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From my chair, the only thing between me and the horizon is a shelterbelt of trees about two and a half miles to the east and a stack of bills close enough for me to grab (and hurl into the trash).

Before my wife and I decided to move to the family farm, receiving a bill in the thousands of dollars would have stirred controversy in the house and put us both on edge. That has changed: It’s not unheard of to spend more than $1,000 a day on fuel running a farm and in the throes of harvest, our farm gets close to that. Combines are large, thirsty machines. And so are tractors when they’re lugging a cultivator through the field.

I grew 230 acres of soybeans. They have been harvested and all of my fields, as well as my family’s, have been tilled and are ready for winter.

But I haven’t sold yet. And this is the tricky part. I’m too green to know the commodities market like others do. The price for soybeans is okay right now, but that could change in a heartbeat.

I’m a small farmer. I’m actually a tiny farmer. I have two large bins full of soybeans about 200 metres west of me right now.

Let’s do some quick math: I have about 11,000 bushels of soybeans in those bins. The difference between $10 and $11 per bushel is $11,000. Of course farmers drive themselves crazy with what-ifs, but the bills in front me are large, and there are many more to come. At some point, selling is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.

My next paycheque on the farm will come next year, if I get a crop and if the market is such that what I grow is worth more than it costs to grow it.