We hired a home inspector when we bought our little yellow house. And like the careful students that we are, we watched on as the inspector performed his duties.
First, the basement, the kitchen, and then the bedrooms and bathroom. Next, he went up to the roof, and we followed suit. It all looks fine, he told us reassuringly.
I know we asked a few follow-up questions during the process, as there was a multitude of problems. But never, not even once, did we question the significance of the half-empty bucket of tar sitting on the roof. Or the dirtied roofing spatula sitting beside it…
We just took his word for it, longing so deeply for a home to call our own and 56 acres of farmland next door ready for us to steward. And we moved on.
You can imagine then the utter shock that came just 2 weeks (!!!) after we moved into our first and forever home when a storm came through, and water started leaking right into the house!
Suddenly, the evidence of the previous owner’s poor attempt to patch things up and the water damage on the ceiling became glaringly obvious. And all we could do, besides strategically placing buckets around the house, was scratch our heads and ponder how we missed all of the signs.
Farming (and life in general sometimes!) is really a game of sniffing out those signs and doing whatever it takes to avoid an impending disaster. After all, noticing the metaphorical bucket of tar on the roof can be a matter of life or death for the animals we’ve promised to care for.
Luckily, we’ve gotten a hell of a lot better at this over the years…
Your Farmers,
Jenney & Greg
[fluentform id=”12″]