My Week with Kramer: Four Days in Big Ag

Four days on the road with my boss. Then a phone call home in the dark that I’m still thinking about. by Chad

We step out of the pickup onto a compacted dirt road. It’s Monday afternoon about 2:30 pm, a few of us have had multiple flights to get to this spot – a corn field (center pivot irrigation) 6 times the size of our own farm. It’s hot. Hats on, sunscreen, and some experienced eyes walking the field to see if we can pick out where our magical Syngenta biological had been applied, next to the untreated part of the field. We’re in Eastern Idaho about to spend 1.5 days looking at potato fields (and one corn field) on farms that are 1,000’s of acres big. This is the start of my week with Kramer.

After an impressive tour in Idaho – our boots full of Idaho dirt after digging some beautiful spuds and huckleberry milkshakes – Kramer and I are on a late afternoon flight to Santa Barbara. In the morning we buzz up to Pismo beach, where we meet up with Loraine, a teammate, and join a meeting with a wonderful longtime biologicals customer. Loraine drives us out of there and our tour winds through the California coastal mountains on a 5 hour drive to a roadside speed dating meeting with a customer in Ripon. Yeah, roadside – we pulled the pickups to the side of a rural, orchard lined cul de sac and stood on the asphalt as we talked about our products. Speed dating… since it was in the 90’s F and we had to talk quick about a new product.

All this after 5 hours, and it’s now 4:30. We had another 1.5 hours to drive “without” traffic. Our plan… grab dinner downtown Sacramento and drive back after the traffic passed. Plan in place, and the dialogue between us – Loraine and my boss Kramer, who insisted on sitting in the back – leaders eat last style – continued. Only for me to learn… Kramer thinks he likes sweet wine. It’s one of those, say it ain’t so moments. And quite a funny conversation from there. Thankfully dinner may have been a redeeming moment as I got handed the wine list and witnessed Kramer’s reaction to the Chablis I ordered… he gave it a thumbs up.

It had been a long day… we started in Santa Barbara and were now in the pickup after dark, Loraine still driving, Kramer in the back, headed the 30 mins to our hotel. I needed to call home… Carston, our 15 year old, had some questions from his day working on the farm. A few minutes into him telling me about his crop load estimates and mildew observations, he could hear Loraine and Kramer talking in the background – is that Loraine and Kramer, he asked. Sure enough, he recognized their voices from phone calls I’ve taken and zoom mtgs he’s half-heard from somewhere else in the house. When I heard him name who was in the pickup my mind went – what the heck… he’s been paying more attention than I realized. We all miss me being home.

I was telling him to either connect with and help Jesus (who’s been with us for 8 years) or tell him we need to drop the clusters with active mildew, when Loraine commented with a smile, “man, you’re really lining things out for him.” I asked Carston if he wanted to say hi and threw it onto speaker – “hi guys.” Kramer and Loraine both said hello, then I asked him to share what he saw in the vineyard today – “we’ve got about 10% incidence of mildew and some is still active.” I reply, “hey, can you tell us what you think of that Syngenta biological we applied to the pumpkins?” Yeah dad, “it’s a bit early to tell, but the pumpkins look amazing, it seems like the product has really helped the pumpkins get a good start.”

It wasn’t 2 minutes after we said our goodbyes that we pulled up to our exit where Kramer commented, “hey Chad, it was almost one year ago we met here for your interview, that was a good day.” My reply, “yeah, it was a big day for me – that was my transition from almost 2.5 years and only flying one time.”

As we pulled into our hotel for the night – where we typically stay in Roseville – across the freeway is where Carston and Jackson were both born. You can literally see it.

Cheers!