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

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

Farmers, they have a difficult job.

Yeah, a lot of times you're raising corn, soybeans, you got some livestock.

Ah, you're gonna make money this year or you're not.

Well, the good farmers, they learned to diversify.

Today, we're gonna be talking with Matt Boucher from Dwight, Illinois.

How you doing, Matt?

- Pretty good, sir, yourself?

- Good.

Where is Dwight in the great state of Illinois?

- Kind of centrally located, more or less.

Some people call it north central, some say it's just central, but to me it's kind of in between those two really.

So if you know where Kankakee is, you know where Joliet is, you know where Streator is, kind of right smack dab between those three, more or less.

So right off I-55 off of Route 17.

- Northern Illinois.

- Northern Illinois.

- That's all you had to say.

- Fair enough.

(both laughing) - Is that where you're from originally?

- Originally from a little bit farther north.

And we had relocated the farm back when I was getting outta high school and had the opportunity to take over the day-to-day of the family farm and been that way ever since.

- Relocated the farm?

- Yeah, we basically got chased out by houses to sum it up.

- [Rob] Oh.

- So in order to maintain farming, my dad and my uncle were ready to step back at that point.

And I was coming back from school.

So it was just a natural fit to jump in and continue our farming legacy, I guess if you wanna call it that.

I'm a fourth generation farmer and certainly wanted to see that continue.

- So you were up around Chicago?

- Not quite, we were by Plainfield, Lockport area.

- Still, they were growing and... - Yeah, it's pretty much all Chicago now.

I mean, it's all developed up there.

But at the time, it was nice country area.

- And how old were you when that happened?

- I would've been 21, 22.

- Okay.

So, I mean, I always wondered about that, right, how that would work.

I mean, was your family okay with that?

- Yeah, in our case, there was so much development going on around us and farms getting sold all the time and so much traffic and everything.

It was time to go.

If we were going to continue the farm, it was evident that it was time to go somewhere else.

- Yeah.

- You know?

Safety reasons driving machinery up and down the road and that, it's just not a place for a farm anymore.

- It drives me insane to be driving the farm equipment around.

I know guys do it all the time.

But it would drive me nuts to have to take a combine five miles when you've got 80,000 cars you gotta go by.

- Yeah, it's a whole different world up there.

I mean, it's nice having four lane roads and what have you.

It's a lot nicer with that than two lanes, but it wasn't much fun.

You know, it was just time.

The timing was right, that's all.

- So, at that time in your life, did you know that you were coming back to the farm?

- I was born and raised and that's all I wanted to do.

And whether I was gonna come back to our farm and run it or go work for another farmer somewhere else, and I mean, that's all I've ever wanted to do.

When I was a kid, you couldn't get me out of a tractor no matter what.

The heck with homework, the heck with all that stuff.

I wanted to be out in the field on a tractor and get my hands dirty.

- Did you go to school?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Where'd you go?

- I went out to JJC first and did my two years there and then transferred out.

- I don't know what that is.

- Joliet Junior College.

- [Rob] Oh, okay.

- So, excellent ag program up there and did a few years there in ag biz and then transferred out and did more ag biz and econ and things like that out at Iowa State.

- Iowa.

- Yep.

- Why?

- I fell in love with it.

Absolutely fell in love with it.

Not knocking anything local or anything here, but as soon- - [Rob] It sounds like you are - No, not at all.

I'm just, I liked the country stuff and it was a whole different feel when we got out to campus out in Iowa State.

- [Rob] Okay.

- You turn on, for example, you turn on the news out there and there was an ag report even on the five o'clock news.

And growing up closer to Chicago, that was the last thing you heard on any kind of news there.

So it just had a whole different feel.

I fell in love with it and that's where I finished out my education there.

- Gotcha.

Who's all involved in your farm now?

- So we're definitely a family operation.

We got my uncle and myself.

We do primarily all the work that's done.

We do have some neighbors and stuff that come help us out in season as well.

My mom is part of it as well, but we got a couple of kids that are getting old enough to come up and wanna have their hand in it.

My oldest has shown hogs at 4H fairs and that for a while.

She's gotten involved, and my son- - She's not that gal that looks all crazy with the- - No, not that crazy.

- That's not her?

- No, no.

That girl had a lot of passion there to say the least.

I would say mine is a little more on the having fun side with it.

She enjoys it a little bit more.

But she got involved in that for quite a while and my son's also coming up and he wants to be involved in certain ways, but he likes more of the turf management and some of the agronomy side.

He likes to golf and likes to go out and do that type of stuff.

