(spirited music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

I'm your host Rob Sharkey.

Farming, a lot of times multi-generational, and it's always a challenge, how do you bring back the next generation, does it have to be a boy?

Lots of questions and lots of answers.

Well, today's guest is all about those answers.

We're talking with Leonard Sheaffer from Dixon, Illinois.

How you doing, Leonard?

- I'm doing good.

- Dixon, Illinois up north of Peoria.

What about, two hours?

- Yeah, it's two-hour drive.

It's around 90 miles.

- Okay.

You're the fancy town that has the arch over.

- Right, the arch from World War I, I think they put it up.

- Why?

- It was for all the veterans coming back.

- Oh, okay.

- As a memorial arch.

- Ronald Reagan's boyhood home.

- Boyhood home.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, where he saved all the girls that were drowning in the river.

- He was a bit of a player, wasn't he?

- Yeah, I guess so.

(Rob laughs) They said 70 drowners but... He rescued 70, but they're not sure how many of 'em were really drowning.

(Rob laughs) - 70.

How could you find 70 people that are drowning?

- I don't know.

Well, it's a river.

- I guess.

You're farming up there.

- Right.

- You farmed your whole life.

- Yes, I have.

- Okay.

Yeah, I assume you grew up on a farm.

- Yeah, same farm.

- What kind of farm was it when you were growing up?

- It was a dairy farm.

My dad had dairy cattle and also raised a lot of chickens for eggs.

- [Rob] Oh really?

- Yeah, I found his records from the '50s and he sold a lot of eggs.

- Really?

I mean, was it like it is now?

I mean, it's all going to one, you know, company packer?

- No, he sold... He had people in town he delivered to.

People stopped and bought it.

He had a brother that had a store north of Sterling that had a (indistinct) broker's license and he went to Chicago every week.

So he took eggs in there.

- Okay.

And, yeah, a lot of that's come back, isn't it, to your farm?

- Yeah, yep.

- So you grew up farming.

Did you know that you wanted to come back to the farm?

- I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

You know, that was kind of the Vietnam era.

- Yeah.

- You know, it's kind of hard to make plans if, you know, do you go to college and then go to Vietnam or do you go to Vietnam and hope you come home to go to college.

- Yeah.

I don't think people understand today the whole draft.

And I mean, it had to be, had to be scary, right?

- Yeah.

Well, and then they finally came out with a lottery, which to me made a lot of sense.

'Cause then you got a number.

I was like 60.

Well, if you got 360, then the odds of you being drafted are pretty small and you could plan your life.

- Yeah.

- You know, if you got a 10, well, you knew what you were gonna be doing.

- Yeah.

- So when they came out with that, I think that was a lot better program.

- Okay, so you got 60.

- Yeah.

- And when you got that, were you worried?

- Well, I had a college deferment.

And by the time I finished college, it was over.

- Okay.

- They quit drafting.

- Gotcha, okay.

So what'd you go to school for?

- Well, originally, I thought I was gonna major industrial technology, but I decided there's a lot of classes I wasn't really interested in.

So I went back and looked.

I went to SOC for two years and I looked at what course I found most interesting that didn't have to take a foreign language.

'Cause I did lousy with a foreign language in high school.

I did good the first year.

The second year, I didn't remember anything from the first year.

- [Rob] What language?

- I took Latin.

- Well, that's your problem, man.

You can't take Latin.

- And I was a junior, so I was with all the freshmen too.

So anyway, the class that I found most interesting was economics.

So, I majored in economics.

- Gotcha.

So after you graduated, what'd you do?

- Well, I kind of was thinking, "What do I want to do with economics?"

You basically gotta get a master's.

And I was already frustrated enough living in DeKalb, which isn't a big city, that I didn't really have a place I could call my own to park my car and watch, you know, I'm gonna end up in a city if I ended up getting a master's.

And I just, I didn't really want that lifestyle.

And my dad was turning 60 and said he wanted to quit milking.

I thought, "I'll do this and I can open my own shop and work on other people's stuff."

- Okay.

So you... (laughs) You made a life decision based on the fact that you weren't gonna have a parking spot.

- Yeah, something like that.

(Rob laughs) Well, I'm used to living in the country.

Living in town is just a different thing to me.

- Yeah.

- You know?

- So were you doing what, accounting?

- No, I mean, I just major in economics, but I never, you know, economics isn't really accounting.

- Okay.

Well, you said you opened up a shop.

- Oh, I was interested in repairing stuff.

My junior year in high school, I overhauled the engine of my car.

