(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Rob Sharkey.

Welcome to A Shot of AG.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast, which led into an XM radio show, which led into a television show, which led into me being right here today.

But today, today is not about me.

Today is about Andrew Larson.

How are you doing, Andrew?

- I'm good, thank you.

- You are from Bishop Hill?

- Yes, Bishop Hill, Illinois, just west of Peoria.

- How far from Peoria?

- It took us about 45 minutes to get here.

- Okay.

I remember as a kid going to Bishop Hill and thinking it was like 100 years ago that they had like all the old stuff.

- The AG days in the fall.

- The AG days.

Do they still do that?

- They still do the AG days in the fall.

Couple of festivals and during Christmas time, too.

- Got you.

Is that where you're from originally?

- No, I'm from south of Galva.

My grandparents lived in Bishop Hill, so I grew up around and around that town a little bit.

- Okay.

Did you grow up on a farm?

- Yes, grew up on a farm south of Galva.

My mother's farm on her side had cattle, some hogs, grain farm.

And my both my parents worked off off the farm.

- Oh they did?

- [Rob] So, it was.

- [Andrew] Pretty small.

- Yeah.

All right, that's pretty normal actually.

I don't think everybody realizes that a lot of times even though people farm, they also have full-time jobs elsewhere.

- Yep, so that got me exposed obviously to AG and I enjoyed it.

So we're not full-time farmers now but we do live on a farm.

- But you do farm now?

- Yes, yeah, we do.

We raise cattle and chickens, ducks and some turkeys for Thanksgiving.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah, got a few.

(Rob laughs) - Which one is the worst to grow?

- I think that turkeys have been pretty hard.

- Are they dumb?

- No, they're pretty smart.

But then we started with 10 and we're down to four.

- What's getting them?

- I don't know, 'cause early on just maybe some illness that came with them.

So that'd be a question for my wife.

She's DVM, so.

- So she's a veterinary?

- She's a veterinarian.

- So you married up?

- I married up, yes.

That's what everybody says.

- Where did you meet your wife?

- I met my wife while I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois and she was in teaching at the vet school.

- Okay, so you went to U of I?

- I went to U of I.

- I did not.

But I don't know what you all did.

The ILI?

- Yeah, that wasn't going on when I was there.

It was more the Chief when I was still there.

- Oh, yeah.

Let's not get into that.

- No, we won't.

We won't get in that.

Probably shouldn't even have said that, so.

(Rob laughs) - Boy, people are touchy.

- Yes they are, yeah.

- Okay, you went and you served in the US Navy.

- Yeah after I got out of high school, I worked at a local elevator, the Galva Elevator for a year and then I joined the Navy and spent four and a half years in the Navy.

- So what time was that?

- It was 1987, I went in.

- Okay.

- So during the Gulf War, first Gulf War.

- Was that '87?

- Well, it was 90.

Started in '90.

- It was started at '90, okay.

- So I was in during that.

- All right, did you have to go over there?

- No, no, my division was ready to go but we didn't.

We didn't have to deploy, so.

- Like, what did you do?

- Were you like on the ground?

- I was an aircraft maintenance.

- [Rob] That's a good job in the military.

- It was pretty good.

- Did you go see Top Gun?

- A couple times.

- Okay.

- The old one.

But yeah, I've seen the new one.

Yeah, it's good.

- So, all right.

You have experience with this?

How did it match up to the first one?

- Oh, well, the first one kind of got me enlisted in service so it worked real well.

The second one, I don't know.

It was good.

There was some things in it that was interesting, so.

- You can read so much into what you just said right there.

Oh, it was okay.

- I liked it.

It was fun so it was good.

- Yeah, maybe it's just because you're more experienced now.

If you went back and watched Top Gun, the original one with your trained eyes now, it might be different.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it's hard to get over Tom Cruise.

- Yeah, he's a good actor.

- That's about as controversial as talking about the Chief.

- Right, do you have any other topics on those cards?

- Yeah, we'll get to them.

- Okay.

- All right, so that was before you went to U of I.

- Yeah, that was before.

I got out of the service, did a year at Black Hawk College.

I did some classes there, did an undergraduate degree at Illinois State in Environmental Sciences, went out and worked in industry.

I worked for actually the Health Department in Knox County and then I decided to get back closer to AG so I went back and got my Master's in Agronomy.

- [Rob] Okay.

- [Andrew] Yeah.

- That's a big commitment With the masters.

