We know Cole ain’t here, he’s back in bed somewhere probably, and the stresses that come on the farm that make relationships hard. Just the lifestyle of farming—there’s long hours and mostly headaches every single day. Single moms are great. A lot of—I don’t wish problems here. What’s the saying, distance makes harder of heart? Yeah. How does she deal with your space? It is so damn difficult to find something derogatory or negative that someone has said about Jesse on the internet. It hurt me reading Reddit threads about you because of how many I saw about me.
Hey y’all, welcome to Meet the McB’s powered by AG America Media. Today I’m joined by my brother Jesse and we’re going to be talking about love on the farm—how to make relationships work in a stressful environment like farming and ranching. Guys, episodes of Meet the McB’s drop every Tuesday on YouTube and every other podcast listening platform. If you like it, share it, subscribe, tell a friend. We’ll be dropping new episodes every Tuesday. Saddle up, let’s get down and dirty with it.
It is early. It is 7 o’clock in the morning. Yeah, so we know Cole here, it feels a lot earlier than that. We know Cole ain’t here, he’s back in bed somewhere probably, but today we don’t need him for this podcast anyways. This is a podcast that I think Jesse and I are going to be the ones that can do the bulk of the speaking on for two reasons—mine not being the best reason. Jesse is a very good, experienced, successful dater in the farming industry, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.
We’re going to be talking about love on the farm and stresses that come on the farm that make relationships hard, because it is damn hard on the farm. Yeah, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. It’s not easy.
So I want to tell a little story because I think this really encapsulates how difficult it is in a small town or in a farming industry to find love and to make it work. When I was in my early to mid-20s, I was recently single, or I had been single for a little bit, and I experimented with dating apps. So I was trying Tinder, Bumble, Hinge—preferences, Hinge I think that’s higher quality, Tinder is just more quantity. Oh no brother, on—but anyways.
You have this map that you drop on all these dating apps and you expand the circle of where you’re supposed to find your matches, right? Well where we’re at in Gallatin, Missouri, you can expand that circle on all these apps—I think it’s 100 miles—and even when I expanded that thing 100 miles, it still did not reach any major city or any big population. So the pickings were few and far between. It was rough.
I realized very quickly, okay, it’s going to be a lot harder than I thought, because the thing about a small town or any sort of farming industry is all of the good ones—both men and women—get married literally within two years of graduating high school, and they’ve probably been dating since like sixth grade. Is it not sure that’s exactly how it works? Like the good ones meet up in like sixth grade, and then they get married right out of high school and they start their family immediately.
So then you have the leftovers like me—years still single, still on Hinge. No, I’m not on Hinge anymore. Oh, clear, sorry, don’t look me up. If you see me on Hinge, it’s a fake account.
So you’re left with this very small number of people that all come with major red flags, hence why they are single in the farming or small town industry. And so that was one of the reasons, candidly, why I went on a dating show—because all of the conventional ways of dating had not worked.
I was in my mid-20s and I was starting to realize, hey, there’s very few single people in my county. Literally in the entire county of Daviess County, anyone between 23 to 28—and hell, at that point I think I was going like 23 to like 40. I was like, you know what, I’ll take a freshly divorced single mom at this point. It was starting to be pretty rough. Single moms are great, yeah.
But yeah, I realized that the odds were against me. They were stacked against me. And so I tried a dating show, and that was eventually how I ended up in another relationship.
Little story about my experience of trying to date in a small town in the farming industry. And I think that there’s so much to this that a lot of farmers and ranchers—like you see a bunch, and it seems like it’s more men than women—you see a bunch of 30 to 40-year-old single men that are farmers or ranchers.
Yeah, what do you think that is?
I would definitely have to say it’s just the lifestyle of farming. There’s long hours and mostly headaches every single day. And I’d say that they got married or were together younger, and were more involved with each other. And then, you know, as years go by—even if you’re not a farmer—you’re not as close as it used to be just because of life in general.
And then obviously mix farming into the bone—it takes away basically any extra time. Yeah, any free time that you have, farming takes away from it. And it’s a yearly thing. As much as everybody wants to say it’s not, it is a yearly job. It keeps you plenty busy.
