RUSS MORMAN: 6:57 Yep. I’m very fortunate with, with my job, not to have to do the same thing over and  over and over again. In the Midwest right now, there’s a big farm show called farm progress show, right? Is actually this week I’m actually in show clothes because we have spent last week building a booth, and now we’re working the trade show this week, but it’s always something different. And, and I know, farming is the same way. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask more technology questions. So, I know you’re gonna get a, a yield monitor, here this fall for harvest. I know you’ve used the steering system to plant with that was the first bit of technology you guys had on the farm at all? Was the 1200 in the, in the steer command.

TIM: It was.

RUSS MORMAN: So how else is it? How has it changed the operation? I mean, it’s easy, you know, with steering system at the end of the day, your shoulders are a little less tight and means this is a means, this is a podcast. Everybody can see me rubbing my shoulder. I’m a very visual person.

TIM: I think. I think I’ve gained about five pounds. Cause I can sit there and need snacks the whole time.

RUSS MORMAN: okay. Yep. That, and I’m gonna interrupt you because I actually have one of my last notes to ask you the most important thing toask you growing up with with three daughters, have you figured out a way to keep the M and M’s in the trail mix yet?

TIM: I just figured out the other day, I got two bags, M and Ms. And I poured it all in there. So, there was more M and Ms than trail mix.

CLAUDIA: That was the best trail mix I’ve ever had.

RUSS MORMAN: oh my goodness. All right.

CLAUDIA: Something else that I kind of noticed too is, I mean, you’ve been working later and you know, if we have a storm coming, he never used to like to work at night. You can’t see where you’re going. But now if you’d have hit a button yeah. You know?

TIM: Yeah. I was thinking that one night, the ground was all dry and I, I couldn’t tell where I’d been and I had the GPS on I’m like, I don’t even know how I would’ve done this before. Like there’s no way I would’ve gotten it, you know, without skips.

RUSS MORMAN: Yep. And that’s, that’s, there’s a big part of it is the efficiencies of it. And

TIM: yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: You know, now when you guys get your yield monitor, you’re gonna know, I know you talked about. Doing some cutbacks on fertilizer and stuff. Was that, was that this spring or was that with winter wheat? I don’t even remember now which it was, but

TIM: yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: You know, the yield, monitor’s gonna give you that report card at the end of the year. So, you’re gonna know, Hey, did this work, did it not work? You know? So that’s, that’s kind of fun.

TIM: Just. This is a bad year for a yield monitor we had drop and then we had that drought. So, I don’t know if I wanna know what it’s gonna yield.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. And, and there’s the flip side to it.

but I it’s, it actually looks better than I thought it would right now. So good. The barley crop, you just got that out here. That, that come out pretty good. Didn’t it?

TIM: Beautiful, yeah. I couldn’t believe. I’ve I’ve never grown it before and Evelyn wanted to get married in it, so I planted some and. It was amazing. I’m gonna grow some more. Okay. All right.

RUSS MORMAN: Well.

CLAUDIA: New barley, a farmer.

TIM: Yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: Well, I had written down cuz you guys, do you guys do wheat and soybeans, hay, corn, and you obviously have the pumpkin farm and the dairy farm as well.

I had to make an extra note cause I’m like, oh, now, now there’s barley as well. So, I gotta talk about that. So, yeah

CLAUDIA:  That’s funny.

RUSS MORMAN: So how did, roll back a year or so here? How did you guys first hear about Ag Leader? I mean, how did. You know, there, there are, there are a couple different options out there.

And how did you hear about Ag Leader?

CLAUDIA: So, I was in Colorado probably two years ago and my boyfriend does a lot of you know, he, he does drag lining and he is Ag Leader. And I think we entered some kind of contest might have been, I don’t know, I don’t know what he did, but anyway, I kind of was like, oh my gosh, what’s that?

That’s the coolest thing. And then, you know, he got a couple hoodies and he actually gave me one. So, then I had that and then I was kind of more on my radar there and I’ve always wanted to, you know, improve our farm with more technology because so often we just see all these farms staying stationary with what everyone’s using and not keeping up with the times so that was the first time that I heard of it. And then we just have loved it ever since.

