SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Chelsea O'Brien from IN 8-29-24
Unstoppable, unshakeable, but it rolls out for town unfreakable, it's unavoidable, you show relatable, in between the lines, start to loosen up your mind. Hey, welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio. Hey, I'm your host Rob Sharkey, we're in the studio today just outside of Breithford Illinois, studio powered by Bex Hybrid, which should be able to harvest here pretty soon. We've got one of them, number one son, taken over for Mr. Shark Farmer, who's on assignment. You all ready for harvest, William? Getting there. The combine is, it's still, I don't know, what do you say, under inspection? Yeah. Yeah. I learned a long time ago, because when I first started farming on my own, I'd go through the inspection thing, but I'd pull them up, it was even before you could find it online, of all the things you're supposed to look at, and it didn't go well. No, I just, I would miss stuff, you know, stuff that, a mechanic, a good mechanic would know, I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad I don't have to do that. I should make you learn it though, just so you'll learn how to feel like I did. Yeah, probably. Uh-huh. You were with the guys, anything major wrong with it? He was saying no. I mean, we had a couple of stuff, like he said that we could do this year next year, but. Next year. Yeah. Next year. We'll probably buy a new combine next year. Yeah, we should. Yeah, we are not going to buy a new combine, but hey, yeah, it could be fun. Uh, William, let's go out to the great state of Indiana, Dale, Indiana. We're going to be talking with Chelsea O'Brien. How you doing, Chelsea? Doing well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here. We're in the great state of Indiana is Dale. Dale is in the southwestern corner of Indiana, right off interstate 64. Dale is not necessarily a large city, is it? No. No. Very rural town. We are nearby or close to Santa Claus, Indiana, which has holiday world. That's right. I'm not a big fan of towns that are in the first name of somebody. I don't know. It bothers me. Oh, Dale? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know the origin of the name of Dale from there originally, just a nearby town nearby. So. Oh, but you grew up in the area? Yes. Mm-hmm. You grew up in Santa Claus. That'd be cool. No. No, I was in the big metropolis of Gentryville in Indiana, which is one of those towns. I don't know if they have this in Illinois, but where your address is not where you actually live. Do they do that? Like you're in the nearest post office. That's what your address is, but you're so rural that they don't. You'd actually live in that town. Like a rural route? Is that what you're talking about? We were rural routes. Like when I was younger, and then they, when they redid all that and got rid of the rural route addresses, they, like we lived in a tiny little town called Heilman, Indiana, but that's just like a curve and a stop sign, you know, and a church, but the post office was in Gentryville, which is like 10 minutes from my actual house, or probably 15 minutes from my actual house, to actually drive there. So. Fascinating. Yeah, I remember using growing up to tell people where I was really from. In high school, the, the military recruiter used to call. I mean, because when you turned 18, you've, you had a register and all that stuff, every, every week he'd call and he'd call with the same joke. He says, this is Robert Charkey from Row route to him like, yeah, it will roll route. That must be the longest street ever. I'm like, God, sir, just leave me alone. You are the marketing communications manager at Superior Ag. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Tell people what Superior Ag is. Superior Ag is a ag cooperatives where we offer a, we're pretty full service. We have an agronomy division, a feed mill and feed division and livestock nutrition. We have an energy division where we have, it's called 10 energy partners. We co-own that with another local co-op to provide diesel fuels like that for farmers. Yeah. I've never even heard of that. How does that get along? Do you guys fight? No, no, it was a, it was a sister kind of joint venture that they created back in 2010. And it's been very, very successful. We actually go into Illinois on that part of our business. Okay. Is it like when we went through Prairie Farms, they've got a big cabinet full of different stickers they put on a milk check. It's the same milk, but they put a different sticker on it and some of it's a lot more expensive. No, that's not quite, that's not quite how this is. We're a retailer for Country Mark. I'm sure you've heard of Country Mark. I have now, so Country Mark, country to have a refinery in Mount Vernon, Indiana and over there on the Illinois border, but anyway, so we are a retailer for them and we sell Country Mark fuels. Gotcha. As well. And then to round us out, we have a grain division, so we have six grain elevators and offer grain marketing services to our customers and farmers