SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Scott & Terri Smith from Windfall, IN 10-10-24
[Music] I don't want to get in this shark farmer radio, hey! I'm your host Rob Shark. You're in the studio today, just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Studio powered by Bex Hybrin. It's day 4,000 of harvest. Oh gosh. I don't know if you can hardly complain. I feel like things are going well. I mean, you guys are so happy for you. You guys are putting in very long hours, but you know, the yields are good and things are not breaking today so far. Why would you say that? You know, trying to count my blessings. Yeah. I just called William here because I'm watching him on the Jonder Ops Center and I don't feel like he has done enough since I left. Well, I said maybe he didn't have a signal, but I was wrong. Was he getting rocks out of the rock collector? No, he had to get out of the combine to load the truck so he had to jump out of the combine into the cart. And apparently that the combine stops when he does that. That is hilarious. So I'm sure that he really appreciated you checking on him being that he's doing your job right now as well as his. He didn't seem like it. He wasn't. Yeah. I think he really loves that Jonder Ops Center. You know, when you look and say, "Gee, I haven't moved in two seconds." He's been active. It's not bad. 89% of the time. And he's been only idle 3% of the time since for the last 10 minutes. Okay. Anyway. All right. Let's go out to Indiana. Windfall, Indiana. We're going to talk with Scott Smith and his wife, Terry. How are you guys doing? Good. Where in the great state of Indiana is windfall? Well, we're north of, we're north of Indy about 50 miles and about 12 miles south of Kokomo. Okay. Is that like, I don't know, there's a big Amish area up there. Is that where it's at? No. No. It's in County. We're in Tipton County. Pork Festival. Tipton County. Pork Festival? In Tipton County. Uh-huh. What, uh, what do you do at a pork festival? We eat pork. That makes sense. Vingers, and they have vendors, and they have entertainment, and they have, um, a queen and princess patrons, and they have everything. Lots of vendors and lots of eating pork. Those are a queen pageant. Sarah always rigged. You know that? Yeah, they are. Our daughter got first runner-up one here. See? That's what I'm saying. You didn't bribe enough. No, it was all good. She had a blast, though. Uh-huh. You guys are farming out there. What all do you raise? Uh, we raise corn for ethanol, and seed beans for Bex hybrids, and processing tomatoes for Red Bull. Oh, tomatoes. All right. I can't wait to talk about that. The first, this is, uh, Scott, this is your family farm, your third generation, correct? That is correct. Uh-huh. Okay, and Terry, were you a farm girl? No, I was not, but Scott and I grew up kind of in the country, and my father was a, um, uh, dispatch for, um, Tipton County Sheriff's Department, and so we went to school together, and that's how we met. Oh, are you guys high school sweethearts? Be sure are. Uh-huh. Who made the first move? Oh, no. I waited. She got off the bus, and I asked her out. I was a nervous wreck, but I did. I asked her out for a double date. She said yes, and we've been dating ever since. Uh-huh. That's fantastic. How many years have you been married now? 49, 49 years. We've been married. Did the other couple, did they make it or did they break up? They didn't make it. Like, survivor, you know. Only so many can make it out. No, it's all right. So, no, it's all good. So, Terry, when you, when you were falling in love, you knew you were going to be on a farm. Were you okay with that? You know, I was. I mean, I lived in the country. My parents, we rented a house in the country, uh, right on the farm. So, yeah. So, I feel like I've been in the country most of the time anyway. Okay. I actually lived right across from the farm, and I didn't know it. And so, it became probably my least productive field bar as efficiency wise. But once I found out she lived there, so. Like binoculars, or what were you doing? Oh, she would wave at me. I'd turn, you know, and come at the end, she'd wave at me and, well, have you. So, was it, you know, I look back. It was kind of a cute moment during that time. I don't think you're telling us the truth. Now, see if his dad had had John Deere ops, he would have said the efficiency went down. Maybe that's what William's doing over there. Yeah. Really wasn't into efficiency of 15 too much. So, it just really was just more about, you know, and falling in love here. Uh-huh. Did you always know you wanted to go back to the farm, Scott? I did, because this is where my roots are. My grandfather, farm, and my dad. And then, so I was just pretty much growing up in their way. You know, I was always on the farm. And so, and I've always been in specialty crops my whole career and my big portion of my dad's career. So, this is what we, you know, it's