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

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

Do you know history?

Do you know farming?

Well, we're gonna talk with Luke Holly from Granville today.

How you doing, Luke?

- Good.

- Yeah.

You're farming over there?

- Yes.

Have a medium size farm operation.

Typical corn, beans, some seed corn and we have a U-pick patch.

- Yeah.

I'm not gonna ask how many acres, but you say medium size?

I mean, everything's relevant, isn't it?

- Yes.

Yes, definitely.

- You know what the definition of a large farm is?

One acre than I'm farming.

(both laughing) You're a multi-generational farm?

- Yes.

About four generations.

The farmstead that my wife and I own, there's been three generations on that farm.

- Okay.

So did you grow up like that stereotypical farm kid?

I mean, raised on a farm, kinda knew you were gonna come back to the farm?

- Pretty much.

Well, when I went off to college, my father was a little worried that I wasn't gonna come back and farm.

But I graduated and I came back and told him that he needed to retire.

- Okay, if you're in agriculture, that's really funny.

(both laughing) 'Cause sometimes that's not the case.

You and I probably both know of farmers in their fifties, sixties, that really have never been the decision maker on their farm, because the generation before them did not want to give up the reins.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So, was it a deal?

When you came back to the farm did you have that talk with your dad?

- Yes, a little bit.

But I mean, we kind went together and just started farming at first and then we grew the operation and then he decided to step back some, but we shared a lot of stuff.

I mean it would be really hard to come in and just start your own.

Almost impossible.

You know that.

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Where'd you go to school?

- Iowa State.

- Iowa?

Come on Luke.

- Yeah.

- Really?

(Luke laughing) What was the reason for that?

- Well, they do have a good agronomy program and last week I think they did beat Iowa in football, so.

- Nobody watching this cares.

(Luke laughing) Iowa, Iowa State.

(both laughing) Y'all are a little nutty about your football out there though.

- Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

I wasn't a huge fan, but I like to see 'em win, so.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Growing up, the farm, was it just corn and soybeans?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Okay.

So is that what you figured you wanted to go back into?

- Yeah, and then we have just outside our house, we have two different patches, about four acres each, and we decided to put 'em into a U-pick patch.

In the summertime we have sweet corn.

I plant it about five different times and so people can just come out and just pick sweet corn as fresh as you can get.

And in the fall we have a pumpkin patch that we've been doing for at least 12 years and it's just more for, when we had kids, we liked pumpkins and we thought we'd start out with a little patch and then it kind of grew into just a, it's a still a small patch, and it's just nice to see the community come out.

- See, that's a problem though.

Like when I raise corn, I raise soybeans, I put 'em in a truck, and then they leave and then I don't care anymore.

You have to deal with people.

- Yeah.

Well, not exactly.

I don't, I'm not there, sitting there.

So there's some people that I've never met that have been to our patch, because there's a little box that you put some money in and its- - Oh, is it the honor system?

- Yes, it is.

Other than there's a few cameras, but, - Ah.

It's the honor system, but we're watching.

- Yes.

(both laughing) - With that, a lot of people don't understand.

They drive out on the interstate, they drive by these corn fields.

They think it's all sweet corn.

Can you explain the difference?

- Sweet corn is the edible stuff and of course, the corn is usually for feed or ethanol.

And the big difference is the field corn tastes terrible.

- But it is edible.

- It is edible early on.

- Yeah, but I mean, if you go out now and eat it, it's not gonna hurt you.

- No.

- You don't wanna eat it.

- No, it's not great to eat.

- But isn't it funny, I mean to you and I, something as of common as that, knowing the difference between sweet corn and regular corn, I would say the vast majority of people really don't know.

- I agree.

Yeah.

The other day I had somebody come down from Chicago and he saw a soybean plant, driving by, but he's never seen the pods on the soybean plant.

So I showed him that and what you do with them and how they break out of the pod and get the bean and where they go to.

So people know corn and soybeans just looking, driving by.

But yeah, have never really touched it or stuff like that.

- But I mean, I don't know if you've ever driven down to middle of California, where they've got like the salad bowl of the world and I was driving there and my kids were like, "Well, what's that crop?"

I'm like, "I don't know.

Looks like soybeans."

And the next one, what's that crop?

"I don't know.

Looks like soybeans."

So, I mean, we don't even know once we get outside of our own bubble.

- Correct.

Yeah.

- What things are.

- Corn, soybeans.

Now the thing about you is would you say you're a history buff?

- I like history, but I'm not, I mean I don't know all the details.

I like parts of history.

