Ag Tribes Report: Thanksgiving Solo Edition: New Ag Sec, Massie vs AFBF, De-banking

Ad read / show intro [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes report is brought to you by Farm Test, a field trial design, execution, and analysis service that makes it easy to ask your fields which management practices perform best to start your field trials. Visit Farm test, ag and Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are so the future knows who they really were. Listen now to a sneak peek of the short film, a family's legacy interview experience and watch the full story at Legacy Interviews dot com slash experience. Having the legacy interview, you know, really helps them open up. I was surprised at the depth the questions went into and to see very authentic answers. I was watching it and I was like, whoa, okay. This is like a new side of Jay that's coming out. I can see like how much excitement it brought him to share the things that he has a hard time talking about. I think in a day, day-to-day conversation, you won't be provoked to answer questions like that. Welcome to the Ag Tribe's report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crowe. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin.

Vance Crowe [00:01:23] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring on a new co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes throughout the United States and Canada, so that way they can talk about the news and information that is impacting the culture of agriculture. But today is Thanksgiving and I did not wanna burden anybody with trying to pull away from the family. So I decided I would just do the show. As a solo show alone, I am actually in my boyhood home in central Illinois. You, if you've ever heard me talk on the podcast about my father's collection of books, they are right behind me, and this is only a small amount of them. I had to find a place to hide away from the kids who have already started singing Christmas carols, which, all right, let's buckle in and do that today on the Ag Tribes report, since it's just me, I'm going to report on three stories and also another one that I got poked about during the Vance Crow podcast this week. So we're gonna talk about the new Ag Secretary. We're gonna talk about Thomas Massie trying to point out that the American Farm Bureau is taking shots at some of his agenda, and we're gonna talk about ethanol mandates. I brought that up on the Vance Crow podcast and I had somebody call me up and say, you're not nuanced enough. You have more that you should know about this if you're gonna be critical of it. And then I'm gonna do a story that is not directly related to agriculture, but I do want to talk about it. It is about de banking people. If you were following along with the trucker rallies, you know that one of the ways that they got all the truckers to disperse was they de banked them.

Vance Crowe [00:02:55] And this has actually been going on in the United States and it came to light this week on an interview with Mark Andreessen and Joe Rogan. So we're gonna talk about that. I will also take the medicine that I give to my guests each week. I'm going to give my own Peter Thiel paradox, and I'm gonna talk about a worthy adversary that I think is worth paying attention to. We're probably just going to jump over the Bitcoin land price report because land where I'm at, I guess I could, I could have done it for the price of a house, but I just didn't, 'cause I didn't think it was a good comparison. We're gonna do all this in just 30 minutes. I'm so glad you're here and we'll jump right into this live stream. So to begin, the new Ag Secretary under President Donald Trump is Brooke Rollins. She was nominated and is expected to take the helm at the USDA all this last week. There was different ideas and guesses on who is gonna be that role. There was a lot of hope out there that it was gonna be somebody that was really counter-cultural and that did not happen. Rollins is the president and CEO of the America First policy, a think tank closely aligned with Trump's policies. And she previously served as the director of White House Domestic Policy Council during Trump's first term. So the Ag Secretary is, for those that don't know, is responsible for managing a vast array of, of issues including trade negotiations, dietary guidelines, food safety, wildfire management, and support of rural broadband.

Vance Crowe [00:04:30] This is a 100,000 person agency and this, her appointment broke the hearts of many that wanted it to be somebody that broke up the traditional ag system. A few weeks ago, Joel Salatin said that he was a part of a six member team, and this raised a lot of eyebrows. People thought, oh, if Joel Salatin's on there, then an RFK is being, you know, put into HHS, then this is clearly going to be somebody that's gonna break up the system. But as it turns out, Rollins, who is a part of the America First policy, she does not have what a lot of ag thought of as big ag credentials. She was definitely a part of the FFA in Texas. She has has been a part of agriculture. Now she shows cattle with her daughter. And so people said this is not enough, either one to run an agency or two that she doesn't actually represent the hardcore part of agriculture. You know, I can't say very much of that. I don't even show cattle and I'm involved in agriculture, but it definitely put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. So I decided, I, I had heard a lot about this America's First Policy Institute and so I decided I'd go look into that. This is a conservative policy group that hosts training sessions for potential government employees and it influences policies through its network of the Trump administration. It's engaged in legal action, challenging voting and election laws.