just something I've always, we've always done. So, I had a good opportunity. And so, and I enjoy it. I enjoy what I do. I have a passion to farm. And I enjoy it. So, you guys left the farm for a time to go to Purdue, though, right? Did you both attend there? Yeah, we did. We both, after high school, we both attended Purdue. And then shortly after that, we decided we wanted to get married. And, and that's where our marriage and my farm and career started after that. Okay, couldn't get into a good school, huh? Wow. Oh, oh. Purdue. I UK as well, so we just kind of keep it, keep it real. That's always fun when we have Purdue people on. You have to tease. You have to tease, don't you? Alright, we got to go to break. Today, we're talking with Scott and Terry Smith from a windfall, Indiana, triple S farm. So, we come back. Hey, I want to talk about growing maters, tomatoes, tomatoes, and 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. If you did catch the podcast, that's okay, because they're podcasts. They're always there like a warm hug. They are, they are. Go to sharkfarmer.com. Under the shark farmer podcast section, it's Emmy Armstrong. They have a dairy there, and it got smashed by that hurricane. Yes, and they talked about all the good that they're doing there. They've got friends at Fat Bottom Creamery, and they have been pausing the milk production a little bit, and better people. In fact, I think they're going 24 hours. I think they're doing like 12 hours of bottling water, 12 hours of doing the milk. That's got to be exhausting. Oh, it's just unheard of, and they don't have electricity, and they've had to bring in generators, and just, oh, they're well. So many people don't have wells, and so, yeah, it's been pretty awful, but she's been a positive, kind of a help around there. They've really banded together when FEMA wasn't there, and helped each other. Are they there yet? I don't know. It depends on what news you're watching. It depends on what news you're watching. Yeah, there's a lot of people up there in the Appalachian Mountains that need help. So they are really doing their part, getting diapers and food, and you name it. So it's a neat podcast to listen to. She has roots there and talks about how she grew up, so. Yeah, absolutely. Continue purse for those people now. I've even seen the news, someone in Florida, the Tampa one. I don't know. They downgraded it, right? But still, it's a lot of rain. All right, today we're in Windfall, Indiana. We're talking with Scott and Terry Smith. They are triple S farms. Met in high school, high school sweethearts, and so when did you start growing the tomatoes? At the very beginning of my career, we started growing tomatoes, and we raised some pickling cucumber, and also some peppers. But today we were all machine harvest processing in May. I started for myself, started in '75. So now when you guys have the whole planting process, tell me what that looks like when you're growing tomatoes, because I've never seen that done. Well, it's ran an art particular operation. We have, it takes 10 people on the setter, so we put them in on a carousel. They're speedling plants, and they come in on trays, and we plant them on a machine, like I said, it's a carousel fed. So we plant around 25 acres a day of plants, and we put that out over around 30 days. We spread that out over 30 days in order for harvest to be efficient, because we can plant a lot faster than we can harvest. And that's one of the reasons. So it takes about 30 days to get the crop in. Do you have problems finding labor? No, I don't. We deal with migrant labor, and have for, like say, my entire career. It's just the numbers have changed. We don't have the magnitude of people that we used to. So today we have about 20 people that come up seasonally and help us put the crop in and take the crop out. And so we just finished tomato harvest on the 8th here. So we had about a 57 day tomato harvest run. So we harvest about 300 ton a day. Is it a lot of red tape, the H2A stuff? Yes, it is. I do not use H2A, so I use documented workers, and they've been, and I have a pretty good return of labor. So I'd say 90% of people are a return. I guess I don't know what that is, the difference. What is a documented worker? Well, they're legal to work here. They are legal to work here. They're not there. Some are just regular citizens or some is just documented. They have credentials to work here. And so, but if not that, the majority of my people that come up here are from Texas and a few from South Florida. But majority of them are from Texas. I'd say probably 90% again from Texas. So they're just citizens just like you and I. So that's how that is. And we've always had Hispanic labor come here. And so it's just normal. We house these people here at the farm. They have real nice housing facilities here at the farm. And so return of labor is good. I bet it's good to have return labor too, just so