- Okay, 'cause I got a history quiz for you.

- Oh!

- No, I don't.

It would've been funny though wouldn't it?

- No.

(both laughing) - Well, like what'd ya have here?

- I said I graduated.. - Yeah, but from Iowa, so I'm not expecting much.

(both laughing) - Iowa State.

- Oh, even less.

(laughing) What do we have here?

- These are actually trench art.

In World War I, they took a lot of shells and made different designs.

And the only reason I know about 'em is my father was a collector.

And he collected all different odd stuff.

We used to go to flea markets, garage sales, traveling all over the place.

And he'd pick up things that looked neat.

He was good at machining.

So he kinda was interested in how they made all these and the details.

Like this one here, it says France and it's 1918.

Was made by soldier.

- And these are shells.

Like are these the ones they dropped down.

The artillery and the whomp.

- Yeah.

- Really?

- I believe so.

I believe so.

- And are they both from World War I?

- I believe so.

- Wow.

- And so you can find them every once in a while and he would pick 'em up for- - [Rob] I've never seen them.

- He'd pick 'em up for like 20 bucks at first.

- [Rob] Oh really?

- Yeah, because they were neat and he has a collection of about probably 25 of 'em.

- [Rob] Really?

- And so it's a neat thing.

And that actually, we put all his shells on display at the Ag Museum in Hennepin.

And if anybody wants to see 'em there, I don't know if anybody knows where Hennepin is, but.

- No, (both laughing) but before we get there, it's amazing, this one, it almost looks like it's braided.

- They sliced it and then they braided it.

- Isn't that something?

- Yeah.

The details to do that is amazing.

The time also.

- Yeah, everybody nowadays would just do it with a 3D printer.

(both chuckling) We have a show on RFD TV where we take antique tools and we put 'em in front of a farmer or anybody and we say, "What is this?"

And sometimes they know it, sometimes they don't.

I went through my dad's barn, I went through my neighbor's barn and we got all of it and I kind of ran out of stuff.

So I called you up, because what's your affiliation with the museum?

- I just help out, not as much as I would like to, but I help out with the museum and I've been there since it started.

- And what's the name of it?

- It's the Putnam County Historical Society, and then it's their Ag Museum.

About 20 years ago, probably, they bought an industrial building in Hennepin, Illinois and they converted it into a museum, because they had a lot of stuff that people donated over the years, were spread out in different people's barns.

And so they wanted to collect it all together so people could see the rich history of Putnam County.

- Yeah, it's amazing to me the antique tools that we used in agriculture.

'Cause I mean, first of all, those old boys, they liked to work.

I mean, I can't imagine the amount of work they went to on something that we find so automated now.

- Yeah.

Especially like the two row.

I mean, there's a bunch of two row planters in there and can you imagine starting on an 80 acres with a two row planter?

- No.

No desire to do that.

- With no cab and air conditioning.

- The one thing, you lent us three tools.

One was a hog holder.

Where they used to hold the hog when they had to work on it or do whatever.

Not many guys knew that.

Then one was to scald, or they scald the hog to scrape the skin off.

A little more well known.

And then the third one was a rope maker.

And most guys figured that out in there heads it was something to do with that.

But I mean, these were a hundred years ago and I would say the majority of farmers didn't know what those tools were.

It's amazing how far we've come.

- Yeah, definitely.

- Yeah.

You do like to collect other stuff.

What's a split Bamboo?

- Well, that was another collection that started with my father.

He started, same thing, going to flea markets and stuff.

And so the split bamboo, actually they split the bamboo and put it into like eight different sides and make a fishing pole out of it.

For fly rods and stuff like that.

- Do you fish with them or just collect 'em?

- No, those are mainly just collecting.

- You probably don't want to, right?

- No, yeah, I do know there was one of 'em in the collection that's for deep sea fishing.

And so it's a bigger one.

And it actually has a way where you can turn the eyes of the fishing pole, because after so much use it starts bending one way.

So you turn it to start bending the other.

- (chuckling) Oh, the the seed signs?

- Yes, actually the newest thing, which just went up about two weeks ago, Moews Seed Company, which was founded in Putnam County.

- Which Is not spelled like it sounds.

It's M-O-E-W apostrophe S. - Correct.

- And that's Moew's - That's Moew's - Okay.

Who made that up?

Who decided that?

- I do not know.

- It wasn't you, anyway.

- No.

And so they actually sold out about three years ago and they donated their sign, which is a neon sign that hadn't been lit in 50 years.

And the Historical Society had it redone.

