SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Janice and David Lee from Dawson, MN 8-12-24
[Music] At warbing in the shark farmer radio. Hey! I'll be host Rob Sharky. We're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Beautiful day. It's not raining, but man, it'd be nice to see the sun a little bit. There's reports of white mold in the neighborhood. We don't need that. Oh boy. Yeah, it is a little damp today. I don't like to hear white mold. No, I'd rather the sun come out. It was a nice weekend. Little cooler temperatures, not such humidity. I mean, this was great. FBI has been here doing the shed. FBI builders. How fast? Don't be doing that to people. Oh, that's funny. You know, that has happened last week when I would say FBI. Yes, FBI buildings. But our shed went up. It went up in four days. Four days. And we put video of it out on our Instagram and Facebook for people to see because it was shocking. They lifted the building in 20 minutes. Yeah, their QLift system. Basically, it's they build the roof on the ground or like four feet up. They put the permacolums in the ground and then built the roof on top of that. And then they lift the whole thing. This building was 16 foot, which the Canadians, they all said, why did you only build it 16 foot? What was it supposed to be? I think they said 20 minimum up there. I don't know those airseaters. Are they that tall? I don't know. Maybe they have extensions on their hoppers. We don't have. I don't know. Maybe when they're talking harvest time hopper. I don't know. All right. Today, let's go up to a Dawson Minnesota. We're going to be talking with Janice and David Lee. How are you guys doing? Real good. Good. Where is Dawson in the great state of Minnesota? We're straight west of Minneapolis, about two and a half hours and 30 miles from South Dakota. Gotcha. And you guys a farm up there? Were you both farm kids? I grew up on the farm my whole life. And Janice can chime in. I grew up on the, well, partly on the east coast. And then we moved to Minnesota. And from there, several different houses or places we lived at. And it was a teenager. We moved out into the country and we were on a hobby farm. And I know we had a horse at one time. But otherwise we had cows, chickens, pigs. And we had a lot of goats. And I remember that we had to milk the goats. It was before and after school. And then we sold the milk to the hospital. Oh, interesting. So you milked your goats. So the hospital wanted it for the patients there or I've never heard of somebody selling it right to the hospital. Yeah. I always thought it was for infants. But I, you know, I was just a teenager. So who cared? Just as long as we get paid for the milk. Well, you know, they do say goat's milk is supposed to be really good for an infant. Who says? Oh, yeah, they do. Who says that? Have you ever heard this? No. Yeah, goat's milk is even better. We can't be fake news here. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, what isn't fake news is your dad was in the Navy, right? So you moved around as a kid. What was it like to have a dad in the Navy? I want to say strange at times, you know, period of time he was gone. But I guess I had enough brothers and sisters to preoccupy that void or hole or whatever you want to call it. And then when he got out, then I think we looked for more permanent places and he was from Minnesota. So we moved back here and eventually ended up on the little hobby fun. Now, where did you two meet? We met at a dance and surround a close city to our farm. And she asked me out. You asked him? You met at a dance and you went up to him and asked him to dance? Yeah, I kind of thought I could have recognized him, but obviously not. I had a mistake for somebody else. I rocked up to him, started chatting with him. And thank you, you asked me, what did you do in the last two weeks? And I said, I came back from a Caribbean cruise. What was your story? You had about stayed trapped in a cave building. We had a three-day blizzard at that time. Yeah, and she came back all tan. I'm surprised you even danced with her. I think I would have passed on that. Oh, yeah. So what are all you guys raising up there? And in our area? Well, on your farm? Oh, no. We're a basic corn and soybeans. And have some hay. And square bales. We do some small square bales, which is getting to be very rare around here. So the price was pretty good. But because nobody wants to lift little square bales anymore. Do you have the kids on the rack? Or do you have like the auto, the tosser? Well, no, we don't. It's hard to find help, so we don't have that much. Otherwise, it'd just be on the hay rack right behind the baler. We call that our quality family time together. Everyone's sweated, talked, and then everyone came home looking and appearing all the same, you know, hot, sticky, and I don't know. I don't know if the kids on the bale, baleers would think that that is a