In my senior year, I worked in the ag work program and worked for an implement dealer and, you know, changed tires, pulled motors, did all kinds of stuff.

- That's pretty major stuff.

- Yeah.

- It not like just, I don't know, normal.

Changing a whole motor is pretty involved.

- Well, yeah, the service truck needed a motor, so I tore the motor out, you know?

(Rob laughs) Just... I learned a lot.

Didn't pay much, dollar an hour.

- Boy, that has changed.

You'd be making bank now.

- Yeah, the next year, I got a job at Armour's meat packing plant.

Paid 4.15 an hour, and that was big wages.

- Was it?

- Oh yeah.

- [Rob] What were you doing there?

- I was in night cleanup.

They slaughtered 600 head a day, and my job was to wash the clothes, clean the lunch room, and hose down the floor in the coolers.

- Mm-hmm, okay.

All right, so on from then.

Well, first of all, where'd you meet your wife?

- I met her at the Methodist Church in Rock Falls.

There was a Methodist singles group, and she was a nurse.

And a friend of hers went to Methodist Church in Dixon and wanted her to go to the singles group.

So she went, and I got there late and they got there late, and there was a concert at junior college next week.

And I asked them both if they wanted to go, and they both said yeses.

- What do you mean both?

- What kind of luck do I have?

- You're a player.

- Yeah, I have... I have a long drive period, and then two people say yes.

So I said, "I'll take the red head," and my cousin, "You can take the other one."

- Oh.

- So... - And the redhead did ended up being your wife?

- Right.

- Okay.

It's good to have choices in life, isn't it?

- Yes.

Yep.

- Okay.

(both laughing) Sounds romantic.

- Oh, it was.

It was pretty nice.

We... You know, I tried researching her, trying to figure out something about her, you know?

- Checked Google?

- Looked in yearbooks and stuff.

Well, there was no Google back then.

(both laughing) And I couldn't find anything.

And I says, "You know, she might have a child."

So when I went to pick her up, she says, "I want say goodnight to my kids."

- Oh.

- So I figured she was like 19 and I was 28.

- Yeah.

- And so we went to the door and she had, one was in kindergarten, one was in third grade.

- Oh, okay.

- I guess she's not 19 years old.

(Rob laughs) So it runs in the family.

They all look young.

- Did she lie about her age?

- No, we never talked about age.

- Oh, you assumed.

- I just assumed.

- Oh, well that's... - Yep.

- That's on you, isn't it?

- Yep.

- All right, so tell me about how you got back to your farm.

- Well, it was pretty easy.

I got... Well, the last semester, I commuted anyway.

So I was already starting to, you know, I was involved with the dairy as it was.

- Yeah.

And this was, I don't know, like the parlor-type dairy?

- No, it was a stanchion barn.

My dad moved there in '46.

It had been a horse barn.

And my grandfather had bought the farm in like '39.

And my dad spent three years in the South Pacific in the Air Force.

And so they remodeled the horse barn for a dairy barn and had 16 stanchions.

- Okay.

- And then in the '60s, he added six more.

So we were milking by... By '79, we were milking 50 cows.

So we had to switch cows a couple times and stuff.

But he was kind of, you know, he's the one that came up and says, "Well, I think we could get a pipeline," you know?

One year, he like, "Well, I think we should build a silo.

And I want a bottom loader 'cause I'm afraid of heights."

You know?

- That makes sense, yeah.

- So, you know, and he was in his sixties, but, you know, he probably wanted me to be successful and he wasn't afraid to spend a little money.

- Okay.

But you ended up building a parlor yourself, right?

- Yeah, I decided I didn't wanna wait till I was 50 to build a parlor.

I wanted to build it when I was younger and use it.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- But parlors are expensive.

So I bought a building, they did the concrete.

It was concrete foundation.

It was a 55 by 90 concrete foundation.

And they did the concrete for the parlor.

And then I did all the plumbing, the drains, electrical.

Had a retired farmer that did carpenter work.

He did the carpenter with me and I put in the pipeline and everything and- - Pipeline for the milk?

- Right.

- Okay.

- Well, the parlor, yeah.

And I found a used parlor that was a year old.

It was the company's first parlor that they built, and then they used it like a year, and then they sold it to somebody.

And I ended up buying it.

I think it was like a $28,000 setup for like $6,000.

- So when you say parlor, are you talking like the metal, the stanchions.

- Where cows come in groups.

- Yeah.

- And you're in a pit and they're at eye level or (indistinct).

