We waited to see if the price would come down. In April we got a call from our supplier. The price was $1.36/gal. We thought it would probably go down. So we decided to wait.

It seems like you have to make decisions earlier every year. When I first started farming, we wouldn't buy seed until a couple of weeks before planting. Now we find ourselves working on that during the harvest.

There wasn't really that much of a benefit to doing the fall work. Not doing it will help us reduce our fuel use. And we'll also save on labor and on machinery wear and tear.

We used to try to get it all done in one deal. But now we approach it more like marketing our grain crop. We don't aim to get 100% locked in at the very top of the market. We try to get some on the way up and some at the top. And then we live with how it averages out. It has served us pretty well.

You have to be able to listen to what you're being told and implement that on the court, but we didn't do that.

There is further work to be done. We must not and will not allow things to go back to what they were.