The Useful Duck!

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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

On being a manager and getting stuff done...

I've been looking for 2hrs for a roll pin punch so I can take a knotter apart. The fellow who is going to haul my hay wants to do it on Saturday. The fellow who wants to buy some hay does not call me. It would not help that much if he did call me as I don't understand a heavy spanish accent over the cell phone.
So here is the deal.
I have 75 acres to ted, rake, bale and stack at my farm. I have 50 acres to stack 15 miles away. I have 20 acres to stack 15 miles the opposite direction. I need to mow 65 acres but it may rain the 20th. I've got one person to help me, perhaps two. My brother needs help to finish swathing. But has to go drive truck for three days. The irrigation needs something, the combine needs to go, the trucks need their side boards, and my wife is rebuilding the bathroom.
It is not so much the acres I have to do as the logistics. I figure if I drink lots and lots of coffee I can bale during the day and stack at night. I think I can do the one 50 acre custom stacking job if I go all night and the other I will try to get the neighbor to run our stacker so I can help haul bales on saturday. Fortunatly I did not update my CDL medical card so I can't drive truck. I have never hauled doubles, shifted anything but a five and four, and I do not want to learn on a twisty narrow road between two small mountians. Perhaps I can drive the squeeze.
This would all be different if the hay was worth money. At this point it is kind of a salvage operation and it is all costing me money...
If I keep hiding in the bathroom will it all fix itself?

4 comments:

  1. Hmm. They say the grass is always greener on the other side. Wanna come run this mad-house for a few days? We could trade! Trouble is, on a scale from 1 to 10 of baler and stacker knowledge, I'd be a solid 1, maybe a 1-1/2. I'm not sure I'd get a lot done. I think I'd be getting the better end of the deal. You would get to:
    1. Learn more than you ever wanted to know about our Masseybines...and their drivers.
    2. Learn how to stuff different varieties of seed into every possible nook, cranny, outbuilding, or bat-cave that has anything that passes for a roof.
    3. Do things that make no sense. Case in point: today's activities. Convert a '60 KW from half-arsed 24V to straight 12V as rent. We did this so that we could use it in fescue, freeing the other trucks for ryegrass. But then the MC of the ryegrass was too high so we didn't need the extra truck. But I had already started so.....

    You can let me know. Or just show up. If you don't find me, come look in the bathroom. Or the looney bin.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Might want to come up with a mobile bathroom. Should have a good library, and room for a massage chair.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Orin, I see there is plenty of pain and suffering to go around. It is the logistics that get me. Distance between fields, getting six things done at once. Knowing we should be combining... Baling straw, stacking for other people, everything but doing hay! It is the middle of July!
    COllieguy, The mobile bathroom idea is not so far off. Especially since the employee had an emergency bowel movement in the field and Stanley rolled in it. Yikes! Ya can't wash that out with tomato juice!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's when ya take the dog to the dog-shamPOOer in town!

    ReplyDelete

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