in the area. So kind of, I mean, I don't want to get real technical, but kind of like that stereotype of a cooperative, an ag cooperative. Correct. We're very, very traditional, we were part of the original Indiana Farm Bureau cooperative system. That's how they got started back in like the 1920s. And then we were four co-ops who merged as one in 2007, so for County co-ops that merged as one together. Yeah. Yeah. Did you grow up on a farm? Not exactly, very close to one though, my grandpa had a dairy farm and my uncle who ran that with him, they babysat me, hit my aunt and my uncle from a very young age, like ages one to three. So it was really ingrained in me and I liked the farm and loved being out there. So that kind of kickstarted my ag interest. And then I was involved in 4-H and FFA growing up and loved that. That was a really big thing that shaped my childhood and honestly kind of career past. So. Yeah. Today we're talking with Chelsea O'Brien from Dale, Indiana, again, she is the marketing communications manager at Superior Ag. I want to come back, I want to talk about this rather large family, the dairy family. My gosh, you think you have a lot of cousins, William? Chelsea's gonna, she's gonna make you sit down, turn around and bail up, think of cotton. 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. It's Thursday. Bet you didn't know that, William. I didn't know just now. We've been at the farm progress show. So by the time you're hearing this, it's probably too late to go because it'd be, you know, three to three thirty on a Thursday last day. I guarantee literally everybody that is there is trying to pack up. They have rules. You can only pack, you can only pack up at the end. So everybody tries to like sneakily pack up. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sure it went well. We released the Shark Farmer Series Hunting Blind from our good friends at FBI buildings. You saw that? Yeah, it looks pretty sure. We have not seen it put together. We saw the top and the bottom, but we never have seen the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm pretty stoked about it. Yes, Emily and I, last week, went to San Francisco with the Illinois Soybean Association at the SoyConnects. William, that's where like the people, you know when you hear on the radio, it's like, I don't know, South Korea bought 400 metric tons of soybeans. We met that person, like the person that was buying the soybeans. Not that specific one, but you know what I'm talking about. So you check off dollars when you sell soybeans, they're going back to finding new markets for you. So it's fascinating. If you want to find more, go to il.soy. No, ilsoy.org, that too, today. We're talking with Chelsea O'Brien from Dale, Indiana. She's a marketing communications manager at Superior AG. Now Chelsea said your grandparents had a dairy. How many cousins do you have? Yeah. So my grandparents had a dairy farm. My dad is one of 12 children. My gosh. They're german Catholic farmers. I know, I knew that before you said it. Yeah. And so on that side alone, from those 12 children, there are 30, I have 31st cousins. There are 30 of us. 30. Wow. From one side. One side. First cousin. Yes. Which are their names? Yes. You would test me if you made me name them off all right now. But yes, I do know all their names. I would have to go family by family to keep it as easy, easily organized. But I love it. That's kind of what I've been around from. And a lot of them. We're waiting for the names. But really, we'll be here forever. OK. Out of the 30, out of the 30, which one do you like the least? I'm not saying that. I love them all. She's not. William, you know, you could tell your least. I'm not saying that. And somebody, Chelsea, somebody popped in your mind. I guarantee it. No. No. Did you get a chance to help on the farm very much? Is it a young Chelsea? I did. Yes. Young Chelsea. I loved to go out and help bottle feed the calves. And I got to actually help my uncle pull a calf once that was given birth in the field. And so I had to have that experience early on. That was memorable. And then they had a hay loft up in their barn. We would always, you know, I would love to just go play up there with my cousins because my uncle that babysat me, they had five kids. So I was sort of the adopted sixth kid. And they would just let me tag along to whatever they went and did. And so I just loved getting pushed around in the wheelbarrow and helping my uncle and my aunt or my grandpa and grandma pick the garden. All the good stuff about growing up on a farm. So marketing, it's pretty much a career that's unnecessary. Why did you get into it? So I actually went to Purdue thinking I was going to be a vet. I had a big interest probably from the dairy farm wanting to be, to care for animals. So I thought I wanted to be a vet. And so I went up there and then quickly learned that you can't major in vet med. That's your program. You have to pick a major. And so they had me sort of ask me like what I like to do and my mom told them about my as she calls it gift for GAB to