RUSS MORMAN: Excellent. Excellent. This podcast would be a lot shorter if you told me this stuff is garbage. So

so, alright, so you guys are just getting started. You’ve just gone through, you know, a year’s worth of learning curve with,  with the first precision products on your farm. There’s gonna be folks that hear this, that probably are where you were at a year ago. If you were to give somebody some advice, looking to get into precision agriculture, what, what advice would you give them?

TIM: I would just say, start out slow and get, get it in one tractor. You’re gonna fall in love with it real fast.

RUSS MORMAN: Yep. Yeah.

CLAUDIA: And I also think you don’t have to know like everything about it at first, like you were kind of wanting to do like everything that first season and getting frustrated over it, but once you just kind of learn the basics and then maybe implement more things with it, I think that’s probably a good idea.

TIM: It’s really easy to operate actually. And when you scroll through it, it’s, it’s pretty simple to figure out.

RUSS MORMAN: Cool. All right. So next logical question would be, like I said you’ve got the steering system on the plant and tractor. You’re gonna have yield monitor, and I think you you’re getting a, are you in a steering system for the, for the auger wagon tractor?

CLAUDIA: CartAce.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. Yes. Ma’am yep. You got it.

TIM: Got it

CLAUDIA: tomorrow.

RUSS MORMAN: 12:06 Yep. You’re gonna love that. I cannot wait to see videos on that. What do you wanna do next in precision ag? What, what type of equipment would you like to get to do next?

TIM: I’m kinda interested in like the variable rate, like fertilizer and all that. Like, I’d like, I don’t know. I, I, I think there’s lots of room for improvement, especially on our farm. Oh yeah. We use a lot of manure and from the dairy and I. We do a lot of soil sample. And so, I, I think we could probably save a lot of money in that area.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. I mean, I get asked a lot of questions about, you know, how, how should I do the variable rate thing?

I mean, you could ask 15 people from 15 different areas and you’re gonna get 15 different answers that might all be right. So, you know, you can do soil samples, you can do try whatever. There’s, there’s a whole bunch of different ways to, to skin that cat, I guess. So. Oh yeah.

I just brought up the tile and things, something unrelated because I was giggling like, hell about it. Did you ever pick up water witching in Claudia? Did you ever get that to work?

CLAUDIA: I think it’s a scam, but

RUSS MORMAN: I, no, it’s, it’s not, I’ve got an uncle. I have watched him do it. Two years ago, I had a waterline that broke going out to my pasture and I knew about where it was at. He tells me that there is something in your blood that, that it works, or it doesn’t, I, I couldn’t get it to work. I gave up.

CLAUDIA: Really.

TIM: You gotta believe.

CLAUDIA: I think it, I can get it to work, but I don’t think it does it in the right spot at all.

RUSS MORMAN: well, that, that doesn’t sound like it’s working at all.

CLAUDIA: I’ve been digging for too many extra hours.

TIM: It looks like a wood. Chuck is.

CLAUDIA: Yeah. Yeah.

TIM: And then she finally finds it, see it works.

CLAUDIA: And then I break it.

RUSS MORMAN: I’ve tried to do that so many times and it just doesn’t work for me. They just kind of go here and there and it’s just, nah. So as it relates to, to steering Claudia, I remember you had, you had a little talk about, if you’re not moving, you know, you’re gonna get further behind, but you had had a little talk about steering and technology versus autonomy and how farming is a hands. Hands on thing and you know, autonomy’s come and whether, you know, I like I’m,I, I do like being out in the field when you’re, when you’re in the cab of the tractor, you got the best office view on the planet but I think economies of scale and that sort of thing, you know, autonomy’s gonna become a thing, but what are your guys’ thoughts on, on that?

CLAUDIA: Yeah, so I, I did have like a little segment with that and I think autonomy is good to some extent. I mean, we have cash robots, milking robots.

RUSS MORMAN: that’s true.