So he might take on that side of ag on the horticulture side more, but still help out on the farm.

- Now, is there some pressure now?

Do you feel like you have to get your farm to where you can bring back one or both of the kids?

- Well, sure, you always have that.

There's always that thought of, you know, for the last 20 years or so, it's been what I wanna do with the farm.

But now we're looking at the next generation and if they want to come back, then we have to figure out a way to fit them in.

And if they don't want to come back, like I've told them, hey, if it's not your thing, then you need to go out and do what's right for you.

And maybe that's going out and running your own restaurant or whatever it is.

But you have to do what's right for you, but if you want to come back to the farm, we're gonna try and figure out a way to have room for you to come back to the farm.

That's important.

- Yeah.

So what all are you raising on your farm?

- So we're diversified, and a lot of people say we're busy to say the least.

We do corn, beans and wheat, so standard commodities there.

Because of my oldest getting into hogs there for showing hogs, we started raising some hogs for meat.

So we got into pork and that spilled over into chicken.

So meat, chicken and eggs.

- How does pork spill over into chickens?

- So, go back to COVID times.

COVID was always interesting at how things all worked out, but one Facebook post I made saying, hey, we're gonna get a few meat birds to raise and put in our own freezer.

And within about a half hour I had 175 of 'em sold 'cause people were asking for fresh meat.

- [Rob] People were nuts back then.

- It was different.

I had a lot of phone calls for a lot of locally raised pork and meat at that point.

So we got into raising meat birds and diversified into that.

And now we're into raising popcorn and pumpkins and some other things as well to be more diversified.

- [Rob] Like pumpkin for canning, or?

- No, just to sell for Halloween, things like that.

I mean, yeah, you can can 'em and people have made pies and things like that.

- Yeah, but you know, you see the commercially grown pumpkins and that's not you.

- No, no, we're more on the jack-o'-lantern side of things.

- [Rob] Are you selling 'em yourself or selling 'em to like an orchard or something?

- No, we sell 'em right off the farm.

Everything we do is right off the farm.

- Do you have like a stand, a booth, a shed?

- We're working on making our own, this winter is our goal to make our own little store.

Frankly, have an office in our shop and we're gonna convert that over into a store.

Right now, we set up a farm stand outside of the house and people come by and pick up their pumpkins and whatever else, or eggs or different things like that.

- Yeah, but then people come to your farm.

- Yeah, yeah, took a little getting used to.

- Ooh.

- We get probably three or four people every day at least that come by.

- [Rob] And you're okay with that?

- It takes a little getting used to, yes.

- Okay.

I suppose there's people like watching us, I don't know.

We understand each other 'cause we're farmers, and yes, we're out there just cussing on our farms by ourselves and happy with that.

- That happens once in a while.

- I don't know.

It would be odd to open up.

I would be afraid to open up my farm to other people.

- Sure.

- So I look at a person like yourself and I'm like, wow, that's something I'd be afraid to do.

- Well, luckily we've been blessed with a lot of good customers here so far.

And one thing I always try to do is on the education side of farm, we tell everybody, hey, this is why things are the way they are.

If somebody wants to come look and see what our hens look like and the environment we're raising them in and that, I'm more than willing to come show 'em that while they come out to pick up their eggs or whatever.

But I'm open with them like, hey, farming is dirty.

There's gonna be manure, there's gonna be dirt, there's gonna be stuff that isn't always the most eye appealing, but it's the way life is.

It's the truth, you know?

And sometimes you gotta get in there and get knee deep and shovel manure out and it's not pretty, but it happens.

- So you can deal with, because my fear would, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm raising pigs and they come out and they're like, oh, I'm not gonna buy that pig because it's dirty or whatever.

- Sure.

- I would snap.

I was like, why don't you shut your damn mouth and get back into your Subaru?

But you don't do that.

- We try not to, no.

We have had some interesting conversations with a few folks over the years, but you know, I'm very upfront and say, hey, this isn't Cinderella.

This isn't the movie with the pig, help me out here.

- [Rob] "Babe."

- "Babe," yes.

This isn't "Babe," you know, it isn't things like that.

This is real, and frankly, pigs love mud.

We have a pen for our hogs anyway.

We have a pen they can go inside and seek shelter, but they also go out and lay in the mud and that's what they love.

Pigs literally love mud and a lot of people don't wanna see that, even although it's their natural habitat, you know?

- Yeah.

- That's how they cool off.

- "Charlotte's Web" also would be a correct answer.

- Yes.

- Because I imagine my wife's in the control room going, "Why would you answer "Babe?""

- Either way, it kind of goes down the same route.

