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
But his exercise of those is much better than I was able to employ, I would say.
I'm 72.
You know, Tanner, I think... You know, it's hard to let go. But at the same time, it's been exhilarating to see. You know, one of the things Stan did was he would bring information from the business world. Do you know, in most successful business, leadership turns over every seven to ten years. And we regard our tenure in ranching as lifetime. But
In all honesty, this ranch business, had I turned it over 10 years earlier, would be further down the road. I still have ownership of the ranch. I still have a financial benefit. Now, I wasn't ready to step aside at 50, but I woke up literally when I was 60, and the hand of time slapped me in the face and
And I knew, Tanner, that I wasn't going to the next level, that I knew I wasn't the guy that could get that done. And what I cared most about was the welfare of this ranch. And I just decided, you know, if I really want to perpetuate this, I got to let go. I got to find, I wanted to find somebody that was better than me. And I did. I did. I found somebody that could carry it on to the next level.
Well – So dad and I bought or initiated the purchase in 76 of the first third that had been partitioned. And then lo and behold, in the late 90s, the second third became available to me. And I'd almost paid the first portion down. It was like, but then the other piece became available. And it was like, and that happened.
So when it came up, I didn't hesitate. I said yes. And I expanded my ranching. I had already expanded the ranching operation. So instead of running the core 7,000, I was leasing a lot of additional land to create the cash flow to make my payments. But Tanner, my life was... Well, I know your listeners. In fact, you know, Connor is out there today.
He's having to put in – you know, I was working unsustainable hours. I was running 3,000 cows a year. I had a crew. The life wasn't very pleasant for me because – I just was so, you know, driven to make my payments and I was doing it. Well, imagine what, you know, and Stan always said, think 10 times bigger. Think about all of your options. And so this is the segue into in 1970.
I think it was 94, Tanner. A couple of guys come waltzing across the lawn. I thought they were feed salesmen. I was getting ready to run them off. And it turns out one of them was a retired – he had voluntarily retired from – he was an electrical engineer from Kansas State. And he had been studying the wind in Kansas for over 10 years at that point in time.
He was developing wind maps that nobody else had. Nobody else was thinking about. And he knew more about the Farrell Ranch wind than I did. And he proposed this idea. And my first reaction was a pretty hard no. You know, it's like, no, that's just too far out there for me to understand. But he persisted. And it took me over a year. I did my homework and they flew me to California.
That was the only place in the United States at the time that had wind farms on agricultural property. And I got to talk to ranchers in what they were east of San Francisco in the Altamont Pass. And they were pretty nonchalant about it. In fact, one of them said, what turbines? You know, we're still watching our grass and cattle here like we always have. There was like.
And that was kind of, well, it was a breakthrough. It's like, here's a guy just like me that has the benefit of getting a check, an extra check for something that's already there. And he's saying, there is no problem running our cattle and grass here as we always have. And so I came home. I did some more homework. And I signed a 35 year agreement. In 95, I signed a 35 year agreement.
In 98, they walked away. And I went, whoa, wait a minute. I thought this was a pretty good idea. And Dr. Johnson then was kind of out of a job. Fortunately, We retained the data that had been collected, and we retained the anemometers. Nobody's going to build a wind farm without knowing exactly what the resource is. So we had a three-year data stream, and we just kept collecting data.
And I went shopping for another developer, and I had five or six on my desk, and then – sometime in 2001, the first wind farm was built in Western Kansas at Spearville. And I decided I'm going to go tour this thing. And I'm literally on a school bus with a bunch of people that are, and here's this green horn behind me.
He's all dressed in a suit and, uh, say, well, I've got this ranch in Eastern Kansas and I've got, I got a five year data, six year data collection. And he perks up. He goes, well, I'm a wind farm developer. Uh, And I eventually do business with this guy. He, he is now an extremely successful. In fact, this was his, his flagship thing.
I had, I had five operas on my desk from corporations, but I decided to do business with Sandy Reiske because he had real, he was a person. He wasn't a corporation. And, uh, uh, Anyway, it's a great story. Four years later, the wind farm was built on this ranch due to his work. And boy, Tanner, it's been it's been so well going back to this succession issue.
It's been very helpful for me to have this other form of income to support me. Because then I don't need the ranch income as much. I still collect rent. But it's allowed me a lot of financial freedom. It's just the truth of the matter.
Yeah, it was completed in the fall of 2005. So what is that, 18, 19 years it's been going? Yeah.
Uh, that was a 30 year agreement. So that will expire in 35.
Oh yeah. Yeah. We're still, we're 20, 19 years into that 30 year agreement. And that's what, you know, I mean, we get, no, these, these machines are really expensive. Um, This was a $190 million project they put on the feral ranch, and they need time to recover that investment. That was explained to me. Why do I have to commit so much time?
Showing 21–40 of 120 · page 2 of 6
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