this, you know, good brood habitat and all that. And that's all that came back so far that I can see. So they told me three times it'll do better if you burn it. Yeah. I think I didn't, I think I didn't drop the disc deep enough because I was wanting some weed and stuff, because I got that app where I can take a picture of it and it'll tell you if it's good for wildlife, and that ain't. So I gotta figure all that stuff out. Old timer's more than just a knife, it's a timeless tool meant to be passed down. The USA made generational series of knives are crafted to last generations, so they become memories made, lessons learned, and values taught. Old timer knives built for generations. There's been a few times I can recall when I've been on a bird there and didn't get him. Couldn't go back the next day or maybe even that next week, but I got a buddy, maybe it's old Bubba. I can send him a waypoint on Onex. Or the gobbler was, maybe where he was gobbling or where he went. Something you can hold over his head when you need help. Fixing your truck, working on your house project, or maybe you want to know whether a crappie or biting. Give the gifts of a gobbler, send them a waypoint from Onex. From the bunkhouse XL to the lodge package, Basecamp Home Series delivers modular, high-quality homes designed for outdoor enthusiasts. Large kitchens, multiple bathrooms, gear storage, a scenic outdoor living sections. All customizable to your lifestyle. It's comfort without boundaries. Visit BasecampHomeseries.com for more information.

SPEAKER_06 28:14

I'm Hank Parker, and you're listening to the Fifth School of Dirt Podcast, the world's greatest podcast.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

We're gonna talk about deer hunting now. We're gonna talk about model numbers and all that later. I'm I'm really wanting to do uh some summer plots. I'll tell you what happened to me last year. I didn't plant my corn ground, I just got way too busy. Turkey season just wouldn't end. I don't know what happened. I booked way too much stuff. Anyway, I bought a blend that I forgot what all I had in it. It was just a summer blend. I don't remember what was in it. I'm sure it was Milo and Millet and all kinds of stuff, probably cow peas, all that stuff. Anyway, I went down there and I I I did this this a little bit. And I put that out and it started raining, and I'm telling you, it rained every day for eight days. It was terrible. And I went down there and looked at it, and it was just a mess where I had disc it up. And I said, Well, I'm gonna get to drill and drill into it. Well, what happened is when I was drilling into it, I was disturbing all that other stuff, and I ended up with a terrible weed patch. So I felt like I did I did two things wrong there. But if somebody wants to plant a summer food plot, this is just getting into deer hunting, what would you recommend? Do you are you for summer food plots? Clover, um millet, Milo, soybeans. I can't grow soybeans on my place because the deer annihilate them. Once they get four inches tall, they're gone.

SPEAKER_06 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

What's your favorite summer kind of food plot?

SPEAKER_06 29:43

Um, I I've always been a big clover fan. Now, down here in the southeast where we get dry, hot summers, uh clover doesn't grow well as it should planted in the spring or the summer. That's more of a fall planted thing.

SPEAKER_04 29:57

Right.

SPEAKER_06 29:57

I love clover, I think that's the most important thing you need in your food plots. Um and I've been doing some research on it and then I've got verified today with a guy we talked to, but uh American joint vetch is probably the most important thing you can plant in the spring or summer plot. Even in the South. Mm-hmm. Especially in the South.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

I've heard so many people talking about joint veg, and I don't know that I've ever known anybody that planted it down here. And I had a guy from Alabama send me a picture today on the way up here and said, Man, my vetch is just starting to come up. And I answered him, I said, You're the only guy I ever seen planted that.

SPEAKER_06 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

And uh can you drill that?

SPEAKER_06 30:35

You can, yep, you can drill it for sure. It's a real low rate, you know, a 50-pound bag of seed will go three plus acres, I think. Really? So it goes a long way. The the thing where people get discouraged with vetch, and I've experienced this, is it's real slow to get started. It takes about 45 days to get just a few inches tall.

SPEAKER_04 30:53

Really?

SPEAKER_06 30:53

But it's it's very graze tolerant, it it regenerates very easy. Um, and then once it gets started, man, it takes off, they they can't eat it fast enough.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Joint vet. I was talking to some guy, one of my other, you know, there's lots of experts in this field. He said, That's that's just like alfalfa, you're gonna have to irrigate that. And I said, Well, I ain't irrigating my food plots. And he said, Well, it ain't gonna grow unless you irrigate it.

