Bud the Bad Good Example
Whenever I am on “vacation” here at the farm, it is usually only a matter of a day or two before I settle into a routine. Wake up at 7-ish, check my e-mail, feed the horses and then spend the rest of the day trying to avoid work and usually failing. Especially if my wife is around.
However, that routine has been drastically altered by the arrival of Bud (not his real name, which is Phil). I hesitate to call Bud a “farmhand”, as he is a full-fledged farmer himself and, unlike me, is actually able to make a living at it. However, even self-employed organic produce farmers can use a few extra bucks now and then, so my wife hired Bud to help out while I was away. She liked him so much she’s keeping him on while I’m home, and I can see why. He actually works. For real, I mean. He moves around and sweats and gets things accomplished and everything. It’s disgusting.
Not that I was against the arrangement, not at all. I imagined being freed up for the leisurely life of the landed gentry, getting up at the crack of noon and spending afternoons in my book-lined study, watching reruns of “Law & Order” and “CSI” and occasionally - to keep abreast of current events - “Sportscenter.”
Alas, the missus had other ideas. The only freeloading I would be allowed to do would be freely loading bags of horse feed from the truck to the feed shed. There would be no lallygagging, though I wouldn’t know a lally if I fell over one, much less know how to gag it. Maybe I would read one of my columns to it.
Bud is a non-stop working machine, a much better worker than what he is paid to be, but that is not the problem. As the co-owner of this semi-unprofitable enterprise, I need to keep up. I don’t like it. I like feeding the horses, pulling two nails out of an old 2×4, and then a nap. But I can’t get away with it anymore.
Besides, I only feed the horses once a day now. Bud is feeding them when I am still trying to decide whether to put on clean socks or whether I can get another day out of the previous pair (if they haven’t already walked away on their own, it usually means they are still good to go). So now I don’t even have the excuse of feeding the horses to plead for rest.
Instead, I have to do actual work. It is amazing that on a farm where so little actually happens, so much needs to be done. Tight, strong fencing that I gazed upon with pride when I put it up a few years back is now bent, sagging, broken, in need of repair or needing to be ripped out in it’s entirety to be replaced, moved, or eliminated from the configuration altogether. Never become emotionally attached to a fence, it can only lead to heartache.
Small, movable (but still pretty darned heavy) outbuildings that were once perfectly situated now are facing the wrong direction or just simply in the way and need to be turned or burned. So far I haven’t had to burn anything. That is not to say that I haven’t burned anything, just that I didn’t have to.
A dog that was purchased to protect livestock has developed a fondness for digging in the flower beds and - rather than surround the gardens in heartbreaking fence that I would only have to tearfully remove a few years hence – trenches must be dug for an invisible fence which will give Lassie (not her real name, which is Hilda) a reproachful jolt – though not as reproachful as the ones experienced by Bruno Hauptmann or Ted Bundy - should she ever again attempt to uproot the day lilies or frolic in the bogs.
Then there are the horses, always the horses. I stand by my philosophy that hanging out with horses is good for what ails you, but only if they are good horses. Most of ours fall into that category, but there is the odd one or so that misbehaves so badly he or she has you reaching either for the rifle or the number to the Alpo cannery, or both. If that horse is reading this, it knows who I’m talking about. You’ve been warned.
But as I have said in previous entries, mine is a working vacation. It gives me something to do while I look forward to going back to work where I can get some rest. I can only wish the same for Bud, if he’d stop working long enough to let me tell him.
thanks for the chuckle- somehow - none of it suprises me but I chuckled just the same -
enjoy your time- hope your wife is healing - I am guessing the alpo horse was the one involved!