CLAUDIA: Now there’s, you know, automated tractors that you can just set out in the fields. . Yeah, but I think that, you know, there’s so many jobs now that kind of are being replaced by autonomy, even in, you know, factories and whatever.

So I think it’s good to some extent, but I also, it kind of scares me a little bit.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah, I, uh, you’re maybe not old enough to remember the Terminator movies, you know, no, and it’s, it’s everywhere though. It’s even, even in the local Walmart, you’ve got the majority of the check outlines are, are automated and there’s still enough old school in me that if I’ve got some bananas and stuff, I just want somebody to just take care of it for me.

RUSS MORMAN: 15:10 And so, I like, I, I do like that. Oh, did you ever get your new truck?

CLAUDIA: It’s actually being born right now. it’s birth week. So, it’s supposed to be getting built this week and then coming in at the end of September, but you never know.

RUSS MORMAN: Okay. All right. The other question I was gonna ask you relation to your old truck.

I, every once in a while, I catch the dash, you have got more, I don’t know, is it stickers or decals but where did you come up with the idea of putting all the stickers on your dash?

CLAUDIA: Oh, I’ve just always done it. Like when I was younger, I had ’em all over my room. Like from floor ceiling was all stickers and I’ve just always collected them. So, then when I had, you know, a new, suspect, which is my truck. I put them everywhere in there. There’s actually less than there used to be. And then I just got a new windshield a couple days ago and I had ’em all over my windshield so I was like, oh, so sad that I’m gonna have to get rid of ’em.

But then I went out and he restuck all of my stickers back on the new windshield. I didn’t ask him to do it or anything. That was so funny.

TIM: That was pretty good.

RUSS MORMAN: I just saw all those decals in there and, and I’m like, you know, that’s, that’s pretty cool. you know, you know, somebody that can probably make that happen.

 I can probably make that happen. So

TIM: can you get GPS on that new pickup?

CLAUDIA: Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea.

RUSS MORMAN: never get lost at all. Never get lost at all.

CLAUDIA: We don’t have straight roads in New York.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh man. Yeah, really? Yeah. One of your latest videos drop. I finally got to see the apple cannon. I was, I, that was, that was pretty cool.

Was that, was it a, was that an apple or potato you shot? First. Yeah.

TIM: Oh, we shot a potato.

CLAUDIA: We’ve been shooting everything out of that.

TIM: Yeah. Potatoes.

CLAUDIA: It goes, how far does it go?

It’ll probably go away. Probably what a thousand feet, if you really turn it up.

RUSS MORMAN: Man. Yeah. I, I saw that, that I think it was a potato come out.

I’m like, holy moly. That went a long ways.

CLAUDIA: Probably something we don’t need to have.

TIM: yeah. We’re pretty excited about it. Just gotta create apples today. So, we’re, getting everything set up.

RUSS MORMAN: I gotcha. I gotcha. Oh, there was one question for sure. I was gonna ask Evelyn, but you guys will be able to answer it.

So, she was giving a tour of your guys’ a hundred year old milking parlor barn.

CLAUDIA: Mm-hmm.

RUSS MORMAN: I’m a car guy and she goes, oh, there’s just this old car under this purple blanket. What’s the car under the purple blanket.

CLAUDIA: I think it was the purple car.

TIM: Yeah, it’s a little kit car.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh, okay.

TIM: I can’t think of the name of it though. just has a little Volkswagen engine in the back.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh, like a little dune buggy type of deal or something.

TIM: Yeah, pretty much. Okay. The guy built it, like, from scratch and,

CLAUDIA: oh, I didn’t know that.

TIM: Yeah,

RUSS MORMAN: that’s cool.

TIM: We had it running one time and we drove around on the block couple times and then we parked it. and there she sits.

RUSS MORMAN: Well, there sits there. She sits. All right. Well, very good.

CLAUDIA: No. We don’t have many pictures of that either.

TIM: I know we gotta get some.

CLAUDIA: Gotta get him back out, back on the road.

RUSS MORMAN: 17:54 Well. Before it gets too cold to drive it. Right. Tell me, a little bit about the pumpkin farm. How did that get started and what all is involved in that? Seems there’s a whole bunch of work that goes into that.

