The day before Christmas I made a trip to the feed mill to pick up 3000 lbs of feed in 50 lb bags.?ÿ This business sold recently to a local family.?ÿ Grandma handles the office work.?ÿ Her son and his wife handle running the business and making and bagging custom feed.?ÿ Well it turns out the granddaughter works there as well.?ÿ I've known Grandma and Grandpa for many years and can recall when their kids were in school.?ÿ They are a family of short stature.?ÿ Grandma and Grandpa are about shoulder high on me.?ÿ The son operating the mill is a few inches taller.?ÿ The granddaughter is probably 12 to no more than 14 and makes her grandparents look tall in comparison.
Before heading down to get the 60 bags of feed I needed to get four 50lb bags of mineral from the room next to the office.?ÿ As I finished paying the bill the little granddaughter stepped through the door and said she was ready to load the mineral.?ÿ I followed her to the pile of bags she had already moved from the far side of the storage area to the door.?ÿ I grabbed one and put it on my flatbed truck.?ÿ She followed the example.?ÿ I noticed while grabbing the third bag that she didn't seem happy about something, but she grabbed the fourth bag and tossed it up onto the truck.?ÿ It hit me that she was upset with me for doing part of her work, either because she was a girl or because she was so small.?ÿ While her dad was loading most of the feed she found a hand truck and went after four salt blocks that weigh 25 lbs each.?ÿ She eventually returned doing her best to get enough weight up on the handles to tip the blocks off the floor as she was scooting backwards towards my truck.?ÿ The blocks weighed more than she did, for sure.?ÿ I watched as she tossed each one onto the truck, then went to help dad throw the rest of the bags of feed onto the trailer.?ÿ She's a keeper!
I think it great that a business got bought by a family operation, and not by some multi-national chain.
I also note that the feed bags got 20% heavier during the telling of the story.?ÿ?ÿ
There were 60 bags of feed each weighing 50 lbs to add up to 3000 lbs total.
Truth be told, they purchased the business from another family operation that began in 1986.?ÿ Now, all of the youngsters are grown and doing their own things.?ÿ The previous owners are 63 years old now and ready to do other things.?ÿ I was either customer number one or two back in the Fall of 1986 when they bought out the fellow who had run it for about 15 years.?ÿ In fact, I helped them out in 1986 by going in with them on the purchase of a significant amount of fresh milo that was ready to harvest as they opened their doors.?ÿ That helped them gain more grain customers while locking in a good supply of one feed ingredient.?ÿ It also paid off handsomely for me.?ÿ One of the best investments I ever made.?ÿ The buyer in 1986 had been an engineer working for Cargill.?ÿ He walked away from that to start his own business, sink or swim.
60 bags, 50lbs each indeed. I misread that first line of the 2nd paragraph.
