Part of our operation includes a farm that’s been in our family since 1906. My dad farmed, and his parents before him. All through high school, I knew that farming was what I wanted to do.

We want to keep growing and try to get more efficient at the same time. You have to manage what you have, but you can’t do the same thing every day; you have to change. We follow the benchmarks of other farms, and we’ve consistently been in the top 10 as far as margins are concerned.

We’d like to get a place where we can run more cows, because we enjoy working with the cattle. Also, my dad did a good job of turning my brother and I loose to try things on our own. We’re trying to do that with our kids, too.

When we get our whole family together at the kitchen table, we talk farming. We love working together and with our kids, who are getting a chance to live the business.

Our financial officer is so knowledgeable about the beef business; he’s helped us with good advice many times. If we show them a well thought-out business plan, they are 100 percent behind us. That’s important because we’ve bought a lot of land over the past several years as we’ve grown our operation, and they’ve always been there for us.