SPEAKER_06 31:20

Yeah, no, I I think it's that and clover are the two big things for me. Now I love iron clay peas. I experimented with those last year, and uh they came up and got almost knee high. And I was like, damn, the deer, they don't want to eat these things, they're just sitting here. And it was like overnight, man, they annihilated them.

SPEAKER_07 31:37

Yeah, I I remember us having that conversation because I was asking you about them things, and you're like, oh yeah, they're they're looking great, but the deer ain't in them. And then I think about 48 hours later you sent me a picture and they wasn't nothing but stubs.

SPEAKER_06 31:48

I mean, they literally ate it down to to about an inch from the ground.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

You you think they waited for it to get to a certain taste, or they just didn't find it?

SPEAKER_06 31:56

I I think since it had never been there, they didn't know what it was, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:00

Um because this year I've planted some, planted it about three weeks ago, and they're not letting it get that tall enough. They remember it. They they figured it out, they remember it. Luckily I planted enough of it where they can't eat it all in one night. And I've got clover, um, I've got some some cereal grains that's heading out that they're nibbling the heads on right now, too. So I've got enough food there for them that they can eat all the peas up.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

You know, uh what people in in get confused about, and I fall into this category, is uh trying to calibrate stuff because they they don't know if they're getting enough seed, they don't know if I'm getting too much seed and all that kind of stuff. How hard is it to calibrate a Great Plains drill? Can can just the average person do that? What's the what's what's the the method for that?

SPEAKER_07 32:50

Absolutely. I mean it it Nathan and I have got a YouTube video that we filmed ourselves. Hopefully we did a pretty good job on that. I guess we'll see.

SPEAKER_06 32:58

Now where can we see it? Yeah uh it'll be on the Stealth Pro YouTube channel very soon.

SPEAKER_07 33:04

Okay. Yes. Um anyways, in that video we go into you know calibration and the steps and and the the importance of it. And uh even while we're filming this and doing the talking, I think we calibrated it twice and we did that in less than 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_06 33:19

Yeah, that video is has got a lot of us just being rednecks and saying a bunch of stupid stuff. Yes. And uh we we waved that seed or caught that seed in my son's Easter basket. Oh my word.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Well, see, I would watch that video, but it didn't sound too technical.

SPEAKER_06 33:37

Yeah, no, the the actual calibration process, one guy could do it in about five minutes.

SPEAKER_07 33:42

It's a very simple task, and it's not it's it's extremely important to do because you know Nathan and I talk about this in that video. We just take it like this. You've already made the initial investment up front of buying the drill. Take take the five minutes that that investment is going to allow you to calibrate and find your correct rate that you're trying to run at, and that sucker will stay there until you change that rate purposely. So it's it's very simple and highly effective.

SPEAKER_06 34:11

Yeah, use the drill for what it's meant for is to save you money. You know one pass with a drill versus you know a disc and a rotary cutter and then a spreader and then you fertilizer and all that. These fuels five and a half dollars a gallon in some places, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

That's you know, my previous farming method was I would look and I'd read stuff and all that, and they'd say, you know, whatever it was, 20 pounds per acre. And I'd look at that and go, well, 40's gotta be better. You know, because I'm just slinking more of the merry, yeah. Yeah, and I learned that that, you know, I I planted, I forgot what it was, it might have been soybeans or something like, man, you were a little heavy on your seat. And corn's bad. A corn don't want nothing by it.

SPEAKER_07 34:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

You know, because I tried to put some stuff in between the rolls on it, and I didn't work. Yeah, it's uh it it just man, I got beat up so much about that. But I they read and the reason they calibrate it and they go through all that work and research is it works better if you don't put too much or too little. If you hit that sweet spot, everything performs better. Is that right? That's right.