Vance Crowe [00:06:02] And so it seems like this organization, which she was the leader of, it's interesting to note that she also founded the organization. So my sense is that this is a, a go-getter. Somebody that is really active and ex and you know, forward moving, trying to get things done, but likely was not chosen because of her ag credentials as much as she was proven to be a Trump loyalist. So if people are thinking about what is it gonna take to change the USDA, it really just depends on what is RFKs influence on this that six person panel. You know, are people like John Kempf going to have sway over all this Joel Salatin? Are they really gonna get to make some moves? I personally believe that the only way you're gonna really change the USDA, it's not gonna be enough to just slash jobs at the USDA. You actually, if you wanna change it, have to move it out of Washington dc Trump had mentioned that before and it got kind of, you know, parlayed. It didn't really happen. My goal is actually to get it to move to Kearney, Nebraska. I choose Kearney because I had one of my great bosses at my time at Monsanto used to say, the only reason you go to Kearney Nebraska is because you have something to do there. There's no other reason to swing by there or stop there. And that's what we need. We need people that are at the USDA because they're there to try and influence policy. Whatever sort of choices you need to make, if you need A-U-S-D-A at all, it should be razor thin.

Vance Crowe [00:07:34] And the one of the most important things is to get professional bureaucrats outta there. One of the things that I learned by living in Washington DC and working there, you find out that the only people that are really in charge are the people that didn't have to leave. If you get married and start having kids, Washington, DC is too expensive to live on a government salary. And so the people that stay there are people that either don't get married, or if they get married, they don't have kids, or they are, you know, not going to get married. Maybe they're, they're homosexual, maybe they're people that just don't have an interest in having children. So those people start to move up in the organization and they never leave and they become a part of this permanent class of bureaucrats that are in Washington dc. And so if you want to change that, if you wanna make this a a, a radical change that's going to, that's gonna really impact how, what policies are coming up, how are we being influenced, then you've gotta remove it from DC and you've gotta put it in a place like Kearney, Nebraska so that that way all these lifetime bureaucrats have to make a really serious decision. Am I gonna move out to Kearney, Nebraska where I'm, where I'm away from the rest of my political advocates and I'm not gonna be able to jump up the chain in other departments? Then that's gonna change their whole behavior. So I believe it is very important that even if you don't like the Ag Secretary, maybe one of the most important things you can do is push, push, push for this to be moved out of Washington DC and into a place like Kearney, Nebraska.

Vance Crowe [00:09:11] All right, moving on Now we're gonna hit a really hot button subject this week on x libertarian representative Thomas Massie said to the farm, said to his followers, are you a member of the farm bureau or do you buy their insurance? They're using your money to lobby against legislation introduced by small farmers to help small farmers. So what he did was he took a a screenshot and actually posted it to his ex talking about the different amendments that the American Farm Bureau is advocating for. So he on here it has amendment 76 A FBF opposes Rep Spartz's amendment to seek to defund the operation of any program established under 5 0 1, the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act amendment 83 A FBF opposes represented in Hageman out of Wyoming's amendment, which seeks to prevent funds from being used to finalize, implement, administer, or enforce the proposed rule titled use of electronic identification. Ear tagged You will Official identification in cattle and bison. Longtime listeners the podcast know that this is about RFID chips and outta the state of Wyoming there are people saying, no, we don't want our money being used to advocate for this, we don't want this. And Massie is pointing out that the A FBF is pointing out that they want it. And then finally, amendment 87 A FBF opposes Rep Massie's

Vance Crowe [00:10:42] This is the guy who posted it amendment which would prohibit funding from being used to issue any new rule regarding the number of owners of an animal for purposes of custom custom slaughter exemption of the food safety inspection service, limiting persons that may own an animal and requiring custom operators to keep records. So what Massie is saying here is the American Farm Bureau is advocating to representatives that the American Farm Bureau opposes these things. And he's saying these are things being put forward by small farmers. Now if you're not familiar with the Farm Bureau system, it is a federation. Each state has their own farm bureau and within each state they're run by counties. And when they get together during their annual meeting, they put together a slate of things that they wanna propose both to their state government but also what they wanna be pushing upwards towards the national agenda. The American Farm Bureau itself only really has one Farm Bureau member that's in Washington DC that's the president, Zippy Duvall. The rest of the organization is there to implement what the collection of states wants. So it's hard to say what it is that the American Farm Bureau wants. These are, they are supposedly putting forward what the states want and what they vote on. And really that is an incredibly complicated voting system. I sense that there is right now a schism building inside of the American Farm Bureau and the States. A couple of weeks ago we talked about how the Illinois Farm Bureau was kicked out by the American Farm Bureau for the way that they counted their numbers.