And they had it redone, so it's lit and now it's at the museum outside.

- [Rob] Oh, that's cool.

- It can be seen.

And Putnam County has, there's three families in Putnam County for hybrid seed corn.

The Moews family, the Griffith family and the Robinson family.

And so they've done a lot in the advancement.

- [Rob] Museum space?

- And so we have a place in the museum called the Corn Room and that shows those different families.

- Putnam County, smallest county in the state of Illinois.

- Correct.

- But yet here you guys are rocking a museum.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

How big is Hennepin?

- Oh, I'm not sure exactly.

- Not very big though.

- No, I mean, you blink while you're going through.

They're right there - You know, we have an outfitter, so we have hunters come from Virginia and one of 'em, I don't know why, he is always like, "Yeah, I went over that Henny Pen canal," Henny Pen and I always make fun of him, 'cause why not?

- Does he call it Illi-noise?

- They do.

They all do.

And it drives me insane too, but again, is what it is.

So are you, what is the fascination with the antique stuff?

The older stuff?

- I think the way the stuff's made and the hand craftsmanship of it.

Just somebody had to invent the stuff to make it.

It wasn't, you could go to your John Deere dealer and get it.

I mean you had to, some of the stuff was completely made.

And there's a four row planter in there.

It's an International four row planter and it's two, two rows.

Somebody designed the frame to make, so it was made by somebody, invented by somebody, because they wanted to get bigger.

- Well even you and I growing up, it seems like there was a lot more building stuff.

And then it's like as time went on, you can't really build the stuff, like attachment to tractors and that, because everything's so big.

Everything's so precise to where we're used to be able to, I don't know, build whatever, some attachment that would make a disc bigger or something anymore.

Everything's so big.

Everything's so bulky.

- And we don't have time too.

- Plus we're lazy.

- Yeah.

That too.

- I mean, I can't do something like this if I'm on TikTok all day.

- Facebook, yeah everything, yeah exactly.

(both chuckling) - Mission trips.

I always think it's amazing when people take their time to go on mission trips.

You've been on several of them.

Why do that?

- Actually, just to get outta your bubble.

To see areas without going to a tourist place.

Well the first one I went on and this is a local church.

A lady just organizes 'em and asks if anybody wants to go and we usually get a group of ten to go.

- [Rob] The Hennepin church?

- Yeah, no (chuckling) it's actually in the Granville.

So the first one I went on was Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina.

And it was actually two years after Hurricane Katrina, it was still a mess down there.

- [Rob] It was, yeah.

- And I've never seen something, a storm, totally wipe out streets.

It was just foundations And then you could see there was a gas station there, because the island of the pump was still there, but nothing else was there.

And so it was interesting, eye opening I guess, to go into the areas and help out.

Because Biloxi is a casino town and so if you went to Biloxi you'd probably just drive in the street, see the casinos.

And you wouldn't see four blocks away was people's houses that were totally destroyed.

And I helped with a group of others, put drywall and insulation.

- [Rob] Actually rebuilding the houses?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- We went down to New Orleans the year after Katrina and we went on the bus tour.

And what I think what a lot of people up here don't understand is once that gets wet, the house is toast, because of the heat and the mold and that, you've gotta strip everything down.

- Yeah.

It was totally gutted.

When we got there the house was gutted from the group before and then we had to insulate and drywall.

- So do you ever get to meet the people that are living in that house?

- Yes, actually the lady's name was Patience Harris was her name.

And I just remember she was a nice lady and the best thing about it is that she brought us, I've never had sweet potato pie before.

- [Rob] Really?

- And she brought us that, and I'm glad I don't live a block down from that place that she bought it from because- - [Rob] Diabetes.

- Yes, exactly.

(both laughing) - I gotcha.

But you, I mean, you don't get paid.

I don't even know if you get a thank you at the end.

Why do you do it?

- Oh, it's well worth it.

I mean even the group that we go with, I mean it's different every time, you meet people from your home that you've never worked alongside doing stuff.

And we had everybody from, somebody would just carry a hammer and help to an experienced electrician, went along.

And so that part was just enjoying, I mean, I really enjoyed it.

- Well, I think a lot of times people are hesitant to go on a mission trip, because they're like, "I don't want to go to the jungle.

"I don't want to go that far out of it."

But I mean, this is Biloxi.

There's a lot of times where mission trips go to places in the states.

- Yeah, yeah.

The farthest we've been was we went to Puerto Rico, which, I don't know if I would ever go to Puerto Rico.