- Yeah, it was fun.

I learned, worked on a research project on wetlands intercepting tile drainage water.

- Okay, I don't know what that means.

- Well, they constructed the project.

They constructed some wetlands in floodplain area, intercepted, they diverted tile drainage water into the wetlands to see about reduction of nitrate and nutrients coming in to them out of the tiles.

- But intercepting, I guess I don't know what that term means.

- Well, they directed them into the water coming out of the tiles was directed into the wetlands.

- Oh, I get you.

- So, all the water coming into the tiles or into the wetland was tile water.

And we monitored the inlet flow and the outlet flow.

- I got ya.

Because not everybody watching this got an AG background, but drainage tile, why don't you explain it?

- Well, we systematically now drain our fields, used to be a little bit more sporadic on drainage as far as back, you know, our ancestors probably started.

Getting low areas, maybe draws but now we're grid tiling fields, just like a herringbone system, you know, it looks like a fish herringbone.

So they'll put them on 50 foot 100 foot centers and all that excess water that gravitation water goes right out of the field and into the surface water supplies.

- You try explaining it to someone that doesn't farm and they don't get it.

'Cause they're like, "Well, you need water to grow stuff but here you guys are trying to get water off the ground."

- Right.

Just getting the excess water out and you know, getting it to closer to field capacity faster.

So we get the excess water out of the fields in certain areas.

And I you know, your area probably tiles a decent amount too.

So it's kind of statewide.

- Yeah, used to be a swamp.

- Yeah, right.

Yeah, your area.

- What did you learn?

Oh, I learned a lot about the nutrient management in the fields, what farmers this particular farmer was actually doing, but we looked at the wetlands and their efficacy of removing nutrients from the tile drainage systems and we found that they work, the wetland works well.

If the flow is, I guess, a good flow, it couldn't really handle excess flow.

So their capacity was a big component of it too.

How long they could retain the water when it came into it to remove the nitrate mainly through denitrification.

And that was the big one, plant uptake.

So they're seasonal.

But they use wetlands a lot in the south for sewage treatment and other treatment, but we get up this far north, obviously our springs are kind of cold.

So it worked quite well.

- They're working hard on bringing wetlands back.

Is that a good thing?

- Yeah, I think so.

I think in certain areas, it's definitely viable.

We probably farm some stuff that I probably shouldn't say this, but we probably farm some stuff that maybe would have better purpose.

- There's snakes in there though.

- Yeah - You're afraid of those?

- I'm not a big snake fan, no.

- Yeah.

Are there, no poisonous ones?

Or we're good there?

- I don't know about it.

- It doesn't matter if they are.

Just keep them away from me.

- I stay away from them.

I'm not gonna find out.

- So now though, you live in Bishop Hill.

You have a farm, three boys.

- Three boys.

- Yeah, and so you're teaching?

- Right, I teach.

I started over 20 years ago at Black Hawk College.

Started teaching in the AG program.

I teach the agronomy classes which includes introductory soils, crops classes, pesticide management, IPM.

I teach a forage crops class.

And then for extracurricular, I coach a soils judging team.

So we do soil evaluation and travel all over.

- [Rob] Is that a physical game?

- Kind not, it can be I guess.

- [Rob] Can you throw elbows?

- No 'cause a few of my students have in the past, get a little rough.

A little physical on that.

But, no, for the most part it's not physical.

But you gotta have some, we always say a little bit of grit because it's cold.

Sometimes we've had to dig out soil pits with full snow.

We've had to shovel them out.

- [Rob] Oh, really?

- Yeah, at a contest.

- [Rob] I think I would come back in a week.

- Yeah, we had to.

We only have a few days to practice.

- Explain how this works, right?

Like the whole pit and everything.

Explain how that works.

- So the pit is a, it's an exposed soil profile.

Soil face, we call it and it's accessible.

For the most part, it's just a ramp walking down and it's about four to five feet deep.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- They tend to dig them to expose what they want us to see or the students to see.

And our students, an official USDA soil scientist, NRCS soil scientist judges the pit and evaluates it.

And then our students have to match what they see with what is actually there.

So they evaluate physical properties in the pit for texture, color, structure.

- [Rob] Well, dirt is dirt.

- Well, yeah, I guess.

From Bradford, you'd probably say that.

But in over the west, Henry County, we call it soil, you know.

- Okay, for people that really don't know, right?

There are a lot of people that think dirt is dirt.