Vance Crowe [00:12:19] I have also spoken with several other state farm bureaus that have been expressing frustration that they feel like a lot of the things that they wanna advocate on their state level when the national level gets involved, it is, it goes in the opposite direction. So I am not surprised to see Massie putting this out there. It's one of his amendments that was being pushed back on by this large American Farm Bureau organization. But I, I don't know what's going to happen. I think this is going to be an interesting time in the next few weeks and months as we see the administration coming in. I sense that there is a lot more strife within the Farm Bureau system. They've certainly weathered that in the past before, but I think there's gonna be a, a lot of fireworks at this upcoming annual meeting that they have coming in January. I don't know much more than that. If there's anybody that does let me know and we can talk about it more here on the Ag tribes report. Alright, moving right along this week on the Vance Crow podcast, I ended up talking about ethanol mandates. I had a guy named Ryan Cooper on, who is aggregating a bunch of small farmers to be able to sell milk, eggs, beef, pork, chicken. And he was asking me about what changes would need to be made to the larger system that is in agriculture. And I said, look, there's a couple of things that if you don't change those then nothing is gonna change in agriculture. And one of those is the ethanol mandate. And I went on to say how much I dis strongly dislike the ethanol mandate. So a buddy of mine that works with one of these corn organizations in an I state, I don't think he really wants me to tell about it.

Vance Crowe [00:13:56] Said, you know, I finally heard you and I think I understand you what your point is, but I've never actually heard you articulate it very well. This is what you don't know about the fuel mandates. And then I think you ought to explain your point of view. So what he pointed out is there's actually three levels of mandates with the ethanol. There is the renewable fuel standard, which is the federal mandate, and they decide how much ethanol from the national stockpile is going to be blended into our petroleum fuel. So in the last year for 2022, the mandate set by the EPA who's the one that sets the mandate was for 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol to be blended into the nation's fuel supply with the biofuel mandate reaching 20.82 billion gallons for that year. So there's that level where you have the federal government mandate. Then another level is the state level. There are seven states right now in the United States, Missouri, my home state being one of them that says, look, you have to have all gas station retail, gas stations have to have at least a 10% blend on that, on that fuel. And then in addition to those two, there is a third one where sometimes cities have a blending that they, you have to have, which apparently improves the quality of fuel. So if you're living in a high density location, this additive, which is made from ethanol, decreases the amount of smog. So from my perspective, one of the things my friend pointed out is, I don't actually have a problem with ethanol. If ethanol works, that's awesome, then blend it.

Vance Crowe [00:15:28] If that's the choice that retail gasoline stations wanna make, if that's a thing that consumers want to demand, fine. But when you make it a mandate, you do all sorts of things to the economy that we don't want. And the first thing is, as soon as you say, Hey, this is valuable, you're now gonna make a loss. So we have to have this much fuel in there, now all of a sudden there's no more r and d that goes into making that ethanol better. Or if it does go into it, it's not in a competitive marketplace. So imagine you have somebody else coming up with a different product, something that can, you know, improve smog or make our fuel less, less reliant on petroleum in some, in some way. Then they have to now not only do they have to invent that technology now they have to overcome the inertia of the law that was created there. Anytime you create these mandates, you lower the amount of innovation that's going on and you make it. So we don't actually know if 40% of the corn would be going to gasoline or and blending into into our fuel if we didn't have this mandate because right now we're required to use this much. And so it's distorting the market. So corn farmers can say, look, this is a great product. I actually want this. I would choose this for my truck or my car. Well, we don't actually know that and we can't know that because there's not a free market. What my friend went on to say is, Hey, the mandates helped you build all of the processing facilities. Well now that we don't have a processing facility, let's remove the mandate because now they've gotten up and running and let them stand on their own.

