Longest Thread Ever

[babe]

must be time for a new topic in here.

 

[babe]

So I've hit a breaking point in my life, sorta unexpectedly. I thought I was the the "Keep on keeping on" guy, and would never change anything.

 

[babe]

I think it's the weather that caused this.

 

[babe]

Last year, a lightning strike caused a fire. The interagency govt experts called it a beneficial fire, deemed to be mainly clearing out some overdone underbrush. It was on the Forest Service site for days, with signs on the road instructing passersby "Management Fire. Do Not Report".

Then a windstorm came, and it burned huge stands of trees, leaving nothing at all.

Then rain came, lots of it. Black, charcoal-filled muck carried timbers ten miles out into the desert valley, knocked over fences, destroyed roads, filled my ditches, washed away my diversion dams, destroyed a water system that would cost a million dollars to rebuild.

 

[babe]

A little rainstorm two days ago flash flooded the place all over again.

 

[babe]

Well, actually, a few years ago I started a business as a sideline to help the ranch cash-flow, and it's sorta taken off. I've doubled my prices because I can't meet demand. I actually can't afford to use my time farming anymore. . . .

 

[babe]

I'm gonna hafta hire some help. . . .

 

[babe]

gonna hafta talk to real people, make hire/fire decisions, do payroll. . .. stuff like that I swore I would never ever do again. . . .

 

[babe]

Old-timers told me that "my" creek used to be the best stream in the valley, that's why my place was the first settled way back in 1890. It ran all year, until a flash flood in the 1930s, and after that it hardly made it to the mouth of the canyon, where the dam is located and the ditch begins.

turns out, that muck from last summers fire, has changed all that. the stream is once again flowing over a sealing layer of clay and no longer just sinks into the cracks in the rocks along the channel, and is running all the way to the ranch, ditch or no ditch, dam or no dam.

 

[LogGrad98]

gonna hafta talk to real people, make hire/fire decisions, do payroll. . .. stuff like that I swore I would never ever do again. . . .

What is your starting wage? Do you have a good relocation package?

 

[babe]

Looks like, in addition to the new business, I've got to plant more fields and invest in better equipment to handle all the harvest.

 

[babe]

What is your starting wage? Do you have a good relocation package?

you wanna come home that bad? I thought you'd be doing six figures in dollar terms, for sure. Besides, you're management. I'm talking Mexican labor here. . . .