So I mean tell, you know, why is it important to know the difference between clay, muscatune, all that stuff.

- Okay, so for the contest it's important to know just to 'cause they have to interpret what they see and what it would be useful and using the soil for.

For example, how well would it be in growing the crop?

What are some limitations of it?

But the students really gather I think an experience where they get to travel.

We go to Kansas, we go to Tennessee, we go to Texas and they get to see soils everywhere and so do I from that standpoint.

But why do we grow corn in around Bradford?

It's mainly the soil types that are productive.

So that's what they get out of it.

They get some background on soils as far as the diversity across the United States and what they get to see.

They only judge for two years with us, but for the most part, that's what they get.

- [Rob] Do you enjoy it?

- Yeah, I enjoy it.

We've done well.

The team does well and I get to work with students.

Usually five to 10 students on our team at any given time and it's fun.

Usually the students that really wanna get extra out of college, you know, they're looking for a little bit more.

- Well, 'cause that's what I would always worry about with teaching, is the punks.

You know the hooligans, the smart mouth ones.

- Yeah, nice thing in AG is we don't see a lot of that.

- Yeah.

- Most of the students that come to Black Hawk are pretty committed to learning about AG and they're pretty interested.

So we don't, the college level discipline is usually not a big problem, which is good.

- [Rob] I would say.

- I wouldn't be good at that.

- In the last 20 years, this is just me looking from the outside, Black Hawk has all of a sudden just like skyrocketed in like even national exposure.

I go all around the country speaking and that and you get to know where I'm at, where Bradford is compared to Kewanee.

As soon as I say, Kewanee, everybody knows where Black Hawk is in the agriculture world.

- Right.

- What have you guys done that's been so extraordinary?

- Well, the program started in 1968 or so.

They started at the armory in Kewanee teaching classes.

But it's the first program was an AG production, AG business program, an AAS degree, Associate in Applied Science.

So it's a two-year degree in AG and it started way back then.

And that program is kind of the foundation of the campus.

Students still come.

We'll have 30 students this fall coming into that program.

They either wanna go into the retail industry, they wanna go back to a family farm like yours, they wanna learn some skills.

And that's kind of the what it started, but then we have added over the years, the extracurricular activities.

So Mr. Hoge came on board, started the Livestock Judging Program.

He was there, I would get it wrong.

But he was there long.

He just retired like three or four years ago.

We started an Equine Program so we have a horse judging team, a riding team now.

- What you hear a lot about.

- Hear a lot about, yeah.

There's a lot of interest in that.

So students, we started the Vet Tech Program too which started three or four years ago.

It's doing really well.

So we've just kind of added to the AG platform from that original AG business, AG production program, we've just added to that.

And it's the extracurricular activities that we get students from everywhere.

They wanna come to that, so.

- Well and don't take much away from yourself, you've done very successful with your judging and that.

- Yeah, our soil's team has done well over the I think we've won the national title last, I don't know, six, seven years.

- [Rob] Do you pay off the judges?

- No, no, there's no, no.

- [Rob] Have you tried it?

- No, no, it would probably would backfire if we tried that.

So we just stay away.

- Depends on the judge.

- Yeah, depends on yeah, right.

I'd like to think that our students could be the judge when they're done.

So that's our goal.

That's our goal.

- What do we have here?

- Oh, that's a picture I brought just to, I'm from I live in Bishop Hill now, but it's kind of a neat story that my great grandparents actually lived on this farm.

It was a Bishop Hill, not part, it was part of the county called the Root Farm.

And they lived there, my great grandparents did in 1926, that era.

And my grandparents lived there with them for a little while but that's where we live today.

So it's kind of neat that they kind of sharecropped and we ended up buying the farm several few years later, a 100 years later maybe.

- And that's something when you look at this picture in 1926, they were just about ready to go through the Depression.

- Yeah.

- All that stuff and here that farm survived.

- It survived.

- Through all that and now you're able to live there.

- Yeah, it looks a little different than that.

So we've cleaned it up a little bit, so.

- Your fashions have changed.

- Yeah they've changed.

- [Rob] A little bit.

- I think my, yeah.

- So who, that's your?

- That's my grandma on the right, Maddie.

Yep and that's my great grandma on the left, so.

- Okay, I don't know your grandmother, but she looks like she's got a little bit of devil in her.

She looks like she could be some trouble.

Look at that look.

- I know we say saucy.

- Is that what it is?

- That's what we call it, saucy.

She's from Kentucky, so there we go.