TIM: Oh boy.

CLAUDIA: yeah. Start on the first day, Dad.

TIM: We started in 1986 and I, my dad let me grow some pumpkins and come to find out they all, they were full of weeds. They were terrible. and nobody would buy ’em and I had $5 a piece on him. He got so mad.

He said, sell ’em all for a dollar. So, I put a dollar on it and everyone sold and I had like, as a little kid, I had pockets full of dollar bills, and I was so excited. So next year it was two acres and then it was three. And then it just took off from there.

CLAUDIA: Yeah. So now we have a bakery, we have a brewery. We have like, squash, Gord, Indian corn, all the

TIM: hay mazes, corn mazes, apple.

RUSS MORMAN: Good grief.

CLAUDIA: Yep.

Animal barn it’s kind of become into more of an agritourism kind of thing. And it started 36 season.

RUSS MORMAN: Wow. Oh, party foul. oh, alright. You  caught me at brewery. I know that you guys feed all of your corn, right?

You keep that on the dairy.

TIM: We feed about half

RUSS MORMAN: feed about half. And then do you sell all the other, you know, the wheat

TIM: yeah, the wheat and the swiping we sell and then, the hay and all the corn. Oh, we feed all the hay.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So now the, I hear the word brewery. Are you gonna keep some of the barley for that?

TIM: Oh, yeah. That’s we already, made a bunch of it this year, beer out of it. So it’s actually come out really good.

RUSS MORMAN: So, what is, I, I didn’t know this, so I guess I was unprepared. What is the name of the, of the brewery?

CLAUDIA: It’s Tim’s brew barn.

RUSS MORMAN: Nice. Okay. I like it.

CLAUDIA: We grow hops and then barley and make beer out of it.

TIM: Yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. You had, you had me at beer.

TIM: It’s a lot of fun. It’s it’s a, it’s a lot of fun making it.

RUSS MORMAN: That would be, that would be pretty cool.

RUSS MORMAN: 19:53 So do you get a handle for the, for the demographics of, of your audiences? Are they younger folks, older folks, a mix of, everybody. I mean some of the platforms themselves attract a different audience, like Facebook attracts a different audience than TikTok does.

Yeah. So, you know, do you know?

CLAUDIA: Yep. So, like you said, it varies on each platform. TikTok is gonna be like people 25 years old and younger. Instagram is like the thirties and then from there it goes, Facebook is like, Forties to fifties. And then YouTube is usually like the sixties plus.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh no.

TIM: I love YouTube.

CLAUDIA: Yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: oh, I have dated myself. What

CLAUDIA: the thing is, is. We’ve always said that with YouTube. I mean, personally, I could never sit down and watch a video over 10 minutes now. like, I have the shortest attention span. It’s probably because of TikTok every video is 15 seconds. So like my brain is just always going. but I mean, same with like, I can never read a newspaper and older people can read a  newspaper, so that will go on YouTube. That’s our logic behind it.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh. But half of your videos are over 15 minutes long. Aren’t they on YouTube?

CLAUDIA: Yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: So, you can make a video over 20 minutes long. You just don’t wanna sit and watch it.

CLAUDIA: No, I usually don’t even watch it back after I edit it.

RUSS MORMAN: So how much time. do you spend editing your videos? Like if you record 30 minutes of video, do you end up keeping half of it? How long does it take to, to get that? So, you post it?

CLAUDIA: So, I’m really not even that good at with technology. That’s a terrible job for me to have to be in right now is a job in technology. But so if I don’t have any computer problems, which I almost always do. it’s I usually keep probably like 25 minutes out of that. And then I’ll just make it into two videos.

RUSS MORMAN: I gotcha. I gotcha. All right.

CLAUDIA: Because in the beginning, I mean, we used to have, we used to not talk as well as we do now on our videos.

So, we’d have to cut out all this extra time, but now I kind of, we kind of know what to say. On our videos without having a lot of dead space anymore.

RUSS MORMAN: 22:09 So, going forward, say in the next five or 10 or whatever years, even next year, where do the New York farm girls want to be from a year from now, or maybe even five years from now?

