today we paid $850,000 for this 80 acres of farm ground that you see me standing on because we had to that math comes out to about $1,625 per acre for comparison one acre is just a little bit less than the size of a football field I know what you're thinking how did I purchase this well the simple answer is we financed it and we're going to be paying for this over the next 30 years of our life I'm in my 20s now and I'll be paying for this well into my 50s it's very rare that
you make a purchase and you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are never going to sell or get rid of that item now a piece of ground is a little bit more than an item but I am willing to pay so much money for this because I will never sell this ground I'm going to be farming this ground until eventually I stop farming and pass this on to my kids which feels pretty special you might be noticing that that is my house in the background which is one of the reasons why I
felt like I had to buy this Farm ground several years ago a farmer in our area approached myself and my husband Grant and he said hey I'm kind of getting out of the farming game and I know that you guys just got married and you are interested in farming for the rest of your lives would you like to rent this piece of ground and that is a piece of ground that we are standing on right here he rented us this 80 acres for $275 an acre which felt very very cheap but that was $275 of
profit off this ground that I was just giving away to somebody else now he approached us again and he said I am ready to sell this piece of ground and I am interested in selling it to you guys we felt very fortunate the approached us because of the internet we have seen a huge spike in interest and accessibility of outside investors purchasing farmr 50 years ago farmr was sold by word of mouth or paper Flyers now every everyone in the country has access to Farms that are put on auction which has led to a huge
increase in big companies and big investors buying up us Farm ground so instead of farmers like me and Grant owning the ground that we're farming a huge company located somewhere out of the state would own it and that really scares me in the next 20 years the United States is going to experience one of the largest wealth transfers in history and I would much rather see that wealth be passed on from generation of farmer to generation farmer or to see New farmers getting into farming rather than a bunch of big companies in Nebraska alone over
a million Acres of farmr is owned not by Farmers but by Bill Gates the Church of Latter Day Saints and Ted Turner yeah the guy that founded CNN I think I would rather my neighbors and myself on the farm ground than them I did not have the cash to buy this ground and frankly if you put it down on a piece of paper purchasing this ground really does not cash flow certainly not in my lifetime but like I mentioned this ground is right across the road from my house and if this ground was to go
up to auction I don't know who I would get for a neighbor and it most likely would not be another farmer around here it would probably be bought by somebody far away I would rather know my neighbors especially people that I have to live right across the road from this is the third piece of ground that Laura and I have been able to buy together and it's been really special because it's very local we don't have to drive our tractors all the way across the county which I'm very thankful for but land just keeps getting
more and more expensive over the last 6 years we've been able to buy three pieces of land the first one was $6,000 per acre then the next one was $8500 an acre and now this the most expensive one is over $10,500 an acre which is just mind-blowing I am excited to see where the price of Farmland goes in the future but I am not excited to pay for it we hope to continue buying more Farm ground so we can continue our farming career and also pass it on to our kids somay the average age of
a farmer in the United States is 60 years old less than 10% of farmers in the united states are under the age of 35 because of that average farmer age that means that over the next 30 Years almost 70% of us Farmland will change hands that's over 300 million Acres this just needs to be planned very carefully so that we can continue farming the ground and it doesn't get bought out by big developers that also means that now is the time for young Farmers if you have an interest in farming or homesteading or the country
lifestyle now is the time in 2017 there was 900 million Acres of us Farm ground just a couple years later in 2023 that number has decreased to 879 million Acres the amount of Farmland is decreasing while the amount of people that needs to be fed are increasing so purchasing this land is really special because it means I get to play a small part in keeping us Farm ground in the hands of the farmers and continuing my family's Legacy as I am a fifth generation farmer and Grant is a sixth generation farmer I can't imagine what
our kids are going to be experiencing someday [Music] one of the stipulations when it came to us first renting this piece of ground was that we had to purchase the pivot so we actually already own this pivot and the well and the motor out here that pumps the water we also recently installed another new pivot we just moved a couple spans from another field and and now we have a totally irrigated 80 with the pivot as you know comes the joy of repairs and that leads us to today's video sponsor as you know I have
