May 02, 2003
The rookie swings and misses
Well, it has been an eventful morning at Old Shaw Farm. I was supposed to have a load of composted manure delivered first thing this morning. It had been raining all night and morning, so things were wet. When the guy came with the truck, I told him I wanted the compost dumped at the top of the hill behind our barn. The top of this hill plateaus out, and we have about 20-22 acres of relatively flat land up there. But there is a bit of a hill to get up there.
Suffice it to say, the compost guy got stuck. I couldn't pull him out with our 2-wheel drive tractor, so I had to call our neighbor Allen. When Allen got over to our place with his big 4-wheel drive John Deere, he must have struggled to keep from chuckling. He, and everyone else who farms in Peacham, knows our land better than I do. So he wasn't surprised (a) that the truck got stuck, or (b) that it got stuck right where it did. It was a rookie mistake to try to get up that hill in the kind of rain we had this morning. The truck driver shares a little of the blame, but I egged him on because having the compost up top was going to make my life a lot easier.
Don't get me wrong, Allen was super nice about the whole thing, and he did just drop everything and come over to help. But it definitely was a newbie move. Good thing there won't be anymore of those . . . right?
The only way through it is through it.
If you work your ass off and learn from every mistake, not only will you be successful, but you'll earn everyone's respect.
Some of the hardest things for me to learn and accept in life have been:
1. judgement is crucial to success and efficiency; and
2. the only way to gain "judgement" is to make a bunch of mistakes, feel pain and figure out how not to make the mistakes again.
Way to go!!!!!!
Posted by: mike, pgg brother at May 4, 2003 05:04 AMThanks Mike. I was thinking something along those lines yesterday. The field needs to be ready for planting in two weeks. I was on the tractor yesterday, and for a variety of reasons I am not sure the field will be ready. And I was thinking, "Is this insane or what? This is like starting a whole new career and I have so much to learn, etc., etc."
As Stuart Smalley would say I got into some "stinking thinking".
But it is a process. It took me a few frightening years before I had any confidence doing my law work, so why should this be different? And we have both learned so much already over the past five years or so. We are just fortunate because we have the earning power to give us the breathing room for learning in these first years.
Posted by: peter at May 4, 2003 06:54 AMThat's the spirit. I know you'll do great.
Posted by: mike, pgg brother at May 5, 2003 05:46 PM