So it was a neat thing to see that countryside and that was a lot of repairing roofs and painting and stuff.

We were supposed to go down to Southern Puerto Rico during that trip, but the earthquakes were happening down there and so they wouldn't allow us to go there.

So we didn't get as much.

- [Rob] I bet you were okay with that.

- Well yeah.

(laughing) But like old San Juan, I mean there's a lot of history there too.

It's just neat to see other areas.

- [Rob] What were you doing there?

Same thing, building?

- Same thing.

Same thing.

- Okay.

And St. Augustine?

- And St. Augustine, same.

There was a hurricane went through there.

- They're all hurricanes.

- Yeah.

- Katrina, Matthew, and Maria.

- Yeah.

And that one, a lady, her insurance wouldn't cover to rebuild her house.

They didn't give her enough.

And so we went in and same, drywall and we only drywalled chest high, because that's all the water went in and that's all she needed.

And that house we did finish.

Sometimes you go on 'em and you don't finish the house and you wish you could have got more done during the week, but you're only there for a week.

- You think you'll go on more?

- Yeah, last week, I think Princeton, Kentucky I think, there was a tornado went through there and so they're trying to get a group together to go there.

- People often hear about mission trips.

I don't know if a lot of people are kind of interested in 'em, don't know what's all involved in 'em.

What advice would you give to somebody that's out there watching, going, "You know, maybe I should look into 'em."

- I think, check out local churches.

There's networks through ministries and different religious organizations that organize stuff like that.

And that's how the person that leads ours, she just looks around and there's on the internet or searching through stuff and I mean even the Red Cross and places like that.

- Mm-hm, my daughter has gone to places that you wouldn't want your daughter to go to.

And it drives me insane.

(Luke chuckling) She's the one running a camera there, yeah.

It's a lotta stress on an old man, to have daughter in a Qatar airport.

- Wow.

I don't go that, my bubble isn't that big.

- By herself.

- Hm.

brave - 'Cause the other people miss the plane, but she was responsible and she made it, which meant she was in a Qatar airport by herself.

Yeah, so, I mean I think there are some limitations to some of these.

- Yeah.

I do believe.

My son actually wants to go, but he's not old enough yet.

- How old's your kids?

- I have two.

Two boys.

One's 10 and one's 13.

- Okay, well I mean I do know some of the mission trips that are out there that they would be old enough to go.

Like you said, hand me a hammer.

What I would never do, is have your sons go to a mission trip where they were holding the flashlight for you.

Like we used to have to do with our dad.

- Yeah.

We used to get yelled at.

- All the time.

Yes.

Trouble lights.

And then all you'd have to do is, like that and the light went out and somehow it was our fault.

- Yeah, no, I know.

- It's amazing.

It's amazing.

- But when you're holding it by yourself now, you know, trying to work on stuff, you think maybe it wouldn't be bad if somebody's holding it for you.

- I know.

Then we could yell.

- Yes.

(both laughing) Exactly.

- You're a corn, soybean farmer.

You do the U-pick stuff.

What do you want people to know about agriculture?

- It's a changing world and I know that's a general statement, but I mean, just as far as, like Putnam County has the ethanol plant and so we're lucky, a lot of my grain goes there.

Next year they're supposed to be building a soybean processing facility for jet fuel.

- [Rob] That sounds awesome.

- So I never thought I'd be selling soybeans to power a plane that goes across the world.

But so it's always changing.

Nothing stays still and like you know, every year weather plays a huge role.

- Are you optimistic about ag?

- Yeah, I think there's more stuff coming out of corn and soybeans as far as materials made and stuff like that.

So yeah, I think it has a good future.

Right now we have very good prices.

- But you don't know.

Don't finish that.

Don't finish that sentence.

- But, but there's always a pendulum and so we just go.

(both laughing) - It is.

Well, and you and I have been around long enough to where we've seen that pendulum too.

And it's so hard to plan for that, because yes, things are good now and we've got money coming in, so we want to update machinery, we want update the farm, but yet we know could be as soon as next year, that all that dries up.

- So we always need a rainy day fund.

- Yes.

Any kind of fund.

Any kind of fund would be good.

Are you on any of the social media?

- Just Facebook, mainly.

- [Rob] Just Facebook?

- Definitely not TikTok.

- Well, and the name of the museum again?

- Putnam County Historical Society.

They have a website and they are on Facebook.

- Well perfect.

Luke Holly from Granville.

I appreciate you coming on.

It's been fun to know you over the years and I appreciate it.

So Luke, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

(upbeat music)