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money


Organic eggs - 4500 doz/wk
organic hay - 60+ acres
custom seed cleaning
wife works at bank in town
occasional driving for Mennonites
very occasional custom round baling and small grain swathing
Very, very occasional buying and selling stuff I pick up at auctions
 
I have only worked off the farm doing some building construction, and harvest work maybe two or three times in nearly 40 years, and that was when I was starting out. Never held a regular job since I was 20, farmed full time. My wife has a part time job in town working for the township, 3 days one week, 4 the next, 6 hour shifts. Our dairy farm is our largest cash stream. It trickles in, and floods out!
 
The wife has a full time job but for me it is just the farm. I've worked off the farm in the past but it is hard to find things anymore. Labor is plentiful around here so employers do not want people that have other time commitments. I went to a Lowe's store to apply for a part time position and the lady said she did not want any farmers there as employees as she felt they would not be reliable in terms of commitment. It boils down to a lot of places want employees that have no other options in life. As far as trades go the Mennonites and Amish have flooded carpentry, brick laying, electrical, etc. and it is near impossible to compete with them. I just recently had to have some electrical work down that I could not do myself outside and the Mennonite did it for under half for what anybody else would have charged. I could stand to work given commodity prices currently but it is very difficult to find things. The local JD dealer before they changed hands was looking for someone to assemble mowers over the winter but that never came to be for me.
 
I have worked off the farm for 90% of the time I'M an electrician and wife a book keeper, we will never get the farm paid for and been doing this for darn near 50 years. Sure would like to retire. But as my wife says " it takes a lot of money to keep this 200 acre hobby afloat."
 
Never had a job for 35 years until I started driving the school bus 5 years ago. Always had full time (and lots of overtime) work. No off farm income til the last few years. My wife did work part time retail for a few years once the kids were gone, but quit to tend her gardens and flower beds. Semi retired now, pension cheque comes next month!

Ben
 
Teach music (fiddle & piano), help out at a tree service when needed. Have done, in the past, some carpentry jobs, installed swimming pools, relief milking, farm work, delivered furniture, tested cows for a while in the 80s and 90s.... Wife's a nurse so that allows me to farm and teach....
 

Besides custom farm work, I drive a dump truck part time, I am a call firefighter at $10.00/hour, LOL, but there is a raise coming. My real income is from two commission sales jobs. I am volunteer custodian at my church, which most of the time doesn't take a lot of time, but sometimes like the last two weeks I put a lot of hours in negotiating for a new fire alarm system and overseeing the installation.
 
I'm surprised the gal at Lowes could even tell you something like that. While she may not have wanted to hire a farmer, I would have had to take exception to what she said, almost an insult, farmers are the most reliable and committed people there are, think about it ( followed by some well placed expletive LOL )
 
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