SPEAKER_07 35:13

There's a point of diminishing return to it, you know. If you're putting too much, you're you're not gaining anything, I guess, you know, by that by that metric. And too, I mean, I think Nathan and I were having this discussion, you know, off topic last week when we were filming that video, is like, you know, if you if you're running the risk, you know, and not just calibrating and going out there and throwing some seed out, you know, you're you're feeding birds at that point. You know, you're losing seed to predation if you've got too much out there, you know, we're not getting it all in the furrow, if we're just dumping it out at a higher rate than it needs to be planted.

SPEAKER_06 35:44

So very important. Especially on corn. I mean, if you get two corn seed and side by side and they come up together, you just planted two weeds because they're competing with each other, and neither one of them will put on an ear of corn. Good point.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

If you don't believe you're feeding birds when you put too much seed out, put you a cell cam out there on it and put it on video. It's it's unbelievable how many birds come in there. I learned I again I learned that the hard way. And uh it's like, well, you didn't cover it up good. Well, whatever. I put too much seed out. I had a guy tell me, and look, there's more experts in this field than there is any other, but I had a guy tell me point blank, and I wanted to I'm we're gonna dispose that myth. He said that drilling works really good in the Midwest and the North. It ain't gonna work down here. Does it make any difference where you're doing it as long as you got some moisture?

SPEAKER_06 36:35

You answered the question right there. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. It really doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

As long as you avoid that that last frost when you plant your summer plots or your spring plots, uh, you get it in the ground in time and you put it in the moisture, it's uh one thousand percent better than I learned I'm I'm getting so much better at this, but I learned I can I can get everything ready, whatever I'm gonna do. You know, I I got mine ready to go. I can load that drill and park it up underneath my shed and just watch the weather. Because I can do everything that used to take me a whole weekend or possibly three days, I can do in about about two and a half hours now. And I can beat that front coming in and I got some I got some pretty good food plots, so I'm I'm working. Do you still need if you're drilling or not, do you still need to have a soil sample and and deal with that? Do you think Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:25

If if you're not doing what they call regener regenerative plots, right, um, then yeah, you you're gonna need to add synthetic fertilizers or lime or something to it to help it along. And that's where you need your soil sample to know what fertilizers to put out. I mean, you can be your average red neck redneck like me and go buy triple thirteen and spread it on everything, or you can get soil samples that cost next to nothing and get the right fertilizers and completely optimize that food plot to what it what it you know its full potential.

SPEAKER_07 37:54

Yeah, get exactly what it needs. Again, because back to the point we made earlier, you've already made the investment on the drill. Let's do it as right as we can get it done.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Yeah, yeah, Toxie used to work. Man, you had a soil sample. No. You know, and uh so I finally bit the bull. I said, I'm gonna do some soil samples. I I didn't I didn't get but like five or six, you know, from different spots and all that. And I put them in my little bags and I I just took them to the county agent because I mean you can take them down there. And I walked in there and it was about it must have been early March or something. And I walked in there, I've never seen so many folded paper bags in my life. She said, Yeah, these two farmer guys is probably he's got 440. This guy had so she said, it may be a while before you get your soil sample back. So I made myself a a note, get yours early and don't compete with them farmers, but they did they live and die by that stuff.

SPEAKER_06 38:48

Oh yeah. Well you when you're putting hundreds or thousands of tons of fertilizer out, it you know, if you put out ten pounds less per acre over a few thousand acres, that's that's a lot of money. Big time.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

Yeah. Let me ask you this you get a soil sample and you're weak on whatever it is, your pH is low, you need lime, whatever it is, before you drill it can you just spread that on top of the ground? Do you you recommend people disc it in? Let's go ahead and disc one more time or just let it eat.

SPEAKER_06 39:18

Um if you're spreading lime, you're probably gonna need some type of tillage to optimize that lime. You know, lime's not expensive. I think you can get it delivered for about thirty dollars a ton. But when you're putting a ton and a half per acre, depending on how many acres you're doing, that can that can add up. So just like anything else, that's the one time where you might want to do some tillage is to get that lime incorporated into the soil. Bite the bullet.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

And that that'll last for a good while too, I think.

