ABOVE: Carson Kahler.

FAIRMONT– Carson Kahler, a 2019 graduate of Martin County West High School, has seen huge success in his YouTube Channel, 6th Gen Farmer. There, Kahler posts a variety of farming videos that he hopes are both educational and entertaining.

Kahler currently attends South Dakota State University and plans to graduate next winter. He’s majoring in Agricultural Systems Technology and has two minors in Precision Ag and Informatics.

Growing up, Kahler admitted he wasn’t too interested in farming, despite being around it all the time. His family, which includes his dad, uncle, grandpa, brother and cousins, farm corn and soybeans in the Sherburn/Dunnell area.

“I wasn’t that big of a fan. It wasn’t until late high school, junior/senior year, that I started to get into agriculture and realized how much I loved it,” Kahler said.

In high school, Kahler also had a big interest in technology and began building custom computers for friends and family. Then, his cousin asked if he’d be interested in buying his drone, which he did.

“I was messing around with it at home and my dad said, ‘you should make a farming video.’ Like a video year book that will show what the farm looks like year after year,” Kahler said.

In 2018, Kahler made a planting and harvesting video and found that the easiest way to share it with his friends and family was to post it on YouTube and send them the link.

“I didn’t think anything of it. Come Christmas of 2018, I had a cousin who hadn’t seen the video. I pulled it up and saw the video had about 100,000 views on it. I hadn’t realized how many people watched it,” Kahler said.

So he continued to make and post drone videos on YouTube. Between 2018 and 2019, he got 1,000 subscribers. After that, he realized he could only post so many drone videos a year so he decided to delve into the world of vlogging.

“I started and was terrible for awhile,” Kahler said with a laugh. “For some reason I stuck with it and kind of caught on after about six months of trying.”

Now, 6th Gen Farmer has 14,000 subscribers on YouTube. Kahler tries to post one video a week, usually on Sundays. In order to keep the videos as current as he possibly can, he goes home nearly every weekend to film them.

“I have a lot of fun with it. I get a lot of comments and my favorites are the ones that say, ‘you and your dad have a lot of fun on the farm.’ And we do,” Kahler said.

Posted videos range from explaining how drainage tile works to a farm machinery tour to visiting a cattle operation.

Kahler said the videos are really for everyone. A lot of his viewers are farmers, but there are many who aren’t.

“Whenever I’m doing something, I try to explain in good detail what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. That’s to help educate the consumer,” Kahler said.

Despite going to a school that’s known for its agricultural programs, Kahler said he’s surprised at how many students are so disconnected from agriculture.

“We’re given this awesome tool called the internet where we’re able to share our stories. That’s something my dad didn’t have growing up,” Kahler said.

Kahler is sometimes surprised to see the amount of views some videos get. He said sometimes he’s especially excited to post one and it will get about 3,000 views, but then he’ll post one he doesn’t think is exceptionally great and it will get 40,000 views.

However, the number of views doesn’t matter too much to Kahler. He said he’ll keep posting what he wants regardless of whether or not it gets views.

“The whole point of this YouTube channel is to educate the consumer and entertain people. I want people to see what I’m doing week to week,” Kahler said.

This summer Kahler will be interning as a product specialist at C & B Operations and will be based out of Jackson but have the opportunity to travel between the business’s stores. After graduating he’d like to go into farming for awhile but said it’s up in the air as for what job opportunities will come. He said he’d like to keep the channel going as long as he can.

The channel has allowed Kahler to make a good number of contacts in the industry. He said people have reached out to him through it and he’s even gotten a few sponsorships for the channel, which he didn’t anticipate when he started.

Kahler extended a thank-you to his family for the support its given him.

“It’s been a learning curve for them, too. All of a sudden there’s a camera shoved in their face while they’re trying to work. They’ve had a lot of patience with it,” Kahler said.

Editor’s Note: This article ran as part of the Sentinel’s April 2022 Ag update special section.