- There we go.

- So, but that's where we live today.

As I was telling you before we started that the Root Farm was part of the Swedish colony.

- Gotcha.

Three kids, your son, Drew, is autistic.

- Yeah.

- Okay, tell me about that.

- Well, he's been, I think he was diagnosed when he was three or four, but he's pretty high-functioning but he loves being around the farm.

Really, the ducks and a lot of the stuff is his.

He enjoys having that on the farm.

So he, you know, it's kind of nice that he gotta grow up there and he still lives with us today.

But he enjoys the farm, drives the tractor and does quite a bit of stuff.

- Okay, So like you said fairly high-functioning.

- He's pretty high-functioning.

He was gonna come in here today, but he thought he was gonna get in trouble, so he stayed outside.

(Rob laughs) - You say that he has taught you to be more patient.

- Oh, yeah.

My wife and I talk about that a lot, that he's kind of taught me that people learn different ways.

Some people take a little bit more time to pick things up.

So from the teaching standpoint, that's kind of mellowed me out a little bit in the last 20 some years that not every student grasps things at the same pace.

So I'm pretty flexible on a lot of stuff that maybe some other faculty aren't.

- Yeah, it made me wonder, I mean, is that go over to your teaching side?

- Yeah, like if a student needs extra time for a test or, I'm pretty flexible.

So, I understand.

- You have kids, right?

And you always worry about everything that could go wrong with that.

So when you get news that, you know, your son is autistic, how does that hit you?

- Oh, for my wife and I, it was more just to sometimes, for us it didn't change a lot, he was still our son obviously and we'd been dealing with him.

But it did help maybe get some services a little bit at school and that but from the start, it was a little tough from the standpoint that you know, maybe people looked at him a little bit different, even though he was the same kid.

But, you know, we hold him to the same kind of standards that we hold the other two boys to.

And he has daily expect, you know, he has to meet his daily expectations and everything.

So it's been fun.

He likes to travel a lot so he goes wherever my wife goes.

He's been a lot of places.

Hawaii is his favorite spot.

- [Rob] Hawaii.

- Yeah, so when he gets fired up, we go to Hawaii so that's always fun.

- So if someone's out there and watching, right?

And they just they get hit with that news, right?

That there's something wrong with our child what advice would you give them?

- Oh, be patient, it gets better.

You know, we went through some pretty rough times when he was developing and just learning communication skills and he's grown a lot from that.

It is pretty rough times, but it gets a lot better.

And as they learn to communicate, you know, like he did with us, what he needed, what he wanted, it got a lot better.

So it's just frustrating.

- [Rob] True.

- And any other thing, you know, the school systems are set up, you know, it's hard because it's structured for certain type of student, right?

And if you can't conform to that, you know, it can be a little difficult.

- Which takes me to a quote, I believe this is a quote, I'm just going off what it said.

"I graduated valedictorian of the lower half of my high school class."

- Yeah, that's kind of a friend of mine and I tried to claim that but I use that at school a little bit when we're recruiting students.

I was just kind of a average mediocre high school student.

- [Rob] C's?

- [Andrew] Yeah.

- [Rob] D's?

- I don't know.

I had to go back and look at my transcript a little bit.

- [Rob] D's.

- [Andrew] Probably a few D's.

- [Rob] D stands for Diploma.

- I know, my mom might be watching this.

But anyhow, I just, I use that a little bit when we recruit students, when we have events on campus, that just because at this point in your life how you're measured against peers or in a structured thing like K12, right?

- [Rob] Yeah.

- It doesn't mean that that's gonna set the tone for the rest of your life.

So my college or high school advisor told me that grades weren't good enough for college, so don't worry about that.

- [Rob] That yours weren't?

- Yeah, my grades.

So he told me that and then he said, "You don't take direction real well, so the military's probably out."

And then he said that, "You'll probably just work with co-op rest your life."

So and I you know, I probably was a little kind of resented that comment but I probably didn't give him much more to work with.

You know it's probably about all he got out of me for four years, so.

- When you got your masters, did you go and slam it on his desk?

- I didn't do that.

- Did you want to?

- Maybe a little bit.

(Rob laughs) It was kind of a thick book so my thesis was kind of big so that would have been fun but no, it was all right.

I didn't give him much to work with when I was in high school, so.

- I do think that is an understanding that's getting more accepted, it seems like.

I was a horrible student.

I literally I could not.

