Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Even Trade

People that farm for a living are, for the most part, amazingly generous. They are often in the forefront of giving of their time, energy, and knowledge in their communities. But, even they have their limits...
We all see people pulled over by one of the fields, stuffing their vehicle with what ever is growing there. Does it never cross the mind of the person that they are impacting the livelihood of another?
Marymine & her husband are farmers, and have had crops (including newly planted orchard trees), fuel, chemicals, and equipment stolen.  They simply cannot be everywhere at once, so when they do run across someone Stealing they can get rather creative in the solution. 
Last summer as Marymine was headed to town for parts, she spotted a man in a vine seed watermelon field. He was loading up the back of his pickup with melons. The field was one of theirs. She drove out to where he was, rolled her window down and asked him if he belonged in that field.  He replied, "Yeah, I'm just loading melons to sell down the road."
"Really, you know the owner of this field?"  
"Oh yeah, he gave me permission."  
"Well, I happen to own this field, and know you don't have permission to be here, put the melons on the ground and leave."  
He didn't seem to want to do that as he kept getting melons, so she stepped out of her pickup, walked over to the back of his pickup, picked the new handyman jack out of the back, and started back to her pickup.  
"What the hell do you think your doing, he said, that's my jack!  You can't take that!"
 "I am taking it, and I'm going to sell it, just like your taking my melons and selling them. I look at it as almost an even trade."   
He got in his pickup and roared off.  Never saw him around again.