Tag: Working hard

1st Dirty Dozen of Homeownership…

Matt and I got the keys to our new home this past Friday!! The house is nice, the surrounding areas are…well…overgrown to say the least!  It’s has some farmable land, and some timber land, and lot of blackberry and weed land.  But being the young energetic couple that we are, we’re looking forward to the challenge!

We have had the place to work on for about 2.5 days now.  And in this time I’m already amazed at how much I’ve learned…so here my friends are the dirty dozen (so far) of homeownership…

1. Always wear closed toed shoes and long pants with long sleeves!  I know it’s 80 degrees out today, but the cuts from the briars aren’t worth it! Neither are the looks from your future husband saying, “I thought I was marrying a farm girl, why do you have shorts on?!”

2. At some point you have to put a machete into use…just fair warning, always keep an eye on the machete, a real close eye when I’m swinging!  I’m effective, but dangerous!

3. Don’t mention lunch, because afterwards it will be all you can think about.

4. When using the weed wacker, stay away from the plants with burrs.  They turn into bullets and shoot out at you.  Then when you complain and your future husband again gives you the “Let’s buck up a little bit here” look, this time tell him he can do it and laugh when afterwards he looks at you and says, “Woah these things feel like bullets!”

5. Take enough breaks that when you’re tired you still remember how much you love the guy next to you, how exciting this is, and how wonderful it will be in the future!

6. When using a blower to clean the house, those big HUGE spiders that live in corners…they will shoot out at you and give you a heart attack, you will dance around on the front porch like a maniac screaming, and once you calm down enough you will step and kill the gigantic creature!

7. Be aware that when your old place was original the owners liked putting up fences, everywhere!  Wirey fences that will either trip the heck out of you, or catch on your mower.

8. If they get caught on your mower like a booby trap, you can’t pull on it and make it better, you can’t go faster to get out of the mess.  No, no, at that point you resign that it’s now going to take an hour to actually remove the mower blades to get them unstuck…oops!

9. When you’re sent into the green house that is covered in briars so much that we didn’t originally know it was there, just to check out if there is anything “worth saving” inside; no one will blame you when you decide not to go through the 32 thick spider webs with fat spiders in them.  Instead just crane your neck from afar…and give the good old, “looks pretty worthless from here” thumbs up.

10. Never let me use the weed wacker with the actual blade vs. the string, I hit my foot three times and my leg twice!  Each time thanking God that I wasn’t using the blade one, I think I would have been a little less than effective if I had cut off my leg or foot yesterday!

11. When you’re just having a ball and you look at each other and say, “Gosh we should start a landscaping business!” 16 hours later…well let’s just say we’re not in the landscape business as of yet!

12. Good things come to those who wait!  I can’t wait for what is yet to come for us!!

Farm Organization…at its Best

All through business school I learned about “Job Descriptions” and how important they were. I also learned that in order to fill out any type of application you had to be able to put down your job description. It was very important and something that we learned about, wrote about, studied on…then I started work for the farm. There are many things that change once the reality of the real working world hits. You realize that your job description that you applied for, can be changed, re-defined, or just one of those jobs where no one actually knows what you do while you’re busy at work all day. But then you come to work for your family’s farm, looking for direction and realizing that there aren’t job descriptions on a farm, there is just work!

So with the many constant projects on a farm, who does what, who is in charge of that and who checks to make sure it was done right?? I gotta tell you, it’s still quite a cluster this time of year, looking like chickens with our heads cut off running around to this job and that. Between changing equipment over for different crops, shipping crops out the door, and receiving crops at the same time! Trying to keep crews busy in the down hours of the day, while also making sure that you’re check on them or wake them up from their naps! And of course along comes all the unexpected, the broken shafts or sheer bolts, that weird sound that has started on the combine header or the squeaky driveline that has decided today is the day it will give out. The list goes on and on of what can be worked on. And when that moment comes that you think there just might not be one project left to work on, unfortunately that is the day that you get to clean the dreaded shop bathroom! It’s amazing the kinds of things you will find to keep yourself busy when you know that is the last project on the list!

This may look like chaos…but it’s really quite organized!

I don’t have a clue how other small businesses work, and I’m sure it’s a bit more streamlined than us. But here is one way that we here at Kirsch Family Farms keep ourselves somewhat organized. It may seem a bit archaic with computers and smart phones on all of our hips, but this is our own version of Google Cloud you could say. “The Board” it’s referred to. If something is not written on “The Board” I’ll be honest and say odds are about 1 in 100 that it will get accomplished in any kind of speedy fashion. But at the same time we have a few items up there that have been on “The Board” so long I don’t think any amount of cleaner will get them off. We keep track of equipment to fix, parts to pick up, parts to order, moles dad has killed (this is my favorite), meetings to attend, field work to be done, spraying to finish up, the list goes on and on!

Way to go Dad!

So with my description-less job of farming, I just keep chugging away and wiping things clean off “The Board”, all the while adding every day the next project to hopefully keep me out of the toilet cleaning job!

It’s harvest…It’s Dirty

This was an especially filthy day for me, as I was downwind while unplugging a combine.  Matt was there too, obviously he chose the smarter side to dig out!

%d bloggers like this: