Government agencies love to categorize farmers, and they are categorized every which way. On what they produce – dairy producers, cattle rancher or grain farmer; on how they produce – organic farmer or conventional farmer; on who the producer is – young, beginning farmer, female farmer or farmers from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. We can slice and dice the farmer pie every way, yet I am convinced there are genuinely only two types of farmers in the world – the farmers who farm because of the equipment and those who farm despite the equipment. Tell me I'm wrong.
It's always the equipment around our place: blown engines, bent shafts on hydraulic rams, drive motors and ripped conveyor belts. We are the common denominator, undoubtedly, and owner error is more often the problem than any manufacturing issues. Also, we are good old bootstrap farmers and have never once bought a new piece of equipment.
Recently, it was the stack wagon. Last year was the first year we'd made small hay bales since we began farming together. It just made sense on our new, smaller acreage. My husband paid for college and put a down payment on our first house by lifting and stacking hay, so no biggie – or so he thought. Then he nearly gave himself a heart attack working like he was 17 when he's closer to 40. He contemplated custom hiring a stack wagon this year, but Craigslist came in clutch. He figured he could practically pay for a “field-ready” stack wagon with what he'd save by not hiring it out custom. It's a win-win, right?
Not right. Ultimately, the “field-ready” stack wagon required frantic calls to every equipment graveyard, I mean used tractor supply warehouse in the valley to find an out-of-manufacture hydraulic ram shaft. He also replaced the sideboards and a U-joint on the drive shaft and lubricated every moving part on the wagon the previous owner had claimed to use at first cutting this season. Apparently “field-ready” has varying degrees of readiness. When it was all done, the stacks looked like the remnants of a Jenga game. As a matter of pride and desire for the hay to store for the winter, he is restacking the hay by hand – right back to where we started – hopefully sans heart attack.
Can you guess what kind of farmer we are?