I mean, you guys, like I said, you’re amazing agricultural advocates and, and I can’t say enough about that. You guys seem like you just are having a ball. Where do you guys want to be in, in the short term and long term.

TIM: These guys are reaching for the moon.

CLAUDIA: Yeah, we, I mean, we always wanna keep the same goal of, you know, educating consumers, but it’s, we kind of have to grow with the times with the platforms and how people react to different, you know, topics and everything. We’ll probably continue with all that we’re doing now and then add too much to our plate, like usual. Yeah. We, we have a couple other business ideas in mind kind of related to NY farm girls that I can’t say yet.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh, oh. I thought I was gonna get a scoop.

CLAUDIA: No, not yet. but that’s, I mean, we kind of just always are, like I said, growing with what gets thrown at us. Yeah. If it’s gonna be, you know, what platform we’re moving to next or what we need to tackle, we’re, kind of trying to get more into like farm policy and, you know, be a little more educated on that. Yeah. And help educate other people. I think that’s a lot, of misinformation with farm policy and what gets approved and what doesn’t. And I think that’s something that we wanna move toward.

RUSS MORMAN: that’s, that’s pretty darn well thought out. So Tim, I gotta ask, your 13 year old daughter comes to you and says, Hey, I wanna start recording stuff and putting it on social media. What did you think about all that? And what are your thoughts now versus if 2022, Tim could have talked to, you know, five years ago or whatever, what would you say? I mean, it’s kind of a big deal.

TIM: Yeah. When they first started, I was like, yeah, it’s probably not gonna go really far, you know? And they kept at it and, they just it’s amazing. Like they, like, there was no, not much good. Mm-hmm talk about farmers or anything on the internet. Yeah.

CLAUDIA: I think, our first follower video, he was really nervous about because we were kind of like going against animal right activists.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh yeah.

CLAUDIA: And they had a lot of bad threats coming at us through our farm, through our family. And he was about to shut it all down and we’re like, no. Okay, well fix it. We’re gonna stop, you know, focusing on talking to vegans and an rights activists and we’re switch our direction before you make us.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. I suppose you want to be educational, but not put yourself in danger.

TIM: Right. Smart about it. Yeah. But they’re good at it. They’re really good at, figuring that out, how to handle it, but it’s amazing now what it, it is turned into because it’s, I get down there every day and there’s something on there it’s just positive. Yeah. It’s truthful. You know, it makes it feel good to watch it.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah. Like I said, I think you guys are just absolutely killing it out there and I hope you keep doing it. I really do. And I enjoy, hearing all you guys’ prospects on stuff and. It’s it’s quite educational and Hey, it’s a bonus that you’re using. You’re using ag leader equipment and you’re gonna be putting more of it on there. So I appreciate that. I, I like right. Maybe I can use some of that to, to buy some beer.

TIM: Yeah

CLAUDIA: we’ll have to send you some

RUSS MORMAN: Alright. Well, I haven’t been out to out your guys’ neck of the woods in, in a couple of years, so. I’m hoping to hoping to change that. I’ve been lucky enough in the time I’ve been at ag leader to, to spend some time in, in New York. I do appreciate it’s an absolutely beautiful state.

TIM: In the, in the summer.

RUSS MORMAN: Yes.

CLAUDIA: Yeah. Not in the winter.

RUSS MORMAN: Fair enough.

But you know, it’s, also horrible here in January and February and cold and stuff. I, my, my first experience in New York was actually, visiting a grower that, that had an apple farm and the smell at harvest time. I was nearly drooling, but I’m like, well, you can’t go out and just grab an apple and eat it. That’d be no different than somebody coming here taking a couple bushels of corn and walking away with it. So I was like, no, no, no, can’t do that.

CLAUDIA: That’s that funny.

RUSS MORMAN: Oh, so anyway, that, that was, that was really all I really wanted to add.

TIM: 26:16 On the side note, all the local farmers around us, they can’t figure out why I have straight rows this year.

RUSS MORMAN: There you go. There you go. Yeah.

