Looking at Dirt

5:24 am – January 31, 2017

One of my first serious land clients would say let’s go take “a look”.  Taking a look at a piece of ground can mean a lot of things, but to this buyer it meant me trying to keep up with him as he walked each property line.  This was not easy to do even though he was in his mid-sixties at the time.  To many however, a typical tour takes the form of a windshield tour.  This is the practice of driving everywhere you can drive without actually literally putting your feet on the ground or even cracking a window to see the land.  I have showed and sold many tracts like this but I often believe this experience often has nothing to do with the dirt; it is the client’s due diligence process in measuring me and the information I’m providing about the farm.  I think most of these land buyers return to the farm under their own power to see the ground and walk it alone.

Frankly, I can’t agree more as I am simply of very little use walking and talking when a land buyer should be paying attention to the farm and not listening to me ramble on.  I have come to believe the best thing I can do is shut up and let them see the tract of land in their own way, which will allow them to enjoy the tour far more.

There is a lot to learn about each piece of ground we represent and we work to learn what we can each time we preview a tract which occurs most often from the windshield tour. The subtle attributes of land however are often discovered when you are walking it or in a buggy zipping around fields identifying corners and just taking it in.  Recently I purchased a Polaris Ranger for our land team.  This machine is offering a lot of fun to our tours and also some “efficiencies”, at least that is how I justified it.

The Ranger will seat six so we can tour almost any sized group and better yet it gives us room for a cooler for our afternoon beverages.  I expect a few of you will find your way into the front seat this year and I am looking forward to that opportunity.  Be well.  Onward!