In the last six weeks the boys at home on the farm have had a turbulent summer, even though the crops are good in Manitoba. Since the farm is so large, there are a number of employees- not just their younger brothers. Some have been with us for years, most only stay a year or two, some decided to leave, some just don't work out for some reason (often not showing up to work- rule #1 of farming is the cows get milked everyday 2 or 3 at our farm- times a day ) and they are let go. Then there are new employees being hired and trained to fill the other slots in the schedule. So Seth and Luke were put into full time spilt-shift milking (the crews that do the two milkings, that start at 2 pm and 9:30pm) by the end of last month, plus they worked extra shifts on their "days off" - they do four days on, two off, on the schedule. Jonah racked up the hours as they all had to fill shifts for the people who quit or fired and were still on "the schedule." The morning shift, that does the six am milking and then jobs like cleaning and feed making, tends to be the more stable shift with long term employees.
However this summer the boys had two employees who were off most of the month of August when there was a terrible accident in the little village of St.Labre, a rollover that caused the death of a neighbor, a 40 year old father of six. His eighteen year old son has worked summers for the farm for four years, starting out mowing lawns and had recently started milking full-time, and his mother had recently started milking cows for the boys, she had previously worked in a pig barn. The son had been injured while trying to move the car off of his father- he was wearing flip flops when he and his sister found the car and cut his feet on the broken glass, and was unable to work for a couple weeks. The boys gave his mother a couple weeks off with pay, and they returned to work a week or so ago.
They were even more shocked when a long-time friend and employee, just 25 years old was found found dead in his trailer on the farm a couple weeks later. Jon was a kid when we moved to Manitoba, his father had worked on the farm for the previous owner, and we saw a lot of him growing up, he often helped out for the day, sometimes when he was supposed to be in school. He became buddies with Josh and once he stayed in our basement when he was about 14 for two weeks until I caught him smoking in the house (he had thought it would go out the open window, not knowing about my famous smoke detecting nose.)
He used to come in with Micah after they finished the night milking around one am, the summer we had Jessica's border collie, Jack living with us, when she worked at camp. Jack would bark like crazy every single time Jon came in the door, but they soon found out if Jon came in while Jack was outside, she would be friendly, so Micah would let Jack out one door, Jon in another, and then let Jack back in so they could wind down watching TV for a while before Jon headed home to bed.
A couple years later Jon quit to go to truck driving school, his dream job, driving a big rig across the country. Later when he was underemployed he came back to the farm part-time and never left, working the morning shift and making feed. In the last year he had started a new part-time job he loved, setting up fireworks shows. Last Christmas he was off doing shows up north while we were home, and he put on the huge one for Josh's pre-wedding night party behind the barns.
I talked to him a few times while I was home in May, he was excited about the start of fishing season, and trying to get the motor fixed on the boys boat so he could get out on Whitemouth Lake opening day. Jon was a real softy but he like to hide that under a blustery exterior. If he was complaining about somebody or insulting them, it was just his way of showing that he was concerned about his family and friends. Jon didn't show up to set up fireworks for Carrick days the second Saturday in August, and his brother found him on the floor in his trailer, he had been at work on Thursday and was off so no one had missed him until Saturday night. The cause of death is not known at this time.
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| Jon Ross at work |
Jon was a regular reader of our blog, checking out what we were up to, in fact he was responsible for the current background, when he complained that the new cloud one I had chosen was too hard to read two summers ago. Jon did not like having his picture taken, he complained about the ones I took of him making feed last May when I did the posts about the farm, so didn't use them, but I sharpened this one up so you can see him. I am going to miss him when I do go home, because we'd always have a little chat sometime when I was home.
The reports I had of the funeral service was that it was very sad, and different, and that they decided to shoot off some fireworks in St Labre after for Jon, and could have used his technical expertise, as they were a little too close to the spectators standing on the road when one went haywire and scattered the crowd. Luckily no one was hurt.
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