So here it is, the Labor Day weekend, the “end of summer”. I’d think quite a few people are upset because the forecast is calling for 90% chance of rain tonight into tomorrow, and this is their last opportunity to get out and go camping and whatnot.
That’s not how it feels to me. Well, for one thing we labor pretty much all the time. I’m not bragging, in fact I’m fairly conflicted about it. Am plumb sick of it at the moment, in fact. Kim and I only took one weekend “off” this summer to go camping.

No, the other Saturdays we ran our booth at the Bozeman Farmer’s Market. Not to complain; it was time very well spent, and the extra income is welcome. Going into it I didn’t have the foggiest idea what to expect for sales. I know a few other vendors, who told me if you sell $250 worth you’ve had a good day. Turns out they’re right, and that’s about what our sales have been running. The extra grand or so a month is useful, but as usual it might be completely eclipsed by the contacts we’ve made, not to mention exposure.
There’s no question that it’s “labor”, though. It’s not like stacking 35 ton of hay by hand (which I also did), but I do know that after getting up earlier than I like, loading up our stuff, setting up the booth, talking continuously with people for four hours, tearing down and unloading; I am shot. It’s more tiring than stacking hay, in some ways.
It just might be an immensely more productive use of time, though. What’s the saying; it’s not what you know, it’s who you know? But of course if you can cover both bases, you’re ahead of the deal, right? In theory, anyway, but in no small irony we wound up in the booth adjacent to the MSU Extension Service. I worked in Extension Economics for a couple of winters after I got out of college, and in yet more small-world circumstances my now-retired boss Leroy Luft stopped by the Market a couple of times. Not to mention the Extension booth was staffed by a rotating cast of folks, except for their stalwart plant pathologist Mary, who was there every time. In any case, we’re pressing the envelope a bit with our marketing of alternative crops; primarily golden flax and camelina, not to mention of course buffalo robes and skulls. It could all be viewed as controversial by the “Old Guard”, but I believe I can safely say we made a favorable impression. Not just once, either…
Vice versa as well, and that’s just the neighbors on one side, not to mention other vendors and the thousands of people who pass through. There’s been more interesting conversations than I can begin to elaborate on.
In spite of being tiring, it’s an uplifting experience. In fact yesterday I was in a pretty bad mood when we started, due to major frustration the day before when we started harvest. Cutting short barley in rocks is just no fun. I’d only cut… less than half a mile and broke eight (8!) sickle guards, at $27+ each. Plus it turns out the bearing in the bottom of my unloading auger is kaput, and yes, it was an exercise in frustration. Harvest is supposed to be at least kind of fun, payday and all, but instead it appeared I was facing a nightmare of sorts.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on things a time or two, until solutions appear. So I’m not complaining about rain at all! Farmers aren’t supposed to (complain about rain in Montana), but I believe there are exemptions during harvest. In this case, though, I should have noticed right away that all the broken guards were on one side of the header. The same side riding low due to a slow leak in one of the tires, the “new” tire that cost half as much as the whole combine! So I’ll get that fixed during this forecast wet spell, and also scrounge up some used round baler belting or something similar to make “wiper flaps” to bolt on a couple of my reel bats to facilitate wiping the barley heads off the sickle, where they now tend to pile up and not feed properly. Luckily I’ve seen that done before, having grown up farming in an area where short barley was the norm.

Plus of course it turns out the elevator is full, or at least doesn’t have room for barley. In the latter parts of our farming days on the Hi-Line, this was a non-issue as most of my neighbors were in the CRP and there were surplus grain bins available for rent everywhere you looked. Not so here in the Gallatin, in fact numerous inquiries along these lines have all run into dead ends, so if need be I’ll have to pile the stuff in our shed. That only requires moving mountains of stuff, which must be done every few years anyway it seems. Plus of course we don’t have a concrete floor in there, which necessitates putting down tarps over the gravel, and of course I sold my hydraulic bin sweep when I thought I was done farming, not that you could use it on gravel anyway so we’re talking shoveling. But if that’s what it comes to… it’ll be way easier than stacking hay. Although, (groan…) we might be looking at close to double the tonnage, but at least I don’t have to lift it twice and stack it, just shovel it into the auger. After I overhaul the carburetor so it doesn’t leak gasoline. No, we don’t need any fires…
And then we only have to seed winter wheat, and break up some hayfields on the Saddle Peak Ranch so we can put at least some of it into crop next year, plus some other fall plowing (not to mention robes and skulls, bookings and endless bookwork), and hey, if we can’t manage to fit a bowhunting trip into there I am going to be really crabby. Once October hits, we’ll be skinning buffalo again, and from then on busy escalates into truly gonzo, and doesn’t let up until February. <whimper…>
All work and no play makes Bill a brittle boy. Or so I’m told.
Enough complaining, though. When you’re self-employed, living and working in a literal paradise you just don’t get any sympathy. And besides, if I were twins this would be duck soup! Even solo, it beats a lot of alternatives that come to mind so I’ll just shut up and get back to work.