Pete Ferrell
speaker
120 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Pete Ferrell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Good morning. I'm Pete Farrell. I live south of Beaumont, Kansas in the Flint Hills. I'm a fourth generation rancher. I'm fortunate to have a wind farm here. We've been discussing pros and cons of the development of wind farms on agricultural properties.
I'm warm and vertical, Tanner. That's always a good way to start the day. Yeah.
Ferrell. F-E-R-R-E-L-L.
We live 50 miles east of Wichita in the Flint Hills of Kansas, which is renowned as being the tall grass prairie, the last stand of the great tall grass prairie. Used to extend up into your area, you know, decades ago. But anyway, the only reason this place wasn't plowed is it's too rocky. Right.
That's correct. I managed the ranch up until about – Well, it's been a phase-out process beginning in 2017. I started a management company 20 years ago that has leasing rights to this ranch. We have a five-year evergreen lease with the management company. And the management company owns everything you'd sell at a farm sale except the farm.
So all the livestock, all the equipment, consumables, some cash. And this young man who's quite amazing, in my opinion, John Wagner, took an interest in this. And so he is now buying that management company. And so he would be the first non-family member to manage the ranch since its inception in 1888 by Wagner.
My great-grandfather founded the place, and I'm the fourth generation of the family to run it. But now John Wagner is running it through this arrangement, and it's so far working out quite well.
That's correct. My great grandfather, he was he was orphaned during the Civil War and was one of those kind of rags to riches story stories. He learned Morse code. He was the first telegraph operator in Council Grove. He was the first telegraph operator in Wichita, Kansas. He was kind of a founding father over there.
But he had an amazing story where he just kind of figured out, you know, he figured out how to fix watches. He was selling apples. He was a merchant. And eventually he put his holdings into this ranch. He kind of seemed to consolidate everything he had into this place where I now live. My wife and I live in the house that he built 100 years ago. So we have... We have deep roots here, Tanner.
And to say we love this place is an understatement. We care for it very deeply.
Well, I had a front row seat on a failed succession plan. The ranch was partitioned in 1968. I don't think my dad expected me to come home because the place had been diminished in size to the point that it was going to be hard to make a living here. But I fooled him. I came back and pitched in. And quite frankly, Tanner, those were some of the most –
let's say carefree days of my life for five years, I got to live as a, as a cowboy with my, uh, my college roommate was here and we had, you know, beer and girlfriends and, uh, not a lot of money, but we weren't worried about it. But somewhere in there, my dad says to me, Hey, you want to buy it back? And, um,
without giving it any thought, and you should think about that, I said, yeah, sure, let's buy it back. And so then he went and died on me right when my first payment was due. And so I had to grow up. Overnight, I had to transition from being a carefree cowboy to a ranch manager. On the day he died, I'd never written a ranch check. And so I had a lot to learn about economics and finance.
And I crisis managed for a long time. I was literally in the wilderness. And I'm sure that many of your listeners will probably relate to this. It's like, all of a sudden, you're the one that's got a right to check. You've got to figure this out. So anyway, it was... It was an interesting education, if you will. And I have to always mention the many, many people that helped me, extension, bankers.
And I eventually – I know that the name of your program is Farm for Profit. The ranching for profit school taught by Stan Parsons was a watershed for me. And all of a sudden the light bulbs came on and I actually realized, you know, maybe I can do this, you know, but it was it was a struggle. I just you know, I it was it was not a struggle. not a good time for me.
And if you know the eighties, there was a, there was a big dairy buyout thing that happened under the, anyway, I just remember waking up and noticing that my balance sheet was half of what it used to be. And it was like, huh, that's what am I going to, how do I explain that?
You do. You know, farmers and ranchers, you know, there's no stress like the financial stress. But I was so grateful to finally kind of learn the rules, if you will, of how to negotiate debt and loan repayments and cash flow and balance sheets. And Stan taught me that through his school. Like I said, I will be forever grateful that I happened into that field. that place in my, in that time.
That was in 87. I began that. And that's when we began what are called holistic practices. We do time controlled raising. The other figure in this is that there's a fellow by the name of Alan Savory that was Stan's partner for years. And they taught much the same curriculum. So it was a, it was a welcome insight for me.
Well, yes. In fact, I met John Wagner as part of that program. And I think that's what developed the trust between us because he understood those very same concepts extremely well. And so that was kind of integral to me to handing the operation off to him. And to kind of answer your question, he took what I started and has developed it to the next level. Um, he's tech savvy.
He, you know, he's got all these cool apps on his phone that, you know, I was doing it longhand. Well, now he's doing it digital and, uh, you know, he's a master stockman. Um, he, he's, he's taken it to the, a much more modern level, if you will, Tanner of understanding. And he's, he's using many of the same principles that, that I employed, um,
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