In late March, several tracts of farmland in Dewitt County, Ill., were auctioned online, including three located alongside property that’s been in my family for more than 70 years. I found myself facing a new challenge as an absentee landowner.  

Before he passed away in 2018, Dad was keen to purchase two of those tracts, totaling more than 150 acres, that run parallel to ours. He liked the idea of expanding the operation “one last time before leaving this world,” as he put it, and saw no better place to take that step than so close to home.

Dad got his bidding ducks in order, sitting at the kitchen table night after night, running figures and contacting Farm Credit for loan details before heading to the auction house on a cold December day in 2014. He took a seat on the bleachers beside Marvin, a fellow farmer and high school classmate of mine, and they agreed not to bid against each other on the tracts each had his eye on.  

As Dad told me after the sale, a local who didn’t farm swept in and bought not only the tracts that Dad and Marvin hoped to buy, but the whole kit and caboodle — close to a thousand acres in all.

Fast-forward six years, and that same local placed all the land, along with spanking new equipment and a recently constructed bin, back on the market. Two of our farm operators, Bob and Fritz, saw the “for sale” signs, and I reached out to the real estate agent working with the seller.

Several phone conversations and emails ensued between the seller and me through his agent. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach an agreement. The owner was unwilling to negotiate, and I, raised by a father who insisted on haggling over prices for items big and small, was unwilling not to strike the best deal I could.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one encountering roadblocks. In February, I heard the owner had decided to put the land up for public auction the end of March. Some 600 miles away in Birmingham, Ala., I asked myself three pivotal questions as I contemplated my next step:    

1. What’s my motivation? Maybe knowing that Dad wanted that land is what had me itching to buy it. Or maybe it was my own desire to grow our operation after jumping headfirst into farm management two and a half years ago. Likely a little bit of both.    

After much soul-searching, I determined that I was primarily invested in upping productivity. The opportunity to accomplish what Dad had set out to do was an added bonus.

2. What are the risks and benefits? I asked Bob to help me draw up an accurate (and realistic) balance sheet to determine how much I could pay per acre based on calculated expenses and probable income from the additional acreage. Would a purchase stretch our budget uncomfortably or leave sufficient breathing room for continuing to manage the business from afar?

I also shopped around for the best loan options. I’d be taking on a mortgage — something I hadn’t faced from a farmer’s perspective because my parents owned all their farmland outright at the time of Dad’s death — and would be responsible for real estate taxes in addition to operating expenses.

Then there was the global pandemic driving markets downward and growing uncertainty in just about every sector of the economy. 

The greatest benefits? Farmland in Dewitt County remains a lucrative investment, and as the seller’s agent frequently reminded me, location, location, location.

3. Is now the right time to buy more land? When the auction went live, my husband and I sat in front of my laptop and watched the bids rolling in. Prices started low, but as we neared the 10 a.m. cutoff, they rose upward of $10,000-plus per acre on the smaller 68-acre tract that I’d decided to bid on.

Ultimately, I bowed out, having thought through the situation carefully before joining the excitement of a virtual auction.

I’m still too new to farming to take this step. While my greenness is one factor that drew me to a smaller tract, I need more seasons under my belt before purchasing additional farmland — regardless of the ideal proximity of these tracts to our family farm.

Also, my 83-year-old mom is living with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, making the future wildly unpredictable. Her care will likely be extensive and expensive, making a commitment to loan payments a frightening prospect.

As I learned shortly after the bidding stopped, Marvin successfully purchased that 68-acre tract. I’m sure Dad smiled down from above when he saw that a respected farmer and friend is now also a neighbor.  

This experience confirmed my desire to grow our operation during my lifetime. Like Dad, I dream of leaving my children a rich family farm legacy. But now might not be the opportune moment — what the ancient Greeks called “kairos” — to take the first step. Like Dad said on more than one occasion, I’ll know when.

Ryan is a farmer’s daughter from Clinton, Ill., and a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Following her father’s death and mother’s relocation to her Alabama home, Ryan manages the family farm from afar. The opinions of this writer are not necessarily those of Farm Progress/Informa.