ODEBOLT, IA - If you head to Odebolt, Iowa, you'll find four men running a farm. Two brothers, one of their sons and a neighbor farm corn and soybeans and raise cattle.
Zane and Reese Johnson admit the two younger guys in the group have a better handle on farm technology. When you add in the brothers' years of experience, however, they make a pretty great team.
Zane has been on the farm all his life. His dad and his grandfather both loved the ag business. They passed that love down to their kids.
"I love being my own boss. And you know in the wintertime, if you want to take a few days off, you just go ahead and take the days off. Somebody else can do what's gotta be done," said Zane.
Zane is not alone. His brother Reese and nephew Troy are there with him every day.
"I don't have to make all the decisions so we can talk things over and got another opinion there," said Reese Johnson.
"I just like that we have a family farm and we all get along great and I never want to do anything else but farm. And I wouldn't have been able to do it without my dad and uncle either," said Troy Johnson.
It's not an all Johnson crew. Zane's neighbor, Tate, wants to farm on his own someday. This family is showing him the ropes.
"I've been riding with them since I was just a little kid. And they've been willing to work with me and I just try to kind of repay the favor a little bit," said Tate Wilkin.
The younger guys, both Tate and Troy, are teaching the wiser farmers a thing or two.
"Lot of things are changing with we have auto steer now... Sometimes it's kind of hard to explain to these guys on how that works but we work through it," said Troy.
"It's just nice to have someone like Troy and Tate who are younger and they understand the newer stuff that's coming up and they're able to set it up and just like no problem for them to get this going or that going," said Zane.
It's not all work for the Johnson men. They have their toys, too.
"This is when we bought the tractor here in '69. We had it for four years," explained Zane about his prized-possession tractor. "This is when I came out of Vietnam here. This is in 2006 when I found the tractor on an auction. It was pretty well beat up and we took soda blast and we blasted all the paint off and we repainted it and here's the product."
Zane said he loves having a tractor all fixed up. They all go on tractor rides all over the country. That is why they store that tractor and keep it in shiny condition.