CLAUDIA: He wanted to keep it a big secret. He was like, I don’t want anyone to know that we have even. My uncle he’s like, we’re not telling anyone we have, we’re gonna go out in the field and it’s gonna look so good.

RUSS MORMAN: well, I’m glad it looks good. And now hopefully you’re comfortable enough with it that if somebody asked you, you can go. Yeah. That’s that’s ag leader, steering equipment.

TIM: Oh, I, I talked about it all the time.RUSS MORMAN: Cool, cool. Alright, you guys get tons of comments on your video. I’m not gonna lie until you I’ve made it all the way down through them. When you were planting, what were some of the more interesting comments you got on the, on the ag leader side for steering when you guys were planting, last fall in the spring?

CLAUDIA: Yeah, there were, I mean kind of surprised. He was figuring it out. Yeah. Everyone thought it was kind of funny. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of something that’s been around for a while, but it’s such a new world to us. Yeah. So, it was kind of, you know, not shocking but different for people to see. They liked seeing us try to figure it out while they’ve been running it for a few years and, you know, they, they were wishing they could relive their first-time using GPS

RUSS MORMAN: You guys are new to it.

Is it still young as far as in the infancy of adoption in your guys’ area? Or are there a majority of growers that are using some sort of precision ag, whether it be steering or whatever?

TIM: I would say at least 50% probably have it.

RUSS MORMAN: Okay.

CLAUDIA: Yeah. Definitely.

One thing I noticed, like when you’re planting with it, you can. Keep a better eye on the planner.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah.

TIM: And all the, everything that’s going on with that to make sure everything’s working. You, you know, you can just focus on that more.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s again, it’s, it’s a whole bunch of things. One you’re eliminating your skips and overlaps two, you can go longer because you’re not

tired and stressed out having to keep an eye on things and you can monitor all the other things that are going on. You just gotta keep from falling asleep. Otherwise, you’ll end up on, on one of those farm talk pages with tractor in the ditch.

CLAUDIA: Oh man.

TIM: Deeper for the ends.

CLAUDIA: Yeah.

RUSS MORMAN: So, we were talking about the trail mix and whatnot. You did make mention, you were gonna try to find something else to do while you weren’t steering aside from eating trail mix. Have you picking up any other shows online or what are you doing while you’re in the cab?

CLAUDIA: He likes to knit.

TIM: Yeah, right. I’ll start watching YouTube and I’m like, I’ll get into it so much. I’ll all of sudden I’ll be at the end of the field. I’ll be like, oh my God.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta be careful with that.

CLAUDIA: Our fields are a little shorter here in New York than other places. So mm-hmm, our passes aren’t as long, but I mean, you text me a lot more. He doesn’t not answer my text anymore. I  used to go all day without getting an answer

RUSS MORMAN: that’s awesome. Yeah.

yeah, I’m certain that there are probably lots of folks that are using steering systems that are watching your guys’ videos of using steering systems. It’s kind of crazy.

Well, that is, that is really all I had today. I know how busy you are and I super appreciate you spend a little bit of time with me and talking a little bit of agriculture, a little bit of ag leader, a little bit of podcasting, all the social media stuff that you guys do.

 Go ahead and let’s get a pitch where for all the different places where they can see you guys.

CLAUDIA: awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us today. We love being here.

TIM: Yeah. Thank you.

CLAUDIA: Our tag is NY farm girls on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok.

RUSS MORMAN: Beautiful. Beautiful.

CLAUDIA: And we also have our online store www.nyfarmgirls.com

RUSS MORMAN: don’t you guys also do a clothing deal as well.

CLAUDIA: Yep. We have two different clothing lines on there.

RUSS MORMAN: Man. I’m gonna have to step up my game of being busy, cuz y’all got me beat. So, Tim.  Parting words, any bits of wisdom for the audience,

TIM: I’m just excited for the future. I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next.

RUSS MORMAN: Yeah, you, you and me, both.

TIM: It’s going to and be awesome.

RUSS MORMAN: Both. Apparently, us older guys are gonna watch it on YouTube.