Back when we were in college, Greg was the numbers person. He was nice to everyone. He excelled at everything academic including French Medieval Literature and Analytical Chemistry. But, I will tell you this, a handyman… he was not.
I had proof of this early on when my college roommate and I decided to paint our bedroom bright purple. I showed him the mess of the wall after we had finished. Not noticing the horrid color or the terrible paint job, he smiled and said, “That’s better than I could do!”
6 years ago when we were just getting started with out farm, I remember watching on as he built a shade shelter for our first batch of Thanksgiving turkeys. He was so unsure of himself, hemming and hawing and sweating over every cut.
But today, while I was taking one of my first walks around the farm since my surgery last month, I looked around and noticed something. Greg’s transformed and is now, quite possibly, the handiest person I know.
Good farming requires it of him. Because, there aren’t blueprints out there for the work he does every day.
Neither the big tasks like relocating an old barn (done with the help of our amazing friend, Eli) or the seemingly small tasks like figuring out how to efficiently move grain from the parking lot to our animals out in the pastures come with manuals. It’s trial by fire with every new project. And he’s totally risen to the challenge.
Not many people would be able to appreciate his growing and stretching in this way. But we’ve spent a third of our lives together and I can see it so clearly and it gives me pause. Because I think he’s proof that we can learn anything, if we want something badly enough.