Borrowing and lending

William Shakespeare certainly didn't understand what it means to be a farmer when he wrote the line "neither a borrower or a lender be........".  Perhaps in the days before the mechanization of agriculture, borrowing wasn't quite as necessary.  Perhaps when it comes to the large mega-farms, borrowing isn't necessary either.  Those things I do not know about.  What I do know is that in operating a small farm there are many days of the year when one of our tractors or farm implements is spending time on someone else's farm and there are many days when we have someone else's tractor working on our farm.

Now for the most part, us small farmers try to be self sufficient.  Since things like plowing and planting and harvesting tend to happen in very narrow windows of time, it is hard for two farmers to share the same piece of equipment.  But there are times, when sharing equipment works well.  Today was such as example.  It is early in the season.  There is not much field prepping going on right now.  Most farmers are concentrating on fixing and preparing their equipment for the upcoming season.  It is an ideal time to borrow (or lend) a piece of equipment that is most likely sitting idle.

Yesterday Mike started lifting more rows of plastic off the vegetable field.  He already had three rows lifted when I got home from work.  After feeding the hens, collecting and washing eggs and feeding the dogs, I walked back to the field and helped Mike remove 4 more rows of plastic.  In addition to the work we had already done lifting plastic and the adjacent ground that had no plastic on it last year, that left a large square of land ready to be plowed.  Mike traveled over to our farmer friend to see about borrowing his large tractor and chisel plow.  Several beers later (I suspect), the arrangements for Mike to use our friend's tractor and plow were made.  And so it was that a nice large section of the vegetable field was plowed today.  Our friend's tractor is bigger than any tractor we have and our barn cat Blackie seemed to enjoy having a higher perch to look out over the driveway.

So while it is still too early to be doing much planting, it sure is nice to get a little of the field prep work done.