(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Farm Connections.

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman.

On today's episode, we're in Kasson talking to Jim Checkel about historic restoration, local leadership and his extensive jack collection.

And the University of Minnesota Extension provides us our Best Practices segment.

All here today on Farm Connections.

(upbeat country music) - [Promoter] Welcome to Farm Connections with your host, Dan Hoffman.

- [Promoter] Farm Connections made possible in part by Minnesota Corn.

Working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

(bright music) - [Promoter] EDP Renewables North America, owner, operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms in Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Promoter] Northern Country Co-op, a full-service cooperative in grain, agronomy, feed and lumber.

For the latest news, job openings and podcasts, you can go to their website NCountryCoop.com.

- [Promoter] R&S Grain Systems a family-owned business serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call 'em for a quote today.

- [Promoter] Employee-owned AgVantage Software, Rochester, Minnesota, 47 years designing and developing agribusiness software for grain elevators, feed manufacturers, producers, fertilizer and chemical dealers, co-op seed companies and fuel distributors.

- [Promoter] Mower County Farm Bureau Association, advocates for agriculture based on the policies and beliefs of its members.

It's dedicated to making the voices of its members stronger.

You can learn more about membership benefits at FBMN.org.

- Welcome to Farm Connections.

We're in rural Kasson, Minnesota with Jim Checkel.

Jim, thanks for letting us come out to your farm.

- Glad to have you here.

- And it's a nice farm and you're an interesting man.

So, we're gonna talk a little bit about leadership today and you're no stranger to leadership.

What drives you anyway?

- Well, part of the thing I think is that agriculture's extremely important in the United States and there needs to be people that advocate for agriculture.

And a lot of the people that are farming nowadays have huge operations and don't have the time to be able to go up to the Capitol and lobby or do other things where I have the time, so, and I love doing it.

- You're very good at it, Jim, but when you said time, you've been very busy as well.

You farmed, plus you had an off-farm job.

Can you tell us about that time in your life?

- Yeah, so I actually, I worked for 42 years at research at Mayo Clinic and then during that same period I also worked, I put in 5,000 hours at Barlow's grocery store and then 5,000 hours at Northern Tool and Equipment and then 5,000 hours at Ashley Furniture.

So, between all of those things it was pretty busy.

Sometimes, I tell people that the only time I had to sleep was when I was driving back and forth to work.

- And I hope you're joking, 'cause safety is important, right?

- [Jim] Sure, sure.

- So, Jim, your farm experience helped you really in that Mayo Clinic research capacity?

- Right, so when I first started at Mayo, I was actually, a certified automobile mechanic.

And I started, I was working for a Chrysler dealer and in 1980 I believe it was Chrysler filed for bankruptcy and I lost my job.

And one day I was sitting in the house and it was raining and I thought, well, Mayo Clinic's got cars, somebody's gotta fix 'em.

So, I went down and I applied at Mayo.

And when I got down there they told me we lease cars, we don't hire mechanics.

And they told me they'd have no job for me.

Well, then after about a week I received a phone call saying they needed someone to work in a lab that would do the stuff that nobody else wanted to do.

And so, I applied for the job and as I started working in that job, I realized that there really wasn't enough stuff to do to keep me busy and I was afraid I was gonna get canned.

So, I asked them if they would give me additional work and they said, "Well, you're auto mechanic, so do the repair on the equipment."

So okay, so I started doing the repair work on the equipment and then after a while I said, "There's not enough work for me to do."

And they said, "Well, we wanna start a cell culturing lab to grow different types of cells and parasites and things.

And they said, "Since you're a farmer, we're gonna put you in charge."

And I said, "Well, I don't know how to grow any of that stuff."

And they said, "Well, you're a farmer and that's what farmers do is they grow stuff, so figure it out."

So, that's how I ended up getting the job in the allergy lab.

And then as I started going through this my boss says, "Wow, you're coming up with a lot of new ideas here.

How about if we put you as a co-author on a paper?"

And then as I started getting co-authorship, then Mayo said, "Well, we'll move you up into higher level positions."

So, I started there at a entry-level position and by the time I left the allergy lab 30 years later, I was the senior technologist in the lab.

- Awesome story.