Not only that, but it gives you more headaches than probably any other job. So when they’re calling you asking, “How’s your day going?” and you’re underneath a combine trying to get it going again, and you’re cutting back fences, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s going great babe, I just love my job,” yeah—it leads to a lot of different fights.
And obviously the timing thing is just a huge part of any relationship. So all those things combined lead to a lot of 30 to 40-year-old single farmers—recently divorced probably. Just very, very true.
So it comes down to number one: you are on call 24/7 in the farming industry, especially if you have animals, because you cannot predict when those animals are going to get sick, when they decide to break through a fence, when they decide to jump a fence. And it seems to always come on Friday night, right when you have dinner plans—right at 7:00, 7:30 p.m.
I swear cows have like an internal clock where they’re like, “Alright, it’s Friday night, 7:30. I bet they have reservations at a nice restaurant. Let’s go bust through this fence and wander out on the highway.” What’s the absolute worst time I can get out of this fence? They pick that. They do. They have an uncanny ability to pick and choose the worst possible times.
So you have the fact that you’re on call 24/7. You’re dealing with a high, high, high stress environment because you have all the work that you have to get done. Mother Nature could throw a wrench at it at any time. So a lot of farmers’ emotional states are a roller coaster—up, down, up, down—which is not great for any relationship.
No, it’s not good. No, it’s not.
And I do feel for anyone that is dating a farmer or rancher, because you do have to deal with the mood swings. Because it is such an emotionally invested career. Like, you are so connected to the farm and ranch, the animals that you raise, the crops that you’re growing, that I don’t see how it couldn’t affect you emotionally whenever you have those bad moments that are inevitably going to come.
Yeah, and I think that’s why it’s so important to find the right person that is able to handle that type of pressure. It takes a special person, man or woman. And this works on both sides. Yeah, both sides.
You have to have somebody who’s very patient, because with farming you just never know. And unfortunately that’s just part of the job that you sign up for—you never know what’s going to happen. You never know when you’re going to get called in, or have cows get out, or have to run all night in a combine, or plant all night because there’s rain coming.
So you have to have a very flexible partner that’s able to kind of just go with the flow.
Speaking of flexible, Jesse, how do you spice up your love life when you’re working out on the farm? Got any stories you’re going to tell us?
Unfortunately, I think we have the wrong brother for that. I know somebody who has a lot of wishful ideas here, and he’s not in here. You have to ask him that question.
Oh, I’m sure there’s—yeah. Can we tell about the story with Cole and the—yeah, I think it’s—I mean yeah, alright.
So there was a couple years back, Cole and Casey—so it’s all good, Casey’s still, it’s all good. Cole was spending some late nights in the tractor, and we kept wondering like, how is he working this late? We know he usually jumps out of his tractor about 5:00 p.m. to make sure he gets back to Casey.
And it was about a month after planting season. All the soybeans were starting to pop out of the ground. You see the rows—every single row. Like, you’d have lines whenever you’re planting in a field.
So basically you set auto-steer on your tractor. It sets two marks and it draws a straight line between them, and you take your hands off the steering wheel and it just is a perfectly straight line.
Well, all of our soybean fields looked great. I mean just perfectly straight rows. And then you have Cole—it’s like every single one of his fields were like this. They were like waving through the field.
Like, “Cole, how are you doing this? You were on auto-steer. They should be a perfectly straight line.”
Jesse, what do we end up finding out?
Oh, I don’t need to tell this—you go.
Well apparently Casey was spending some evenings with Cole in the tractor cab. And to say Cole was distracted would be an understatement. I feel like the steering wheel kept getting bumped. I think that’s what happened. He had to grab it and put it back on, and then it hit the auto-steer again.
And yeah, Cole was multitasking, is what he told us. I was glad he was still working.
You know what, honestly, we’ll take it. If that’s what it takes to keep Cole in a tractor, that’s fine by us.
That’s probably his dog in the tractor cab with him too.