Vance Crowe [00:17:00] I agree with him. You can't just walk in and start ripping things out. You have to say, this is what is. But I believe that ethanol mandates, if you don't change 'em, we're not gonna be able to find a better mixture of crops in the United States. And I know that upsets a lot of my good friends just know, I want you to be successful. I want you to grow and and prosper. But I don't wanna do it through the efforts of a a rule, which anytime you set in a law, you're making it so the government is saying these consumers, they must pay farmers for their corn even if they didn't choose to. That's not a free market. That's not the America that I wanna live in. All right, we are now gonna go to the fourth and final headline. This is about Mark Andreessen, the the venture capitalist that runs Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a 16 Z. He went on Joe Rogan and described what went on with the de banking in the United States. This is kind of a long clip, but it really rung with me. This is something that I actually have seen happen as I was a member of a on the board of a directors for a bank. And you see how the, how much regulation banks are under. But I have never heard anybody go out into the world and talk about this. And it's something that is really important because even though the trucker rally that happened in Canada isn't our banking system, this is what happened to them. And this is what the government is a power that the government should not have. So let's listen to a little clip of Mark Andreessen talking about being Deb banked in the United States.

Clip: Mark Andreessen on Joe Rogan [00:18:31] This started about 15 years ago with this thing called Operation choke Point, where they decided to, as as marijuana started to become legal, as prostitution started to become legal. And then guns, which there's always a fight about under the Obama administration, they started to de bank legal marijuana businesses, pro escort businesses and then, and then and then gunshots just like your gun manufacturers. And just like you're done, you're outta the banking system. And so if you're running a medical marijuana dispensary in 2012, like you guess what you're doing your business all in cash. 'cause you literally can't get a bank account, you can't get a visa terminal, you can't process transactions, you can't do payroll, you can't do direct deposit, you can't get insurance. Like none of that stuff is, you've been sanctioned, right? None of that stuff is available. And then this administration extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just generally political opponents.

Clip: Mark Andreessen on Joe Rogan [00:19:20] Yeah. So that's, that's been like super pernicious. I wasn't aware of that. Oh a hundred percent. And this is called, so it was operation choke 0.1 0.0 was 15 years ago against the pot and the guns choke 0.2 0.0 is primarily against their political enemies and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world. Like we've hard, we've had like 30 founders Deb banked in the last four years. Real Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a, it's been a big recurring pattern 30. This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump. It's like we just can't, we can't live in this world. We can't live in a world where somebody starts a company that's a completely legal thing and then they literally like get sanctioned, right? And embargoed by the United States government through a completely unaccountable, no, by the way, no due process. None of this is written down. There's no rules, there's no court, there's no decision process, there's no appeal. Who do you appeal to, right? Like who do you go to to get your bank account back?

Vance Crowe [00:20:12] So this is something that I think is of deep importance because this is the way that the governments can control their people. And I know firsthand BA people that were at the trucker rally that had their bank accounts shut down. Now all of a sudden they had to figure out do I have enough cash to fill up my semi with diesel to be able to drive it back to wherever I'm from, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta. This is a horrible power that if you are advocating for anything to go on with the Trump administration, we want to remove this power. We wanna remove any agency that believes they have this power and we also want as many banks to be allowed to come up and proliferate and try what they're doing. Operation Choke Point absolutely went after some, a group called that was trying to start up a Bitcoin bank, which was gonna be a fully reserved bank. Meaning instead of taking your money that you put in in deposits and turning around and loaning it out, it instead would say, if you want us to hold your money, you have to pay us a fee. But in exchange for us holding that fee, we are not going to lend out your money. And so when the, they applied for a federal charter, the Federal Reserve said no, you can't do that. And all of the people involved in the banks that were connected to this all the sudden started being choked out. So you heard about these Bitcoin banks that had failures. Well that was caused by the United States government. So I bring this up not because it is ag related, but because ag is so closely tied to banking that you need to understand this is a power.

