Farmer goes outside the family for next generation of producers

[Dufault]  “You can't farm forever. Although when I did say I was retiring, people were saying, well, geez, farmers never retire. Well, this one's going to retire. yeah. It just, you know, none of the kids were going to come back to farm. And, so I keep going, I farm with my older brother, and he's ten years older than I am. So, it's just getting to be more work for both of us. and then, like I say, the last three seasons with the late spring, you just never had a break during the growing season to get away for a vacation or a weekend even. And after a while, it's just like, why am I doing this? It's time to hang her up. Let somebody else try it.

[Yeager ] So is this, you're holding on and going to rent, or are you going to sell everything? 

[Dufault] No, no, no, no sense in selling just yet. So we're renting it out. I've kind of had an X on my back for several years from the neighbors. But so I rent it out to six different young guys, and I try to make everybody happy. you know, just give everybody a little bit. But, you know, I wish I had more land to help these guys out with, but they're all getting a good start, and, yeah, yeah, it's good for the community. 

[Yeager] So was there a process that you had with these farmers? 

[Dufault] I had one guy ask me, he's, smaller farm, works in the bank full time. And, he was asking about land, and I said, well, I hate to upset you, but, you know, he's 41. You're too old, you know, I wanted to keep it as young as I could or the smaller operation was, you know, I had one guy pull in the yard. He's older than I am, and he was asking for his son, and I'm thinking, well, why isn't your son here? And, well, they lost a few hundred acres, and they could really use some more. And I said, well, how many acres area farming now? Well, 5000. It's like, yeah, you're probably okay, you know, but, so the ones I've rented to, you know, they're from, the small cattle herd, he's renting 60 acres for alfalfa to, well, I don't know if there's anybody. Yeah, the the one they might be at 2000 acres would be the biggest, you know. And and he's the neighbor coming in to start with the other farmer. He's taken him under his wing. That's what I really wanted to do. if I could have a, like, a turnkey a few years ago with someone, bring someone in and say, you know, here. Have worked with me for a few years. but it was hard to find somebody like that. 

[Yeager] So the goal is always to do kind of what you did and find land farmer partner. 

[Dufault] Right, right. Yeah. Somebody that wants to give it, you know, give a next generation a chance. Someone that doesn't have land but has a passion for agriculture. but then that's a, tough hill to climb too, because it's so capital intensive. Unless that young person's got some, good banker behind them, it's tough to buy into an operation. But, you know, I was willing to see what we could do, but I just couldn't find anybody.

[Yeager] Because I'm guessing. Tim, you could have. You may have left some dollars on the table. If you would have gone with a larger farmer who might have been able to pay more for rent. But you are taking it as an opportunity to get someone started. Was that part of your motivation as well? [Dufault] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I could have turned it over to one of the mega farms in the area and rented it out for top dollar and moved to Florida. But that's not us. That's not what my wife and I want to do. So, you know, you look around and the churches or the school district, you know, the stores, the storefronts downtown, you know, let's keep as many farmers as we can going. That's what I want to do. And, you know, we're at a good point in our financial situation that I can afford to leave a few dollars on the table. 

[Yeager] Commonality – everybody's under 40. Is that what I gather? 

[Dufault] One that just graduated college here about a year ago. yeah. It was a couple of them that are under 25, you know. So it'll be fun to watch these guys grow and mature. 

[Yeager] Absolutely. Did you put parameters on, you know, checking in with you or running, plans, by you, like when you said one cut into alfalfa? but were there any rules, I guess, that you put in on these guys? 

[Dufault] No. Not really. I did offer everyone, so I've gone to, I'll call it, no-till, everybody's got a different definition of no-till. Depends on what area of the world you live in. But I've pretty much gone to minimum to no-till. And I told each one of them that, you know, if you go to no-till if you, you know, if you want to do that, I'll cut your rent by 10% because I'm protecting my asset, like I told them, I, you know, this is my asset. If I had an apartment building, I wouldn't want to rent to people with pets or smokers. And so I'm going to be protective of my land and we're going to work together on that. so I've got two of them that are taking me up on that. They're, and part of the other thing is, once you get started in No-till, it takes a few years before that land really starts to show the benefits of it. And I'm just getting to that point. So I told these guys, you know, if you go ahead and work it up this fall, and you decide two years down the road what, you just lost five years of No-till. So let's try it now. And so they're going to do that and I, I hope it works for them. You know it's a mind change.

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