There is an story of the farmer who joined the new world order by buying a tractor, mowing machine, rake, and shiny new HAY BALER. He abandoned his horse drawn mowing machine, horse drawn "buck" rake, and the horse drawn hay wagon and stout sons to stomp the hay around the hay stack. The cows could eat the hay from the bottom, and the hay would slide down the pole until it was all eaten. The horses helped eat the hay; their compenstation for devotion to the task of making hay...as if they had a choice.
The tractor ran fine, a shiny new Ford 8N, the 501 Ford mowing machine performed flawlessly. The rake raked the hay in long windrows. The baler, oh, dear friends, that evil invention, the baler! It started the days work picking up hay, stuffing it into the baler chamber where it was neatly chopped and packed out the rear to the marvelous device called a "knotter". The knotter ties perfect little knots, rendering hay into small 50 pound packages to be stored in a hay shed. HAY SHED! Nobody said anything about a hay shed!Something else not need with the old system. Bales need dry storage...hay stacks just create their own thatched roof.
About 4:00, the knotter stopped tying the neat little knots on one side of the bales. All work stopped. After a very frustrating 30 minutes, a low rumble was heard in the distance. Rain coming. Hay in the field. Baler broken. No horses, just a broken baler that wouldn't tie...the neat little knot.
The farmer, in dispair, shouted to the heavens. "Sometimes the soulution to the problem is more complex than the problem itself...I'm just trying to get the hay in!".
This statement has been flung to the heavens by thousands, no millions, of farmers around the world who ever engaged in baling hay. That damn little knotter!
I flung stuff at the sky a few times in the last two weeks myself...but the damn hay is done! I guess horses and hay stack have their place...don't know that I'm capable of that technology anymore.
Thanks to the neighbor who has a new baler and a big heart!
Many thanks for helping the wannabe get that $%#@ plowed, dead grass off his garden w/ your hay rake.
ReplyDeleteEinstein addressed your complexity issue somewhat
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Thanks,
bb