Vance Crowe [00:21:46] We don't want any, any administration to have this. So as you're thinking about advocating, putting your position forward, absolutely, absolutely. Push against the government having this ability. Alright, now we are done with our headlines. I'm gonna skip over the Bitcoin land price report. I have to say that Bitcoin last time I checked was at 95,000, which after last week's 98,000 and it almost kissed 100,000. It's down a little bit. I would wonder what's gonna happen with it after Thanksgiving. 'cause there's probably a lot of people that were talking about it over Thanksgiving dinner. Whether that's an effective way to get more people to invest in it, I don't know. But onto my Peter Thiel paradox, this is where I ask my guests, what is one thing that you believe that no one in your tribe agrees with you on? And I am going to say this is, we're gonna continue on with this crypto and Bitcoin thing. Obviously in my tribe, this is what's very important. I'm gonna say within 10 years more than 20% of land lending will be collateralized by Bitcoin. And that every farmer should start storing their non-operating cash in Bitcoin as a hedge against land depreciation. I mean that, I believe that land has the very strong potential to lose a ton of its value right now. That is the way that people know that they're wealthy. That's the way that people go to the bank and get operating lines of credit. But I believe that over time there is a strong possibility that land prices could drop and that one thing you can do to hedge against it is to start holding Bitcoin.

Vance Crowe [00:23:23] Because eventually I believe that banks will accept Bitcoin as collateral. Now I'm going to use a clip of a fascinating interview that I heard on CNBC earlier this week. I think that this is the start of the way that it could happen in agriculture. So we're gonna go now to watching A-C-N-B-C clip where they talk about multifamily home lending using Bitcoin as collateral. Check this out and if you disagree with me, you should absolutely stay to listen so you can know more about what you disagree with.

Clip: CNBC Squawk Box (Bitcoin-collateralized lending) [00:23:52] Excited to announce today on Squawk Box, this loan that we've just completed, we combined a seasoned multifamily asset in Philadelphia about 50 meters away from the first bank of the United States. The one that Alexander Hamilton started. We combined that asset with around 20 Bitcoin and we provided a loan to refinance the existing mortgage on the property to provide the asset sponsor some funding for capital improvements and with the remainder to buy the 20 Bitcoin. Okay, we gotta go backwards. Go ahead. You gotta go backwards. We're just gonna slow the whole thing down so everybody understands what happened. Okay, so there's a property. Yep. Physical property, multifamily, that's multifamily. It's a multifamily 63 units. It's a multifamily property. The sponsor, the effectively the owner of that property Yep. Needs a loan. That's right. Okay. They come to you. That's right. Okay. You say we'll provide you the loan in the form of a loan a a classic loan. That's right. Okay, so you're gonna give them cash. That's right. Term financing. Term financing for And how long's the loan? Just 10 years. 10 10 year loan. Okay, that's right. At above market rate or below or what's the No market rate. Interest rate rate. I'm just trying to slow the whole thing. Okay, now let's introduce the Bitcoin piece into it. That's right. So no, no. Explain how the Bitcoin piece and why and relate. So the loan has been provided, the use of proceeds is to pay off the existing financing. So the use of the proceeds of the loan of the loan is to retire the existing mortgage. Right. So there's an old, old mortgage gone, they're gonna pay the old mortgage off. It's been paid off. Okay. Now they have a little bit extra money to make some improvements in the property, right? So a little bit of extra cash. So you the, the amount of money you've lent pays off the old loan. That's right. It's also has you have a little bit of extra to to fix stuff up the property, fix stuff up. Yep. And then with the remainder, which is a little bit more, more so you getting a little extra to turn. That's right. And that instead of cash out, it's Bitcoin in and we use it to purchase some Bitcoin and add it to the collateral package of the loan. So now our loan is supported by both the traditional asset, the 63 unit apartment building. Right. And the Bitcoin. Okay, So you you the loan it was maybe $2 million more. So that's how you get exactly Bitcoin out. Exactly right. So it's On the assumption that the Bitcoin's gonna rise faster and that will become an asset that over The life of a loan for sure. So we think on the downside, this provides us with much better protection compared to a traditional lender. Because a traditional lender, if something goes wrong, they have to recover against that particular building, which is idiosyncratic risk. Something might happen with the maintenance or what have you. But that also requires conviction on your end that Bitcoin is not a volatile asset asset over time and over time, over time. And that is either going to go up or at least stay where it's, well that's by, by fusing the Bitcoin with credit and by fusing it with traditionally financeable assets, it gives us the luxury of expressing that medium term view on Bitcoin. And that's what's key. It's volatile in the short run, you know, I mean minute by minute today, who knows it could cross a hundred thousand, right? That would be exciting. How long's the loan? 10 years. 10 years. And the minimum hold period for the Bitcoin is four years. So what we say to the borrower is we say look, you can repay the loan at any time for any reason with no penalty. Which is a really valuable feature compared to a traditional loan. Yeah that's like a a home mortgage then, right? Like a home mortgage almost. That's very unusual for commercial financing. But what we do say is that to the extent that the loan is repaid at year four or earlier, the minimum will release the property but the minimum length of time that the Bitcoin has to stay in escrow is four years.

