Who's Your Sawyer?

I wrote a piece recently entitled “Outside My Door,” a chronicle of the different careers I have pursued in my lifetime, including a grocery store clerk, war monger, auto parts clerk, carpenter, teacher and farmer. I concluded that the greatest of these is my current profession: that of a farmer.

There is nothing wrong with any of the first five professions; it’s just that being a farmer requires far more variation from what constitutes a day’s work, than any of the others. I like routine as much as the next hippie, but I prefer to break up a work day into as many variations on a theme as possible. This keeps me happy in my work.

Take one recent Sunday, for instance, a day in which I had to switch hats so often, it made my head spin. Try doing that as a teacher with 37 eighth grade students, and you’ll wish you hadn’t.

On this particular Sunday, I stumbled out the back door just after four in the A of M, to do a half-hour’s worth of hand-watering on some problem areas. This was only after having already removed my writer’s hat, having written something trivial for posting on Mark’s Work, and donned my farmer’s hat.

"Official" farmer's hat

Included in my hand-watering are two beds of ornamentals, the peppers in the green house, my hollyhocks, the basil and about a dozen problem children. These are cannabis plants that just need an extra allowance of water every day to help them with their trials and tribulations.  

I then proceeded to flip a series of on/off valves, allowing twelve little areas of ornamentals to get their five minutes of bliss for the day. I have to stay focused during this hour’s time because water is precious, and there is none to spare for gratuitous flapdoodles.

Just as it was getting light, I switched to cleaning the ten water filters in my system, so as to ensure that there is maximum water flow. Water flows through each filter at increasingly reduced rates, if more than a day or two goes by without cleaning. I perform this chore every other day and it takes about a half-hour. 

Pausing long enough to quaff a homegrown latte, while I throw some potatoes and eggs together and eat a quick breakfast, I head over to the Pepper Pot. Here I am wrapping up the construction of a power shed, a project that Jason and I have reduced to only the installation of the Hardy Board exterior siding and the painting. Because Jay is on-assignment this week, and not on-farm, I am finishing the siding by my lonesome.

All finished except for installing a door.

 

Being on salary with no boss and no time-clock, this has been a fun project. The nature of the task is a perfect example of the way that I am utilized on-farm these days. Whether the task is part of the cannabis-regulatory process, or whether it is simply farm-related, I am available to plug in where needed.

I don’t work as part of a crew anymore, and I rarely spend more than four hours on jobs like the building of the power shed, but I can also say that like the turtle, slow and steady gets the job done. If I am part of a crew, then I function as the sawyer. 

Also, occasionally, I am able to sift through the sawdust in my brain, and provide a key pointer to facilitate a given endeavor. Take the just-completed kitchen roofing project, for instance; I was able to assure HeadSodBuster that cutting through the metal roofing, to accommodate the kitchen stove-pipe, was a piece of cake. The pitch is reasonably extreme, and HeadSodBuster copped to letting it get under his skin, in the time leading up to the start of the project.

When it comes to geometry, I am the pro from Dover: algebra and trigonometry, not so much. There was just too much done orally, for me to have a chance of keeping up. Geometry was all about shapes and angles, something that I am good at.

Pepper Pot

Coming back from the Pepper Pot in late morning, I put away my tape measure, and took monster-colander in hand, and went to roust up some Heinz tomatoes, for a batch of catsup. I was only in the harvesting stage because Jay was expected back on-farm soon, and I wanted him to be in on the processing part.

Still, I allowed ample time for the task because I don’t bend as well as I used to.

About a million pounds of smallish tomatoes later, I stopped, figuring I would finish when I had some assistance in the form of Jason. No sense in killing the job, I am sure you will agree.

Besides, I had a six-pound organic chicken I wanted to roast up for SmallBoy and Dancing Girl. Knowing they were making some logistical moves as far as relocating Dancing Girl to the mountain, I had invited them to Sunday night dinner, the time being affixed at 5:30.

Because my chicken was almost as big as the smallest of our meat birds we raise, I wanted to roast it slowly, at 325 degrees, instead of a more robust pace. I scrubbed up some potatoes, poked a bunch of holes in them to preserve the somewhat tenuous integrity of the inside of the oven, and put them in on the bottom rack.

I also had a fresh head of farm cabbage, that I quartered, steamed and served along with the chicken, baked potatoes and homemade gravy. The gravy could have been thicker (I added a couple of tablespoons of tapioca flour), but it was pretty tasty.

Both SmallBoy and Dancing Girl were effusive in their appreciation, and I was happy to be a part of their day, so it was a win/win situation. Cleaning up was easy-peasy and I knew there was another dinner in the chicken for the next day, regardless of how it was repurposed. 

Besides, as many dudes have discovered on their own, what could be easier than the meal I just described?

Go to de fridge, get de chicken and poot it in de oven…

Go to de pantry, get de taters, and poot dem in de oven…

Finally, the most difficult job of all because it involves handling a knife: go to de fridge and get de cabbage. Cut it in half and then into quarters. Be veddy careful.

Voila!

For dessert there was farm-grown watermelon, the crispiest, sweetest melon I have ever tasted. Being one who refuses to eat store-bought melons, I am in paradise right now. 

I wandered around after the kids had left, picking up my hats from wherever I had strewn them, making sure to get my author’s hat, farmer’s hat, my constructo hat and my chef’s hat, before trading them all in for my night cap, one which obviously does not fit properly.

I know it doesn’t fit because if it did, I would get more than four hours of sleep every night, but I’m not complaining. I always have the option of going back to my health care provider at the VA, and obtaining Big Pharma’s answer to a mood spectrum disorder. Can you say chemical sh*t storm? Try it. I know you can. 

On the other hand, I can just keep wearing that night cap that doesn’t fit, and call it a day.

http://markyswrite.blogspot.com/2017/07/outside-my-door.html