Equivalent to the level of wrongful negligence toward his animals was Larry’s reckless, and often imperious management style over his work crew (ie Carlos, me and a later WWOOF’er arrival, to a lesser extent). Wednesday’s served as Mr. Matthews one day a week away from the shop. In lieu of enjoying a moment of repose, he spent the entirety of the daylit hours tending to the property; during which time, us ‘farmhands’, would occasionally be placed in precarious situations.
Ultimately, his priority was saving money. Concern for safety and keeping the workforce in good-spirits certainly? Not so much. Why else would he rely on an illegal immigrant and volunteers? In the chance Carlos had quarrel’s with the job, Larry could easily drive to the nearest Home Depot for a capable replacement. One who would be might be open to do the work for a dollar or two cheaper an hour. As for volunteer organic wanna-be-farmers like myself, well, we could leave anytime we wanted if we felt his methods too much to deal with. And if the WWOOF’ers labors weren’t performing to his satisfactory standard, Larry had the power to show them the door. No severance package required!
The time spent attempting to re-track a Hitachi Trackhoe Excavator best exemplified his frightful carelessness. Larry was in the beginning stage of a compost pile project along the south-facing sloping area, adjacent to the house’s rear deck. The plan is to dig out a series of 8 to 10-feet deep trenches in parallel lines, perpendicular to the slope to later be filled with food scraps, tree slash, livestock waste and hay bedding, amongst other ‘compostables’. Eventually the material would be re-dug and provide an efficient fertilizer. On my first full day on the Harmony job, moments after twisting the excavator's ignition, Larry somehow unfastened the track from the front wheel on the hoe's right hand side. He remained behind the wheel and stubbornly sought to steer and occasionally jerk it back into place, all while anchoring the bucket and arm on the lower slope.
Rather than ‘waste’ $500+ of his money on a mechanic on realignment, the majority of the lifting and resetting, and the seemingly half-ton weight of it, fell to Carlos and myself while Larry remained chiefly in the cab. Even the subsequent aid of a chain and pulley, secured and hoisted by the excavator’s arm, didn’t prevent us from ineptly creating a hulking, haphazardly-positioned, mono-tired vehicle, positioned atop it’s rubber wheel (as evidenced by the attached photos). We wouldn’t have had anything to show for the days work if it weren’t for the handful of hours spent mounting a 100 lb control panel for the solar power unit on the basement wall and the daily animal commitments.
A week later, Kent, another volunteer, showed up for a planned week and a half stay. A mid to late 30's, single male, Wisconsin-native, equipped with a heavy load of corpulence; likely resulting from a full-time sedentary lifestyle. How farm work stirred interest out of a man who without hesitation makes daily stops for fast food and drives a gas hog SUV I never quite made sense of. Plus his preference of indoors work with the dishes and sweeping over outdoors chores involving a plant or animal quickly became glaringly obvious.
One of the first jobs Larry sought our combined abilities for was clearing brush and slash along a soon to be placed fence line. The incautious bossman neglected to mention the Poison Oak and yellow jacket hives we'd be up against. Unacquainted on how to spot the toxic shrub, my co-woofer's stay might have been a bit on the itchy side if I had not pointed them out to him before we started lopping and digging out old scraps of fence line tangled in the forest duff. Lucky for him, the wasps acted relatively quiet with the dropping winter temperatures, at least at the time.
Kent's scheduled 13 day work vacation @ Harmony in reality became an 80 hour stop-off. After barely saying his departing words he got his vehicle in gear and hurried off with the driveway's suspended dust seemingly in tow. Over anything else, having to drive 30 miles out for a decent wifi signal every night and attempting to catch up on the pigsty of a kitchen, along with the daily 4 to 5 dish cycles and discarding of food scraps littering the floor tied into it, were the ultimate deciding factors. Taking off at the ass crack of dawn on the 2nd Wednesday of mine spent in Buxton, he left without being subjected to a full, straight day of Larry's commands. That lucky son of a bitch. Disinclined to taking out/in the heedlessly, aggressive male goat with it's leash, having no run-in with yellow jackets himself, and not getting the chance to partake in the second attempt at retracking the excavator, the wwoofer from the badger state never quite experienced the 'thrills' I did. The flying, pestering stingers reanimated themselves a week later and postponed 1/2 day of planned work, till Carlos and I smoked them out fully.
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