By Zoë Bradbury

March 26, 2008

So here’s the reality: farming is one of those things where you do a little bit of everything. Carpentry, botany, soil science, Microsoft Excel, plumbing, accounting, people management, marketing, grunt labor, welding, mechanics, etc. A lot of farmers get really good at all of them — after enough years.

I haven’t had enough years yet, so my skill set break down looks something like this at the moment:

• Good (enough) at it: carpentry, botany, marketing, grunt labor, Microsoft Excel, plumbing
• Needs improvement: accounting, soil science
• No clue: welding, plumbing gas, mechanics

The thing is, hiring someone to do the things you have no clue about costs money — usually a lot of it — so I tend to take what I know from the “good enough” category, apply it to the things in the “no clue” category, and cross my fingers. A lot of times it works, and I learn enough to move from the “no clue” category to “needs improvement.” It’s a good, self-reliant, empowered kind of feeling.

But this week the experiential learning model backfired when I went to plumb a gas line from my propane tank to my hot water heater in the greenhouse.

Given that “plumbing gas” falls into the “no clue” category, I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that the combination of explosive hazard and installer ignorance would be a good reason to bite the bullet and hire this job out, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of paying $500 for someone else to run 10 feet of gas line.

So I did it myself.

I did not blow up the greenhouse, but almost. I shed some tears, bloodied my knuckles, got pipe dope all over my Levi’s, spat out a month’s worth of frustrated curses in two days, and in the end had to hire a professional to do triage anyway — after I blew out the gas control valve on the water heater for lack of a pressure regulator in the line (whoops). Who knew?

The thing is, swearing my way through those few days of frustration means that I know more about hot water heaters, gas valves, propane tanks, brass fittings and pipe dope than I ever would have if I’d paid someone to do it at the get-go. Wretched a process as it was, gas plumbing has moved out of the “no clue” category. Which is not to say I’d do it again.

I suppose there’s another nugget of learning as well — sometimes it’s just smarter to pay the guy and save yourself the grief.

Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.