The Calculator and the Cow
A Holstein steps on my desk calculator in the barn office and produces the most optimistic loan projection Hico has ever seen on paper.
Every spring I sit at the desk in my barn office and work out my feed numbers on a big old desktop calculator with a paper roll. It is a sturdy machine, built in the days when a calculator had to be heavy enough to hold down a lease. I have used it for thirty years, and it has never once complained.
One morning in April, I left the office door open while I went to fetch a bucket of calf starter. That is all it took. Clementine, who believes the office is part of her pasture, wandered in and placed one front hoof directly on the keypad. The calculator whirred, advanced the paper, and printed a total of 1,111,111.11. Clementine looked at it, looked at me, and sat down on the floor as if to say she had earned a nap.
I will admit I stared at that tape for a while. It was a very pretty number. It lined up like a row of fence posts. I almost wished it were real, because a million dollars of net income would have bought a lot of milking equipment. Instead I tore the tape off and tacked it to the wall as a reminder of what happens when you leave the door open.
My lender stopped by that week and spotted the tape. He asked what it was. I said it was my best case scenario. He studied it, nodded slowly, and told me he had seen worse projections from people with college degrees. Then he asked me to redo the numbers the regular way, and I did, and the regular way, checked against the loan officer's own spreadsheet, came out to a much smaller number that was quite a lot more honest.
We still keep the tape on the wall. Clementine has learned to leave the office alone, but I notice she walks by it every morning with a look of real pride. If you ever want to talk through equipment budgets with a clear head, I would point you to the notes on tractor and equipment guides, and I would keep the door shut. The rest of my barn office stories are on farm.FM.