Farm Portfolio

The "Farm Portfolio" began thirty years ago when my grandparents divested their dairy herd and invested in blue chip stocks and fixed income securities. Grandma and Grandpa owned banks, telecom, and utility companies, but most positions were fixed income securities. When I assumed control of the investments in 2016, the portfolio composition changed considerably. Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon have become the largest positions and only JP Morgan and U.S. Bancorp remain as constituents. Shopify has been our best performing position, now worth more than $700 from roughly $50 since we purchased it.

I still refer to this portfolio as the Farm Portfolio because even though we no longer need to feed, water, and milk our assets, our wealth is directly derived from the dozen, or so, dairy cows and forty acres of farm land Grandma and Grandpa operated after Grandpa Norm returned home from World War II.

Dairy cows need to be pregnant to produce milk so the headcount of a traditional dairy herd naturally increases with the production of milk. Thanks to a bit of mental gymnastics, the compounding returns of a dairy farm is not to different from the compounding returns of an investment portfolio.

Moreover, these assets were earned through the hard work of my family. I may have been trained to manage financial assets, but the blood, sweat, and tears that amassed these funds belonged to someone else. Referring to these assets as the Farm Portfolio keeps me humble and grateful.

Farm Portfolio Weighted Equity Positions as of March 12, 2021

It’s been almost a year since I’ve updated our portfolio on this site but you can see we have several small positions, I’ve also excluded a few due to the size of the list but they are only a couple hundred dollars. Several small positions have grown to become a significant portion of our portfolio since our last update (most notably APPN) and we sold some shares of CTAS in a tax-advantaged account for a significant profit. Our JPM, USB, and BRK.B shares have rebounded since last August

Farm Portfolio Weighted Equity Positions as of AUgust 19, 2020

Farm Portfolio distribution