Posted by picassomcp on January 15, 2018 at 20:17:32 from (50.107.40.149):
I am seriously thinking about selling out my line of equipment. I have only farmed 6 years, 50 acres hay only the 1st 3 years, then grew to 100 hay and 220 corn/soybean rotation. I only own 25 acres, the rest is rented. I have a full line of equipment, mostly 6 row sized stuff. Older Ih tractors ranging from a 460 diesel to a 756, 1256, 1456, 1486, 3588. More than I needed, I know. Some of these tractors really have some good collector value. All run great, several with newer paint jobs that I did myself with automotive paint. JD 7000 6 RN planter, 45' sprayer, JD 4400 combine with corn and bean heads. A 499 New Holland haybine, 644 New Holland Round baler and lots of other smaller valued equipment such as tillage, gravity boxes, augers, etc. It has been fun gathering up this equipment and making it work. Also, as the size of the farm grew it felt good and I was proud to see my operation working and growing. Then this past fall came. I turned 40 and started looking at life a bit differently. Soybean harvest drug on, then I decided to hire out the corn harvest as it was getting late. Corn yeilds were bad and the prices were worse. Got no tillage done. It was kinda nice not having to worry about corn harvest, the guy I hired combined it and hauled it to the elevator. I spent my time working on my other business of being a landlord of 20 single family homes. I realized that my passion for farming was not a deep as I thought it was. Then a month or so later, I lost the 50 acres of ground neighboring my house that I had been renting that I had planned to buy someday, the local BTO bought that. This deflated me a bit more. The passion just ran out. I had an auctioneer out to look at my equipment and am thinking about booking a sale date for early to mid March. I know I would miss the farming and it will be hard to see the tractors go, but I think down the road I will feel that I made the right decision. I'm just a small farmer in a big sea, my farm would need to grow an awful lot to be a respectable size and I just don't want to make that type of investment in equipment or land. Plus, I really need to be concentrating on my house rental business. My time is much better served there. My son would be crushed, he has all the equipment that I do for his carpet farm, but he is only 4, not sure that this is that big of deal, but something that I think about. On one hand, I struggle to book the auction, on the other I feel that if I don't do it this year it would likely just be a year or 2 down the road. The market for my equipment will be even worse a year or 2 down the road as I only see the ag economy getting worse in that time. I am not being forced to quit by the banker or my wife, it is just myself wondering if farming is really the best use of my time and money each year? I have recently bought an older car that I want to spend time cruising around in with my wife and 2 young kids (4 and 7). I have friends that are farmers, I'm sure I can pick up some tractor time helping them out.
I guess I'm just looking for someone to tell me that I am not crazy for thinking about giving it up. We have also discussed selling our home and moving to the neighboring school district which is much better than the one we live in currently. If we do move, I think that could make quitting the farm much easier for me too. It could just be a whole new start of something new then. Been looking for a place that direction, but haven't found anything yet. I'm running out of time if I want to be moved prior to planting time next Spring. I really do believe that our kids would get a much better education in that school district. It is also the school district that I attended as a kid.
I did talk with my tax preparer about selling out, the tax consequences are not as bad as I feared. I would take my proceeds from the sale and pay down some debt on the rental properties, so the money would be working for me there. If I could just pull the emotions out of this decision I think it would be an easy decision to call the auctioneer, its just that those emotions make me 2nd guess myself.
Enough of that, now a couple questions.... What do you think of a weekday auction, maybe a Thursday? This was the auctioneers idea, he says he has seen good success from weekday auctions. Not sure what I think of that and am curious on your thoughts.
Anything else that I should be thinking about at this point? I appreciate all opinions. Thanks
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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