Bedlam Farm needs some love before winter comes. I think we’re getting it.

Dan The Handyman fits into my portrait portfolio. I greatly respect him—another skilled and kind big man in a truck. We’ve known Dan Rogers for a long time; he is a kind, honest, and professional handyman named “Dan The Handyman.”

We met him when we were going to the county recycling center (dump) every week. He was the manager. He was much loved. The dump was a place where our community could often come and meet one another. We hardly see each other, just like the cities and suburbs.

Dan quit because the company running the recycling center charged residents in new ways he thought were unfair. We loved seeing him on Saturdays; he was fun to be around and always gave away great and discarded stuff. He has a great sense of humor and strong ethics.

He is one of those people who do what they say they will do, no BS.

 

 

We ran into him the other day; he’s rebuilding the new horse trailer food stand Casey Page is building to sell breakfast and morning coffee, tea, cider, and baked goods.

I was thrilled to see him; I am struggling to find a plumber to replace our water pump, a carpenter to build housing for the new upstairs composting toilet and a roofer to replace some growing holes in the big barn. Maria doesn’t like making telephone calls. I learned to love it as a reporter and am the hunger-gatherer; getting people over here to fix things is my turf.

At first, the handymen will only talk to me, and they aren’t used to talking to women. They quickly figured out that I was the last person to talk to about repairs and plumbing, and they gladly talk to Maria.

One of the challenging things up here, especially when dealing with younger handypeople, is that they must live flexible lives and do all kinds of work to survive. In the summer, there is lots of work cutting trees, landscaping, fixing wood sheds, and painting houses. They are always looking to get a job for the winter and locking it up early.

This is a kind of financial Russian roulette for them.

They need work in the winter badly, but they need to know beforehand if they will have any. That rarely happens in Spring.

If they take on a small task for the fall, and somebody comes in and wants their help building a house, they must bail out of the first agreement. They have no choice. We had a terrific young carpenter lined up to create the upstairs straightforward bathroom, and he seemed excited about it, but he’s disappeared, and I can’t reach him.

So when a job comes up, and it’s good, they must grab it. This is understood here: we all have to survive and don’t fault anyone for doing it. I wish they could give me a call to see if they can’t come, but I don’t think that will happen. My three-call system works. If there is no answer and no call back after three calls and two more days, we all understand that I can move on. No hard feelings.

My rule is three calls and wait two days. If I don’t hear back from someone who’s agreed to work on the farm, I call them, leave a polite note, and let them know that if I don’t hear from them in days, I’ll be obliged to get someone else. I understand, but I have my own dignity to preserve also. That water pump has to be installed soon, and it needs to work.

I know I won’t hear from them, so I understand and just let it go. When I run into them at the coffee house, they act like I’m their long-lost brother, and we do hugs and back-patting. Nobody mentions that we got stood up.

It’s part of the life. And I do understand it. It’s hard to make a living up here, and some of the people we need most must make tough decisions about survival. I get it, especially for the younger people who are just starting. We make the rules we need to make.

Dan is not one of those people. He takes on what he can do, turns down what he can’t do, and comes when he says he’ll come.  And he does good work and takes pride in it. When one disappears, another appears, and while it’s sometimes a nail-biting process, it always seems to work out.

Above, Dan gives the improval for putting the new upstairs bathroom in the corner of our bedroom. He’s building a new wall around it with a door, a ventilating pipe, and a fan leading to the outside.

In two weeks, Dan (going on vacation for his family’s annual rabbit shooting trek in the Adirondacks) is coming back to install the new pump for the point well; it’s making weird noises like it’s clogging up. Dan says it will last until he gets back.

This afternoon, he entered the basement with Maria and looked at the wellpoint.  I don’t dare go down those steps at the moment. He says he can fix it, and the sooner the better.

He came upstairs with us and went over the plants (we’ve done this three times now) to build a small but private enclosure around the odorless and natural bathroom.

It happens like this every time. When I get nervous, the fates intervene, and we get what we need. I am happy to see Dan again, and yes, I am relieved. We couldn’t have done better.

And he’s coming just in time.

The big barn has 15 to 20 slate pieces cracked or open. Keeping those intact is crucial, as they can quickly rot out of a barn. Dan will get up on a letter and fix them on both sides of the barn. We don’t have any extra slate; we’ll have to buy more.

Wind from the South blows through the stone foundation of Maria’s Studio. It gets freezing in there. We’ve been trying to figure out how to insulate it, it’s too close to the ground to pour anything in from below. Dan suggests filling plastic bags with leaves, stuffing them to the hilt, and stacking them before the rocks. They work well, he said, are free, and will block the wind.

Maria will do it herself, perhaps with the help of some of the Amish girls who come every year to help clean up the leaves. So it’s great luck running into Dan again. We like him a lot.

He’s got three jobs to do – the bathroom/wall structure for the new toilet upstairs,  the water pump in the basement, and the broken slate on the big barn roof. We’ll handle the bags of leaves ourselves.