SPEAKER_06 39:43

Usually you get about 18, 24 months out of one lime.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Yeah. It takes it a while to break down too, I think. It does. And uh say pellet fertilizers, say you got corn, you know, and I dri I I'm gonna drill some corn and you come back and you see the guys on, you know, the real farmers, they knife that nitrogen in, this liquid. Is it just as I mean, uh again, we're talking about food plots for deer. We're not making a living off our corn, trying to get 180 bushels, anything like that. But just throwing pelletized nitrogen on top of the ground after you drill, it'll get some good out of that, won't it?

SPEAKER_06 40:22

Right, absolutely, yeah. That's the key to it, is there is getting moisture on it. Yep. Um, nitrogen, if it doesn't get rain and it just sits on top of the soil, it'll go up into the atmosphere and you won't get any of it.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:33

So you want to make sure when you put nitrogen out, you've got some moisture on top of it.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Back to watching that foam to see when the rain.

SPEAKER_07 40:40

I was about to say, taking notes from you and watching that weather.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Yeah, you and you look, here's the deal. I have a force field around my little farm out there. I can't tell you how many times I'll see it coming. It'll get over about the west side of Chickasaw County, and it'll just split and go south and it'll go north. But man, that rain just absolutely means everything. Uh the uh no-till drills from Great Plains. The ones I looked at, I I did a little, I was looking on uh you know, wherever Chat GBT or Google, wherever you get your information. And the first seven I looked at were really big. They were huge. Let's talk a little bit about I'm assuming y'all are designing some stuff that can be pulled with a smaller tractor, uh maybe ATV. Let's let's start and go through some of the models.

SPEAKER_07 41:32

Okay. So we've got to go through our stealth pro lineup here. So we've got they start at three foot. We've got a three-foot model, a four-foot model, and a five-foot model right now. They're all three-point hitch. So that three-foot model, I believe, Nathan. I mean, we you can get down to 40, 45 horsepower tractor would work at that three-point model.

SPEAKER_06 41:56

Yeah, I mean, I I've got a 35-horse tractor and I was carrying a four-foot. That's right. I had that three and four backwards. With that three-foot, I'm gonna say a 25-horse tractor, no problem.

SPEAKER_07 42:05

Okay. Nice. And then so after the three, fours, and fives, we've got a six-foot pull type model. It's got a hitch to it. But we also offer that six-footer and a three-point hitch type as well.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

You gotta have a little horsepower to lift a six-foot, I would imagine. But probably a few foot. Three foot, you could run that with just about anything, couldn't you?

SPEAKER_07 42:23

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yep. And then after that six, we go to eight foot three-point type, three-point hitch model, and then after the eight, we got a ten, ten-foot pull type. So we got you covered from three foot up to ten foot, you know, depending on the horsepower of equipment you got. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Can you cover enough ground with a three foot to justify spending some money on a drill?

SPEAKER_06 42:44

I think so, because they don't cost a whole lot. You know, if you're your average guy where he plants a lane, well, that's a lot of people's food plots, is a lane, old logging road, or you know, a strip of a power line, you know, a few passes on that, and I think, yeah, I think it justifies the money.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Any ATV pool behind in the in the mix coming down the road, or y'all ain't got that far yet?

SPEAKER_06 43:06

Not yet.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Not yet. Not yet.

SPEAKER_06 43:07

That's very well said, Nathan. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Three foot and four foot. That's good. That's awesome. I was getting down there. And you know, it's just like I was telling a story about this uh this guy, I I do a lot of trapping and I post about it, and he's like, I can't get nobody in my hunting club to help. And I said, do this. I said, go buy 24 of them DPs, coon tra just the coon traps, and on your get everybody out there, have a cooking, and explain to them how to do that, and give every assign everybody a day. And uh, because everybody said, I can't I can't run a trap on every day. What can you do Wednesday? And those guys have been trapping for two and a half years now, and everybody has a day. And they don't do it year-round, they'll do it February, early March, whatever it is. But I would think the same thing could be with a drill. If you got a flu i if you're in a hunting camp or something, let's split it up eight ways or something like that. And uh go ahead and and bite the bullet and get it out.

SPEAKER_06 44:03

Yep, it can cost less than a membership in some clubs. You bet.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

To have something to and I I'm assuming the uh how to calibrate it's on the outside. You just gotta be able to read that.

