Meet three teenagers sharing farm life on YouTube
The farm boy gets the call — his dad needs help hooking up the gooseneck trailer to the pickup. He grabs his brother and cousin and they’re off to help. Minutes later the three are corralling one of their beef cows to load onto the trailer for a trip to the local veterinarian for a hoof trim.
Similar scenes play out every day on family farms across Missouri. But what’s different about the one where these three boys live is they are filming the daily happenings for their YouTube channel with the goal of showing and telling the story of modern farming. Welcome to Barringhaus Farms and its three video stars: brothers Britton, 15, and Bentley, 12, and their cousin Tyler, 15.
These three young men eat, breathe and dream about farming. They’re also big fans of farmers on YouTube, such as Welker Farms, Millennial Farmer, 10th Generation Dairyman and others who all have subscribers to the tune of 500,000 to 1 million. For Christmas 2022, Tyler wanted just one gift: Start making videos about the farm.
“I thought it was cool there are YouTubers who educate others about agriculture, and I thought it would be fun to do the same,” he says.
Tyler’s parents, Jill and Kevin Barringhaus, and Britton and Bentley’s parents, Tim and Brooke Barringhaus, agreed videos featuring the boys on the farm would be a fun project. The boys represent the fourth generation of the family operation near Glasgow, and they farm alongside their fathers. The first video on the Barringhaus Farms YouTube channel went live in late December 2022.
The videos show everything from gearing up for planting season to fieldwork to mowing hay on the farm, which produces corn, soybeans and beef cattle. You ride alongside as Tyler drives the grain cart during corn harvest, Britton mows along field edges and Bentley cuts net wrap around big hay bales as they feed cows. They also do a video series called “Tailgate Talk” where the boys pull questions out of a tin can and answer them. A recent question was: “Would you rather do homework or your least favorite farm chore?” The unanimous answer was, “Our least favorite chore.”
In the beginning, Tyler says their goal was to film something every Saturday around the farm. “We just film what we do and how we live our life every day,” he says. “We film as much as we can before our phone dies.”
Jill shot many of the first videos, coaxing the boys with questions and capturing their camaraderie and infectious laughter. She has since taught the filming and editing steps to the boys. “Videos take a lot longer to make than you’d think,” Britton says. Tyler now uses Adobe Premiere Pro to edit all the video and estimates it takes 1 hour of editing work for every minute of a finished video.
Britton and Tyler are both freshman at Glasgow High School and members of the Glasgow FFA chapter. This year Tyler received a $1,000 grant through FFA to support their farm video efforts. He’s bought a GoPro, and the boys are saving the remaining money for a drone to take their filming to the next level.
The teenagers are learning the ropes from their fathers on their fourth-generation beef and row-crop operation near Glasgow.
In just one year, the Barringhaus boys have posted more than 160 videos and attracted more than 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. Video views range from a few hundred per video to more than 40,000. Through the comments, they answer questions from people across the U.S. and even abroad about farm life.
Britton, Bentley and Tyler dream about farming together in the future. If they do, you can bet you’ll have a front-row seat via their YouTube channel. Want to learn more about the future of agriculture? Just hit the subscribe button for Barringhaus Farms.
Britton, 15
Favorite farm duty: I like helping my dad feed cows and running the grain cart.
What he wants you to know about farming: It’s not just all driving tractors.
Tyler, 15
Favorite farm duty: I like to cultivate or chisel plow. I also love taking care of bottle calves.
What he wants you to know about farming: It’s not all sunshine. There’s a lot of hard stuff we don’t show.
Bentley, 12
Favorite farm duty: I don’t have a favorite thing, I just like driving tractors.
What he wants you to know about farming: Farming is not always easy.
For more information or to watch videos from Barringhaus Farms, visit www.youtube.com/@Barringhausfarms.