Vance Crowe [00:27:29] So this is a lot of talk. If you've been involved in banking you probably understand a lot of it. I know I still have some questions but it is happening and I know this is something that when I talked it about it two years ago, even a year ago, people thought no there's this is not going to happen. They're not gonna be used as collateral. It's already happening. And so if you are looking for a non-traditional way to be able to store up value so that you can get into the farming game or buy land or do something that's gonna require capital purchasing Bitcoin might do that for you. I hope that you started that position, you absolutely hated the idea but that it rattles around in your mind and that it's something you considered. You know, just consider an idea that you don't already agree with. That is the value of the Peter Thiel paradox. Alright, we are gonna move on to the final section. This is the worthy adversary. And I have to say that this week I encountered a guy that made me really uncomfortable. Like I was like whoa, what is going on here? He goes by defund the USDA, it's at dusty 4 2 4 0 2 9 9 9 and he started the hashtag seed corn wars 25, which has absolutely blown up on X. He's taking shots at the system. That is, he was definitely, I mean we definitely agree on the defund, the USDA, but he is talking about a lot of challenges that he has to the seed corn industry and what he thinks about traits that are off patent that are still being sold with a technology fee.

Vance Crowe [00:29:06] He's making all sorts of claims about the value of that corn and he is claiming that he is getting cease and desist orders from some of these seed companies. I don't know if any of that's true or not and I certainly don't have the same disposition where he's out there kicking up dust and fighting. But it is interesting to see somebody be really passionate about something, have a bunch of points to say and then watch how many people are responding to it. So I am definitely putting him on the worthy adversaries list. He is somebody to watch because he is clearly making a difference and getting a lot of engagement along there. You know, I think the most important thing when we talk about worthy adversaries is to find people you disagree with and then just talk about ideas with them. Talk about the things that you don't like about what they're saying. Talk about the the ideas and why you disagree with them. But it is totally worthless to call names at people. So I saw that happening. I think it happens over Thanksgiving. Maybe people get drunk and they think it's a good idea to talk smack uses names. But the best thing to do is just to talk about ideas because you never know what you will uncover. Alright, if you have been with me through this entire Ag tribes report, I am so grateful. It has been a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know my family did a very gracious thing by taking my young girls and going out Christmas light looking. I hope that you're doing something like that. I also hope that if I said anything in this podcast that you don't agree with, definitely make comments below.

Vance Crowe [00:30:40] Reach out to me on X at Vance Crowe because I would love to learn more. And my buddy that called me about ethanol, I learned more in that small conversation about ethanol than I've learned in a long time. If you stayed here this long, I wanna give you a special treat. Many of listeners know that I do Legacy Interviews and in this Legacy Interviews I sit down with people to record their life stories so that future generations can know who they were. They can hear those stories, they can know where did the farm come from, what matters to you, how did you become who you are? Well we had a very special guest named Jay Curtis and his wife Karine who's a wonderful woman. After they did the interview, they invited us to come up and film them actually watching the legacy interview with their family and what you're about to see my creative director put together as a video to describing what it was like for their family to have done this. I believe it is an absolutely beautiful and wonderful video. It's interesting to watch even if you're not interested in Legacy Interviews. So thank you for being here. I'm gonna sign off by having you watch the this amazing video called A Family's Experience. Thanks so much and feel free to disagree.

Ad segment / Legacy Interviews film (multiple voices) [00:32:20] We are on our family farm northeast of St. Thomas, Ontario. We were the original people to settle this land in 1832. In earlier times it was very common for the man of the host to be harder or seem harder or less talking out ideas of emotions. I think that's very common in all of the farm world. I think it's common probably in everybody's world and I think today it's better to be more open. I've known about the legacy interview offerings for quite some time. Got thinking about it more deeply and then Karine and I went down to St. Louis and we did it on site, which was really cool. So this weekend you've come to stay with us to film us seeing the final production of our legacy interview. We're gonna sit down as a family unit and we're gonna watch this production. We haven't seen it yet so the children are watching it with us so we can get their reactions. It'll be interesting just to see how it all goes down. It's a beautiful fall weekend and yeah, everybody's home so we're gonna enjoy the time together. I'm really curious to see my children's reaction to this and I hope they enjoy it. How did the two of you meet? Well the first time I met Jay was at a party at a friend's place, but then our best friends married at the time married each other and so we were kind of getting together with their wedding plans and everything and then he got the nerve to ask me to go out.

