Farm Business

[sw363535]

It's fall--------Harvest------- evenings are cool and air is clear.  Oct 1--------Big Wind is a month away when winter pushes in hard.  The wind and the cash flow have been very calm for over a month.  But there's a stench in the air coming from the office.

I approach it like looking for a dead mouse.  I look everywhere to avoid looking where I know it is.

It's the decaying of the mail and bookwork piled on the desk.-------------Don't get me wrong, I love the office.  It's the heart of the farm. Where you can feel its pulse.  Where you first glimpse it's health "issues".  Did it run a good race?  Did it grow strength this year or just survive? And the occasional-----Is it still alive??  All that stuff comes into focus in the office, getting the numbers in order, checking the pulse.

But there's a period of time in the fall when I just want to live with my imagination. --------let it ride, so to speak.   What could have been and yet might be.  Harvest is not over.

One field records a good yield, the one across the road a drought/poor water victim.

A fear of the other reality sets in, even when I know I am lucky to be doing what I love to do.  The opportunity to change the outcome for the year with hard work or imagination is dwindling.  No lets face it------gone.  

Ok, OK, -------don't call in my accountants to revive me----------I am going back in there.  I am going to pull those decaying envelopes out of the pile one by one and revive them with a stressed bank account, knowing we can bury the first notices at the bottom in the old dumpster--------------let the chips fall where they will----whether I like it or not.

Every year around Thanksgiving, I reclaim the desk, computer, and the files.  By Christmas I will be dreaming of a big desk, one like my old classmate, my banker has (always neat by the way).  But Right now---------this one is way too big.

If you suffer from this--------struggle on.