SharkFarmerXM's podcast
CJ Chalfant from Hartford City, Indiana 7-4-24
[Music] And welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio, hey! I'm your host Rob Sharkey. We're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Happy 4th of July. Amazing, amazing holiday. It's amazing country. And if you want to keep it that way, whatever your politics are, just make sure you do it. You got to be proactive in this world, right? That's right. That's right. We are blessed to be in this country, land of the free. So a lot of people fought for us to have this freedom. So yeah, happy 4th. All the things, you know, everybody looks forward to the 4th of July. Hope we have great weather. So we're planning on floating down the Fox River. Floating. Floating. It's kind of becoming a tradition. If there's nothing better than floating or, you know, kayaking. It's a really close second. This is you and the kids type of thing. I have not embraced the float yet. You have not embraced the float. Which, I mean, I'm buoyant. I should be able to. Anyway. Alright, today we're going to go out to Hartford City, Indiana. We're going to talk with a CJ cell phone. How you doing CJ? Doing well, Rob yourself. Doing pretty good. Now we're in a great state of Indiana. It's Hartford City. So Hartford City is on the eastern east central halfway between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. Gotcha. How far until you get to Illinois? Way too far. Yeah, you're feeling lucky about that. Now, is that where you are from originally? So I originally grew up in Farmland, Indiana, which is about 45 minutes south of where I am now. And yes, that is a real town called Farmland. But I went to school there and then went to Purdue and moved back to, uh, to Farmland. Purdue. Purdue. Went to Purdue. Never heard of that one. Is that a college? It is. It is. Kind of big deal. Now, well, congrats on whatever. What did you go to Purdue for? What would you study? So I studied a farm management and then I came out with a D.S. and farm management and associates in the ground. So did you always have a plan that you wanted to be back on the farm or working in agriculture? I mean, from when you were a little kid? I mean, probably as soon as I could talk. I knew I was going to farm one day. I just always had the itch for it when I was in high school, farm with my grandpa. I didn't plan on going to college, but mom and dad were like, "Hey, you got to go to school and get a degree somewhere." And just in case, time to get tough and the farm fails. So I decided to go to Purdue and I am thankful that I want to Purdue. I learned a lot while I was there. I met a lot of friends. I helped me become who I am today. I'm curious. You've got a couple kids, younger side, but do you think you're going to have the same philosophy as the importance of college? Has that changed for you? You know it hasn't. I would say that our children are going to, you know, whether they go to a trade school, whether they go to college, they're going to have some sort of further education. Because I mean, there's just something about living on your own and being away from the farm that just helps you grow up and learn other skills that you just want to get. If you stay in your hometown and just stay with family. Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, you can argue all you want about the importance of, you know, underwater basket weaving classes and all that. But to get people out of their comfort zones to get people used to networking. I mean, that has a lot of value and that has built a lot of careers. Well, it has. I mean, it's not what you know, it's who you know that has just become evident that the older I get and for their life, I get to get everything done. So was there a place for you to come back to the farm? So it was, you know, I wasn't making a lot when I first came to my college and I just thought I wanted to farm and then I had a seed company approach me, Raptor College, no self seed and I'm glad they did. Because that has opened up a lot of doors and helped me make, you know, a good living. Did you basically come back as a hired man or did you come back automatically farming something? I was just hired man, you know, anything from scrubbing toilets, cleaning bins to run an equipment. Well, I mean that, you know, people kind of look down on it. That's what I did. I think it taught me a lot. I think it taught me how to eventually be a future better boss, you know, because you, we had another hired man and I, you know, I worked side by side with him, you know, it wasn't like I was above him, you know, we were the same. I think it helped in the long run to kind of start out at that lower run. Oh, I would agree. I mean, it definitely helps you become a better manager because like, I don't have problems getting down or getting dirty with them. I will get in the trenches with my guys and and work just hard right beside them instead of sitting in the office and well, you do this. You do that. Go do the crappy jobs. Oh, I'll go out there, but I don't want to work alongside them anymore. That's way too much work nowadays. So you have two kids and how long have you been married? So we've been this summer, we'll be 10 years. We've got daughters. She's seven. Her name's Claire and son Isaiah. He's four. Did you meet your wife at school? I did not. My best friend from college was really good friends with her from high school. And that's what that's how we met. See, it's not what you know. Nice. It's like set them up on a blind date kind of, huh? Oh, was it a blind date? Wow. That had to be intimidating. Love it for sight. Oh, would she say that? Probably not. All right, we got to go to break. Today, we're out in Hartford City, Indiana. We're talking about CJ, a cell fan. No, he went back to the farm. We're going to talk about all this. We're going to talk about being a salesman, trucking companies. We've got a lot to cover. We'll be back. All right, after the break. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io. That's commonground.io. I was so excited to talk about the Fourth of July that I forgot to mention. Our studio is powered by VEX Hybrid. Absolutely. America. America. All right, I hope everybody's having a wonderful Fourth of July. Hopefully get the day off. I don't know. Farmers were supposed to go to the lake, right? They are supposed to go to the lake. I think it has been a crazy week. Everybody's been working so hard so that they could have so many one or four day weekend. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, they were busting it to get everything done. Yeah, that ain't going to happen here. It's not even close. Maybe a couple days. Get our feet up a little bit. Today, we're out in Hartford City, Indiana. We're talking with CJ Chalvin. Now, he is a sixth generation farmer out there. He went to Purdue, which is apparently university in Indiana, and he came back to the farm. So it was you, your dad, and your grandfather. He was still farming when you came back. That is correct. He's still farming today. He's 84. He runs just many hours with the rest of us. That's fantastic. He doesn't just grab a cup of coffee. Tell you, tell you what needs to be done and go in the house. He still tries to tell us what to do. So what are y'all raising out there? So we're raising corn, soybeans, and children. Mm. A widely diversified Midwestern farm. Do you help? Have you ever tried anything else? You know, we used to raise some wheat. It's been 10, 15 years ago, but like you talked about going to the lake, we enjoy going to the lake, and that kind of kept in the lake. I tell you what, it's this is not braggy. This is going to be ripping on myself. Every 4th of July, I'm like, yeah, thank goodness we didn't put wheat in. We're getting a collective sigh around the country. Oh my gosh. And around here, a lot of the wheat is off already. It's an early year. So man, those guys will be laughing. They get these 70 bushel double crop beans, and there goes our bean market. All right. So you talked about being a salesman too. So tell me about that. So I graduated Purdue, came home, started farming, had a seed company chase me out of college. One of us wanted to work for them. So I went to work for Broadbeck, which is now, so they were owned by Dow, which is now Dairyland. I was with them for six or seven years, and then switched to Stewart's, which is another regional company for Monsanto. And then with them ever since, and now this summer, we're going to roll into channel. And we'll roll forward with that. It's hard to keep up with them all, isn't it? It is, it is, but you know, the, I guess the good and bad, the sad thing is, is they're all starting to combine, you know, and there's going to be less and less. So, you know, hopefully that from price to standpoint to the farmer, hopefully we can get prices better, because there's not so much upper management. But on the flip side, there's less competition. So you can see what happens going forward. So were you one of these guys who was a good closer, you like to get on somebody's farm and like close the deal, and you were kind of a talker? What are we going to have to do to get to see in your hands? That's right. Actually, be quite honest, I can get on the farm. I could talk to anybody BS all day. My problem was closing the deal. But I've learned, you know, throughout over time, how to close the deal, how to ask the right questions and open, you know, ask an open ended questions instead of, Hey, you want to see today? Yeah, don't wait too long because I've got three other people there going to be looking at the sea this afternoon. So I can't promise anything, but I know if you want it, we probably better do something now. Is that what you do? That's right. That's right. He showed up with donuts. That was a good story. That doesn't hurt. Yeah, that does not. You got to press the wife too, because that's what really matters. Allegedly. Tell me about the trucking company. Well, we had a, you know, then five years ago. We had a, the company that was going to process chicken litter and might turn into pelletized litter to sell to organics into. Oh, greenhouses and such. There's looking at building a facility in our, in our back door. And there was a lot of stink about it in the community. There's a lot of people were against it. Someone was for it. So I called the guy that, that was going to build it