everybody knows their job and can just jump right in and you don't have to spend your time training or, you know, having new people on the farm and going through all that. I bet it's nice to have them return. Absolutely. I'd say in probably in one round, in one hour, where everybody's acclimated again, is because we try to put the experienced people on the same job. And then we have somebody doesn't. And then we try to share that duty with somebody that is experienced because they do East person is responsible for a row. We plant twin rows. And so we have somebody there on their by their side to help them a little bit and trained and find out who can do what, you know, the first day is always challenging. But with return labor, it's less challenging. We'll say that. Mm hmm. That's got to be boring now, sitting there just dropping seedlings all day. They have a lot of camaraderie amongst themselves because when they get off the end there, we have fill up with water and they interact with each other. And then when they go home, they're together again. So these people, they come the same time period. They ask if other people are coming when they talk to me, they're just so and so so. So they actually look forward to it. So these people, they're professionals at what they do. They do their job well. And so I could not operate the type of farm that I do without them. I really depend on these people helping to get the crop out. But like I say, we did 57 days of harvest straight. And so it's pretty enduring, you know, so that's what what's entailed at that particular crop. Mm hmm. Is a harvest, is that mechanical or manual? It's mechanical. It's mechanical. Yeah, you probably pick around 25 ton every 30 minutes. Wow, that is an amazing amount of tomatoes. Now, is that sent directly? Do you ship it right to Red Gold then from your farm? Yeah, we ship it right directly from our farm to the factory and to the plant there. And there's, they have three different plants where we ship them right there and then their process almost immediately. So these aren't the like a tomato you go by in the grocery store. These are for what? Well, you can buy these in a grocery store. These are Roma tomatoes. So these are not fresh market tomatoes. These are Roma tomatoes. They're designed for processing. But the mechanical harvesting that doesn't hurt them? No, not really. They're, like I say, they can endure machine harvesting just fine. And of course, they get handled very delicately. So you almost have to see it, you almost have to see it, you know, hands on and to understand it. But it really does. It handles the fruit very, very gently. We have very little mechanical damage. I'd say we'd have more damage trying to pick these out by hand, but with foot rot, so to speak. That's amazing. We go under the ground just a little bit, kind of the roots and then it lifts the plant up and then it shakes off. Okay. Very, very cool. All right, we do got to go to break. Today we're talking with Scott and Terry Smith. We'll be back. [music] 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. [music] It's time for Windfall, Indiana's favorite radio segment. Where in the world is well? Well, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. I'm doing pretty good because I'm in Windfall, which is a town in Wildcat Township, Tipton County, Indiana. It is part of the Kokomo, Indiana metropolitan statistical area. Oh, that beach voice on. Windfall's population was 697 as of 2021. Okay. Windfall was founded by James B. Fauch in 1853. Fauch planted the land, or platted the land with the goal of securing a train station in order to earn businesses. From the lucrative lumber trade. He built the first sawmill in 1853. A Christian church was built just outside Windfall in 1854. The congregation moved to Windfall in 1866. Then a Methodist church was organized in 1857, with meetings taking place in a schoolhouse. The post office has been in operation since 1855. Windfall has a notable crime history, dating out from just after its incorporation. In 1865, Noble Gough, a man once described as respectable, but in later years had fallen into heavy dissipation and had made many enemies, unquote, was murdered with a hatchet while in bed. His wife was charged with the murder and served her time in prison. Henry Thomas was killed by a local doctor named Armstrong in 1864. The doctor killed Thomas out of, quote, jealousy, but claimed he was not guilty upon trial and then was acquitted. He got a whole soap opera going on today. A few years later, a man named Perry was killed in a local saloon over a game of cards. My gosh, it's an angry little town, isn't it? In 1867, a man named Gifford was killed by one James Stewart. The two men entered into a fight at Stewart's house, and Stewart shot him. He was acquitted for self-defense. Finally, the work of a suspected arson burned down a large brick drug store in the nearby home of Dr. McAllister in 1883. There's something in the water there. Well, in 1944 through 1945, Windfall was home to a World War II German prisoner war camp. The camp was located near the site of Windfall High School. On the northeast side of town, the site is now home to a mobile home community. At its peak, the camp housed 1,500 German prisoners and their prison officers, and they were put to work laboring on local farms. That's odd in Indiana. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's it. No notable people. There's like one governor or something. Okay. All right. Thank you, Will. Today, we're talking with Scott and Terry Smith from a Windfall, Indiana. Did you guys know all that? We knew about the prisoner camp. You didn't know about the multiple, multiple inverters in your town? You know, it doesn't have a little bit of check or pass, doesn't it? I guess so. How are you guys doing? You're not angry, are you? No, it felt like most of it kind of fell out in the 1800s. Thank goodness. Okay. Don't yell at me, Scott. I don't get it. We're way north of Windfall, so we're good. Scott and Terry, they farm triple S farms. We're talking about growing tomatoes for red gold. Are they like they're like the standard of tomatoes? It seems like they're everywhere. Well, Red Gold's family owned and family grown and one of the largest family tomato operations in the world. So they just make very good products. It's because they get very good products from us. So produce to the products right there. So it's fresh and it's the best, I guess. I would say that. Do you grow any other specialty crops? No, not today. We raised a pickling cucumbers for about 20 years and we shipped them all over the United States there. But it was very labor intensive and we went 100% mechanical harvesting now. So we just concentrate on the three crops now. Corn for ethanol and seed beans for BEX and processing tomatoes for red gold. That's the three crops. Which is actually where we met you guys. We met you at BEX and Atlanta, Indiana. It was nice to meet you that day. It seems likewise. So the corn harvest and the soybeans, I mean, how's crops looking out there? Well, the beans are great. We are probably about 60% down on beans and the crop is great. Corn, we haven't been enough to know, but I say corn is good. It may have greatness in it. And the tomatoes were, tomatoes were this average for us this year. We had a real tough July here. It was very wet and tomatoes don't like wet. Wet seeds and they had that going on for most of that month and so that dropped the yield down a little bit. But the quality was good. It was just a lack of a number of fruit that we normally have. But still I would still say it was good because it was average. It was our average crop. And so all in all, pretty good crops again. So you said it. Officially it's a fruit, correct? Absolutely. Okay. I mean, I grew up thinking it was a vegetable, but, you know, we get taught a lot of dumb stuff here. Yeah, it's a trick question. Is this just going to continue in the future with the tomatoes or any plans to change? Yeah, I mean, we're creatures of habit, all of us are. So we've always raised tomatoes here at this farm and we will continue. So we have family. Our farm is made up of a family, an extended family. And so we will continue for, you know, on and on here. We'll probably be raising tomatoes. I don't know exactly what it would be like for us not raising tomatoes because I always have. We interviewed a guy one time and they put a lot of the human sludge on their ground, which is all heat treated. So it kills everything. It kills everything except for tomato seeds. So they'll have like tomatoes growing in their corn crops because the seeds can't be burned out. Did you all know that? No. No. Yeah. And the guy who said it's always disturbing because his dad would eat the tomatoes and then he says, you know, if they remember where that seed came from, and he was, I don't know, something stick with you. That happens when you farm by Chicago, I guess. That didn't happen in windfall. No, just lots and lots of murders. You just get shot there, you know, and just move on. Hey, do you guys have social media at all? Yeah, we do. Working people find you. Oh, well, that'd be on Facebook. And that's about it. Terry is on my wife's on Instagram. And I guess that's about it. Triple S farms, because if they just go on Facebook and triple what? Triple S Smith farms. Okay, that's going to be a lot easier than going on Facebook and looking up Scott Smith. Well, Scott and Terry, it was a pleasure to meet you guys, pleasure to talk to you guys. It was really interesting and congratulations on making a success growing the tomatoes there. You got to think outside that box. But Scott and Terry, I don't want you to go anywhere because Sean Haney is coming up next. He thinks that avocados are better than tomatoes, and they're both vegetables. He's Canadian. That's everybody next time. ♪ Next year we go ♪