Cost to stack hay

[NativeSon]

When my boys were about 11 I started taking them to work(I had a restaurant) with me on Sat. They were too small to wash dishes at that time, but they could bus tables and that would free up someone else to do some special cleaning projects.

Going to work with Dad meant getting up at 0300 to get there in time to open at 0430, so that took a little getting use to. I would pay them out of my pocket and the waitress' would tip them(against my advice) if they would keep them caught up and help out when asked. The guys would come home with $25-30 per Sat..........pretty good for an 11 year old, and they were tickled.

One year I had a bumper crop of tomatoes so I told them if they put in a little sweat equity, picking the fruit, I would take them down across the street from the fire station and set them up to sell to the locals. So I dropped them off with several boxes of tomatoes and some paper bags to sack them up. It was about 2 blocks from our house on a Sat morning. In about 45 min. they were back needing more produce.

Instilling a Work Ethic at an early age is very important. Today they both have good jobs, that they like, and live in houses bigger than they grew up in. And have Blessed us with 7 Grandkids......That are very well behaved.

Charlie

 

[Lastkidpicked]

Thank you all for the very well thought out replies.

Tmac and Native Son, I totally agree with you that the benefits go well beyond the money. You are right on and I respect your thinking along those lines.

We are very proud of the boys in that they are happy to help a neighbor or friend without thought of payment. In fact, many times they only took the money because a neighbor or friend has told them, "I would really feel better if you would allow me to pay you."

The reason for actually doing the math on this is that we live in Colorado and there is quite a boom going on right now, so the boys all have jobs where they can work plenty of hours including overtime. So while they will always help out a neighbor or a friend, if they were to try to haul hay as a regular job, it would have to pencil out.

As a side note, reading these replies shows there are still a lot of people out there with thoughtful ideas.

Its nice to see.

 

[Birdhunter1]

My question to you all: Could the boys actually make money doing this, or are expenses so high that they could never make it work?

In the mid 90's there were 4 of us who worked together routinely and we kept a list of folks we had worked for and we had a good reputation. I don't remember it paying $.90 a bale or what the price was but the farmer furnished the equipment, usually his wife fed us and we'd show up and bust our butts (usually after our early morning summer football conditioning workouts) and split the profits. We'd each give a $5 bill to the one of us who had that farmer (meaning the one who had got his business). I don't know that it paid that well given this was pre-cell phone days, all of us had old pickup trucks that our dads had bought us (most were old worn out farm trucks) or were hand me downs (dads old truck) so we didn't really have any bills. Also considering we had early morning football workouts and then often went in the evening for the same it was good summer part time work, usually that or carrying concrete forms around was the best gig for folks in our shoes. Our only real expense was gas to the farm, some sort of water container and a pair of gloves.

 

[Lastkidpicked]

Thanks, Birdhunter. Don't you enjoy looking back on those days of hard work? Made us the people we are today.

While you didn't say it specifically, there is a general theme among our friends of, "As long as it pays SOMETHING, it's much better than the kids wasting their summer playing video games."
This is true... builds up the body and the mind, building up the wallet is almost secondary.

It's a little different here this year because of the oil boom. The kids already have jobs lined up for the summer, so hauling hay outisde of friends and neighbors would have to pay enough to make sense.

My daughter is looking over my shoulder and wanted to add:
Don't dismiss fast food. The burger joint where she works can't find enough people so they changed their "no overtime" policy. She might only make $ 8.50/ hour, but during her overtime hours that's $ 12.75/ hour. Not bad for a teenager. It's like we say all the time,

"I've worked a lot harder for a lot less money!"

 

[Birdhunter1]

My first real (full time with benefits) job paid out at $12 an hour in 1999. Thought I was in hog heaven.

In high school us on the football team had a limited time slot due to summer workouts, once two a day practices started then season we were pretty busy between the team and school work. Bucking bales fit our time table, paid, didn't wear us down physically (at least if it did we were used to it) and still allowed us to party it up when the sun went down.

Winter time was the worst though, once football season was over most retail places were either cutting back their summer staff or had already hired their Christmas staff. Mostly we cut firewood and cleared fence lines for farmers, and hunted.