- Okay, so what we do, generally in your driving down the interstate, you see corn fields, right?

That is number two field corn.

It's mainly used for ethanol and for animal feed.

- Correct.

- You can't put that corn in the microwave and pop it.

- Nope, not at all.

- So tell me, is it a different plant, or what's the difference between popcorn and the corn, the vast majority of corn that people are seeing going down the road?

- Sure, so anytime I have a conversation with somebody about corn, they always refer back to sweet corn.

We're all familiar with that.

And you can cook it up on the ear and everything in the middle of summer, it's great.

But then like you said, you have your field corn.

It's the same looking plant, but you harvest it at a different time of the year and it's dry.

Popcorn is the same way as field corn is.

It looks a little bit different.

It's a little stringier of a plant.

It still looks just like regular corn, but the ears are completely different on it.

And if you go to stick that field corn into the microwave, it's not gonna do anything.

But if you stick popcorn in there, it builds pressure inside that kernel.

It explodes, that's how you literally get popcorn.

- And this is it, huh?

- Yep.

- This is what you've grown on your farm?

- Correct.

- Oh.

- Gotta make you work for it.

- Do you... Well, yeah, this is Boucher Farms.

So, do you do this on your farm or you send it off somewhere to get- - No, we do everything on the farm.

We have a seed cleaner that we run everything through and it does a fairly good job of cleaning everything out.

And, yeah.

- It looks good.

- We stick it right in the microwave and pop it up, put a little butter on.

It's good stuff all the way around.

So, not good for chowing on it like that, though.

You can have that one.

I like 'em popped, personally.

(Rob spits) (Matt laughing) - We've got people for that.

- But we do, oh, probably about 4,000 pounds of popcorn every year here.

- 4,000 pounds?

Divided by 50, is it 56?

- More on the 60 side.

It's a lot more dense than what regular corn is.

- So 60 pounds per bushel.

I don't know, how many of these in a bushel, do you know?

- Well, in a bushel there would be roughly 60 of those.

- [Rob] Oh, this is a pound, okay.

- Yeah, roughly a pound, give or take.

- [Rob] Okay.

- And that'll pop a lot of popcorn when it expands out.

- This will?

- Yes.

- Like, this will be more than one sitting.

- Oh, yeah.

That'll be probably 15 or 20 sittings, I would say.

- Okay.

How are people popping popcorn nowadays?

Because I'll be honest, we do the little bag in the microwave.

- So the convenience is, the biggest thing with a lot of consumers is in this day and age, and we're working toward working with some packers that will be able to have our own microwave popcorn bags.

- [Rob] Oh, really?

- And that's one of our goals here for the winter is to get that established as well.

But of course there's hoops to jump through with that as well.

But a lot of people just get a pan, they'll put a little butter in the bottom or a little oil in the bottom, put the popcorn in, pop it up.

We are working on other solutions to help people along with that, that normally just depend on microwave popcorn all the time.

But we have started- - They don't have the thing anymore.

You used to have it as a kid, right?

- Yeah, the air poppers?

- Is that what it was?

And it would pop it and it would like come over the thing.

- Yep, we had those too.

- Do they still make those?

- Yeah, we have one at home, actually.

The only thing is people are so used to getting the microwave popcorn with the seasoning and the butter in it already.

With the air popper, it comes out dry and then you have to put all that on, and... - [Rob] Oh, those poor people.

- Yeah, it's not what they're used to is what I'm getting at.

- Yeah.

- And if we can do the microwave popcorn thing with our popcorn and our farm name on it, that's just another way for us to diversify our farm.

And when tough times come on the farm, that gives us another revenue stream there to help get through.

- Can you use your planter, sprayer, combine, your usual farm equipment to grow popcorn?

- Yes, yep, we totally do.

We gotta clean the planter out really, really well.

Plant the popcorn just like you would with regular field corn or beans.

And then do the same thing with the combine.

We clean it out really, really well and combine that with a regular combine.

Well, you know, obviously set completely differently, but- - [Rob] Yeah, oh, I imagine.

- It's still just like regular field corn.

- I've heard that popcorn is very prone to fall over as a plant.

- Yes, yes.

- So I imagine you gotta be pretty aggressive when you're growing it?

- Yeah, you gotta have the right variety.

And one big thing too you see is, you know, you'll see popcorn being advertised as non-GMO.

We can get into that in a whole nother conversation.

But all popcorn is non-GMO.

So if you have any kind of rootworm issues or any kind of corn borer issues, it's gonna go after the popcorn, whereas it might not go after the field corn in the field next to it or something like that.

- So it doesn't even have a roundup trait to it?

You're going old school with this.

- This is old school conventional all the way around.

- Has it worked out well for you?

- Yeah, so far.

- Okay.

- Yeah, we've done this... On small scale, we've done it for probably, oh, five years now, I would say, four years.

And we've been slowly expanding that four years and then slowly expanding that more and more.

And as demand goes up, we plant more.

And we've got some lofty goals, but it takes time to get there, of course.

- What is a cover crop?

- So the definition is, it means a lot of different things to different people.

But a cover crop generally for us is a plant that we will drill in or fly onto our fields.

We seed, that we drill or fly onto our fields after we combine our regular corn or bean crop.

That cover crop, those plants would grow in between when we harvest and when we plant the next crop.

Has a lot of benefits in certain ways, but that's kind of the short summary of it.

- So I've done cover crops before, we've tried them.

Seems like I'm always behind the eight ball with them because by the time I get, 'cause my harvesting to me is a priority, right?

Getting it all done.

- It's gotta be number one.

- And then when I get done with that, we go in and we put in cover crops and it's a guessing game whether the weather is too late or not.

What are you finding?

- So the the biggest thing is time, you know, timely, right?

And of course, Mother Nature has to work with you.

We did some stuff two years ago and it was so dry in that fall that we planted it and three weeks later, we finally got a rain and then it all came up.

Some of the stuff we had planted there, it needed to get growth on it before it frosted and it didn't grow right away.

It frosted and it didn't make anything.

It's a risk you take, no different than planting corner beans.

But products like cereal rye, we can plant that even now when it's cold and it'll still come up by spring regardless.

So you gotta go by every situation and treat every situation a little differently.

But timing is everything.

And that's where we come in, we do a lot of custom drilling for a lot of customers and we can get in there while they're still combining and we can get in there and get it done.

- Yeah.

- So we try to, anyway - We do white tail deer outfitting.

So a lot of times in those fields, one would we have the co-op come on and put our dry on.

We'll just have 'em put like some cereal rye in there too.

It's hit and miss, whether it works or not.

You mentioned like putting it on, flying it on.

- Yep.

- You doing that with a plane or a drone?

- A helicopter or an airplane, right now.

Drones are kind of coming up and gaining their place in the market.

But if you have, I know guys do it, but if you have a large flat field, it's not always efficient to use a drone.

I think drones over time are gonna be more suited for areas where helicopters and planes can't easily get to, 'cause the tree lines or power lines or whatever else might be in the way.

But each one of them has their own strengths and weaknesses and we'll be able to get that seed or fertilizer or even sprays on as needed depending on their strength and weakness in that situation that they're in.

- So you sell the cover crop seed and also do some custom, you'll put it on for other people, like the drilling and that?

- Yep.

We do.

- I see that's become more and more popular in my neighborhood.

Used to be like the old drills that would put it into it.

Now you see a lot of tillage equipment that's been retrofitted to where it can put the seed on and work.

So when you're working up, you can also kind of plant too.

- Right, trying to do two birds, one stone type deal.

- Yeah.

- That works really well.

We have a 30 foot air seeder.

I can load that up and we can do 150 acres on a fill.

A lot of times with the tillage equipment, what guys will run into, they can only put 20 or 30 acres on a fill.

So they find themselves stopping and filling quite a bit, but it's cheaper.

It does work really well and it works.

Again, everybody has their own situation and it works well for them, so good for them.

- Mainly rye.

- Yeah, that's our biggest seller.

But we're trying to, rye ahead of beans works really, really well.

Cereal or rye ahead of beans works really, really well.

We're trying to figure out what works really well ahead of corn and that's what the whole industry is trying to figure out.

And there's no silver bullet ahead of corn, like cereal or rye is ahead of beans.

So we're always experimenting with different things and different timings and whether airplane or helicopter or other means and trying to figure that out.

But it's something we learn from every year.

- We try to put some of the radishes and turnips in too.

And when those hit, they get massive out there.

- They do.

- And then, man, do they smell in the spring.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

2019 when we had all the prevent plant acres, we drilled a tremendous amount of radishes and oats throughout the summer and come fall and winter when they started to die off, we had a lot of phone calls saying, man, this stuff stinks.

And that's just kind of the way it goes.

- Not many people have been in a Super Bowl commercial, but here you are.

- Yes.

- Tell me about that.

- We were blessed to work with the Illinois Farm Families and they had a program stating the fact and trying to convey the fact to non-ag people throughout the state that 96% of the farms in Illinois are indeed family owned and operated just like ours.

