The farm budget committee is giggling these days. The budget committee, ostensibly made up of two amiable, cooperative farmers, is essentially stonewalled by one farmer, the no-budge budget farmer. Yes, I admit it; I am the beautiful, practical stone wall, crafted by hundreds of thrifty New England farmers, the wall whose job is to keep some things on the farm, and some things off the farm.
This, not surprisingly, has resulted in various impassioned proposals brought before the stone wall by the budget committee's more flexible, excitable, passionate farmer, the beautiful, life-giving New England creek, we might call him, whose job is to keep things flowing, on and off the farm.
Early on in our farming years together, the stone wall and the creek agreed that they had to agree on the budget. However, the stone wall was much more easily persuaded in those days to invest in sundry impassioned proposals by the creek. Unfortunately, this easy acquiescence meant that we two were stuck with some farm items that proved less than necessary. But those mistakes did give the stone wall a lot more defense.
“This would be really great, we really need this, this would help the farm a lot,” the passionate creek might say.
“That's what you said about the bigger fuel tank on the irrigation pump, and it's still sitting in the box, after ten years. Or is it fifteen?” the stone wall answers.
After many years of the fuel pump, the creek suggested that the stone wall needed a new line of defense.
The stone wall chuckled. “A new one? How about the fly net for our horse Benny, because he was so bothered by flies that he couldn't work, and it's never been on his head yet?”
“Yeah, that's a good one,” the creek answers. “Use that one for a while.”
Over the years, several other stock phrases have evolved, designed to lift the spirits of the budget committee, who also comprise every other committee on this small vegetable farm: the irrigation committee, the draft horse committee, the advertising committee, the weeding committee, the transplanting committee, the making supper committee, and so on. All these committees must work together, in close proximity, which is where amiability and cooperation, civility and kindness, come in.
Thus, when the creek bubbles over with a new idea, the stone wall now chirps, “Gee, I wonder how we can do that and still fit it in our budget?”
“Nice,” says the creek. “I like that a lot better.” It makes for a much more pleasant budget committee meeting, with less flooding of the stone wall, and less damming of the creek.
Over the years, the creek has also changed its course somewhat, providing more research, comparing prices, testing new products by borrowing them first, and etc. (Plus, there is a ground rule here: anything that really costs a lot has to be entirely approved by both of us, so that if we buy a $1000 truck that we then take to the scrapyard in two weeks, we can freely grouse about it together.)
Now, after all this, you might wonder why the budget committee is giggling lately. This is why: the stone wall wants to purchase something! Something really great, something that we really need, something that will really help the farm a lot! The something is a new bigger greenhouse tub, to fill flats with soil mix, and to soak flats full of transplants before they move out into the garden.
For years we have been fiddling around with a too-small tub, tipping the flats one way and another, getting soil mix in places where we didn't want it, and not in places we did want it, i.e., in the flats. For years, we have been watering our transplants with the overhead wand, which just wasn't thorough enough for the big shock of transplanting.
“Ohhhh,” the stone wall moaned in the spring, as she tried yet again to fill a flat evenly with soil mix in the too-small tub, “I really want a bigger tub.”
And what did the kind creek do?
He researched tub sizes on-line. He ordered a bigger tub from Jack's Hardware store. He picked it up. He brought it home.
Then he offered to let me use the new tub first. Such a lovely creek is he.
I, the stone wall, am in ecstasy. The new tub! So big! So easy to fill the flats! So easy to soak flats! Oh, the tub! the tub! the tub! “We should have done this years ago!” I say. “It's fantastic! What were we thinking?'
The lovely creek says nothing. He just smiles. Maybe he has a new idea for the budget committee too. A new idea, with a new passionate, persuasive phrase: “We should have done this years ago! What were we thinking? We'd better do it right now!”
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 7 --April 13, 2021