Okay, part of it was me and I do admit to that but part of it is I just I couldn't comprehend.

When I read something it just didn't click in the mind.

But I mean if I took like a test orally, I was fine.

- You were good, right?

- Yeah, so.

- But going back to like my son, you know, and in college when I deal with students, some people do better orally and don't do very well written.

But back when you and I went to school, you didn't have those options.

This was the system, this is what you gotta deal with.

- [Rob] No, we didn't.

- You know, so it didn't flex much back then, so.

- So your farm, what are you raising?

- Just some birds around the house, chickens and then we have around 20 cows, 25 cows.

Yeah and we, my wife is a certified embryologist so we put in eggs, embryos out of a cow that we're part owner in that with the Lowderman family down by Macomb area.

So, that's kind of our thing with the cows.

We put in nice Hereford embryos and have nice Hereford calves and sell them.

- I get what an embryologist is.

Where do you go to get certified for it?

It's a national organization that you have to go through.

It's pretty rigorous.

- I imagine that's not like I don't know, - planting a tulip bulb.

- No, no, it's not like being a green handed star.

It's a little bit more.

It's a group of peers that evaluates people that wanna get certified.

So she likes that.

She's from California, so.

- Your wife is?

- Yes, she's from California.

Like you said, I married up.

People always ask like, they'll ask her like, "Why did you move to Illinois from California?"

- [Rob] That's what I was thinking.

- When I'm standing right next to them, right?

(Rob laughs) It kind of hurts, you know.

That's okay, but she likes the Midwest.

She really fell in love with the Mid.

She went to vet school at K-State.

- Oh, okay.

- So she really likes the Midwest.

- Yeah.

- Thank goodness.

- Yeah.

Let's say there is a high school senior that's watching this show.

They don't.

- They could be a few.

- They're on their phone is what they do.

The only reason is maybe because their grandma has it on by accident.

But it's let's imagine, right?

- Well, they might have Googled and heard Bishop Hill.

- They could have.

(Rob laughs) Interested in agriculture, what's your sell to get them to go to Black Hawk?

- The the sell to come to Black Hawk, well, if you like the foundation of agriculture, we have that, which is really good.

You don't really think of AG being diversified but there'll be students there that are interested in equine, AG production, livestock judging, soils, all kinds of students that come from everywhere to a small little community college.

So you'll get that experience while you're there.

And if you like extra activities, like you may be do in high school in your FFA chapter, we do all of that.

So that's our kind of our selling point.

If you're not interested in things like that, you know, we may not be the best fit for you.

But, you know, we've had students from Hawaii, everywhere.

So it's a pretty unique place to come to.

You know, and I know from growing up in Galva, that when you're local to something like that, you maybe look past it and maybe don't look at it, as not a real viable option.

But I would encourage, you know, anybody to take a look at it and come see us and visit the campus.

- I would encourage them not to come to Black Hawk.

I don't like Black Hawk students.

You wanna know why?

- Why?

- All right, so my wife and I, we love going to Los Ranchitos in Kewanee.

- Oh yeah, they're probably always there.

- That's the thing.

We go in there and there's no place to sit because it's all the Black Hawk kids.

- But they're polite.

They're polite students.

- Students are polite?

(Andrew laughs) - Yeah, there's quite a few that come from out of the areas.

- I suppose.

Is there any place to find you on social media if people wanna get a hold of you?

- Oh, boy, I have a Twitter account.

- Do you remember what it is?

- Larson nine, I can't remember it.

(Rob laughs) I don't know.

I'm not that, sorry.

- That's fine.

It doesn't sound like you're on there too much.

- Actually I read, I have some follow, people I follow on AG that I'm on there quite a bit.

I don't post a lot on there.

- [Rob] Okay, all right.

- Or you can Google the college and you can find me there.

- Yes, Andrew Larson and your title at Black Hawk?

- Professor of Agronomy.

- Okay, I mean that's pretty cool.

Going back to your guidance counselor that said, "No".

(Andrew and Rob laugh) - Yeah, I doubt it that they'll be watching this so that's okay.

- Well, I mean, that kind of hurts Andrew.

(Rob laughs) - Well, I'm sorry.

I just don't see them.

- No, that's fine.

- They Google Andrew Larson.

- We're just about out of time.

- Yeah, we are.

That probably didn't end on a very good one there.

- Andrew Larson, thank you so very much for what you're doing.

Really, really appreciate it.

Everybody else, maybe that's watching, we'll catch you next week.