- Yeah, and it's true.

- And it started here with your farm background.

- Yes, absolutely.

I think that if it hadn't been for my farm background and the diversity that's involved in here with livestock and machinery and everything that was involved with that, I'm sure I probably never would've been given the opportunity.

- Well, I think luck and preparation came together, right?

- Oh, I'd say 99% of it's luck.

- You were the right guy for the job and you've used that in other ways too.

You've given back to your community hugely.

How many boards do you serve on at this time?

- I think it's like 16.

- Can you enumerate some of those and tell us about that?

- Yeah, so I'm the President of the Farm Bureau and then I'm the Supervisor on Ashland Township.

And right now, I'm the Chair for the township and then I'm the Chair for the Association of Townships.

And then I serve on, what else?

I serve on several different boards.

I serve on an advisory council for Mayo Clinic for the family clinic in Kasson, and let's see, Farm America.

And I recently was on the Dodge County Historical Society Board, but I've gone off of that now.

And so, I do a lot of things with leadership roles that are kind of the things that need to be addressed in the county, but a lot of people just don't have time for 'em.

- Well, I've watched you operate as peer at the Farm America Board and I'm impressed with what you bring to that board.

Why is it important to have people representing agriculture and to show what's happening in our world?

- Because there aren't enough, people that have the time or the willingness to do it or have the bravery to get out there and maybe make a fool outta yourself once in a while.

Sometimes, going out and being a leader, you end up doing things that other people think are extremely foolish or whatever, but somebody has to be out there doing this.

And to me, agriculture is so important.

I just can't express how important it is that we need to have people knowing what's going on the past of agriculture, the current agriculture, the future of agriculture.

When you take and look at a lot of people think of eggs and they think of plows, sows and cows, but there's also drone technology and there's mechanics and there's dozens and dozens of areas in agriculture that we need to have people involved in.

We need to be expressing to young people that there's many more opportunities to get out to a farm and plows, sows and cows are still there, but there are other things too.

- Use some of the emphasis you have on history to do some things on this farm with the buildings.

- Yeah, so in 1936, if you look around here now, there's about 10 buildings on the place, But in the 1930s, a man who lived here was connected with the University of Minnesota Ag Extension or Minnesota Ag up in University of Minnesota.

I don't know exact word of it, but ag engineering program.

And so, they built prototype buildings on this farm.

And so, at one time there were 21 buildings on here.

And so, when I was younger we'd have people come in to look at our well house or grain storage buildings and things like that.

And I got to the point where I just couldn't keep up with it anymore.

So, I actually, took it down to a more manageable size, but I also use my farm now in that, with my job at Mayo, I worked with people from 32 different countries.

And with the 32 different countries, many of them had never even been on a farm in their own country.

And so also, we do so much marketing of grain to foreign countries that I wanted people to come out and see a soybean plant on my place.

And when they go back to their country and they hear that there's a shipload of soybeans coming from the United States, they can email me and say, "Were those the soybeans I saw raised on your place last summer?"

They probably weren't, but they may have been.

And I want them to get an opportunity to see how this is all connected.

That the plant that's growing in Minnesota is the same soybeans gonna be used for meals in Asia, for example.

And also, when I had the farm and working in the allergy lab, we did a lot of plant studies and like ragweed for example.

But people from other countries have never seen ragweed.

And so, when you tell 'em about how bad ragweed exposure is, they're not aware of what a ragweed plant looks like.

So, when they say, "Can I come out to your place and see a ragweed plant?"

I'd always say, "Well, we can probably find one at the neighbors."

But we always seem to be able to find one here too.

And then I also grew plants, for example, we did a soybean allergen study.

Well, where is the allergen in soybeans?

So, we started with seed beans, planted 'em in a strip out in the field.

And every so many days I would pluck out so many beans and take them in and we would make extracts from the leaves, the stems, etcetera of the soybean plant to find out, if we could find the stage in that plant where the allergen was being developed and where it was going to and being located.

So, I mean there was a very strong connection to agriculture right there.

And another thing that farmers have in Minnesota or in the United States and isn't in other areas, is farmers' lung from molds in silos and things like that.

And we would get people coming from other countries and they'd say, "I have no idea what a silo is."

- Interesting, very interesting.

What did you find out about the soybean allergen?

- So, the soybean actually, this is fascinating to me, but inside the pod of a soybean, if you look inside, there's a white membrane in there and that's called a tella.

And the tella is there to protect the integrity of the seed, while it's inside the pod.

And so, the inside the tella there are chemicals that are called proteases and those kill bacteria and fungus and things like that.

So, if you crack open a pod and look at that white membrane inside the pod, that's where the toxins are.

And so, when you harvest soybeans and you crush that pod, as you crush the pod, that tella gets broke up and spread into the air.

And so, we actually, set up air samples or air samplers at different locations around, and we would have the guy riding in the combine was wearing an air sampler mounted to his a shirt.

And then we had a guy who had one that was unloading the grain at the grain elevator.

And different stages as we were going through and we measured the amount of allergen that was being, the farmer who was in the combine was exposed to almost nothing.

The guy that was unloading the grain into the elevator going up to the grain bin was exposed to so much of the dust off of this that the filters would plug up.

And so, when you looked at the location of these where the different workers were, it really varied as far as how much exposure they had.

And one of the things that came out of this was, if you go down to New Orleans where they would unload the barges, the barges would unload up here, and the amount of dust coming off of the barges would be quite high.

And as you went away from where they're unloading the barges to the grain terminals, the amount of allergen would gradually decrease as you went toward the grain elevators.

And the amount of allergy to soybean was highest next to the barge areas.

- Extremely fascinating.

I think we've both been in soybean fields when they're harvested.

And especially, with today's machines, with high RPMs and the chopper and back, there's a film of dust that settles over the entire field.

- [Jim] Yes.

- And of course, we're all exposed to that in our atmosphere.

- Yes.

And so, I also worked on various molds.

There was, if you look at corn plants in the fall, for example, they'll have a black mold on 'em, that's called aspergillus.

I worked on that.

There's alternaria, there's all kinds of other molds.

We did one study where people would get a growth inside their nose called nasal polyps and they would have to surgically remove those.

And a guy from Germany that I worked with said, "You know, I think that people are having an allergic reaction to mold."

So they took a spray or they took a liquid called Amphotericin, which was used since World War II to fight mold infections on people.

And they put it in an aerosol mister, and they'd have people shoot the Amphotericin up into their nose.

And when the Amphotericin would destroy the mold and the number of surgeries that had to be done plummeted.

And so now, if people have a mold allergy, a lot of them can take that shoot a little bit up in their nose of the Amphotericin and it clears the mold out allergy.

- You had a fascinating career at Mayo Clinic and you probably used that experience plus the farm experience to move into leadership roles in rural Kasson County and beyond, right?

- Correct.

So, a lot of the people that I was involved with and you've been involved with in the past had gone through a program called MARL.

- [Dan] Yes.

- Minnesota Ag Rural Leadership.

And as we are going doing these things like for Farm Bureau and doing these different programs and getting involved with these different groups, different ones.

Why don't you apply for MARL?

Why don't you apply for MARL?

And so, I applied for MARL and MARL is bootcamp training for leadership.

And when you walk out of there, you're gonna set the world on fire.

There's nothing you can't tackle.

They do an excellent job with the program.

And so, after going through MARL, I was asked to serve on the board of directors.

And so, I moved up through that.

And once you go through there and you get yourself established in leadership roles, then you get somebody else comes and says, we need somebody to serve on a co-op, we need someone to serve on the town board, we need someone to serve on this committee or subcommittee.

And pretty soon it's just, it's almost too much.

- Jim, what do you say to people when they say, "Oh, I'm too busy to be in a leadership role?"

- I say, yeah, you probably are.

- [Dan] However.

- However, yeah.

But there's always everybody's always too busy, but there's always time to do more, to better yourself.

And that's kind of, I think that a focus needs to be is even though you're do a great job, and I'm not gonna say that you don't, but there's opportunities where you may be able to do more or to better yourself.

And by bettering yourself and doing more, you're bettering your community.

- Do you think we're gonna run out of opportunities?

- No, I don't think so.

- Jim, you're awesome.

Thank you for spending the time with us today.

- Oh, thank you.

- Stay tuned for more on Farm Connections.