talk and to, you know, I was always good at speech class and school. And so I took an agricultural communications class along with an animal science class. I was kind of picking between those two and just fell in love with agricultural communications. I didn't even know it was a major until I went up there. And that was in 2007. So it's grown a lot since then. But it's basically like a communications major. We just take everything that they do plus ag specific science based classes and econ based classes so that we can communicate it properly. And you mentioned you're in FFA for age that continue got your seems like you looks like you're involved in farm bureau quite a bit. I am yes, so I was when I was in college, I continued in collegiate for age collegiate from bureau and joined that chapter up there and got really involved in from bureau. I did. We had a Purdue collegiate chapter and you could do what's called a discussion meet, which I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's similar to I did. I won it. I won the whole thing in 2005 did you really I did, but the judges did not think so. Oh, so you didn't go on stage and I did I was in a final four and again, I think said the gal from Minnesota. I think private judges anyway, we're talking about you. So you you won your state, so I won my state in collegiate and went to the national collegiate young farmers and professionals discussion me in Orlando that year. So I made the past week 16, I'm pretty happy about that. And then I continue to do it as an adult in the adult or you know, normal farm bureau discussion meet and I never made the final four because I always got beat by the winner is that ever happened to you right like you, the person who beat me and my sweet 16 round won the whole thing every time. So I sort of just got the bad luck of the draw on the rooms, but it's okay. It was a really good experience. And then this past year I applied for and won the Excellence in Ag award, which is yeah, thank you. That's an award from Indiana Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ag Professionals that they have two of them. So one of them is honoring young farmers and ag professional to derive the majority of their income from a traditional ag operation like a production agriculture. And then the Excellence in Ag is for those like me who were ag professionals or do not derive the majority of their income from an owned ag operation. Yeah, I think that's a good idea because I mean, yes, so many people involved in farm bureau. I mean, don't necessarily just nest farm. I mean, a lot of them farm on the side and stuff like that. So yeah, I know that's a very big deal, probably more competition in what you want than the young farmers. I'm not sure just saying today we're talking what Chelsea O'Brien from a Dale, Indiana. She again is a marketing communications manager at her friends at Superior Ag. We come back. We're going to talk more about her being able to talk. That's kind of a circle thing, William. We'll be back 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. Too many wills on this show, William. Yeah, I agree. You've agreed to be referred to as William. I think I just got told that. You were voluntarily told that. Yeah. Well, you don't get the world's most favorite radio segment though, we're in the world as well. Yeah. That does not involve you. Not at all. All right, Will. What did you find for us today? Today I'm in Dale, which is a town in Carter Township, Spencer County in the US state of Indiana. Dale was originally called Elizabeth and under the latter name was laid out in 1843. How do you go from Elizabeth to Dale? Well, when a post office was established, the name was changed to Dale in honor of Robert Dale Owen of New Harmony. It's always a post office. The town's congressman at the time. The Dale post office has been in operation since 1844. Okay. We got some notable people from Dale. Really? Oh, yeah. We got Roger Kaiser, basketball player for the 1961 Chicago Packers. What? We got Florence Henderson, singer and actress, co-star of the Brady Bunch. Oh, yeah. Yep, she was born in Dale. America's a sweetheart, wasn't she? Something? Yeah. We got Jay Clarence Carcher, geophysicist and inventor of the reflection seismograph. Oh, yeah. I wish you'd come fixed mine. Right. Reflection seismology is a method of exploration geophysics that uses the principles of seismology to estimate the properties of the Earth's subsurface from reflected seismic waves. Well, duh. I don't know if you had to explain that or not, Will. Yeah. That's for those who aren't key into the knowledge. I suppose. You've got all kinds listening, yep. And Abraham Lincoln, US president, was raised on a farm near what is now Lincoln City. His mother, Nancy Hanks, Lincoln, died while he was young, and her burial site is located on the original farm. Everyone in the eye states is scrambling to claim Lincoln. There is no scramble. There's a scramble. Illinois is a land of Lincoln. Lincoln. Lincoln once bought a soda at a gas station here in this town. Oh, my goodness. Where was he a senator? Illinois. I'll try. Jay, we don't have Kentucky though. Indiana has a race they do with 500 cars or something. I don't know. Give us a blinkin. Right. Right. Okay. Is that all? That's pretty much. That's it for Dale. Okay. It is pretty cool when we spoke in Dale at Superior Egg. What was that called? That meeting? Chelsea? Agronomic knowledge day. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. But we had a break in between. So we drove down to Santa Claus, which is your town with a roller coaster. But you go buy that Lincoln thing and it's got like that old split rail fence or what ever it's called. I mean, that goes on for miles. Yeah, that's called Lincoln's Boyhood Memorial. Yeah. Do you guys claim him? Abe Lincoln? We do. Mm-hmm. We actually have a Nancy Hanks Elementary School. Well, good for you. And there's Lincoln State Park and Lincoln Boyhood Memorial. They're like across from each other in Lincoln City, which is what where you drove through probably to get to Santa Claus from where you were. Yeah. Actually, beautiful area. Yeah. Gorgeous. Mm-hmm. You were talking about, you won the Excellence in Ag Award in Indiana there. That is. So you've got the young farmers and then you had the people that are like an ag business. So did you win a truck? No, I did not. I won a cash prize generously, thanks to Indiana Farm Bureau and Farm Credit. And then I got to go to the National Farm Bureau Convention in Salt Lake City and against the other state winners for that award. You know, some of the states actually, if you win that award, you win a truck. You're in the wrong state. You win. I know. Well, they used to, I think, but I don't know if there was just, you know, not everybody was interested in the truck or maybe they, I don't know, they just switched it up and did. It was a 1996 foreign rager, but hey, a truck's a truck. That's right. So has this led into anything that you went in the Excellence in Ag Award? It has. It's actually been pretty cool. So I, when I was out there and you kind of have to give a presentation on your involvement in the ag industry and your background and what you've done. So I got to do that and I was thankful to make the top 10 out there. So it didn't make top five because I actually went over in my time, your time. So I was slightly over in my time, probably that gift for gab thing, you know, I've got a little carried away. But so May top 10, which was a great honor and a wonderful experience because you get a, you know, meet other people from across the U.S. and hear their stories and connect with people. And then part of that, one of the areas that I'm passionate about is helping reduce the stigma of mental health in agriculture. I unfortunately have had some experience in my local communities of farmers, you know, losing the, losing the battle, yeah, in the battle. Yeah. So that was very impactful and then kind of hard on our community and I just hate to see that happen to anybody and then, you know, effects that come from that. So, and then I also, after I had my first son, I had a miscarriage in between my two children. And so during that pregnancy and then after I had my second son, I had postpartum anxiety. Rob dealt with that before, never had any sort of mental health challenges ever. And so it was very much a whirlwind. Thankfully I spoke up about it early with my doctor and through talk therapy and anxiety medicine kind of got back to my normal self. So I learned a ton about just the mental health space during that journey that I never knew before, so I felt like it was, you know, really important to share that information with people and do what I can to help in that area. So I actually, I don't know if they have one of these associations in Illinois, but they have an Indian or Rural Health Association here and they did what's called a helping minds, helping lives workshops all across the state this past year. And so I got connected with their facilitator and went through one of the classes where it trains you how to be like a, called a QPR like crisis negotiation skills when for someone who's in a mental health crisis. And then I helped kind of host one for my local County Farm Bureau where I'm the young farmer rep. So that was really, that's really impressive, I mean, to do that and, you know, put yourself out there. I want to commend you. We are running out of time to help people where they can find you a social media website all that. Yeah. So I, if you want to learn more about superior ag where www.superiorag.com and then I am active on social media, share gardening, canning, recipes, all that stuff at O'Brien acres. Yeah. Oh, B-R-O-B-R-I-E-N, correct. O'Brien. Correct. Yes. Chelsea O'Brien from Dale, Indiana. Thank you, Chelsea. It was great to meet you out there to secure your ag and thank you for all you're doing for agriculture. It is not going unnoticed, but Chelsea don't go anywhere. Sean Haney's coming up next. He didn't go to the Farm Progress show because he didn't want to see me. I don't know. We'll catch everybody next time. [Music] ♪ With an egg shaker ♪