I don’t mention it often, but those who know us recognize that we are in a bit over our heads on the farm. We simply don’t have the time to maintain everything as it should be, do the projects we want to do, keep our businesses running and spend time with Mackenzie, the dog and other friends and family. We do our best to get things done and keep things in shape, but many things just eventually fall through the cracks so that we can work on issues which we find more important. And then we scramble to catch up on the maintenance but we just never seem to get back on top of it all.

We’ve been halfway looking for someone to help us out for a while now but no one seemed to be able to help. We even asked one of the farmers living behind us if he knew anyone who might have some spare time and be willing to work inexpensively, but he had nothing for us. The farmer has been fussing at us for over a year now about the ivy growing on our barn because it drops leaves all over the place and they blow into his courtyard. We’d started to remove the stuff but still had a ways to go…and it just kept growing, like so many other things around here.

But last Saturday, our prayers may have been answered. When we went to pick up the canning jars from the farmers’ market, Stefan hopped out to pick up a booklet about the Lantern Festival which gives all the details about the weekend’s events. Mackenzie was sleeping in the truck so I went in with his mom to ask about the jars while he hung behind with his dad to keep an eye on the little one. The front gate of the farmers’ market always has signs and advertisements pasted on it and one of them caught his eye.It was an ad from someone named Nico who was looking for someone who more or less needed a farm hand: garden work, cleanup, maintenance, a man for everything. He wanted to work 1 day a week for 8 hours for just €50. And he wanted to find a place where it could be a regular occurrence, not just one week here and there and nothing in between.

So Stefan gave him a call yesterday to see if he might work for us. We figured it was certainly worth a try because we definitely need someone to help get things in order. As it turns out, he’s a carpenter by trade so we might have even more work for him to do than we initially thought. Our front gates need to be rebuilt because they are rotting out and we need new shutters on the front of the house – like I mentioned, we have a TON of work to do.

So Nico is here today (he actually arrived 20 minutes early) and he’s taken down the ivy (2 hours work), pulled down the rest of the dead wispy vines that were on top of our storage buildings (about an hour including sweeping the roof, removing stuff growing on the roof and cleaning out the gutters near him) and is cleaning the courtyard now (sweeping, scraping the cracks between the pavers and pulling grass out). I certainly hope that we don’t cause him to hate us with these sucky tasks because I already find him FANTASTIC. He takes initiative as needed, finding the tools he needs and putting them back where he found them (after I showed him where things are first, of course – he’s not just rummaging through all our junk). When I told him to clean the courtyard he also cleaned all the weeds from the flower beds and tied our climbing roses to the wall – the latter is one of the tasks we planned on getting to this weekend. He’s tidying things up as he goes along to and putting them away.

After he’d nearly finished with the ivy, he also looked at his watch and said, “Uh, your husband said you had a full day’s work for me? Maybe you want me to paint the side of the barn there where I just pulled down the ivy?”

I told him that perhaps we’d get him to do that later…but that we had plenty for him to do in the meantime. There’s no shortage of work around here, even if it’s mostly small stuff to start with. We just needed to know that he’s not going to be a flake or work at the speed of a snail. And right now, I seriously love this guy.

Next time he comes (assuming he doesn’t run screaming from the place), we’ll just give him a list of what we want done and let him work it off as he wants. I wasn’t too sure how this would work out but I have to say I’m impressed with his speed and his willingness to just take of things that need to be done…and he hasn’t made one complaint. At times he’s even whistling. We’re hoping that he will sweep the courtyard and front sidewalk once a week and keep all the beds and walkways weeded. We might even get him to start weeding and trimming in the garden every couple weeks. We’d also like him to start cutting the grass down at the orchard for us (a task we just have no time for lately). There’s about a million other little tasks that we’re thinking we may be able to trust him with if things continue to go well, so please keep your fingers crossed for us.

And if you live near us and need a helper like Nico; sorry, we can’t help you. The last time we recommended our workers to people, they started flaking out on us so we won’t be making that mistake again!