Ad segment / Legacy Interviews film (multiple voices) [00:33:56] I thought they were just making a trip down to St. Louis because we had some other plans that kind of fell through in the summer. I didn't find out until after they got back they were going down to do an interview. But their legacy, I thought that it was more of like a friend trip. I wasn't really sure exactly what it entailed. I don't know if my dad's like super good at explaining things sometimes. Like we were both kind of a little confused. I think maybe a little nervous one or two weeks later he had like a clip that he showed us. He's like, oh yeah, this is what we did. And I was watching it and I was like whoa, okay. This is like a new side of Jay that's coming out. Gathering together with the family to watch it was was really nice. It was, it was sweet. It was funny for my dad, it was really impactful. I can see like how much excitement it brought him and how much joy it brought him to share the things that he has a hard time talking about with us. He's not, at least in the past, wasn't a very emotional person. So it's kind of nice to see him, him be able to talk more openly. For me, I think I saw Jay in a new perspective to see him reflect on who he was growing up, to be in that room with him as that's happening. Like kinda like heartwarming that he does have that emotional side. Especially like looking forward to like when we eventually have a family. Like I want that for our children too. Sharing the experience with my brother is great. I think it was kind of funny, we never really hear our parents like together sharing stories about us so it was kind of funny to hear both perspectives. I thought it was cool to like reflect on some of like the childhood memories.

Ad segment / Legacy Interviews film (multiple voices) [00:35:27] Like they brought up like you know, me climbing trees or Carrie doing a awkward dance as a child. You know like things like that. Like I knew these things happen but like just hearing them again 'cause it's been so long for some of these things. You know one part that really stuck with me outta that interview was my dad talking about our childhoods and like, you know, work a lot and it kind of felt like, you know, they didn't stop the smell the roses. There was definitely some like, like bittersweet moments. Yeah, like hearing my dad hearing that he like regretted not being around when we were younger is not something I've ever heard Listening to my dad talk about, you know, working too much or missing out on certain things, you know like it means a lot to me. It just kinda helps I think put some of the old arguments and stuff to bed a bit. It's kind of nice to hear. I think it's good for our relationship to have that openness the last few years. Like he's retired now and seeing him, you know, enjoy life more. It means a lot when Carrie and Neil were watching together, like obviously they were also able to talk about it afterwards and I think that's good looking back on it and being able to kind of debrief together and then you know, it creates more conversation within the family. I definitely view my mom as a storyteller. She always has been kind of like the historian of the family. Neil's mom is so sweet and heartwarming and she's so humble and she's always so considerate of other people.

Ad segment / Legacy Interviews film (multiple voices) [00:36:58] It's like she's so like naturally funny and like warm. She doesn't really like being photographed or film but I don't know, I think she's a really interesting person and she has a a cool story to share and I liked hearing it 'cause like when you're growing up, you know you hear little snippets here and there like how they met but you don't have like the whole story like driving around a truck in London with music too loud or you know, just funny things like that. You know? It's just cool to like see their love for each other and how much they care about each other. I was surprised at the depth that the questions went into and to see some of those more like very authentic answers, it was honestly a lot more meaningful than I guess I had originally anticipated. It's cool to capture all that knowledge because you know in the future your children are, might wanna know where they come from. The stories that Karine and Jay talked about, it would be neat to like look back on that just to say like, oh yeah, like my great grandfather had those same similarities and yeah, I think in a day-to-day conversation you won't be provoked to answer questions like that. I feel having the legacy interview, you know, the questions asked really helps them open up. I think it's worthwhile. Every family has worthy stories that need to be told. A lot of people don't think they're worthy, but they all are. It's kind of a, a relief, a weight somewhat lifted. Being free to discuss good things, difficult things.

Ad segment / Legacy Interviews film (multiple voices) [00:38:29] In my case it changed my openness ability. It's kind of a teaching an old dog new tricks and I think it's a great gift to anybody coming behind you to be clear and honest and safe. Whatever needs to be said.