a lot of pivots on my farm meaning I have a lot of problems it seems like something always needs to be fixed or upgraded luckily Universal motion components or UMC has been a longtime faithful Channel sponsor together we are slowly replacing every gearbox Center Drive knuckle and booster pump on our farming operation for these sturdy reliable ones that UMC offers all of its customers they are truly products built to withstand the test of time where and whether they have the widest selection of irrigation Solutions and pivot powertrain Parts in the industry and they maintain their
industry-leading position by offering global distribution so be sure to pick up your UMC parts from your local pivot Parts distributor if you do any type of pivot irrigation UMC is the company for you they have been revolutionizing the industry for over 40 years and it is my privilege to be partnered with them thank you so much to UMC and now back to work this field was planted to soybeans last year which means this year in 2025 it will be corn for the most part the 80 is pretty flat there's this corner spot where some water
does run in there's a little bit of a Groove to it you can see where we had had to leave some beans on the ground because our Draper head didn't quite Flex enough to pick them up but besides this one corner it's a pretty nice looking piece of ground here's a good example of where our pivot track closer went through and we closed this pivot track pivot comes in waters right along here and we got this all smoothed up everything is ready to be watered again next year our house is right across the road from
here and like any used thing that you purchase there's always just a little bit of work that needs to be done so our plan is to remove some of these weedy trees here there's some stumps here we can level all of this out there's also a couple different junk piles that we've been looking at for quite some time that we are going to be able to clean up sell for scrap and hopefully this will all be a very nice looking ditch when we're done with it all smoothed up and ready to be mowed this summer
it's been a dream of ours for some time now to actually be able to plant a tree line so now that we have ownership of it our long-term goal is to make a tree line in that ditch to provide a little extra wind blockage here's our junk pile that needs to be cleaned up the cement pad will be left exactly how it is but all of these tires will be recycled and the pipe is going away I've been farming around this pile for a couple years now so I'm kind of excited to get rid of
it we owe all of you guys watching a big thank you because without you watching this video and all the other videos that we post we would would not even be able to dream about purchasing this piece of farm ground I don't love doing advertisements and sponsorships but that on top of the YouTube viewership that you guys are providing me with and the crops that we're going to grow and then sell off this ground it almost makes it affordable the corn we produce off this ground will come out to be about a little over $80,000
a year at the current crop prices and that will pretty much cover our mortgage payments and the taxes on this ground we get taxed almost $70 per acre on this 80 and so that comes out to be a little under $6,000 per year and that doesn't even cover our seed that we have to plant which is close to $100 an acre our irrigation expenses our fertilizer expenses and the diesel fuel we have to put in our tractors so this year we are actually losing a ton of money so not only is this costing us $850,000
to buy we are going to lose money operating on this ground but this is where the uh gamblers mentality of farming comes in we are just hoping that next year or the year after corn hits $7 and all of a sudden boom we're profitable and all the meanwhile this ground is appreciating so not that we're ever going to sell it but it'll be worth more someday so here's to losing more money and thank you for watching this video cuz we need all the help we can get speaking of fertilizer expenses like we said before we're
going to be planting corn out here this year a big part of land ownership is maintaining the soil it is a living organism and it needs things to keep producing a good crop so our plan is to apply dry fertilizer this winter and we'll sit out here we're going to plant corn and then the corn is going to use those nutrients from that dry fertilizer that we spread and hopefully grow even more than 240 bushs an acre I have to say winter Nebraska gets to be pretty bland and I am very excited come spring and
summertime when this whole field is green and there's nothing but corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see it's a really beautiful sight to behold and sooner than you realize we are going to be out here in a tractor we're going to be cultivating we're going to be irrigating and eventually harvesting there is something very special about driving a combine and harvesting a crop on ground that you own it feels very similar to walking into an apartment that you're are renting versus a home that you own there's just something very special about it
let's clean up this junk pile [Music] we are so appreciative of you guys' support and love thank you so much for following Along on our farming journey together and whether you feel like it or not you guys are really helping us out so thank you so much for watching we are so excited for 2025 and all the things it's going to bring and we will see you in the next one bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]
