WSJ article: Lessons From the Ranch

[dirt_dobber]

This article really resonated with me and thought others might like to discuss.

Lessons From the Ranch: Schooling a Teen in Hard Work

Lessons From the Ranch: Schooling a Teen in Hard Work - WSJ

 

[dirt_dobber]

My parents divorced when I was 7 and there was lot of family dysfunction. Was lucky I had a grandpa that had a ranch. He had a 600+ acre ranch which also had 5 acre peach orchard and about 100+ cattle. I learned so much about life through the hard work while spending every summer of my life helping him on the farm. I don't know that many of today's youth experience blisters on their hands or working from sun-up to sun-down.

 

[Senator]

Hard work built America. The lack of hard work will destroy it.

It doesn't matter what you do for work, as long as you do it, it helps. It doesn't have to be manual labor vs. machines. Waiting on others to produce for you is what will kill the dream that was once considered the world's utopia. Of course, I am going to FIRE early, so maybe I am contradicting my self...

I worked on many ranches and farms in my life. never full-time, always a few days/weeks at a time. Milking, rounding up cows, putting up hay, cleaning barns, etc.

 

[dirt_dobber]

totally agree Senator.
Learning that early work ethic really helped me being able to FIRE.
Seeing a farmer well up with tears with the hope of a coming rain just in time is something hard to describe.

 

[razztazz]

It doesn't matter what you do for work, as long as you do it, it helps. It doesn't have to be manual labor vs. machines.

Wait a minute now. What if you're good? Or strong? Then the work will be easy. Do I get credit for hard work? How about people so rich they don;t have to work? they tale credit for everything all the time.

Waiting on others to produce for you is what will kill the dream that was once considered the world's utopia

I thought that is the world's utopia? Whenever successful people talk of freedom it immediately is cast as "freedom to run your own business any way you want without government". That's what a business is. Getting other people to do the work.

As far as being the world's utopia. That is wrong. It was considered "better than what we have now/we have nowhere else to go". Not a Utopia. Utopia would be a world where everybody has everything they want and doesn't have to work for it. That's why the term "Socialist utopia" is always derided. A capitalist utopia is where only some people don't have to work but everybody else does. Sort of like the old Soviet Union

 

[HFWR]

Having pitched hay, mowed yards, stamped out metal parts, moved chickens, loaded boxes of canned food, run a chopsaw, etc., in my younger days, I learned that I didn't want to do any of that! So I got me an edumacation, and traded manual labor for life as a cuberat/labrat. Often soul-killing and mind-numbing, but inside, out of the elements.

I do think that lots of folks have no idea how "hard" some other folks work, and therefore, perhaps, have a lack of empathy for how the other half lives. Still, one-hundred-hour weeks of travel, meetings, negotiations, and such are no picnic either...

 

[walkinwood]

People all over the world work their butts off. And you don't need to be on a farm to do it. And as far as I can see, working hard is a given for success, but it doesn't always work the other way around.

Now, whether a US senator works hard... that's a question that's worth pondering.

 

[mickeyd]

During my college years I worked at a ranch earning a bit over $1.00/hour and wo*ked "can to can't" all summer in the Florida sun for a few years. It's still the most difficult physical wo*k that I have ever done. I always compared other difficult wo*k to that j*b and it still held the high ground.

Could have been the most important thing that I learned during that time of my life.

 

[unclemick]

As I said on another thread - WORK SUCKS! I did the picking thing starting at age 11 - strawberry's, beans, black caps and gathered apples for the cider press. Hard work made me mad and I couldn't wait to grow up and get the heck out of the country and into the'big city' where the fun was. Luckily school and college were easy and fun not work.

Also didn't consider the phys ed involving summers in the logging camp and lumber mills work but great fun and proud to be with the grown ups.

heh heh heh - left handed INTJ here . Screw work. Let time in the market and compounding do your work for you while you diddle around getting paid for doing research - aka 'following your bliss' to paraphrase the late Mr Campbell.

a little contra stuff to stimulate conversation.

 

[calmloki]

Knew a mason who claimed all work was equal. Really tough stuff - carrying hod or packing 5 gallon mud buckets upstairs started out very hard, but got easier after some time on the job. Jobs that started out easy one acclimated to and you ended up whining because there were only two break rooms and the better one wasn't on your floor or the AC vent moved papers on your desk.

 

[MRG]

Knew a mason who claimed all work was equal. Really tough stuff - carrying hod or packing 5 gallon mud buckets upstairs started out very hard, but got easier after some time on the job. Jobs that started out easy one acclimated to and you ended up whining because there were only two break rooms and the better one wasn't on your floor or the AC vent moved papers on your desk.

I would agree.

I stared out w*rking in logging and mills and everything in between. Rough, physical, dangerous work, often outside in the elements. All my dealings there were done from 7:00AM - 5:00PM, in KCK. Finally enough idiots convinced me it was time to leave.

Then a career in IT, always performed indoors, never dangerous, physical, or rough. Messed up hours, often unscheduled deadlines, trips. It was a different group of idiots that convinced me it was time to leave.

I never minded the obvious pain points of either career, I choose to do it. The idiots made it unbearable. Different idiots with the common ability to make my life less enjoyable.

 

[Sunset]

During my college years I worked at a ranch earning a bit over $1.00/hour and wo*ked "can to can't" all summer in the Florida sun for a few years. It's still the most difficult physical wo*k that I have ever done. I always compared other difficult wo*k to that j*b and it still held the high ground.

Could have been the most important thing that I learned during that time of my life.

Talk about enriching..... I worked for $5/day for the government, cutting trails in Parks, picking up garbage, etc. And I saved $4 each day of that to send home, so mom could put it in my bank account. I was 17 at the time.