I actually have a neighbor who farms 200,000 acres. 100,000 one year, while the other 100,000 is in fallow collecting enough moisture to plant. He switches back and forth every other year. - Millet

Did he just get started?

I have often wondered why some people have the drive to expand their farms so much to the point where they are more business managers and not able to enjoy some of the aspects of farming like stepping in hidden holes when irrigating so that your rubber boots fill up with water.

In my prior off-farm career I worked with many accounts in a review capacity and wondered why some people expanded to 7,000 acres of almonds, 20,000 milk cows, 60,000 acres of cotton, etc. It just doesn't seem like it would be much fun. I'm anxious about my own prospects of expanding by getting into a partnership with over 1,000 acres. I don't think I'd do it for more than five years or so as I don't want to "spend all my time making money, spend all my love making time" (or however the Eagles song goes....).

One cool thing I saw 15 or so years ago with a guy that had grew his business quite large (not farm-related, but it would be nice to see it happen to some farm). He had reached the point in his life where he wanted to retire and he was active in our church and had other things to do with his life. He ended up forming an Employee Stock Ownership Program and turned the entire company over to his hundred or so employees. With a plan like that I could see a reason for getting large.

Harvey, the 200,000 acre neighbor has been farming for many years. Their family name is Linnebur, and there are seven brothers. All the brothers are large farmers. Their farms range from perhaps 40,000 acres and up, with the largest brother at 200,000. All but one brother goes to Our Lady of the Plains, Catholic Church, in Byers, Colorado, the same church that I attend. Gene, the largest farmer, has 18 combines of his own that he rotates every 2 years for new machines. He parks them in a row along the highway where everyone is sure to see them- LOL. He also runs a very large herd of Buffalo, and is contracted with Weight Watchers USA where he sells all of the meat. - Millet

I still suggest Philip start out a "little" smaller! I also hope Gene tithes!

Dear Philip, it is helpful to have neighbors. I'd like mine to be a bit further away but they do tend to help me out when I'm in a bind of some sort and visa versa.

The night is still young. I will be going out to change water flows into different alfalfa checks much of the night tonight. It's only 82F right now, much better than the 103F we had late this afternoon!!! It's mostly just tromping around in rubber boots to increase/decrease flows into checks so that I can get the entire field irrigated without washing out the ditch banks at the ends of the fields. Sometimes I have surprises, though. Our river pump puts out about 2,500 gpm and sometimes the 16" poly pipe I use comes apart or gates get blown out, etc. and it can be a big challenge to deal with alone in the dark in the middle of the night. It's been going pretty smoothly lately, though.

Philip, it would really have been a fun experience if you showed up....it's now a couple of hours from sunrise but I'm going to shower and go to bed for a few hours. Maybe next time!

I know what you mean about fun irrigating. Today I had to dig up 40-feet of irrigation pipe on the drip system as it must have frozen during the winter. The pipe was broken all along the 40 feet. Evidently, we did not blow the pipe out good enough when getting the system ready for winter. This type of repair, is of course, unfortunately always done in mud. - Millet

Boy, frozen underground pipes is one thing we do not need to concern ourselves with here. Even when we had a week of low 20s and down to 20.4F in January 2007 my above-ground pipes did not break. I don't bother to drain anything in the winter. But I have had a somewhat similar experience as I misjudged my backhoe skills and broke an underground 12" PVC pipe. That made a lot of mud! By the way, my underground PVC pipeline was subsidized by the USDA EQIP program back in 1995.

Sorry to hear of your loss, Philip. We had to put Harvey's Golden Becky to sleep in February 2006 and it was a big heartbreak. We thought it would not be fair to an puppy to have to try to fill her spot so we chose a yellow lab ("Yella" which is an Arabic word we picked up while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land which means "let's go!") for my son's birthday present a couple of weeks later. We thought getting a different breed would make it easier to avoid the comparison. Yella is full of energy, never wanting to sit still. We still miss Becky a lot and I'm sure we'll get a Golden again some day. Good luck with your Golden!