Farmer Gary is a renaissance man.

His decades of planting and harvesting crops have taken him into the realms of botany, nutrition, chemistry, geology, meteorology. There’s math, engineering, economics, accounting,

Even a bit of stand-up comedy.

“Back when they were doing some digging work over at Mom’s home place, I noticed one of the bulldozers was a Japanese brand, so I asked the mechanic how he liked working on the equipment. He told me ‘the hardest part was learning to cuss in Japanese.'”

Ba-da-bum.

Gary also faces near-daily challenges in the field of mechanics.

… which is exactly his most favorite part of farm life.

Yesterday, Gary came home with a story about his chainsaw.

And why does a farmer need a chainsaw, you may ask?

Well, in this case, to help get the fields ready for planting. Over the years, the itty bitty scruffy saplings that line the perimeters grow to be shade-providing trees if you don’t keep them under control. And shade is not the best thing for growing crops, so Gary spends time every few years trimming them back.

This time of year, I think of my husband as working at his branch office.

Ba-da-bum.

Of course, our sons grew up admiring their father’s playthings.

Christmas gift-giving was never a problem. Between Tonka trucks and John Deere mini implements, shopping was easy.

One gift that was handed down brudder to brudder was a chainsaw. A toy, of course, but that thing could really make a racket!

Yesterday, Gary came home from the farm and announced he’d “gone about as far as he could” performing maintenance on his chainsaw, and had turned it over to a professional.

Apparently, the chainsaw needed an adjustment made. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting to the inner workings of the contraption in order to make that adjustment.

At some point, Gary removed a spring but then couldn’t get it compressed enough to wedge it back to its appointed place inside the chainsaw. (Please note I left off several colorful adjectives in that last sentence. If you know Gary, you can probably fill in the blanks. Otherwise, let your mind run free …)

“I could see what needed to be done, I just couldn’t do it,” Gary sighed, as I glanced over at his large farmer hands. “I fooled around with the thing for about an hour.”

Gary knows when to surrender. It was time to head over to the nearby town of Mariah Hill and Dilger Service & Repair.

The proprietor, Kevin, was closing up for the day. Gary quickly explained, “I have a problem and need someone with more experience and patience than I’ve got.”

“Well,” Kevin drawled, “I’ve got one of the two.”

He didn’t mention which one.

Kevin instructed Gary to put all the chainsaw parts on the workbench, promising to get to it first thing in the morning “… before everything else starts to aggravate me.”

Never one to quit when there’s a story to share, Kevin regaled Gary with this one:

Recently when feeding the farm animals for his dad, Kevin ran into a problem. The Dilger farm is what Gary categorizes as an “Old MacDonald’s Farm,” with a handful of cattle, goats, ducks, chickens, and geese.

Kevin had just pulled into the pasture with a large hay bale for the cows’ evening meal. He hopped down off the tractor to secure the gate behind him lest any moo-cows try to make what Gary calls The Great Escape.

While closing the gate, Kevin noticed a goat making a bee-line for the tractor.

“The goat runs up and grabs the ignition wire off the side of the tractor – and runs off with it!”

Of course, the tractor died immediately. Kevin chased after the goat, but the wire was gone.

A 20-minute shop search yielded a workable solution. Keven found a suitable ignition wire, installed it, and finished up with the feeding. Just another day in the life. E-I-E-I-O.

Gary plans to head back to Mariah Hill tomorrow morning to pick up his reassembled chainsaw, with that pesky spring perfectly fenagled back in its place. Thanks to Kevin, Gary’s early-spring day in the fields will continue on flawlessly.

After all, hope springs eternal.

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