good quality time. I never did. Yeah, that was a hot job. Oh, my gosh. So do you think it's because it's hard to find help that people aren't doing the small square bales anymore? Oh, very definitely. I feel that equipment's got a lot better. I mean, most people with horses, they like to hand feed them if they can. Otherwise, so just sit and eat with the wrong bale. We've had a horse customer, if you want to call that, always wanted bale square. We've been doing that for what have we figured about 25 years? Close to 25? I guess the whole point is you probably should never have horses. All right, we got to go to break. Today, we're talking with Janice and David Lee from Dawson, Minnesota. When we come back, we're going to talk more about their farm. We're going to talk all about a Minnesota. We will be back 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. Had a busy week coming up, going out to Indiana twice, going to somewhere, Friday, I don't know. Yeah, tomorrow we're at FBI Builders. We're looking at the new shark farmer blind and doing some taping for the TV show. And then, gosh, we're going to be in El Paso, Illinois the next day, because, you know, another technology days, which is exciting. Yeah. And then Thursday, you've got a keynote with Superior Ag, so we're back in Indiana. So yeah, a lot of Indiana this week. Next week, going out to what? San Francisco with the Illinois Soybean Association. Yeah, it's exciting. We've got a partnership with them, and we're trying to connect Illinois farmers and, you know, any soybean farmer around to learn where their check-off dollars go and how they're connecting, you know, making new relationships abroad, right, to have better prices for soybeans. Yeah, everybody to check off, you get to check for your soybeans, right? And you see how much they took for the check-off there. And some people are like, getting, "Is that really you doing anything for us?" Well, they want to show you what they're doing. So you might as well find out, right? You're already paying for it. Already paying for it. So yeah, we'll be out in San Francisco at SoyConnects. Yeah. And you can find out on the map there, ilsoy.org/trademap. All right. Today, we're in adults in Minnesota. We're talking with Janice and David Lee. They'll be farm out there, they'll corn and soybeans. How do things look, guys? Oh, we're in, we had a very wet spring, and so there was quite a, I think, that came out today how many pre-vent planted acres were prevented. I never heard how many, if it's half a, I don't know how many million acres that pre-vented. Just say seven million. We want the market to go up, so we might as well start some rumors. Seven million, were you expecting that? Was that what it was? I might as well be. Did you guys have any prevent plant? Oh yeah, we had a little bit. I've never done that. That's not as easy as it sounds, right? You just don't plan it. Don't you have to maintain it with something? Yeah, well, you got to control the weeds. Ideally, it'd be good if you could put down a cover crop to help the soil. How about weeds? We'll do that. Yeah, there's some green manure in those weeds. Yeah, there's no better cover crop than water hemp. Yeah, you got that right. Oh boy. When we were in Minnesota, we saw that there were a lot of, I mean, you guys must have had a lot of water really, really early on. Did you get things planted really late, what you did get planted? Not really, but a lot of people, they got so much rain, they lost the crop, a lot of, a lot of pockets. I think it was like kitten myths. We got things planted in at the right time, and some rains came, more rains came, and then it just kept moving. Yeah, so I guess if you had you had some prevent plant acres, that's probably worked out okay this year, so it's a kept raining. Yeah, so you guys met at a dance. Did you all go off to college? Yeah, well, before that I went to the universe, and then the soda crooks way up north. And yeah, I graduated in a degree in agriculture/soils and fertilizer. Was it always that you wanted to go back to the farm? Did you have farming in your blood, or did you know at that time when you went to college what you were going to do? No I didn't. I just see you end up, I end up working all farming, but then I still work through the local highway department maintenance for 41 years. Oh wow, so when you farmed, you worked for the highway department as well, and you put in over 40 years? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a good thing Minnesota really doesn't have the harsh freezing and thawing, so your roads probably didn't need much attention. I was just thinking back on that. Yeah, well, there's a few situations where she's possibly some life-saving situations we were in, and some brutal winters. It's like what do you mean by that? Well, plowing snow, plowing snow, and sometimes people get stranded, and I know I came up in one lady, they said, "pull the plows in," and I said, "I want to go a few more miles just in case," and sure enough, there's a lady sitting there pick up. I don't think she could have made it through the night if I hadn't come by. Oh wow, I bet she was glad to see you. Yeah, I guess there's been other situations where it was so bad blizzards, so my employees would be walking ahead of the truck, because they couldn't see the truck, couldn't see the road, just a rescue a person. I remember, go ahead. No, what were you going to say? I said, "I remember I would cut our first snowmobile, or a snowmobile, because David had mentioned that you know, you can hardly get to where you need to go to work, it'd be better to travel my snowmobile." And then a couple of times, I don't know if the county had contacted him, and if I, well, we can go out on the snowmobile and see if where these people might be at, and sure enough, he did do some rescuing by snowmobile, and I don't know if you brought him back to the county shop, or what you did. That was an ice storm, so it wasn't a blizzard, but... Well, it's a snowmobile. Come on, no. What was the things they took on the ice family, the fishing, the ice bears? Is it like an ice bear? Is that me like with tread? I don't know. I see some some guys down right by us, they'll have these snowmobiles, and they have to trail them all up towards you, just so they can ride them. I don't know. I guess they enjoy it. Yeah. I don't know if we've ever done that. We just stayed parked until it's needed. I don't know. It's kind of a funny time. It's not as popular as it used to be back in the 70s. Well, it's a damn Elgore. It's a global warming. You don't have the snow that you used to. Yeah, yep, they can smoke. You want like that. So, at one time, did like growing up on the farm, did you have livestock? Well, you know, seem like back then every farmer had a lot of livestock. So, we always had milk cows and beef cows, chickens, pigs. Yeah. You had... Oh, you had... Many raised feeder pigs. Oh my gosh, I'm glad you got out of those. Believe me, doing the road work is much better than raising feeder pigs. Today, we're talking with Janice and David Lee from Dawson, Minnesota. They're farming up there. When we come back, we're going to find out all about where Dawson is, what about it, and I'm sure a bunch of statistics we don't really care about, but it'll be fine. Good old Wikipedia. We'll be back. 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. It's time for Dawson, Minnesota's favorite radio segment, or probably TV segment, too. I don't know what the kids watch. Maybe the phone segment? Where in the world is Will? Well, what do you have for us today? Today, I'm in Dawson, which is a city in L'Aqué Parle, Lucky Parle. There's no way you said that right. No way. I said that right. I nailed it. Minnesota, United States, the population was 1466 at the 2020 census. The land Dawson sits on was originally home to the Wauk-Pecute yank-toni, and this one is brutal. You guys should just see this. Auk-fi-sack-a-ween. Yeah, he nailed it. Nailed that one. The three bands of the Dakota. Land was ceded to the US government by the Treaty of Traverse De Sioux in 1851. The treaties were signed on July 23rd in August 6th in Traverse De Sioux and Mendota, respectively. The land was ceded in exchange for $3,750,000, which is a bargain. Yeah, 12 cents per acre. It's gone up a little bit. Little of the payment was received by the Dakota. Oh, really? They didn't even get it, huh? Dawson was platted in 1844. The city was named for William Dawson, a former mayor of St. Paul, and one of three partners in the Dawson Town Site Company. Okay. A post office has been in operation at Dawson since 1884. And then? And then Dawson has become known as "No Motown" a USA. Like, how do you spell that? Like Gnome. Like a little... Gnome-G-N-O-M-E. The little garden fellas. Because Dawson commemorates its notable citizens by making them into three-foot tall gnomes that are placed either in the Dawson Public Library or at Gnome Park. I'm surprised they can do it, you know? Now that everybody's so sensitive about stuff. I wonder what you would look like as a gnome, Rob? It's about the same, honestly. The gnomes are revealed to the community during Riverfest. Each gnome gets its own legend. New gnomes have been added every year since 1989, and there are more than 40 gnomes in Gnome Park with more being added every year. Oh, okay. That is hilarious. Yeah. The 2005 movie "Sweet Land" was partly filmed in Dawson as well. Never saw that one. Yeah, me either. We got some notable people, though. We got Carrie Tullifson, Olympian at 1500 meters in 2004, NCAA cross-country champion in 1997. Gotcha. Jeff Nordgaard, second round NBA draft pick in '96, James Day Hodgson, United States Secretary of Labor in the '70s, and the Ambassador to Japan in the '70s as well. Oh, they've done well for such a small town. Right. A