TP's secret farmer

Our hay farmer canceled on us this year and we had a field full of hay.

J called everyone we know who might help, and as a last resort, called TP, my acquaintance I do not call a friend anymore.

Remember when I told her I'd spend the day helping her at a horse show? When I arrived and asked how I can help she said, "It's best you don't speak to me, I'm trying to concentrate."

So I helped her in silence all day. At one point I started to remove a lump of saddle wax from her saddle and she said, "Don't touch my saddle!" OK then.

Due to her strange behavior I have avoided going up to her lovely arena to ride, also, she has a lot of boarders now, and dogs, and it's just no fun. And the arena is enclosed by electric wire that is always on, so that resulted in a shocking experience for Mag and I.

I have to mention that not long ago her sweet husband Charlie hit her and left her. She was surprised, I was not. She abused him terribly. He built her a horse boarding farm with his own hands exactly as she wished everything built.

I couldn't believe he didn't leave her sooner. He's in the process of suing her now, for the money she's making in her horse boarding business. I know it sounds cruel of me to say this, but if you could have heard how she spoke to him like a child...or a lackey....

***

So we ended up contacting TP as a last resort. I asked J to do it because I wanted to be sure the communication was free of language barriers.

She said she would call around and find someone, but we were not allowed to continue our search, because she didn't want to have to cancel if she found someone. That's understandable.

A week later we heard back from her; she'd found someone to harvest our hay. 

But she was very adamant that I remove the cross fencing. Um, what? Of course I'd remove cross fencing, you can't have mowers going through fences, I'm not an idiot. It was a little bit offensive.

Then she said she walked our pasture at night, twice, and found an unreasonable amount of horse poop along one side of one fence. It's true, I am not so careful about horse poop along fencelines, because in all these years, I've never had a problem with horse poop in my hay. 

TP said, "We cannot work in this pig sty. You must clean it all up!"

So we did. 

***

We asked TP to let us know what hay farmer would be coming. 

Honest question, right? 

She said, "Don't you worry your heads about it. It's not important that you know who."

WTactualH!?~?~?She literally said "don't worry your heads"

I started worrying.... a LOT.

Why would it be a secret, who is mowing our field? We have insurance for people working here, if we know who is working here! 

It is part of the insuranc we pay yearly to own a farm, and we need to know who is here.

I could only imagine there was an illegal aspect to this situation.

We asked TP for 100Euros to pay for the part of our pasture that we lease, its yearly fee, in order to have all the hay mown and removed for "free." 

We obviously cannot have a field of hay overwinter, uncut and unused. 

TP agreed to the 100Euros for the farmer's fee. Hrm. 

Why won't she tell us who it is? 

There was only one explanation: she was getting a cut. She was getting a percentage of the money made off of our field.

Not that that is a horrible thing, oh no, it's just weird that she wouldn't tell us. If we are not allowed to know the farmer, it leads to the conclusion that she needs her cut in the deal. 

(If it's not obvious, we don't care about that. She was doing us a favor by making a few phone calls. That she is taking a percentage is fine with us. There is no need to hide that information.)

***

I watched the farmer mow our field, and turn our field, day after day, and I went across the street to our good neighbors, and asked them, "Do you know which farmer this is?" 

Petra said, "That's Muehlinghause, right?" 

Her husband couldn't confirm it. I remembered the name. 

***

The next time the green tractor with the yellow wheels was here to turn hay, I got the license plate. 

Important note: At this point, I sent her a text saying thank you for helping us, it's a relief to have our field mown.   THANK YOU TP!!!

***

In the meantime I worked as a medic with police at our "country fair" and asked if a cop would run a plate for me. haha, this is not  TV, this is Germany, of course not. 

GL MP30

***

Back at the ranch, I investedgated the name Muehlinghaus and found he's a hugely popular hay farmer in our neighborhood, one who stands for the rights of all other hay farmers, in the Bergisches Morgenpost, our local newspaper. In fact....

He's in the newspaper so often it was easy for me to find a photo of him standing next to his big green John Deere with yellow wheels with the license GL MP30.

Y E S !!!!!

***

They took 7 large round bales away from our field. Not as much as normal, but still something; the price is 200Euros per round bale.

***

I finally had the answer to the big mystery of TP's secret farmer. 

I started to worry. And fret. And shut my window coverings because I know she likes to walk by with her dog. 

I knew it would happen.

The mean thing I did was not to warn my innocent husband of her inevitable arrival.

And then she arrived. With her airdale terrier and her white Arabian horse. She joked as I answered my door, "I caught Mag on the street!" 

I immediatley ran to my husband's office and said, "Please come deal with this."

***

She laid into us with "How could you not fall on your throats for all the work I did for you?"

She actually used that particular line twice, because our lack of falling on our throats was so lacking for her.

I didn't know what that meant, but I could guess. We were supposed to thank her ....more.

My husband was absolutely taken aback by her anger and yelling, "They only got THREE bales of hay from your field!!!!!!!!!!!" (No, 7.)

He said, "We would have liked to have known, for insurance purposes, who worked on our property. For insurance purposes."

She said, "You have no need to know. Who ever knows who is actually mowing a field?"

He said, "We normally do, if that's not normal for you, all I can say is it's normal for us."

She was infuriated by this. 

She tugged her animals away from us and said, "You ungrateful people, I want nothing to do with either of you ever again!"

I was never more apologetic about anything in my life, as I realized how shook up my husband was. 

He had no idea that people could be so unreasonable, so ....crazy.

I apologized again and again, but he'll never forget how awful horse crazy people can be. And I do blame it on horse crazy people. There are none of us that are not at least a little crazy.

***

"I'm so sorry J, I'm so sorry."

"I'm calling her," he said.

Why?

Truly, a few days later he called TP, our local witch of the East, and said, "I need to talk to you."

He explained that he was taken off guard, that perhaps we should have been more grateful, and  -----ON MY REQUEST --- he told her that she deserved the 100Euros for the field rental, that we agreed to pay her secret farmer. 

Her anger was appeased at the idea of that 100 bucks. (I'm still sure she got a percentage off the total harvest off our field, so...)

So she deceived us, got paid by the farmer, and got paid by us. 

And she FORGAVE us. 

***

I know who the farmer was, Torsten Muehlinghaus from Habenichts. TP does not want us to have direct contact with him. 

We might not ever need him again. Our own hay farmer might come back. But we have his name.

I just wish I was sassy enough to sent TP a single SMS message, "TORSTEN MUEHLINGHAUS". But I'm not. My husband went to a lot of trouble to stay on good terms with TP. He's the best of us.

: )