Regarding the possibility of me possibly working for my family farm someday, my father has always had the same piece of advice about it: work for somebody else who isn’t related to you. So, last summer, I decided that it was finally time to embrace the advice that he has always given me. But what was there for me to do besides farming? All I had ever known was working outside in the barns or in a tractor; and I was always working under my father’s command. So, I decided to combine my love and skill of working outside to the world of landscaping. After a few phone calls and a very interesting interview that just so happened to take place in the cab of my employers truck, I was hired onto the work crew of Dubach Landscaping. I was, in essence,
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Of the 15 weeks I worked for Dubach Landscaping, I’m not completely sure if I landscaped at all. Sure, I mulched, mowed, trimmed, cleaned up, painted, fixed, built, drove, sweat, and watered just about every kind of plant on God’s green earth, but I never landscaped. In fact, Dubach Landscaping has multiple branches of operation, but one might notice that nobody in the company landscapes. Ken, the boss, was in charge of landscape lighting, which often took two people, because his knees ‘just can’t support him like they used to.’ Justin, the crew leader, was in charge of lawn care, which basically means he hauled a tractor with a fertilizer spreader wherever the customer desired. Luke, bless his heart, got what landscapers would call the crap jobs: trimming and mulching. The jobs where, when combined with hot, humid weather, made you want to quit or just tell the customer to do it themselves. Joel and I, without a doubt, lucked out. We had, for lack of a better word, the privilege of mowing most of the summer. Instead of installing lighting in someones mulch bed, or spreading fertilizer in someones yard, or even trimming and mulching at someones house, we got to plop down on brand new, zero-turn John Deere mowers all day. Now, before I go any further, I must admit: I hated mowing at first. How were we supposed to get to work at 3:30 and do a full days worth of yards in just five hours? I’ll tell you exactly how: we showed up, and mowed until all of the jobs were completed. Thank goodness we did this, because it slowly began to teach me the value of knitty-gritty, don’t stop until the job is done work ethic. But, fortunately, those long, work until dark days would soon be behind me; mowing was about to get better. Much
Of the 15 weeks I worked for Dubach Landscaping, I’m not completely sure if I landscaped at all. Sure, I mulched, mowed, trimmed, cleaned up, painted, fixed, built, drove, sweat, and watered just about every kind of plant on God’s green earth, but I never landscaped. In fact, Dubach Landscaping has multiple branches of operation, but one might notice that nobody in the company landscapes. Ken, the boss, was in charge of landscape lighting, which often took two people, because his knees ‘just can’t support him like they used to.’ Justin, the crew leader, was in charge of lawn care, which basically means he hauled a tractor with a fertilizer spreader wherever the customer desired. Luke, bless his heart, got what landscapers would call the crap jobs: trimming and mulching. The jobs where, when combined with hot, humid weather, made you want to quit or just tell the customer to do it themselves. Joel and I, without a doubt, lucked out. We had, for lack of a better word, the privilege of mowing most of the summer. Instead of installing lighting in someones mulch bed, or spreading fertilizer in someones yard, or even trimming and mulching at someones house, we got to plop down on brand new, zero-turn John Deere mowers all day. Now, before I go any further, I must admit: I hated mowing at first. How were we supposed to get to work at 3:30 and do a full days worth of yards in just five hours? I’ll tell you exactly how: we showed up, and mowed until all of the jobs were completed. Thank goodness we did this, because it slowly began to teach me the value of knitty-gritty, don’t stop until the job is done work ethic. But, fortunately, those long, work until dark days would soon be behind me; mowing was about to get better. Much