Why Cows Need Names: And More Secrets of Amish Farms

6. Four Big Questions

Four Big Questions · 41 41 6 Four Big Questions With the three meetings coming up fast, Les and I continue to refine our list of equipment and decide what questions we will ask the farmers about each piece. We finally come up with four questions. 1. Purchase Price. How much should you expect to pay for this piece of equipment at auction? 2. Useful life. How long might you use this piece of equipment until it is worn out and you have to get a new one or completely rebuild the old one? We capped this at 30 years. if it’s well cared for, some equipment will last much longer, but most farmers won’t. after 30 years, they’ll likely be looking to pass the farm on to the next generation or sell it. So 30 years seemed about right. 3. Salvage Value. When you are all done with it, after it served its entire useful life, what would this piece of equipment be worth if you dragged it back to the auction and sold it again? 4. annual Maintenance Costs. How much do you need to put into this piece of equipment each year to keep it working? There’s one major complication: most of the equipment used on amish farms is no longer manufactured. Farmers have to buy it used—sometimes very used. So we decide to ask our kitchen meeting crowds to come up with numbers based on good, serviceable used equipment that a full-time farmer might buy. However, some things like the harrow, hay wagons, forecart, hay tedder, and field sprayer are usually bought new, so we’ll ask 42 · Why Cows Need Names the farmers about new equipment in these cases. Then a few things, like manure spreaders, are a real mixed bag. Some farmers buy new, and others buy used. For these, we’ll get both prices. The plan is to get the farmers in each of the three kitchen meetings to talk about each piece of equipment and agree on answers for our four questions. it sounds like a tall order, and i am somewhat dubious about its success. But if it really does work, we will end up with some fairly powerful data in an oddly current and extremely useful area of agricultural economics that has not been looked at in a long, long time. The four questions are written across the top of the page, and the equipment is listed along the left-hand margin. The total list takes about a page and a half. Using a blue ballpoint pen and a wooden ruler, we run vertical lines down the pages between each question and horizontal lines to divide each piece of equipment. The result is rows and rows of neat little blue boxes. During the meeting, all les needs to do is write the farmers ’ agreed-upon number in the corresponding box. For our purposes, calling this grid of machinery names and questions the “Equipment List” will work just fine. The farmers will understand what it is, and we won’t get confused either. However, should the gathered data ever be written up for an academic journal, the simple little boxes of our “equipment list” will elegantly morph into a very exact and correct “Set interview Guide,” or a bit more ominously into the “Survey instrument.” Four Big Questions · 43 Purchase Useful Salvage Annual Item Price/$ Life/Years Value/$ Maintenance/$ Corn Binder Corn Planter Disc Drag Feed Grinder Fertilizer Spreader Field Sprayer Forecart Grain Binder Grain Drill Hay Elevator Harness (1 set) Harrow Hay Baler Hay Loader Hay Tedder Hay Wagon Manure Spreader Plow Rake Sickle Bar Mower Silage Chopper Threshing Machine Tractor TOTAL 44 · Why Cows Need Names Finally, two weeks have passed and this is the morning of Raymond’s kitchen meeting. les and i drive out over the hills through Burton and then Middlefield on our way to the farm. We go over our roles again in the car. i will lead the meeting and ask the questions. les’s job is to write down the figures for each item, and each question, after the farmers have agreed on a specific amount of money or time, depending on the question . He has a clipboard, two pencils with erasers, and three copies of the equipment list and questions. it’s about 25°F outside and a little windy. There was a dusting of...