SPEAKER_06 44:14

Mm-hmm. It's inside the lid, and then there's also a QR code inside the lid, too, that you can take a picture of and it'll take you to a YouTube video to show you how to do it.

SPEAKER_07 44:22

Eventually it might take you to a YouTube video where you watch us two rednecks go to calibrating these things.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Well, let me tell you something. I'm ready for it. I I pulled up one not long ago, it might have been last year, and I was at my desk and this guy was calibrating the drill. I don't remember what kind it was. Anyway, and I pulled it up and I listened to three or four minutes, and he ain't even got close to touching the drill yet. Anyway, I got on a phone call and I just left it on. I had one one headphone early in. And I'm telling you, that phone call lasted 45 minutes. And when I hung the phone and looked up, he had finally go over to the drill and I looked down. That that video was an hour and 20-something minutes long, and he started. And I was like, uh, no, nobody's gonna watch that. He he it was like this these college formulas from math class. I'm like, can't be that hard. No, it's not that hard. Now, can you calibrate it? If you got a really good blend that's got, you know, winter wheat and oats and all this other kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_07 45:25

Yes. The the trick me and Nathan like to pass on to folks is you know, if you've got your blend with higher, you know, three, five, seven-way blend, whatever, pick your most uniform uh seed that correlates to our seed rate book. So look through, you know, whatever blend you got, look at all those seeds and pick one that's kind of most uniform in in in size and density. And then if that's in our seed rate book, calibrate it to that one.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

For that. For that one, yes, sir. It may drop a couple of smaller seeds, but you gotta make sure that big one's coming out of there. Right.

SPEAKER_06 46:01

I mean, most of your blends are gonna be 70 to 80 percent of one seed. And your smaller seed are only gonna make up you know five, ten percent of that.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Yeah, you gotta watch some of them bags too. They'll throw some stuff in there you don't even need, but it's uh that's a whole nother story. Here's a tip I can give you too. And I I'm I'm not an expert. I'm gonna f we're gonna talk about where they can see some of these things. Uh there's a buddy of mine that's got a drill, it's not a great plane, it's an old one, but anyway, now he never used it. I went and got it and cleaned it up, did all this kind of stuff, and I kind of I got to be really good. He let a guy borrow it last year because I didn't plant any corn and he come got it. I laid it under his shed and all that. And I called him, I said, Where's the drill at? Oh, it's so-and-so, and that's what I drove to get the other day. I made a little video driving. And I got back to my shop and set it down and opened the lid up, and there was four inches of seed and the bottom all the way across. And I ended up having to take everything apart. I mean the knives, the tubes. I I worked six and a half hours trying to get that thing out. So when you get through with your drill, just run it empty. Run it empty. Yeah, and uh I know what I I don't know what else kind of maintenance things is. I had my son-in-law there, and it was it was to the point there was just stinky, kind of weird-looking mud. It would all rot it, it was crazy. But anyway, I said, should I spray some WD-40 on that auger and get it? He said, No, that's gonna make everything stick. And uh, so we just did it with hot water and moving it and moving it and moving it. So that's uh that's the only downside I've seen. But I I tell I said, Don't let that guy borrow it no more, whoever that was. Yeah, how do you not empty a drill when you use it and just pull it up on a tree and unhook from it and drive off? And it was that much seed. I mean, there was probably two 50-pound bags left in the hopper all the way down to the knives. But anyway, what where can people what's the best way for somebody to go look? Now they make it they can start online, but how how can you just go look at Great Plains stuff and start doing some shopping and figuring and pricing and all that? What's the best way to shop for?

SPEAKER_06 48:12

Um, our our website has got a dealer locator on it. So greatplainsag.com. You'll find our dealers on there. Just type in your zip code and it'll give you all the dealers within about 100 or 200 miles of your house. Um and then you go to the dealer and then tell them what you're looking at, and if they've got one on the lot, they can go show it to you and price it from there. Or you can call us and we can tell you where to go.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

I'm assuming at the the big website, there's models with photos.

SPEAKER_06 48:36

It is.

