Why Food Is Not Free

Farming is an up and down sort of business. But a lot of times, it's a really neat job. I'm going to outline today why food costs money, as there are some days that (shh, don't tell anyone!) farmers might be inclined to work for free--just for the joy of it.

This was NOT one of those days.

When The Farmer mixed up his daily batch of compost, he noticed a stray piece of metal sticking up out of the mixer wagon. The mixer wagon is where The Farmer measures and mixes exact amounts of manure and sawdust. After it's mixed, it goes into the in-vessel composter for a few days, and the out to the finishing pile. None of this process involves stray metal banging around in the mixer wagon. When he checked it out, he realized that the mixer wagon was rusting to pieces, and that stray metal was part of the bottom of the mixer wagon.

Time to call for Captain Welderman.

After cleaning out some of the future compost (which is REALLY nasty in its potential form), Captain Welderman went to work patching the bottom of the mixer wagon with a new piece of metal.

This is why farmers don't work for free. Partly because stuff breaks so much, and somehow all this broken stuff must be paid for. And partly because some parts of farming are so darn yucky you wouldn't believe it unless I showed you. And you don't even begin to get the full effect unless you're standing in it. Or doing the laundry later.

I actually can't believe what The Farmer and his cohorts fix. It's simply amazing what they can do, and even more amazing that they do it in some pretty nasty conditions.

Doesn't it look all nice and pretty now?

That, my friends, is why food is not free.