The Misadventures of the Puppy, Max

Hi there!  My name is Max.  I'm about two months old (but I'm younger in this picture).

About a month ago I lived in a nice, warm little shed with my mom and a bunch of brothers and sisters.  A nice man and lady took care of us.  After a while, some of my brothers and siblings started to go away with other nice people.  I didn't mind too much.  There were still lots of playmates and plenty of food.  One day, two nice ladies came and looked at us.  The younger one climbed right into our shed to get a good look at us.  After we'd all had a good long time to climb on her and lick her and generally look cute, she picked me up and took me out of that shed.  I was the one she'd picked!  I guess she though I was the cutest and smartest of the bunch.  And why not?  It's true!

Anyways, after stopping for a moment for goodbye to my mom, we got into a pickup truck and the young lady drove us away, while the older one held me on her lap.  I didn't much like that ride, but it wasn't too long.  It was during that ride that I got my name.  The two ladies debated it for a few minutes, but they finally agreed that I would be Max.  I was pretty happy with that decision.

When the ride was over, I met a dog.  His name is Bandit and he lives at the farm where I live now.  We've been buddies the whole time!  He teaches me lots of things, like how to chase pretty much everything and dig holes (which is the best game ever!) and sometimes how to obey the master and my mistress (which is not so fun).  My mistress is the young lady, Valerie, and the master is her father.  The other lady is her mother.  She doesn't have quite as much association with us dogs, but we sure do have to obey her!  She pretends not to like us very much, but I know she loves me way deep down.

I was having a great life until a couple of weeks ago.  Valerie and Master took me to a man named Vet. He made me stand on a cold metal table with no grip.  I almost fell off!  And then he checked me all over and gave a needle.  How awful can a guy be?  And Valerie says I have to go back!

Since then, life has been pretty spectacular!  Every night Valerie puts me to bed in my very own kennel and she feeds me and I always have plenty of water.  During the day I dig holes with Bandit, run as fast as I can, and sometimes do what Valerie tells me to.  My life was great until Friday night.  I'm really not sure what happened, but while I was waiting for Valerie to come put me to bed, I got really far from home.  I couldn't find my way back.  By Saturday afternoon I was at a place that looked a bit like a house, except no one lived there.  There were some big metal boxes a ways off from the building.  It was rainy and cold out, so I just hung around those boxes.  It was pretty dry under there, so at least I wasn't wet.  I sure was hungry, though.  It was getting to be night again.  I hadn't eaten all day, I was cold, and I missed home.  Then a truck drove up and stopped.  I got out from under the boxes to check it out because it reminded me of Master's truck.  All of a sudden, there was Valerie!  I was so happy!  My whole body was wiggling all on its own and I couldn't stop licking her face.  She picked me up and Master drove us right home.  When we got out of the truck, there was Bandit to say hello and then Valerie took me to her mom.  She seemed both sad and happy (let's call it sappy), as if she'd really, really missed me and couldn't quite belive I was home.  I told you she loved me.

After that, it's all a bit of a blur.  I just know there was a lot of food around and I got a little grumpy with Bandit when he got too close to the food.  I bet he'd been stuffing his face all day!  I hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours or so!  I'll apologise to him tomorrow, though, and then we can dig holes and be buddies again.  For now, I'm going to snuggle up in my nice warm dog house full of straw and have me a good long sleep so I can get up extra early and bark the humans awake like I always do.

Paying the Price

I picked rocks today.  That's not an unusual thing for me to do at this time of the year.  In Western Canada (and other areas, I'm sure), there are a lot of rocks in our soil and we need to pick them every year so they don't break our equipment later on.  It's a hard job, but certainly not the worst job on the farm.  Sometimes we use a mechanical rock picker, but most of the time we walk through the fields and pick up the rocks by hand.  Some rocks are small, and we can carry several at a time.  Others are bigger and we can only carry two or three at time.  Some are so big that we can only roll them into the bucket of the tractor, and still others are so big that we have to use the tractor, or even a backhoe, to dig them out of the ground.

I've spent many hot, windy days getting covered in dust whilst picking rocks.  I can't remember a spring/summer when I wasn't picking rocks as a child (that was back before some people decided it was child abuse to teach children to do a good day's work).  It was always hard work, but I had fun looking for arrow heads (that fun sort of disappeared after I finally actually found one as a teenager).  There are large rock piles in every field that my dad owns and rents.  Even with all of the rocks I've picked, I can only take credit for a small portion of those rock piles.  My dad has picked tons (literally) of rocks in his lifetime.

Every once in a while a friend or neighbour will ask us if they can have some rocks, usually to use in their garden or as lawn ornaments, depending on the size of the rock.  We have always just given the rocks away.  Today while I was picking rocks I started thinking about what my professors tried to teach us at college, especially in the business-type classes.  According to my professors, farming today requires a good deal of money (who doesn't know that?) and it is just good business to charge a fair price for products from the farm.

For years, we been giving away rocks and composted manure for people's gardens.  I understand why we do it.  Those are just waste products that other people can use.  They come pick it up and take it away.  Why would we charge money for that?  On the other hand, why wouldn't we?  In the case of the rocks, unless the people come pick them or dig them out themselves, we have spent hours working hard to pick those rocks and put them in a convenient pile.  It's hard work that has to be done anyways, but it would be nice to get paid for it, especially when other people get the benefit of that hard work.  The composted manure takes a little less work, but it takes time and effort to clean out the corrals and get it all into a pile.  Again, that's work that has to be done anyways, but when people come to get it, we have to take the time to find the best pile and get the tractor out to load their trucks up.  Then again, what's a few minutes to help a friend take some waste products off of our hands?

Do you get the idea that I'm having a bit of an inner struggle here?  I want to be a nice person and help people when I can.  Then again, I want to be a good business person and when I look at this situation from a business perspective, all I can can see is that it only makes sense to charge a fair price for the products.  I don't think it's unreasonable to charge for these things, as long as the price is fair.

My parents are great people and they've kept the farm going for several decades.  I'd really like to be able to keep the farm going the same way that they have, but I don't think that's possible.  I'm going to have to figure out the best way to run the farm as a business.  The farm has to pay for itself and make me a living if I'm going to be able to keep it.  One of the ways the farm will pay for itself is if I can make money from waste products, like rocks and manure.  I haven't completely made up my mind yet, but I think once the farm is mine, I will start asking people to pay the fair price for products that have previously been free from this farm.

Let me know what you think.  I'd like to have feedback as I consider this.

One of the rock piles on some land that we rent.

You can see the variety of rock sizes we deal with.