baseball football wrestling and hockey coach Ed Eador Nelson and Phyllis Gates, interior decorator and wife of Hollywood actor Rock Hudson. Oh, going back there. All right. Nothing on a creek. Nothing on Dawson Creek. Nothing on Wikipedia. No. Nothing on Wikipedia now. That was fun. All right. Thank you. Well, uh, Janice and David, uh, did he get everything right? No, I want it good. I want to mention about the Olympic girl and Jeff Nordgaard. He forgot one thing. Just one? Well, so far. Peter Christensen was our, was from Dawson. He was our governor of Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah. You've had some doozies as governors, haven't you? Remember that? That wrestler guy, the venturi. Yeah. Yeah. You've heard about the one lately, haven't you? Yeah. He's running for vice president there with Kamala. Yeah. You guys sound really excited. We can't really talk about our governor. So I know that was the one thing they set up at Farmfest. I'm like, well, you know, we're talking to farmers, so is anything off limits? They said, you know, a little thing with our governor going on. Maybe we'll just let that one lie. So yeah, I didn't. I didn't do any jokes. Yeah. Mm hmm. Uh huh. Uh, the thoughts are quite a governor went to a doc in here this year. She was impressed by the gnome part. Uh, she didn't mistake him for a dog, did she? No. She didn't shoot any of them that I know of. Okay. We better move on. Uh, Janice, you were a township clerk. What are you doing with that? Well, um, I just got reelected in March. So I'm on my 15th year and I keep track of over bills. I work with some contractors and I've worked the last few years on various different FEMA projects. And we had some horrendous storm damages that came through our town hall, got some damage, uh, like catapulted by, uh, I call it like, hail stones. It's a functioning building, but it, uh, qualified for repair. So that's still in the process. But, uh, I've gotten to know I want to call them my residents or the residents of lack of pearl and, uh, the history behind it. And we've had various different meetings and the health activities. I think we did the, uh, sesquitoneal at our town hall. And I just enjoyed the community in itself. A friendly neighbor. Mm hmm. Is it hard to imbezzle money? I would think so, but that's not my thing. Oh, you, you don't do that up there. Well, I'm from Illinois. You got to remember this. So what made you run in the first place and get involved in, in, you know, interested in that job? Well, I think, uh, no, I have a county background from having gone to trade school and I'd worked at various different places in the neighboring communities and that and I ended up in the school district and for about 20 years. And my children had mode at the town hall and one of my neighbors who happened to be a clerk at that time said, uh, and I think she knew my demeanor and knew what my background was. And she said, would you like to attend the meeting inside the doors? And I said, sure. Okay. And sat in for a few months and I thought, this is a piece of cake guys. This isn't that tough. Well, nothing's wrong with going old school, writing it down and every little category of things. But I said, you know, if you put on a spreadsheet, you can add it up for you real quick, although you can still manually add it up. Next thing I know is a pointed and then the following year I was connected. Uh huh. So no more written down journals, huh? No, but I mean, it's okay to do it that way. I don't have any problem. If somebody wants to like, can you put it down on paper for me? Not a problem. No paper, Charles, you know, it makes it easier to do what? She's a spreadsheet kind of girl. Are your friends tell you that you're too honest? Yeah, I mean, I guess I figured if, uh, if they were my friend to begin with, I will definitely tell them, you know, you know, this is not a good idea to be doing that or maybe you should, you know, go down this path and put what you're doing. And it will still be friends afterwards. It's not like, oh gosh, I can't hang out with that person because their mind is not with them, you know, something old. Oh, oh, you know, I just felt like it is and everything. She's that good friend who will tell you not to wear that shirt on a given day. The one where you say this might be look bad, she'll be. That's right. You need that friend. Okay. All right. Uh, Janice and David Lee from Adaus in Minnesota. Appreciate you talking to you guys. Appreciate you meeting up there at the Minnesota farm fest. Uh, congratulations on a, uh, successful career of fixing roads and farming. Sounds like an awful good life to me, Emily. That's right. All right. Uh, Janice and David don't go anywhere though. Sean Haney's coming up next. I think he lives a half hour to the north of you. So you just drive up there and listen. We'll catch everybody next time. ♪ Care ready for, care ready for the next shake up ♪