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Or all the stuff on there now, the three foot and the four foot, they can go look at those. Yep, everything's on the website. That's uh that's good to know. Well, I've become a big fan of that stuff right there. I'm telling you, I don't have the Great Plains one yet, and that's not why we're here. I don't I don't have a Great Plains drill, and uh, but I'm a big I'm a big proponent of how to do that and love to share that kind of information because I'm telling you, it's when I've started figuring some of this stuff out, it saved me a lot of money. I don't use as much fertilizer, and I'm getting close to the point where I'm not I'm not exactly doing that regenerative farming, but I'm getting pretty close.

SPEAKER_07 49:15

Getting close.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

And it was amazing to me that it would grow without doing all that other stuff, some stages.

SPEAKER_06 49:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

And right now with the price of diesel fuel and all that other stuff, man, if you can save yourself two or three steps and uh two more bags of seed and all that, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_06 49:32

Yep. You're gaining a bunch. Well, yeah, one crop can help the next. You know, clover is gonna free up a ton of nitrogen in the soil, and every time you turn that soil, you're losing organic matter. And organic matter next to nitrogen is one of the most important things in the soil.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

So how many farmers you think are doing no-till? Just if you had to pull a number out of a head, half of them in the country or more than half or less than half?

SPEAKER_06 49:55

Probably at least half. Um there's some countries, I mean excuse me, counties in uh Nebraska and Iowa, the big corn states, that don't even allow tillage in certain times of the year.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Really? Everybody's paying attention, aren't they?

SPEAKER_06 50:09

Yep. Yep. So and even here in Mississippi, you know, there's there's doing some version of no-till where they're skipping two or three years between doing tillage.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

So And I think it's a wave of the future. I like I say, I learned I got all beat up doing mine. I mean, I I had my nose bloodied so many times I needed a beach towel to wipe it off, but I'm getting better and better and better at that. And it's getting to be I I'm tell you, I enjoy myself not hooking up to that big heavy ten foot disc and having to do all that and then turn around and hook up to that tiller, which is a good it's a great thing if you if you get the right kind of dirt, but it's so heavy, it's hard to hook up by yourself. I can back up to that drill and just go to work, so that's a big deal. So anyway, one more time. What's the name of the podcast when it comes out?

SPEAKER_06 50:58

It's the Stealth Pro Podcast called Hunt Starts Here.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

Stealth Pro Podcast. Any idea when that thing's gonna launch?

SPEAKER_06 51:05

Probably see the first episode here within the next month.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

All right. So you going, I'm gonna hold you to that. You're going out on the line now, so we're gonna have it in about a month. So I'll keep you guys posted on it. So Nathan, Justin, I I appreciate it. I know that look, I know y'all get tired of talking about the same stuff all the time, but I I just get bombarded with questions. Hey, cu because people trust me, I'm not selling stuff. And again, I don't have a great planes drill, I'm just trying to save them some time. It's like I want to throw that thing out there. Hey, run it go go look at a three or four footer, get the price on, run that up the price, run that up the deal at the next hunting club meeting. And uh, because somebody's got a tractor. You know, the first food plot I planted, I didn't even have a tractor. And then I bought a three-cylinder diesel that would run sometimes, sometimes it wouldn't. But what that did is it started kind of a lifestyle with me. Now I have more fun. I would rather be in the seat of my tractor than I had in the seat of a lock on 20 feet up in October. That's just how I feel about it. And uh passing that on, I told you I bought a uh 1954 Ferguson because that's the year I was born, and me and the grandsons worked on that thing off and on for a year. And uh now they're they're following farming stuff on YouTube and all that. It it's more than just growing a food plot to kill a big deer. It's uh it's a pretty cool lifestyle.

SPEAKER_07 52:34

It is.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Don't you agree?

SPEAKER_06 52:36

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 52:37

I totally agree. Being allowed the opportunity to spend as much time as you can in the Lord's creation is I mean, that's what it's all about for me.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna try to get my wife to get in on this deal too. She's she's got a green, she grows, she grows the best garden you ever seen. She grows everything in pots. We might need to be getting her own. I'm telling you. She grows stuff in pots, and you can't you can't eat it all and put it all up and can it. I'm telling you, I was gonna I maybe one day I can get her started on the food plots. But anyway, I appreciate you guys. I'm gonna I'm gonna get y'all back in here. I'm gonna keep everybody up on the food on the the podcast you guys got coming out. We're gonna check back in. I'm gonna check back in and keep y'all updated on the corn crop highest doing this year. And uh, as things happen from Great Plains, you guys gotta let me know.

