My wife and I bought a farm 3 years ago. We have been dreaming, planning, pruning, hauling, mowing, spraying, cussing, laughing, burning, digging, and sweating to make it our own. It has been the most therapeutic investment I’ve made yet. There is always a to do list to distract me from the everyday stressors. I feel at peace when I’m there. I can just walk down to the creek, smell the ‘sweet bubby’, dig out a spring head, walk fence lines, and forget what’s going on with work or the frustrations that people sometimes lay on my shoulders. Tucker absolutely loves to run around out there and eat all sorts of crap and ride the tractor with me. Our horses are settled in to the new pasture and barn.
I didn’t grow up on a farm. We lived in a single wide trailer that would sort of become a double wide later on when my dad built an addition. My parents shipped us off to our grandparents most weekends. My mom’s parents were my closest tie to agriculture. Papaw was a logger by trade, but dabbled in chickens and fighting roosters. We raised and slaughtered a hog or two nearly every fall when I was a kid. Papaw always had a garden, so we were accustomed to stringing and snapping beans, shucking corn, picking squash, cucumbers, peppers, and digging potatoes. But I didn’t spend a lot of time on or around heavy equipment. During college, I lived on the university dairy and got accustom to driving tractors and equipment and doing some basic maintenance.
Now that we have the farm, we have some equipment to help maintain the place. It has actually been fun learning how to fix things. God bless YouTube demonstrations. I didn’t have to work today so I spent my morning at the farm. By 9am, I had replaced the shear bolt, adjusted the slip clutch, and replaced and adjusted the rear tire on my bushhog (that’s actually a brand, it’s technically a rotary cutter). Three years ago, I didn’t even know what those things were.
This afternoon I picked up a new 200 gallon PTO-driven, boomless 3-point sprayer to spray some of the summer weeds that are starting to come up. Pig weed (spiny amaranth), nettle, and dog fennel are all popping up in the horse pasture and hay field after we cut at the end of May. I borrowed a sprayer like this one 2 years ago and liked it much better than the boom sprayer I used in college. This sucker sprays 16 feet left and right, covering a 32 ft swath, and it has a sweet spray gun to use for fence lines, corners, and banks that are tough to reach. I didn’t know any of those weeds, or the different pre- and post-emergent herbicides 3 years ago.
After focusing for so many years training in veterinary medicine, it has been a complete breath of fresh air to learn something new and practical that I don’t have to do for anyone else. Sure, it is frustrating when things break – especially expensive things. But, I’m one of those nerds who just likes to learn, so there is an opportunity to work through a problem. Also, I love equipment and handy tools. I just can’t help it. I mean, if you haven’t witnessed what a forestry mulcher is…you need to YouTube that thing. It literally just grinds up all that junk you typically would drag and burn in a pile. I don’t have one, but if I hit a big pot of money, it would be my Ferrari.
I think immediate gratification kind of lights my fire. A crazy overgrown field? Fixed with a few hours of mowing. A broken shear bolt can be fixed in 5 minutes if you don’t have to beat the snot out of it. An overgrown fence line? All you need is a weed trimmer and few sweaty hours and ta-dah – the voltage on the fence is better. So little in my work life has instant gratification, particularly with chronic disease. The farm provides a lot of opportunities to make a visible dent.
I was thinking about this while replacing the shear bolt in my bushhog drive line this morning. The shear bolt is a bolt that is made to break or “shear” if the bushhog comes under too much force – like when you hit a huge rock you didn’t see or you reverse too quickly and the bushhog jams into the ground while the PTO is spinning. The 89 cent bolt breaks in order to stop the spinning PTO shaft before the expensive shaft breaks.
In many ways, the farm has become my 89 cents shear bolt. My mental preventative to save me from an expensive breakdown. A beautiful place to witness creation and become a bit more grounded. A place to share with my wife. A safe place to work, escape, think, forget, and learn. Such a blessing.
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