Yep, that’s a crowded tractor cab. Good Lord. How can you even see anything outside?
I don’t—there’s no way he could have. That’s what he was probably like, looking out like this. He’s got his dog by his feet, his girlfriend on top of him—good Lord. He’s a mess. I wish he was here to talk.
I think that’s what you have to do—any chance you can. Cole seems to be very spontaneous when it comes to that.
Yes, yeah.
I’d say Jesse and I are considered the starfish of the family.
Hey, nothing wrong with it, man.
So what have you and Ally been able to do to navigate a successful relationship? Y’all have obviously been together since—what, since we were in diapers it seems like?
It really does.
What have you guys been able to do to keep your relationship going strong, even through all the down years and the rough times?
Honestly, she’s probably made it a lot easier on me. If it was anybody else, they would have left me a long time ago. But in all reality, I’d say we just kind of made compromises with each other.
You kind of have to accept some things and work around them. Obviously she’s a nurse down in Kansas City, and I’m working an hour and a half north on the farm. So we don’t get to see each other every day.
And this is where I think one of the most important things in a relationship is actually getting space from each other. Not too much space—you can’t never see each other—but you definitely can’t be with somebody every single day, 24/7, and not expect to fight.
Like, if I’m working with Cole for a week straight, I want to knock his teeth out.
So in a relationship, you’ve got to have that space. But you also have to compromise. I drive back to the city at least three or four nights a week to see her. She’ll come up on the weekends during our busy seasons.
So really just making the time to see each other, understanding that there’s going to be times when you can’t see each other, and try not to make a big deal out of that and turn it into a whole ordeal. And just talk through it, really.
I think that’s where I go wrong, for sure.
Yeah, I would say when I’m with someone, I want to be with them all the time. You do.
Which is a good thing—but when you’re together too much, it’s actually a bad thing.
Yeah, you end up at each other’s throats nonstop.
What’s that saying—distance makes the heart grow fonder?
Yeah, it definitely applies.
I need to work on that one a little bit. I think that’s what has been the downfall and why the relationships I have attempted have not successfully materialized or worked out. That and many other reasons. I mean, I see what you’re saying.
Is there anything—I mean, did Ally have like—did you guys have any conversations up front when y’all started dating about the industry that you’re in? Or do you think she just kind of understood over time?
Honestly, no. I think I got very, very lucky with Ally. You know her—she’s very understanding and just kind of calm. She’s very independent on her own, so that in itself is another thing you kind of have to look for if you’re looking for a partner—someone who is independent, has their own thing going on.
If you can’t find somebody like that, then you do have to communicate that up front and basically say, “This is kind of just the lifestyle.” So if you want to actually be with me, then you’re going to have to accept that one way or the other.
Because as much as they want to say that it’s okay up front, it’s an entirely different ball game when you’re in it. Once you’re in it, it’s way different.
Yeah, and then they think they can control you and it just never works after that. Never works.
No, unfortunately for me in my case, I think I got kind of lucky with my partner that she was a lot more understanding. And we didn’t really have to communicate that, mostly because back when we first started, I didn’t work really far back and forth. Yeah, kind of phased into it.
So she just kind of had to go with the flow, and that’s kind of how I’ve had to do it with her too. We both made compromises and accepted that, you know, she had to work weekends, or I had to work down in the city and I had to go see her down there, she had to come up here to see me.
So how does she deal with mood swings? Because you can’t sit here and deny the fact that you don’t have mood swings like the rest of us whenever it’s a bad day on the farm. It’s really, really hard to not let that affect you for the rest of the night.
You know, I definitely do have mood swings. I’m usually a pretty happy person, like for the most part. But there’s definitely days where I call her and just absolutely lose it.
And how does she deal with it? She’s pretty good. I’d say for the most part she doesn’t react. She doesn’t really say much—she just lets me get whatever I need to get out, scream and yell.
And then I usually hang up the phone, and five minutes later I’m like, “Okay, sorry about that. That was not me.”
For anyone that has not worked on the farm or around cattle, you can’t judge anyone or hold anyone accountable for the things that are said when you’re working cattle or when you’re having issues with equipment.