- Okay.

- And then it had automatic takeoff.

She'd put the milker on, and when it was done, it would shut off and swing out of the way.

And so you could milk 50 cows an hour and it was kind of relaxing.

- Oh really?

- After being in a stanchion barn where, you know, you gotta squat down and do everything.

- Well, the stanchion one, you still, I mean, you weren't doing it by hand, right?

- No, we had a pipeline.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- All right.

Well, we just interviewed a guy that was doing it by hand when he was a kid.

So you never know.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, when my daughter started milking, she started when she was 14 and she had two cows.

And she milked my hand for two weeks and then I had to do it for the weekend.

Then we got a milker going then.

(both laughing) - That's a good incentive, isn't it?

- Yeah.

- Tell me why it's called Windsweep Farms.

- Well, my dad, when he was in the South Pacific on one of the islands, they had like group tents.

And I guess it must have been a windy island, and so they called their tent Windsweep.

And they had this sign that was probably this by this and it had a picture of a tent and it had this person blowing the wind at it and the names of the eight guys in the tent.

So he always called it Windsweep Farm.

Back in the '50s he had stationary that said Windsweep Farm.

- Okay.

- So when we decided we're gonna start selling meat to people, to consumers, we decided to call it Windsweep Farm.

- Well, plus Dixon, you're the land of the wind turbines too.

So you probably have enough wind up there.

- Well... No, they're south of us a little.

- Yeah, so there's no wind at your farm?

- Well, there's wind.

(Rob laughing) We're on the top of a hill, So, you know, milking usually you had a breeze going through the barn.

It was open east and west.

And... - So right now you have a daughter, and she is what?

She co-owner of the farm now?

- Well, I farmed the ground I originally farmed.

She and her husband bought... Well, they bought 60 acres and I bought 90 acres of farm, and they're raising organics on their farm.

But it was a farm that had some old barns that most people, if they would've bought it, would've torn 'em down.

But for us, they worked beautiful.

- Okay.

- You know?

I mean, 'cause we've got livestock.

And the 90 acres I bought has 40 acres of pasture with it.

- Okay.

- And... - So between the two of you, what are y'all raising on your farm now?

- Okay, we sell beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs.

Did I say lamb?

I think I did.

- I think you did, yeah.

- Soap, honey.

- Soap, honey.

That's it?

- Oh, turkey.

She raises turkeys.

Some of the... I'm in partner with her on the beef and the eggs.

- Yeah.

- We got duck eggs too.

- Well, that's- - But she raises the sheep and the pigs.

- I get a feeling if we just keep talking, you'll just, "Oh, and then there's buffalo and all that stuff."

- No, buffalo.

There's... We sell grain-finished, grass-finished and Wagyu beef.

- Oh, the Wagyu.

- Yeah.

And I started bringing that about 10 years ago, and Renee told people I was crazy or something.

But... - Yeah.

- I said, "What the heck?

It's a niche.

It doesn't cost us anymore to do it."

And I went to Japan in marketing trip in 2003 with Farm Bureau, and we went to the farms where they raised them and, you know, I thought, "Let's try it."

So it's worked out.

But we've... What happened was, we buy extra calves from a big dairy and I told 'em about breeding the Wagyu.

And I went back a year later, I said, "Well, I've been breeding the Wagyu."

Well, they're smaller calves.

We didn't realize at the time.

So for calving ease, they're a good breed to use.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So we ended up with all these Wagyu.

Well, last August, we didn't have hardly any grain-finished.

Everything was Wagyu and we get 25% more for the Wagyu beef than with the regular, but we didn't have any regular.

And Renee says, "Well, we're gonna have to sell, you know, like the regular."

And I says, "Well, why don't we just mark it up 5% until it's Wagyu?"

You know?

So people are... They're not getting it at the regular price.

They're paying a little premium, but it's regular 25% more.

- Yeah.

- And we have an awful lot of people that we did that with, and now they want Wagyu.

- Price of cattle plus the bump in the price.

My gosh.

- Well, newborn calves we buy at the dairy are $1,250.

- That's something.

- Yeah.

- That's crazy.

- But, you know, they said that's the only thing that's saving 'em 'cause the price of milk isn't.

- Yeah.

Oh, that's true.

You mentioned Japan.

Tell me... I love this.

You went to Japan.

How did you get involved in bringing the tractors over?

- Well, two years before I sold the cows, we had an 2N tractor and I was having fits with the thing.

And I thought, "Man, it would really be nice to get one of these little diesel tractors."

