Fear and loathing on date night
Jen and I have been pretty lucky over the years with some of the people that have worked for us. Though it seems like it was yesterday, it was in fact five and a half years ago that two special young women entered our lives for the first time, both within months of each other. Though Kimberly McAllister and Jennifer Esposito ultimately came here to the farm for very different reasons, each has had a lasting effect on the life of this family and in doing so have given Jen and I the time and the space to do what we we needed in order to shape CCNF into the operation it is.
Kimmy, whose official title is Herd Health Manager, many of you know as the smiling good-natured face of CCNF that holds the fort whenever we are away, joins us at the NAAS most springs (we try not to treat her as the “mushroom manager”: kept in the dark and fed on bullshit), and is generally Jen’s right hand when it comes to herd management stuff. The fact that her previous job had entailed milking 300+ holsteins by herself meant that her farm credentials were pretty much unassailable when she first interviewed here. She and her 5 year old son Aiden (with whom she was pregnant during that interview) live here on the farm as well and to say that it’s worked out well for all parties involved would be an understatement.
Jen Esposito showed up on the farm as well that year originally looking for any work she could get (poop scooping etc…), referred here by her boyfriend Mike who was doing some fencing work for us. Though as soon as we heard she was a child psychology major we quickly changed tacks and hired her to help us look after the kids (who were then 6 and 9) for the summer. She’s kind of never really left, the poor thing. For the subsequent summers up through 2010 Espo would come here 5 days a week to keep an eye on the kids which really allowed us to have 8 hours of uninterrupted work time knowing that Sam and Max were fed, entertained, and safe. Anyone that was at the 2008 or 2009 National Elite sales might also remember Jen Esposito chasing the Lutz boys around VAF. Though she has since had a little boy of her own and just opened her own business a few months ago in nearby Chester, VT, Espo does still come over and grant us one extreme luxury: a regular weekly date night.
I will fully grant that it is awfully nice to get out and spend a few hours with just the two of us alone (believe it or not we don’t actually see one another that much during the average work day) that one night each week. Though, in the interest of truth in advertising, I should point out that a good part of the time all we do is some form of drooling across a restaurant table from each other. It usually involves a bottle of wine though and the point on those drooly nights is that we could be having deep and engaging conversations about the world at large so it really is the thought that counts. It’s always nice to check in with your other half. “Who are you again? Oh, yeah: that person that’s tolerated me for the past 20 years!” It’s all good. Every now and then we even get relatively gussied up (read: no alpaca poo on those shoes) and go out to eat at one of the nicer restaurants in the area. Such was the case last night. Though because we are lame-to-the-max (we ARE the party people) we still found ourselves heading home by 9:00 even after lingering over a nice dessert. At least we thought we were heading home. Unfortunately a rather nasty pot hole on the Hartland-Quechee road had other plans for us and more specifically for one of the tires on our car. Did you know that you could make a tire tear right off along the rim by driving on it flat for a couple of miles? Neither did I. Pity, that.
Leaving aside the fact that it was about 12 degrees out, that we were on a back road, and that we were both wearing nice non-barn clothes and dress shoes, the most humiliating part of the whole episode was that after struggling to get the car jacked up and getting all of the lug nuts off of the “flat,” we couldn’t get the stupid wheel to budge. That was the cue for the tow truck. It took all of one swift kick from the steel-toed boot of the driver though and the wheel of course popped right off. Steel-toed dress shoes next time? Hmm. In any case after having been on the side of the road getting progressively more snippy with each other for more than an hour (isn’t this romantic, honey?), in less than 5 minutes the wrecker had our spare on and we were finally on our way back home. Here’s hoping the next date night ends less eventfully!