And so us, our family I should say and numerous other farm families across the state were contacted and asked to be part of the program.

I think there was 12 families.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that was 12 altogether that were scattered throughout the state.

And we got to be in a series of different commercials that were aired throughout the state, including a handful of Super Bowl commercials that were played either during the Super Bowl or around the Super Bowl timing to help convey that message.

And they had some really good results on that.

- You must've got big bucks for that.

- No, nothing at all, I wish.

I wish.

- Tell me about Wreaths Across America.

- So Wreaths Across America is a great program.

We help out the Will County Farm Bureau up in Will County up in the Joliet area.

They work with the Abraham Lincoln Cemetery to be coming up here soon that they'll start taking donations and everything for the 2025 year.

But anyway, their goal is to put a wreath out every Christmas on every grave that's in the cemetery.

And their numbers are going up every year.

And the more and more donations come in every year.

But of course, more and more veterans are getting buried there every year as well.

So I work with them in the fact that the Will County Farm Bureau facilitates bringing the wreaths in and a lot of the farmers with the Will County Farm Bureau will load up their livestock trailers with the wreaths, physically bring them into the cemetery.

And I document that for them and help make some promotional videos to help from a local level bring more attention to it and hopefully answer that goal of getting more and more wreaths out on all those graves.

And eventually, on all the graves throughout the whole cemetery.

- You're talking real wreaths?

- Yes, yeah, real ones.

- It's very cool.

I've seen videos and probably your stuff of it.

It's very cool.

It just gives you a good feeling, and honestly, memories deserve that too.

- Yep, it's a great program.

It's a great day.

A lot of families will come out and get involved and help put the wreaths out and then they'll have a memorial program there as well that day.

Highly recommend it.

And if you got time, swing by, check it out.

- You say you like produce the stuff.

You've been like involved in social media and that.

- Right.

- Where can people find you?

- TikTok is obviously the biggest thing out now, so it seems.

- [Rob] It'd probably probably be banned by the time this comes out.

- Could be, yeah, could be.

We'll see what happens with that.

But TikTok, I'm The Farm Dad on TikTok or just look up Matt Boucher, you'll find me either way.

We've had a Facebook group and a Facebook Farm page, which is just Boucher Farms.

We've had that for quite a few years now and keep working with that.

But yeah, you can find me on Facebook or TikTok is primarily where I hang out anymore these days anymore.

- Yeah, what's your Blue Sky account?

- I haven't got that far yet.

- You haven't?

- Nope, I'll follow your lead.

- No, I took my name.

Because when something pops up, I always make sure that Shark Farmer doesn't go to somebody else.

- Yeah, that's a good idea.

Good idea.

- So yeah, it's very cool to see a farmer that is proactive because we're probably gonna be going into a downturn if we aren't already there in agriculture.

But if you diversify, I mean, there's always big opportunities out there and it seems like y'all embrace it.

- We try to.

I mean, I try to do something new and different on the farm every year 'cause that's how you learn, right?

If you just do the same thing and do the same thing that everybody else does, you're not putting that step forward.

So sometimes things work, sometimes things don't.

But going more and more on the local sale things, like I said before, we've got really good customers that we've been blessed with and hopefully, we can continue that and maybe that'll build something for the kids to take over someday.

We'll have to see where that ends up.

But right now, things are going pretty good on that side.

- That's fantastic.

And what'd you call the air popper What was it?

- That was just an air popper.

That was all it is.

So plug it in the wall.

Hit a button.

As simple as could be.

- We don't get political on this show, but maybe we could make air poppers great again.

- Hey, we can do that.

You gotta buy a red one though, right?

- What'd I just say about political?

- It's just a color.

That's all.

You can get blue ones too, I guess.

- Yeah, those were the best.

Like Sunday night, I remember watching Disney on Sunday night and we'd always pop the popcorn 'cause that was a treat we got back then.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Pretty good stuff.

- Yeah.

Very cool.

No, very, very cool.

You've always been a good representative of agriculture, so I wanna thank you for that.

- Well, thank you.

- You can't be a good representative if you aren't in business and you've done a very good job at maintaining your farm.

I think it's fascinating, when a farm gets engulfed by the city to be able to move out.

I couldn't even imagine restarting like y'all did.

- It was great to do it at the time 'cause the timing was right.

I have no desire to ever do that again though.

Just to be completely honest.

I mean, that's something for the next generation to take care of someday, if that's their choice.

- I believe you.

- That was, it was a lot.

- Matt Boucher from Dwight, Illinois.

Matt, thank you for being here today.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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