Yep, absolutely.
Like Jesse, my dad and I—we have said some of the most horrendous things about each other to each other whenever we are working on the farm, working cows, whatever it may be. “You didn’t shut the gate right,” or “you didn’t spin the cows the right way,” whatever it may be.
You just forget. You kind of have to have amnesia—where you forget everything at the end of the day.
Yeah, just forget everything. That’s what you have to do whenever you’re working on the farm, because there are some times where you just have to let loose.
Oh yeah.
Speaking of that, just the other day we were loading or separating cow-calf pairs and loading them into a trailer. Braden and Blake were up—I guess this would’ve been—Braden was up here, yes.
It was Cole, Jake, and me. I can’t remember. It was a really hot day, and for whatever reason the cows didn’t want to go into the trailer. It turned into a whole show.
So Cole and Jake just started getting into it—absolutely screaming at each other. And I was just like, “You know, this is just another day on the farm.”
I look over and I see Braden and Blake high-tailing it away like, “I’m getting out of here as fast as possible.” They weren’t used to that.
That wasn’t even that bad. That’s like an everyday occurrence. They’re going to be fine here in two minutes.
Jake and Cole threaten to fight each other probably three times a day. They never have, but they threaten it every day. You just get used to it when you work out here.
Did we do Reddit reads? We did it last week when Dad was on.
Yes.
Well, I’ve got a Reddit read that I found about you. And let me tell you right now, it is so damn difficult to find something derogatory or negative that someone has said about Jesse on the internet.
I had to go down the rabbit hole of Reddit for like 30 minutes to find one negative thing. And this isn’t even that negative, but I was pretty happy with it.
I thought I was going to have to make my own Reddit account and post something about you, but I did find this one.
Okay, from a user—it says:
“I don’t think Ally even likes Jesse. She had more chemistry with the stripper, to be honest. Maybe Jesse is gay.”
Is that really what it said?
I swear. That’s why I don’t read anything. I don’t watch. It hurt me reading Reddit threads about you because of how many I saw about me. It was horrible.
Every time I saw my name I was like, “Go back, go forward, don’t look at it.”
Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought.
The amount of Reddit reads we could do on Dad and Cole—every single podcast for the next five years.
Ally and Casey was all positive though.
Yeah, I could see that.
I’m going to start spreading a bunch of false Reddit stories about y’all.
Go ahead. There’s enough out there already.
Hey y’all, today’s episode is brought to you by AG America, your go-to financial partner for all things agriculture…
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Now let’s get back to the podcast.
I do have a couple questions for you that I got on Instagram. I posted a Q&A the other day and some of these questions were reoccurring.
This first one’s a hair care question.
Jesse, what moisturizer are you currently using? What’s your skin care and hair care routine?
Okay, I’ll start with skin care because I know that one. Basically, right before I go to bed, I turn on the sink—cold water—splash my face. That’s the extent. Then wipe it down with a towel and go to bed.
That’s my skin care routine.
Hair care routine—I really don’t pay attention. I just started using conditioner a little while back because my hair started getting really hard or split ends.
I was using the three-in-one. Apparently that wasn’t doing the job.
You can’t use a three-in-one.
They talk about tallow, rendered beef fat, for skin and hair.
Then they talk about hats, hair growth, awkward hair stages, barber stories, cutting hair before filming, wedding hair plans, cowboy hats, wedding nerves, honeymoon plans to Maui, hating the beach, loving the mountains.
They talk about officiating the wedding, repeating vows, dancing, first dance, Uncle Jimmy dancing, and then wrap up.
Any last notes for love on the farm?
If the relationship really means something to you, you can work through anything. Take it day by day. Be upfront. Tell them how busy you are. Save problems down the road.
God bless the women that date farmers and ranchers. Y’all are amazing.
Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning in. If you liked what we had to say, share it, subscribe, tell a friend. We’ll have more episodes to come with Cole, Dad, Jake, and a lot of exciting news on the way.
Thanks so much guys. We’ll see you next time.
