Stress . . .

I'm stressed.  It's true. 

Let me preface the situation with a little history to make my point:

In 1997, I was licensed to practice law in the State of Arkansas.  After a two-year gig in Little Rock, I moved back to God's country and opened the law firm with my namesake.  That was in 1999.

In 2001, upon receiving the news that Papa was short a hired-hand on the farm, I opted to scale-back the law practice and work on the farm for a while, which was a raging good time until 2005, when the banker told me that it'd be a good idea for me to go back to the practice of law -- which I did.  However, prompted by a telephone call from one of my father's landlords, I opted to rent a small block of land and hire the farm work done while renting equipment, which worked out extremely well.  So well, as a matter of fact, that the territory I was farming more than doubled over the next few years.  Things were, well, going well.

On April 1, 2012, my hired-hand bolted.  While it wasn't a huge surprise (it's what flighty people do), I was somewhat disappointed.  Let's face it:  my employee was someone I had counted on and someone who had given me his word over hand-shakes only a month earlier that he'd be there through the farming season. After carefully considering the situation, Papa & I decided that it was something we could pull off.  So there we were:  me and my 70 year-old father and 1,000 acres. 

While quite the struggle, I've managed to pull off a full-time law practice and a full-time farming gig for the last 8 months.  I said I'd do it, and I have.  Unfortunately, it's come at a cost.  Working these hours will make an old man of you, and the returns simply aren't worth the investment.  Couple that with the fact that I absolutely abhor the practice of law, and the fact that my dissatisfaction with the profession is directly proportional to our level of financial success at the office, and its a recipe for a meltdown. The better we do at the office, the more I hate it.  I can't explain why, other than to say that, as your success rate goes up in this business, the expected volume and corresponding pressure increase exponentially in relation thereto.   

Sooooo, to make it fit on a page, at the the Mrs. & I had determined several months ago that, for better or for worse, as of the end of 2012, the law office would cease to do business, regardless of my career path thereafter.  Having done so, we were left with the decision regarding whether to farm or not to farm.  Ultimately, we chose to farm.  Yea me!

Okay, so that decision having been made, we jumped into the most frustrating harvest of our lives.  The weather didn't cooperate, I broke everything I touched, and things generally came unravled.  What should have been a short undertaking wound up taking right up until last Thursday, which meant I was in a rush to prep for the upcoming duck slaughter. 

I immediately went to work.  Stopping up levees, rolling stubble, etc.  The weather made it difficult, equipment failures made it even harder.  Add to that a general lack of available water, and now you're up to speed. 

We're presently holding ducks in three locations in phenomenal numbers.  The problem is that I don't have the water or the acreage under it to hold the numbers of birds we have for the amount of time necessary to get us to the Nov. 17 opener.  The wells are shut down, the creek is pumped dry, and the ditches have been empty for weeks.  At this point, I'm praying for an inch of rain and running ducks out of the fields twice a day.  It'ss frustrating, and I'm stressed. 

Catching Up

So, I'm behind.  Dove season was da bomb, as per the norm.  The weather was tragic and the shooting horrific, but I still managed to blast through waaaaay more boxes of shells than I should have and finally reduce my limit to possession.  Rain and 30 m.p.h. winds, but you just can't complain about blasting through cases of shells with family and friends.