Not exactly crop related here but still on the general ag topic. This is the first time in over 50 years my parents won't be calving out cows. Last year they decided it was time to completely retire as even the 10 or so cows they had left were just too much to care for at their age even with my help living 30 miles away. Gotta admit I'm going to miss it some too as I kept some ownership in the herd too and late Feb to early April is when we calved so don't have any weeks old calves running around the lots to enjoy. Happy for them though, dad just turned 79 and needs knee replacement so even with that small number it was time for them to not have chores and other things to do that were hard on them physically at their age. I just don't have the time with a full time job and 2 kids in a lot of activities to keep it going myself either. We were really fortunate though to sell the entire herd to a young family we've known a long time that have kids at the age of getting into 4-H so they were looking for exactly what were selling so it worked out for both of us and having that relationship already allows my parents to still have some connection following how their kids do showing the calves and growing the herd they bought from us.
The challenging thing now though is trying to sell off all the stuff we no longer need around the farm. My dad is from that era where he thinks stuff is worth more than its probably worth so trying to get it sold on Facebook marketplace and other avenues has been an interesting go at it so far. We have mostly smaller and older stuff that you basically need a niche buyer for that is looking to use it the same way we did along with hay we made last year that we don't have a use for. A couple years ago with the drought the hay probably would be gone by now but last year was a pretty good year for making hay so seems like there is a lot of it out there for sale right now. The stuff I got the most interest from and sold fairly quickly was old galvanized metal stock tanks and some wooden feed bunks. Got a bunch of messages on them as apparently a lot of people re-purpose those for raised gardens and flower beds. Once it gets a little nicer out I need to find a weekend to go out and pull the implements out of the sheds and get cleaned up to photo and post. Some of the stuff has sat for years and washing the dirt and dust off would help with eye appeal trying to sell it. My struggle is getting him to realize that he has no use for this stuff anymore and if I'm not getting interest at the prices he wants to list it at then he's too high and it's not worth waiting it out when we can sell it when we can have it gone for a little less. One example is he has a manure spreader that he bought years ago that I am certain he'll get more than he paid for it back then because used farm equipment market is fairly strong right now. He's looking at stuff on tractorhouse to get his pricing and I have to bring him down to reality with other sites that more accurately reflect private treaty sales that he's not going to get dealer prices for this stuff.
The 1 good thing is we have 2 neighbors interested in renting the pasture and hay field so they won't have to worry about maintaining all the acres. We invested a lot over the years in new fences and keeping the pasture quality good so as long as they own the property I don't think we'll have issues finding someone to rent it because it's setup nice for someone that needs additional pasture or keeping a small herd at. My brother in law raises about 100 head of cattle and also crop farms in NW IA so I still can scratch my ag work itch if I need to by helping him out.
The challenging thing now though is trying to sell off all the stuff we no longer need around the farm. My dad is from that era where he thinks stuff is worth more than its probably worth so trying to get it sold on Facebook marketplace and other avenues has been an interesting go at it so far. We have mostly smaller and older stuff that you basically need a niche buyer for that is looking to use it the same way we did along with hay we made last year that we don't have a use for. A couple years ago with the drought the hay probably would be gone by now but last year was a pretty good year for making hay so seems like there is a lot of it out there for sale right now. The stuff I got the most interest from and sold fairly quickly was old galvanized metal stock tanks and some wooden feed bunks. Got a bunch of messages on them as apparently a lot of people re-purpose those for raised gardens and flower beds. Once it gets a little nicer out I need to find a weekend to go out and pull the implements out of the sheds and get cleaned up to photo and post. Some of the stuff has sat for years and washing the dirt and dust off would help with eye appeal trying to sell it. My struggle is getting him to realize that he has no use for this stuff anymore and if I'm not getting interest at the prices he wants to list it at then he's too high and it's not worth waiting it out when we can sell it when we can have it gone for a little less. One example is he has a manure spreader that he bought years ago that I am certain he'll get more than he paid for it back then because used farm equipment market is fairly strong right now. He's looking at stuff on tractorhouse to get his pricing and I have to bring him down to reality with other sites that more accurately reflect private treaty sales that he's not going to get dealer prices for this stuff.
The 1 good thing is we have 2 neighbors interested in renting the pasture and hay field so they won't have to worry about maintaining all the acres. We invested a lot over the years in new fences and keeping the pasture quality good so as long as they own the property I don't think we'll have issues finding someone to rent it because it's setup nice for someone that needs additional pasture or keeping a small herd at. My brother in law raises about 100 head of cattle and also crop farms in NW IA so I still can scratch my ag work itch if I need to by helping him out.
