The Prairie Farm Podcast

Tommy Hexter bought a tiny local food market at 20 and grew it to nearly seventy Iowa producers. We talk food hubs, pay-what-you-can groceries, why Walmart can’t tell you where your eggs came from, running for the statehouse at 24, and why Iowa’s soil should make it America’s food capital.

 

hokseynativeseeds.com (for all your native seed, backyard prairie, hunting mixes, CRP mixes, native pasture mixes, and more)

 

iowacovercrop.com (for all your cover crop mixes, waterway mixes, forage mixes, small grains, and more)

 

MckayInsAgency.com (for all your financial planning and insurance needs)

 

Chapters
0:00:00 Introducing Tommy Hexter
0:04:00 Iowa Trust and California Stereotypes
0:08:00 Summers Working and Being From Iowa
0:12:00 Grinnell College Pig Roast
0:16:00 What a Food Hub Is
0:20:00 Pay What You Can Groceries
0:24:00 Iowa Food Hub Scale Without Walmart
0:28:00 Soil and Water Conservation Race
0:32:00 Learning Iowa Ag From Outside
0:36:00 Running for Office With Curiosity
0:42:00 Debating Like Gentlemen
0:46:00 Leading With Values Not Fear
0:52:00 Why Food Hubs Fail on Scale
0:56:00 Healthy Food That Actually Tastes Good
1:00:00 Future Grocery Carts Versus Oreos
1:06:00 Farm Work Dirty Hands and Blue Collar
1:20:00 Radiance Dairy and Ascribing Value
1:24:00 Wrap Up and Where to Find Tommy

Harvest has the Hoksey crew running on fumes and fighting old combines, so naturally we’re talking tractors. Nicolas, Kent, and Judd dig into how John Deere, Case IH, Allis-Chalmers, Oliver, and Ford got where they are, why farmers stay loyal to one color, and what right to repair means today.

 

hokseynativeseeds.com (for all your native seed, backyard prairie, hunting mixes, CRP mixes, native pasture mixes, and more)

 

BirdHunterSupply.com (for all your bird hunting supplies and dog hunting supplies)

 

Chapters:

0:00 Long Harvest Hours and Grumpy Crew

4:00 Right to Repair and John Deere

7:00 Coffee Time Intro with Jud McCoy

10:00 Who Owns Which Tractor Brands

14:00 Growing Up in John Deere Country

16:00 Buying Reliability

22:00 International Harvester, Case and New Holland History

26:00 Early Tractor Makers and the Railroads

28:00 Planned Obsolescence and Manufacturing

32:00 Family Tractor Brands and Loyalty

40:00 Companies Moving Production to Mexico

42:00 John Deere and the 1837 Plow

46:00 Consolidation and Capitalism

50:00 The First Tractor from Charles City, Iowa

52:00 Inventors vs Money Makers

56:00 Wrap Up

Iowa DNR state deer biologist Jace Elliott sits down with Nicolas and Kent to talk about the new trail camera ban on public land, drones for deer recovery, nonresident tags, crossbows, and chronic wasting disease, including surprising new data on genetic resistance that has even the experts rethinking a few things.

 

hokseynativeseeds.com (for all your native seed, backyard prairie, hunting mixes, CRP mixes, native pasture mixes, and more)

iowacovercrop.com (for all your cover crop mixes, waterway mixes, forage mixes, small grains, and more)

 

Chapters:

0:00:00 Intro with Jace Elliott, Iowa State Deer Biologist

0:02:00 Sponsor

0:04:00 Deer Repellents

0:06:00 Trail Camera Photos

0:10:00 The Trail Camera Rule on Public Land

0:12:00 What Hunter Surveys Showed

0:16:00 Cell Cameras and Outfitters

0:20:00 Woodsmanship vs Trail Cameras

0:22:00 A Perfect Saturday in the Tree Stand

0:24:00 Is Iowa Really the Trophy Buck State

0:28:00 What Makes a Great Deer Hunter

0:32:00 Under-the-Radar Hunters

0:38:00 Where Whitetails Thrive

0:42:00 Public Land Fairness, Haves and Have-Nots

0:48:00 Cameras and Law Enforcement

0:52:00 Cameras Used to Monitor Hunters

0:54:00 Drones for Deer Recovery

0:58:00 Potential for Abuse

1:00:00 Tracking Dogs and Permission

1:02:00 Wounded Deer and Recovery Ethics

1:08:00 Rules Getting Looser Over Time

1:10:00 Iowa's Nonresident Tags

1:14:00 Iowa vs Wisconsin Timber

1:18:00 What Iowa Offers Outdoors

1:24:00 Defending Iowa's Natural Resources

1:26:00 What Deer Tags Fund

1:28:00 EHD and License Sales

1:30:00 Hunter Numbers and Recruitment

1:32:00 Hunter Age in Iowa

1:36:00 Sponsor

1:38:00 Chronic Wasting Disease

1:42:00 Which States Handle CWD Well

1:48:00 Wayne County and Southern Iowa Prevalence

1:50:00 Illinois vs Wisconsin Approaches

1:52:00 Earn-a-Buck and Working with Hunters

1:54:00 My Time vs Nature's Time

2:00:00 Iowa's First CWD Positive in 2013

2:02:00 Disease, Tolerance and Prions

2:10:00 Genetics That Prolong Infected Deer

2:18:00 Could CWD Jump to Humans

2:24:00 CWD as a Threat to a Valuable Resource

2:28:00 Daniel Boone and Eating Deer

2:30:00 Jud's Question

2:34:00 Prions in Scrapes

2:38:00 Cat Guts Denature Prions

2:42:00 Could We Manage It Like Rabies

2:44:00 County CWD Seasons and Deer Management Zones

2:48:00 Wrap Up

Harvest is here and the crew is running on fumes. Nicolas, Kent, Riley, and Judd talk through a stacked week of native seed harvest, then dig into the science of sound: how traffic noise steals sleep and health, and why birdsong, running water, and prairie soundscapes actually lower your stress.

 

hokseynativeseeds.com (for all your native seed, backyard prairie, hunting mixes, CRP mixes, native pasture mixes, and more)

 

MckayInsAgency.com (for all your financial planning and insurance needs)

 

BirdHunterSupply.com (for all your bird hunting supplies and dog hunting supplies)

 

Chapters:

0:00 Pre-Show Banter

2:00 Toy Catalogs and Raising Consumers

10:00 Coffee Time Intro

12:00 Favorite Past Episodes

16:00 Harvest Week To-Do Lists

18:00 Losing Rough Blazing Star Seed

20:00 Fall Forb Planting and Deer Season

24:00 Prioritizing Harvest Decisions

26:00 Fewer Calls During Harvest

30:00 Combine Cleaner Trouble

32:00 Noise Pollution and Tinnitus

34:00 Living Near Wind Turbines

36:00 Natural Sounds Lower Stress

40:00 Studies on Traffic Noise

42:00 Boise State Phantom Road Study on Songbirds

46:00 The Shoe Horn

48:00 Prairie Farm Ambiance Videos

52:00 Wrap Up

Realtor and CRP planter Steve Hansen joins Nicolas and Kent to test a new Friday format: a rolodex of topics. They cover Iowa's public land trail camera ban, drones in hunting, the 2016 pollinator CRP boom, 44% of Iowa CRP expiring in 2027, farmland values, and whether elk could return.

 

hokseynativeseeds.com (for all your native seed, backyard prairie, hunting mixes, CRP mixes, native pasture mixes, and more)

 

BirdHunterSupply.com (for all your bird hunting supplies and dog hunting supplies)

 

Chapters:

0:00:00 Intro with Steve Hansen

0:02:00 Sponsor and Harvest Day

0:04:00 High School Workers and OSHA

0:06:00 Why Steve Is Back

0:08:00 Trail Cameras on Public Land

0:12:00 Hunting Stories

0:14:00 Old World Hunting Laws

0:18:00 Technology Moving Faster Than Ethics

0:20:00 Drones and Hunting

0:24:00 Drone Perimeter Systems on Farms

0:26:00 Early CRP Seed Mixes

0:28:00 Burning CRP Fields

0:30:00 Photo Monitoring a Planting

0:32:00 Working with Landowners

0:34:00 Using CRP Strategically for Deer

0:36:00 CRP Paperwork

0:38:00 The Dust Bowl and Where CRP Came From

0:40:00 Railroads and Public Land History

0:44:00 What the Prairie Would Look Like

0:46:00 Paying Landowners for Conservation

0:48:00 Interest Rates and Land Loans

0:50:00 Who Is Buying Farmland

0:52:00 Development Around Pella

0:54:00 Realtors, Commissions and Land Prices

0:58:00 Handling Land Sales Quietly

1:00:00 Terrace Repair and a Lawsuit

1:06:00 Frivolous Lawsuits

1:12:00 The Expiration Date on Ethanol

1:16:00 AI and Universal Basic Income

1:18:00 Land in Southern and Northeast Iowa

1:20:00 How Steve Uses AI

1:22:00 Movie Recommendation

1:24:00 Land Values by Region

1:26:00 Wrap Up