Bob Welker
speaker
66 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Bob Welker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I think.
Yeah, we got to the hotel and check in and she goes, yeah, welcome to H-E-M-M. What are we in for? But hey, no sweat. It's being here. There you go.
Now, we have a lot of connections, too, outside even Case IH. Just wanting to touch base that we've been meeting for the last four to five years. And it's always cool just to touch base with the Midwest and the people.
Okay. All right. My grandfather came from Oklahoma when they opened up Montana in the early 1900s for homesteading. 340 acres was what they were given. That was huge. Most of you guys are thinking about 160. Well, this was double. And so that encouraged my uncle and grandfather to go up and homestead just outside of Shelby, northern Montana, about 70 miles east of Galatia National Park.
And my uncle had enough for one year and left, and so my grandfather took care of that 320, and then his 320, and then in five years they own it. And so that was the first generation. He stuck it out. My dad and uncle farmed it, and then it passed on to me. I'm third generation, and I'm just managing the farm. It's growing. We're getting more acres, but I don't see that as acres.
I just see it as a heritage. We are a heritage farm in Montana over 100 years old. And I just see is that this fifth generation that's on the farm right now is going to be using that land. So I'm just a caretaker. It's a privilege to be able to see that I have this started in another generation and they can experience the joys that we are experiencing.
You said 18, 1,800? Well, our average is around 30. It's supposed to be 30 for spring wheat, 37 for winter wheat. But the last few years have been brutal. And it hasn't just been drought. It's also been hail. So it's just one of the troubles that farming face. We look for it every year for a crop. Again, we look forward to the next year.
And another thing is that we didn't put all this together. When you look back and say, well, we need to do this, this, this, this to grow a channel. It was just things that we needed to do on our farm. And then things that were out of our control, like Farm Simulator game. You know, that's a big worldwide farming game. And of course, they wanted big buds on that.
And they came to us and said, they asked for a farm that runs big buds. And so they mapped our farm, part of our farm, put it on there. And that, of course, blew up. And so it was just those kind of things, some of the creative builds that we did. And we didn't do it necessarily, but it just, you know.
So we look back, and it was God that was putting certain things that finally culminated into us being here interviewed by you guys. Absolutely. Which is a privilege.
Well, in the very beginning, you know, we start and we do start doing some repair work or whatever. And he's like, stop, stop, stop. The camera didn't quite work. And Scott and I would be kind of, you know, well, we want to get this done. You know, and so we'd have to do a stop and then redo it like this and then start again and do it like that.
But it wasn't very long before, you know, the viewers start popping up and you're going, whoa. I mean, you know, we don't find this, we just normal. And honestly, we say what we're doing and have done, many of you guys do out there in the Midwest all the time. It's just that the platform has been given to us. And so we, it wasn't very long before we said, you know,
God has given us a platform, and if we can encourage others and showcase the family farm and what we do, we are representing also all of you out there who are spending just as much time or more energy and resources to produce the food for our country. And so we're very privileged to be in this position.
Yeah, I would say, you know, the 160 block, because what the difference is, is that a lot of our country is intersected with county roads a mile apart. And so you're either, like most of them are going to be 320, you know, half of the section, and because it, and there's different,
owners lands kind of scattered around so you just can't block out one you know so some is rented some of your own you whatever and so it's just kind of morphed we'll have our longest strip is is two and a half miles long man two and a half miles yeah yeah and you better hope you don't pull in the wrong driveway with the truck yes it happens yes that's why they beep you when you get to the headlands yeah the alarm goes off tells you to grab the steering wheel again it does
But what that does add is then when you're filling out FAA maps or federal crop maps, there's 135 fields. So you end up, you know, doing a little bit of paperwork.
That area was noted for farming half the land and the other half would lie fallow because they had no other way to control weeds and moisture. You always conserve enough moisture so there will be enough to grow that next crop. So summer fallow is what we call it came into effect. And that was plowed. Well, we were actually... not knowing they had no other alternative is mine the soil.
Because you were mining the organic matter in there because you couldn't help but plow it. Anytime you introduce oxygen into the soil, it's going to continue to break down. Well, the land was getting just harder to farm, cloddy. It just wasn't accepting water as well. So in 1997, I made the decision, and it was 100% no-till.
You had to adjust the equipment to start tilling in that kind of a ground, but the equipment had come about then. And so since 1997, we have done very little tillage. And so we want to manage the residues out there, and actually our farmland has really improved since that.
Yeah, we have to manage our inputs via our resources. Our resource is water. Yep. And so we look at our yield and whatever, and we can put enough N down with the seed. We'll hit those years when everything goes well and you should go out there and top dress for that. But we consider our farming very simpler than the West.
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