Over the years of doing this blog I’ve occasionally written about how I respect the breadth of knowledge it takes to be a farmer. A farmer must be conversant in agronomy, mechanical engineering, meteorology, sociology, accounting, marketing…the list goes on and on. Other occupations allow people to be supreme experts in a tiny segment of a specialized field but blind to other aspects of life.
This disparity between farmers and other professions is highlighted when I talk to a good friend who works at a lawn mower retailer in a large city. He deals daily with PhD’s, bank presidents and other professionals who know less about mechanical devices than your average 10-year-old farm kid. Here are some of the mechanical issues he has had to discuss and/or explain to these kings of business:
-explain that lawnmower blades have a front and back/top and bottom, and that if the blades are installed upside down they don’t cut grass very well.
-sell a bank executive a new cutting head for his string trimmer because the financial wizard decided it was easier to pay to have the entire cutting head replaced every couple months than to learn how to re-thread string onto the old cutting head.
-diagnose that the reason an accountant’s lawn mower pushed “so hard” was because it’s a self-propelled mower, and the accountant wasn’t engaging the self-propelling mechanism on the handle.
-arrange to have the blades on a lawyer’s riding mower removed and sharpened because the lawyer didn’t have time to figure out, “which way to turn the bolt-things that hold on the blade-things.”
-diagnose that the cause of a push-mower leaving leaving strips of unmown grass was because the blade under the 15-year-old mower had never been sharpened or replaced--the old blade was two inches shorter than a new blade because the ends were worn round.
-placate an irate customer who had trashed the engine on his lawn mower because he never checked or changed the engine oil. “Nobody told me lawn mowers need oil,” was his excuse.
So once again I emphasize: never underestimate the knowledge, skills and common sense that are second nature because you are a farmer.