(upbeat music) - [Promoter] Farm Connections Best Practices, brought to you by Absolute Energy.

(upbeat music) - I'm Brad Carlson, Extension Educator with the University of Minnesota Extension and the Water Resources Group.

I work with a lot with soil fertility and water quality issues.

And this is today's Best Practices segment.

The last decade has been extraordinarily wet, and this has been very important for nitrogen application, because the loss processes of nitrogen that are most significant are water based.

And that primarily happens when the soil is saturated.

So, a lot of people ask the question after a nitrogen application has been made, whether it be in the fall or prior to planting, and then conditions get extremely wet is, did I lose nitrogen?

And that's a really fine question and it's dependent on a couple of key conditions in the soil.

One is that the soil has to be completely saturated in order for this to happen.

The two main processes are either leeching, which is moving the nitrogen down into the profile and into either shallow groundwater or field tile or denitrification that happens in the atmosphere.

And so, that happens through a biological process when there's oxygen is absent from the soil and because it's biological, it's really keyed in with the soil temperature.

It happens faster and to a much greater extent when the soil is warm as opposed to leaching where it doesn't really matter.

Now, in both circumstances, the nitrogen has to be converted to nitrate before either of these processes will happen.

So, most of our pre-plant and obviously, our fall applications are going to be strictly anhydrous ammonia.

And then our pre-plant applications are likely to either be anhydrous or probably urea.

In both cases, the nitrogen has to actually, convert to nitrate first before the loss can happen.

That also, is a biological process that happens when the soil temperatures are warm.

So, enough time has to elapse as well as the soil temperatures need to be warm enough for that to happen first.

And so, oftentimes, when we have extremely wet conditions early in the spring and there's been a fall application, farmers will say, well, it's been really saturated and really wet.

Did I lose nitrogen?

Well, not very likely.

A fall application of anhydrous with cold soil temperatures in the fall and of course, frozen in the winter and then cold again in the spring, probably didn't convert the nitrogen into nitrate in order for the nitrogen to be lost.

And so, that process happens as we get into the early part of the planting and growing season.

Typically, we hit an average soil temperature of 50 degrees on about May 1st.

And so, that's when that process really takes off.

And so, most of our fall and pre-plant applications are fairly stable for that reason.

It's really then we need to focus on whether it gets wet in the early part of the growing season.

That would be for leaching purposes.

If it's extremely wet, we can move nitrate into the tile.

But more significantly, in southern Minnesota's denitrification, which is up into the atmosphere, because that is also a biological process and keys in on the soil temperature being warm, it really isn't until the temperatures are warming above 70 degrees, and particularly, when they get to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit that, that is significant.

So, really that processes starts to happen in great significance when the soil is saturated starting in about June.

And so, that's when farmers need to really start paying attention to that.

If your soil is saturated, for one thing, it needs to be for more than two days at a time for it to even start.

But if the soil is saturated for more than two days, we can start losing nitrogen to denitrification.

If the soil is saturated for 10 full days, we can lose about half of our nitrogen that we've applied in that 10-day period.

And so, really that's kind of the key, if you've done a pre-plant or a fall nitrogen application is really be watching for saturated soil conditions, and particularly, when the soil temperatures start to get warm.

And if that is the case, then you're going to need to think about supplementing the applied nitrogen.

This is Brad Carlson, Extension Educator of the University of Minnesota Extension, and this has been our Best Practices segment.

- Well, Jim, I'm guessing this barn had many purposes before it became the Jack Museum, right?

- Absolutely, where your cameraman is standing right now used to be where they kept the draft horses.

And then this area in here is where they milked eight cows on this side, eight cows on the other side.

We had a pen over to the side that was the milk cow for the house.

And if you turn back here, you'll see there's a couple small pens in the back.

One of those was for calves and the other was what they called the bull pen, where the bull was kept separately from the rest of the cows.

- [Dan] So, all of a sudden you decided you needed to have a jack collection in your barn.

What happened?

- Well, when they opened the hardware store in Dodge Center, I won a handyman jack or a high-lift jack, and that's that one right there.

And I decided, well, if I got one, I might just, well keep getting more.

- Well, here it is.

- And there it is.

