A couple weeks ago, Rachel and I visited an estate sale in one of the 1960-ish suburban neighborhoods on the edge of town. I find that they make a fantastic excuse for avoiding the work I should be doing. I've become quite a sucker for stuff I don't really need when it's at rock-bottom prices. It's even better when I find something I do actually need - or have suddenly decided that I need.
While walking from our parking spot over to the sale, I noticed an older gentleman trimming the four small bushes which made up the entirety of his landscaping. "How nice it would be to have so little to maintain!", I said.
The more infrastructure that exists on a farm, the easier most tasks become. Fencing around the yard means we can let our sheep mow the lawn. Additional barn space means our equipment is under cover and less likely to have bearings or bushings seize up, and also leaves space in the garage/shop for various projects with no need to first move equipment outside. A water line out to both barns, along with the orchard and garden, makes it easier to keep animals watered without dragging leaky hoses everwhere. Our mile of fencing means that I don't have to worry so much about one of the animals making a break for Canada.
But the more you have, the more you have to maintain. I haven't yet plotted out the maintenance to benefit ratio of our farm's infrastructure, but it feels as if it's fast approaching 1:1.
A case in point is the frost-free hydrant in the horse's barnyard. Being as they are clumsy 2,000lb beasts, they managed to bump into it and bend it last winter, despite the protective post on one side. "No way to dig it up now -- the ground's still frozen", I thought to myself.
I bent it back to a relatively upright position and all seemed okay... but something was causing it to leak underground, as evidenced by our well pump cycling every 5 minutes whenever the waterline that serves it wasn't shut off.
I managed to forget about it for a while, and suddenly it was spring (too busy to deal with it now!), and then summer (too damn hot and humid to be digging a big hole!). Rachel was clearly annoyed that I always had the waterline shut off (the valve is in a dark and spider-web filled corner of our cellar which she absolutely *loves* getting to), and I was growing ever more annoyed that she would leave it on after finishing her work in the garden. Whenever I sat down to relax in the living room, I could hear the well-pump -- a barely audible humming -- whenever the waterline was left turned on. That sound makes me crazy, no matter how hard I try to ignore it.
So I finally decided that today was the day, despite the morning's not-so-low of 66 and a forecast high of 84. Any time the night-time low stays above 60, the air holds humidity, and our days aren't so pleasant. But... there's no time like the present! (or in this case, 6 months after the fact)
With the hydrant placed right on the edge of the hog pen, I decided I could let the hogs out into the surrounding horse barnyard while I worked, as they seemed to be quite fascinated with the big hole I was digging. They're still at a relatively cute stage, especially the one we call Pinky. She's the first pig we've ever had that wants frequent tummy rubs.
The pigs quickly bore down on my dirt pile and started rooting around with their snouts. They came over and stood on the edge of the hole while I was in it., with one foot repeatedly slipping into the hole. Two of them fell into the hole with me. One got so scared that she pooped on my leg while squealing bloody murder as I lifted her back out. I could hear Bilbo barking at the commotion from inside the house.
As the hole reached 5' deep, getting the long shovel out became a real chore, but I was aided by one of the pigs repeatedly biting my elbow as I lifted the loaded shovel up above shoulder height so I could empty it above-ground. Later, while I was inspecting the fitting that attached the hydrant to the waterline, another of them pushed the shovel into the hole and down on to my head. When I climbed back out, yet another took great interest in the heel of my boot, and started biting it.
This hydrant isn't the only deferred maintenance on our farm, of course. Though the list is shorter now that I'm no longer spending hours each day to milk our cows, it's still pretty long, and seems to grow about as fast as I'm able to check off the various tasks.
I've not cleared beneath our electric fences for a couple years now, which causes them to short out and lose their potency as the brush grows up around them. Then again, I wasn't able to keep them on much until the last few weeks anyway, as they make fantastic antenna for catching our regular lightning. Our old Amish farrier told of working in a barn when lightning struck the fence. The charger exploded into a fountain of sparks and started a fire, so I keep our charger disconnected whenever there's lightning in the forecast.
There's still a lot of painting on my list, and I need to get up on the roof of our new barn, where the ridge cap leaks whenever we have a strong driving rain from the north. I also need to put some slide-stoppers on the roof to keep the snow from ripping the gutters off, and it would be really nice to install some gutter guards so I don't have to spend so much time on a ladder looking down from 27 feet in the air while cleaning the gutters twice a year. Oh, and the windows on the barn need some panes replaced, and painting after that...
Our tractor has always played second fiddle to our horse-drawn equipment, and I figured that since we don't use it much anyway it didn't need annual oil changes. Whether that was a factor or not I'll never know, but the engine began to suffer a heart attack recently, making a noise from somewhere deep inside that I was soon unable to ignore. Though I despise the coating of grease and oil I find myself bathing in whenever I work on it, I don't have too much trouble fixing the various external things that have gone wrong with it over the years. But... tearing apart the engine itself is more work than I'm interested in, so it's being sold to someone with less of an aversion than myself.
This means, of course, that I'm looking for a new tractor. I can't dream of affording the $30,000 of an actual new tractor, so new in my case means upgrading to a 1960's era tractor from our 1950's tractor, and hoping that the maintenance to benefit ratio of the tractor will remain below 1:1 for as long as possible. Perhaps a tractor with a loader (and more associated maintenance) would be useful...?
Sometimes, I really like the idea of having nothing to maintain.
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