SPEAKER_06 53:30

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

All right, thank you guys. We'll be uh we'll be back.

SPEAKER_07 53:33

Appreciate you, Kate. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

I'm in my tree stand every afternoon. I escape the stupid world with my Mossy Oak Camo, which by the way I'm getting on the Mossy Oak Podcast. It's called Fistful of Dirt, which pretty much summarizes my life. You know, in Braveheart and the Gladiator, when the gladiator went to fight the evil forces, he'd kneel down and get a fistful of dirt and fondle the essence, the physics of spirituality of the earth, and that we all must remain grounded down to earth. So I fondled earth every day.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

You're listening to Fistful of Dirt, presented by Mossy Oak Properties.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

With all that said, I, you know, I don't think I really talked to them about drilling through present-day stuff. But anyway, I did it and made a post about it, so I'm gonna keep everybody posted. I just tried it. 4.9 acres.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

I almost didn't even want to tell you this. But we were trying to plan logistics for some upcoming graduation stuff, and I told Yaya, I was like, well, at least they took the rain out of the forecast. They'd have been predicting storms every day. And she goes, Well, you know your daddy planted. That's usually when the rain stops.

SPEAKER_02 54:52

There's no doubt. If I put seed in the ground, the rain's done. I I wanted to do it earlier, but I mean you gotta wait for the the soil to get up to 50 degrees. And I said, Well, maybe if I do some seeding early this year, I'll get some rain. The force field is in place.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

That was so funny because I was like, oh man, like w they're gonna push all these things indoors. We won't be able to do it on the football field. And she was like, Your daddy planted they took all the rain out.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

You don't if you need an umbrella during that ceremony, it's gonna be because the sun's giving you a sunburn. I made a post last year. I was sitting by a I was sitting down in my uh by the pond there, and I was like, hey, if you need it to stop raining, PM me, I'll come plant you a food plot. You won't get any rain. Anyway, I did it and got an experiment going. I'll keep you posted. I and I, you know, I just I got uh uh it was almost five acres, two two big spots. Now, like I said, we don't have turkeys. Occasionally you'll get one lost come through there, but I still rode down there on the ATV real slow, just riding around, make sure there wasn't a fawn or turkey nest. Usually fawns don't start hitting around here till July, but anyway, just to make sure, and I drilled uh soybeans and iron clay peas and some sorghum and I think some millet. And uh anyway, there was some moisture in the ground, and that's what that's what I'm gonna depend on because naturally the rain that was coming went around us. We have the best force field ever out there. But anyway, that that's a good topic when I'm not I am no biologist, I am no agronomist, I'm I don't know anything about that stuff. I'm uh my you know, my method for growing stuff was look at the bag, and if it calls for 10 pounds per acre, I'm going with 20. That's gotta be better. That's not how it works. So I hope you got some good answers. Those guys know exactly what they're doing. And uh, you know, not it's not it's not that a drill may be out of your budget, because the more people that get into it, it's just like used cars, you can go on the internet and find used ones all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 57:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

So, anyway, I hope that helped. If nothing else gave you something to think about, drilling some cool stuff in there and get you a summer plot going.

SPEAKER_03 57:14

I'm 0 for one with summer plots.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

Last year it didn't work out good. I drilled it. Well, I disc it first, I just I couldn't make myself do just drill down anyway. And then I drilled it in, then it rained for seven days. Washed it off, and anyway, I said, Well, I'm gonna drill it again. And when I ran over the top, I just messed the dirt up enough to where I had a beautiful weed patch. Man, so anyway, new experiment coming up. I'll keep you posted on that. So, with that said, hope you got some good tips out of that, maybe a little inspiration. So, for me and Laureen up in the Camo Cave from Malsey Oak and Malsey Oak Properties, God bless every one of you guys.

SPEAKER_03 57:56

We'll see you in seven days.