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So, you know, I didn't wanna spend $15,000 for a diesel tractor that's in the manure all the time.

And so I got looking.

I found out you could import used ones from Japan.

And in Japan, you know, they're small rice patties, so the first container load I bought had four tractors that were 1979s that had less than $500 on them.

- Okay.

- And the- - Diesel should be nothing.

- Yeah, they're diesels, four wheel drive.

And Japan has a different philosophy than we do.

I talked to a guy from Cat that had been there three years and he said that they say, "Don't break the other guy's rice bowl."

So, basically, they don't have a repair industry.

- Oh.

- They ship the stuff overseas.

You hear about takeout engines for cars.

- Yeah.

- They said there was an outboard motor that was really good in races, so they passed the law.

You can only use it in two races.

(Rob laughing) And then they had... They had government subsidies for people to, you know, buy tractors, finance 'em.

It's like the cars.

On the trip, I had a cousin whose son was over there.

And when we were in Tokyo, he came and picked me up and went to his house to eat.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And he had this really fancy sports car.

And he says, "Well, I could buy it because, you know, it's a figure years old."

Well, they have an inspection that's really expensive, but the older the car gets, the more often you have to have it.

- Yeah.

- So it discourages people from keeping cars very long.

- Yeah, yeah.

Everything over there is fairly new.

- Yeah.

- So to buy these tractors, you had to buy a container of 'em.

- Right.

- So how many tractors in a container?

- A 40-foot container would've 16 tractors.

16 tractors, and they build a double deck, so there's two layers.

- Yeah.

- And they're not like you could drive on the upper layer.

I mean, you actually take the tractors off, you tear that deck out and then you get the ones out underneath.

But they have the wheels off, the fender's off, the steering wheel's off.

- Yeah.

- Plus, they include all the rototillers with them too.

- Oh, okay.

- So you've got a pile of stuff to load and you got like eight hours to do it.

- Okay, and you have to pay the money ahead of time.

- Right.

- And then you just wait for it to show up?

- About six weeks, you know?

And when I started, it was in '97.

So at that time, you weren't getting, you know, emails with pictures of tractors or anything.

- So you write a check, probably a pretty substantial one back in the day.

- Yeah, it was $30,000.

- Okay, so, yeah, back then.

- Yeah.

- And you're waiting on tractors.

You're worried about like Godzilla damage to 'em and all this stuff?

- Well, usually, it depends who you're buying from.

And I was buying 'em from outfit that had really good quality.

- Yeah.

- I mean, I had people that bought parts for me, and they'd get container and spend $1,000 on front wheel drive seals.

I think... And the whole time I did it, I put two front wheel drive seals in the ones I got.

I mean, they were really good quality.

- Yeah.

And that's what you did.

You sold... - Yeah, well, you know, you buy the tractors.

The place I was buying 'em from, basically, you'd paint the wheels 'cause they looked like they'd been sandblasted.

The wheels in the frames, the tin work, it looked good even though it was, you know, 20-year-old tractor.

- Huh.

Well, you know, every little side hustle.

- Yeah.

And, of course, the thing is, you know, people don't just want a tractor, they want a loader, they want a finish mower, they want rotary a mower, they want a blade, they want a rototiller.

- Attachments, I am addicted to 'em.

- Yeah.

- You can't have enough.

Speaking of little side hustles, you got, what, fudge here?

- Yeah, try taste.

If you try eating it, you're gonna think you're having mouthwash or something.

This is so soap.

- It would be the first time.

(both laughing) - Yeah.

This is soap that the Oregon Soap Shoppe makes.

They've been in business 25 years.

Put a plugin for them.

And they buy lard and milk from us to make their soap.

- [Rob] Okay.

- And I said... Before COVID, I said, "Well, why don't you label some for us and, you know, we'll promote you, you promote us and- - Windsweep Farms.

- Yeah.

So when COVID hit, the mayor of Oregon said they were an essential business and they stayed open the whole time.

- The soap was essential.

- Yes.

- I suppose, right?

'Cause we're all supposed to wash our hands.

- But, you know, that's kind of interesting.

It's just a small shop, you know, that the community thought that was important enough just to keep that little shop open when everybody else is being shut down.

- Yeah.

Well, that's cool.

Tell me what it means to have your daughter come back and farm.

- Well, you know, I used to have all the barns full of tractor stuff, and slowly, she's just taken all the room and put cattle in there.

So I kind of lost a lot of my space.

- Have you seen the price of cattle?

That's not a bad thing.

- Yeah.

- We're doing well.

- Well, it's like we didn't raise our prices for beef much after or during COVID.

And then like a year ago, she says, you know, "We're 5% under the market.

We could take our cattle to sale barn and make more money."

And so like in six months, we had to raise a price three times.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, you deserve to make money.

- Yeah.

- And sometimes as farmers, we forget that.

- Yeah.

Well, and that's it.

We were looking at some farmers' markets and, you know, we visited one, and we were looking at what they were selling, you know, meat for, and Renee's like, "Don't they know they can take it to the sale barn and make more money?"

(both laughing) You know?

And we were thinking about going there and we decided, "No, we're not gonna go there 'cause we can't compete, you know, on their price."

- Yeah.

Let me ask you this.

Let's say a younger person comes up to you and says, "Hey, I trying to make a decision whether I should farm or not."

What advice would you give 'em?

- Well, my advice always when I was younger, when I was a young farmer, you know, if you don't have money, you don't have resource, it's pretty hard to start.

But if you start small... Doing grain, I don't think, is the answer.

It's gotta be with livestock where you can have something reproduce, you know?

I mean, you can build a herd.

I had two cornea transplants, and the first one, I sold all my cows.

I kept all the heifers.

And in '18... Well, no, I guess it was more like eight months, I was back milking 18 cows.

- Okay.

- And in a year, I was at 36 cows.

You know, because I had offsprings and, you know?

I mean, that's... Renee has, she bought one Brown Swiss calf and she's milking seven Brown Swiss right now.

- Okay.

- And she's sold cattle to couple families in northern Illinois, she sold a couple to people in Missouri and one even went out to Montana.

- Oh.

- But, you know, if you have something that reproduces, to me, you can grow.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know?

- Well, that's good advice.

And you guys are doing well.

You've got... I mean, you got a lot of side stuff.

You got all the prices for the raw milk, the Wagyu, the grass fed, Berkshire.

If somebody wants something to eat, you guys are the place to go.

- Yeah, we're kind of the protein source.

- Uh-huh.

So you got an email here.

Email at windsweepfarms.com.

Is there a website?

- She has a website.

Renee pretty much does all the marketing.

She basically corresponds mostly by text 'cause she has five children 10 and under and she homeschooled.

- Five children?

- Yes.

- 10 and under?

- Yes.

Three, five, seven, nine and 10.

- Your daughter needs a hobby.

- I don't think she does.

(Rob laughing) She bakes from... She cooks from scratch.

She has a big garden.

Between the fourth and the fifth, she had lymphoma and she still had a garden.

I says, "Renee, you don't have to have a garden."

"I gotta have a garden."

You know?

And she homeschools.

She has somebody that milks about half the time.

- Okay, gotcha.

You've spent an entire lifetime in agriculture and farming.

Where do you think we're going?

- Oh, I don't know.

I... I don't know.

I look at the Auto Thomas, how do you say it?

- The Autonomous, yeah.

- Auto Autonomous.

You know, I don't know.

I just got done reading Jon Kinzenbaw's book.

- Who?

- Kinzey.

Oh, it's Kinzenbaw.

- Oh, from Kinzey.

Yeah, gotcha, yeah.

- Yeah.

And, you know, he talks about this grain cart and tractor and planner.

And people, instead of having one big planner, having multiple little planners.

I don't know if that's really... This book's a few years old.

- Yeah.

- But, you know, I don't know if that's the way things are going.

Sometimes I wonder how big is big enough.

You know?

I mean, you know, of course, we're doing direct to marketing.

I think vertically integrating is what people need to do.

Now, we did the high oil corn, you know, when Wyffels was really promoting it.

And, you know, you finally get to a point it's a commodity.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And it's like the organic.

Was it last year they had wheat?

Organic wheat was cheaper than conventional wheat.

- Yeah, I see that just- - You know?

- It is difficult.

- So, to me, you have to vertically integrate.

You know, I invested in an ethanol plant in Lena not because I had money to invest 'cause I didn't, but I thought we should vertically integrate.

And it ended up being, you know, a real good investment.

- Yeah, that plant did well.

- Yes.

- Not all of 'em did, but, you know, oh, I'm glad that plant did well.

You make a very good point too.

I mean, just looking at all the equipment, you make very, very good points.

We could talk all day, and, unfortunately, PBS won't let us.

- Oh, it's too bad.

- Leonard Sheaffer from Dixon, Illinois.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

It's been too long since we had a chance to catch up.

Thank you very much for coming.

- Sure.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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