- Are you gonna show us how to use this?

- Go ahead.

- Well, I think you should show us, Jim.

- So, the pins are down here on the bottom, and you just flip this lever up, and that locks the dry pins.

(jack ratcheting) - [Dan] Inch by inch.

- [Jim] Inch by inch.

- [Dan] Inch by inch.

And of course, if it's not moving fast enough.

- [Jim] Yep, you just grab it and pull her up.

- [Dan] All right, let's reverse it and bring it down gently.

- [Jim] You push the lever down there.

- [Dan] And what happened to gently?

- [Jim] Well, that was your part.

(Dan laughing) - Okay, and you've got a tie.

- Yeah.

- They actually came with a metal clip, which usually, tended to fall off after about three or four times of using them.

And then the handle would keep falling down.

So, I just put a bungee strap on there to hold it.

- Many farms had this jack, including the farm I grew up on more than one, but it was very useful in leveraging the human body to lift things.

And as farms developed and equipment got bigger, it also got heavier.

And how many jacks now?

- Only 365, but I've got nine on order from Portland, Oregon.

They're supposed to be here in a couple weeks.

I'm bidding on two of them in a auction in Waseca.

And I've got five down in Sargeant I'm supposed to pick up.

- That's a nice collection.

You're gonna be at 400 very soon.

- Very soon, yeah.

I'm thinking of quitting at 399, because 400 just seems a bit excessive.

- That one could do it.

The straw or jack- - Yeah.

- that broke the camel's back.

- Right, right.

- When you look at a jack, is any jack acceptable in your collection or do you look for specific things?

- So, what I try to do is I try, first of all, my passion, if you wanna call it that, is mechanical jacks, the old heavy iron jacks.

I have a few hydraulic jacks, but I'm really not that interested in those.

They're very easy to find.

I try to find ones that I can identify a manufacturer or I can identify a brand.

For example, some of the major in farm equipment companies didn't actually make a jack, but they had someone custom make one for 'em.

And so, a lot of times you'll see ones and they'll be referred to as a particular brand, but they're not actually made by that brand.

They'll be made by another manufacturer.

And so, you'll have a farm equipment name on one, and then the one identical to it will have the jack manufacturer.

So, you might see jacks that look identical, but they have different castings on them.

- [Dan] And I think you mentioned that happened with Ford also?

- Yes.

Ford, when they first started making jacks for the Model Ts, they couldn't keep up with the manufacturing 'em of them or they were focusing on other part of the manufacturing.

So, the very first Model T jacks had Ford scribed on em, but then they started farming that out to other companies and they'd send out contracts for 5,000, 10,000, a hundred or whatever, jacks.

And so, when you look at the jacks, there's 10 different manufacturers of Model T jacks.

- So, you've got jacks to lift buggies.

- Yes.

- Farm equipment, cables, as it's being strung along roadways.

- Correct.

- Railroad cars.

What else?

- Well, I've got one that's from a, over to the side over here that's from a lumber company up in Northern Minnesota, a lumber camp.

And then I've got one further down the line here that's going to be from a Conestoga covered wagon.

And that one has a date stamped on it of 1849.

And then there are, when people had the first cars, a lot of times they didn't drive 'em during the winter and the tire would rot where it's set or got flat spots in it.

And so, there's guys that made, a company started making something called a tire saver.

And so, I've got tire saver jacks.

And then there's also, in some of the manufacturing places, when they'd put the axle for a buggy for example, they would put the jack on each axle, and then they would take and put the frame on top of that, and then they would put on the front too.

So, there'd be four jacks holding the frame of the buggy.

They'd build it when they got the buggy built, they'd slide the jacks off the end of the axle or the hubs and they'd slide the wheels on.

- [Dan] Fascinating stories, Jim.

- [Jim] Yeah.

- Jim, thank you so much for sharing about your farm and your jack collection.

You're awesome.

- It's been a pleasure, thanks, Dan.

- Stay tuned for more on Farm Connections.

(upbeat country music) We covered a variety of topics today and it just goes to show how important agriculture is to our community.

There are interesting people and subjects everywhere you look.

The community is a vibrant one and we're always happy to share it with you.

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thanks for joining us on Farm Connections.