and picked his brain to learn about it. And I told him, I said, Hey, I said, once you get this thing built, I want to haul your litter. I said, because I got three trucks sitting here doing nothing nine months out of the year. He's like, Okay. So a month later, he calls me. He's like, Hey, I've actually got a facility down the road, you know, an hour down the road from you and we're all sleeping. I need a guy to haul that for me. The guy that's doing for me is quit. And so would you like to haul it? And so we looked at it. My brother and I did. And we're like, you know, I think we'll give it a shot. So we had to buy a trailer, pulled one of the trucks off the farm and start holding soybean meal for a couple of years for this company. And then I had a landlord that used to work for a road stabilizing crew and they needed a truck to haul powdered cement. And so we had the right style trailer. And so we jumped into that three years ago, we went from one truck to three trucks in a year. And then the following year, we have the two more and it's just been a really good gig. So I'm a pilot partner in it, basically. My brother Joel, he manages the day to day drives one of the trucks and we got, we got four other guys that work for us. Oh, that sounds good. Soybean meal that. Do you have to have an auger truck for that? It was actually a pneumatic trailer. And so we had a pneumatic trailer and we had a blower big PTO driven blower on the truck that would blow off the sleeping meal through the through the trailer up into their silos. That's I'm surprised. That's that stuff. The the always thing I remember about it was they didn't flow the best, especially if it came out of Bloomington, which we were buying. It was always a little too wet and it was always a struggle. It was always a struggle in that pneumatic trailer to get it out. I mean, if it was good, we could get her down in two hours. There's days that took us 12 hours to get it out to and it was brutal. I love it when side hustle turned into a business. I bet when you first started and said something to that first guy about having a truck, you didn't realize it was going to become five, six, seven trucks. Exactly. And I mean, I don't know. You know, I look at other young farmers or other kids come out college trying to get onto the farm. Don't be afraid to say no. Just stick your head out there and ask questions and don't be afraid to fail. Yeah, I'm going to say it here and I'm going to stick by it. Guys that are into trucking are as bad as the farm wife set by the first chicken. You start with one and then all of a sudden you've got a llama in the backyard. Is that truck math is like chicken math? They multiply? Today, we're talking with C.J. Calvin from Hartford City, Indiana. When we come back, we're going to talk about being on the Indiana Soybeans Alliance Board. We're going to talk about some international traveling. We'll be back. All right after the break. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io. That's commonground.io. We had about 20 truckloads of dirt coming yesterday. We got it up 9/10 of rain. This is all a day ahead because we're recording ahead. My point is the truck drivers, they all, when they came here, they're like, "Oh, are you Rob Shark?" I said, "Yes." I said, "Oh, this is really cool." Is Will here? I said, "No. He's down in Nashville." I said, "Well, tell him we love his segment." So it's time for America's favorite radio segment. We're in the world as well. What do you have for us today? Today I'm in Hartford City, Indiana, which is a city in the US state of Indiana and it is the county seat of Blackford County. I love that. Every day. So specific. Very specific. Located in the northeast central portion of the state, the small farming community underwent a dramatic 15-year economic boom beginning in the late 1880s. The Indiana gas boom resulted from the discovery and exploitation of natural gas in the area. The rural economy was transformed to one that included manufacturing. The boom attracted workers and residents, retail establishments and crafts people. The increased population was a catalyst for the construction of roads, schools, and churches. And after the boom came a long period of growth and stability. Just like wind turbines. Please don't email me. That was a joke, people. Oh, do we want to talk about solar today, too? The town motto of Hartford City is "the one and only." Oh, it's a little self-absorbed, but... Agriculture has a strong influence on Hartford City's culture. The main crops in the area are soybeans and corn. Some wheat and hay are also grown. The Indiana Farm Bureau office for Blackford County is located in Hartford City. 4-H youth organization associated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a strong presence. It's always good. It's always good. The annual county 4-H Fair is held in June and features a rodeo, horse show, dog show, livestock, and carnival. Do they ride the dogs? I think the dogs must jump through little hoops or something. Isn't that what a dog show is? I don't know. Sounds fun. Best in show. Notable people from Hartford City include Cheryl Wilman, Cancer Researcher and Executive Director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs. It's impressive. It's very impressive. Edwin H. Ford, the founder of the Ford Meter Box Company, an inventor of the Water Meter Box. What's that, Suck? You invent something like that, but your name is Ford? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that guy invented the government's ability to charge you for water. Do you believe me? Us who have a role well, we don't feel sorry for you. Clarence G. Johnson, another founder of the Overhead Door Corporation, an inventor of the first electric operator for sectional upward-acting doors, a.k.a. the garage door. Okay. And lastly, Erica Wykoff, golfer, and one of the most decorated female athletes in Indiana University history. Yeah, it's not saying much. You're throwing down today. That's all right. Happy 4th of July. Well, today we're talking with CJ Chalpent. Now he is from Hartford City, Indiana, 6th generation farmer. You're a busy guy, CJ. So why take the time to be involved in the Indiana Soybean Alliance Board? Well, I got interested in the Soybean Alliance Board because I didn't know where my check-off dollars were going. Mm-hmm. And, you know, there's 28 directors on this board that represent all of Indiana. And we help manage those funds, half that funds go off to the national organization. The other half stay in the state. And I wanted to make a difference. So I saw Iran and got elected. Do you have you done much traveling with it? Yeah, I have. So I went to the Panama Canal, this past winter, to tour it and get to see how important it really is to, you know, U.S. agriculture. And then, six years ago, I think we went to Vietnam to go tour some -- well, really meet some grain buyers that buy, you know, U.S. grain and to talk to them about the differences between, you know, U.S. and South American crops. Are you find that it's important to let the Indiana producers know where their check-off dollars are going and let them know how important it is to go meet face-to-face with people who are buying soybeans? Uh, yes. You know, as I said, I didn't really know what my dollars were going for. So I think it's extremely important that we educate, you know, our farmers in our state to inform them why we're doing what we're doing. You know, whether that's investing money in other countries to, you know, they buy grains just the way you are I buy corn, soybeans, or buy chemicals from who we do, that relationship. You know, that's why we buy where we do. And that's why the rest of the world buys where they do. Mm-hmm. We're able to stop at a port there in the Panama Canal. Uh, we were. So we got to see both ports. So we went through the canal. And what was mind-blowing to me is they have a port on each side and, you know, those boats that are coming through, especially your container ships, you're going to be so deep. And so if you're too heavy, they will offload your containers, stick on a rail, send it to the other side, which is only 50 miles away, and then reload it on them when they get to the other side so they can continue around the rest of the world. I don't think I've ever seen a more efficient facility than I think we were on the east port. I don't even remember, it's been so long ago. But I mean, they had it down to the second, how long the semi lined up and they wanted that trailer on that semi and it gone off the road. It was literally, it was within seconds, they wanted all the trucks they could get through there in a day that they possibly could. Uh, it's incredible. I mean, it's just like watching ants, you know, carrying stuff from going to get food, taking back to the pile. It's amazing. Have you been able to, you know, share this with your, your fellow farmers in Indiana? How important the soybean alliances? I have. I have. You know, we've got a, you know, different. Oh, shoot, whether that be, you know, it'd be different meetings that produce sponsored or when we go try to get our, our sprayer points, you know, be able to keep our chemical license. You know, we typically have a least one or two directors that everyone has meetings and, you know, putting in plugs to talk about that. So it's soybean alliances is this what like Illinois says soybean associations is the same thing. There's two sides. So you've got the association, which does the. The public, not politics, but the lobbying and that stuff. So that's one entity and then the other entity is taking, you know, is the check off dollars. And that's, you know, doing those programs. Yeah, check off dollars can't be used for politics CJ. Is there a place where people can find you online if they have any questions? Um. No tick tock. No tick tock. Okay. All right. Well, I suppose if people really want to find you, they can hunt you down. I mean, people are good at that. They can look up the Indiana, Indiana soybean. Yeah, exactly. Well, CJ, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. I want to wish you a happy fourth of July and hope you get to do whatever you want to do. But CJ, I don't want, I don't want you to go anywhere because Sean Haney is coming up next. He is not celebrating the fourth of July. Canadians. CJ, thank you very much. Everybody else will catch you next time. [Music]