Uphill might be the better view

We did farmer's markets for twenty years. It all started with a bumper crop of local honey (50+ year beekeeper here). Adding a focus on heirloom vegetables we learned that you need 8' fences to keep the deer out and three feet of wire mesh at the bottom of the fence to keep small animals out.

You collect a lot of stuff...more fencing, weed mat, containers, tools, hoses, all sorts of watering contraptions and a lot of things you might need. We kept all of that in half of a garage and the first floor of a barn (the cows left 30 years ago but there are still remnants of that effort). Never in the last ten years had we locked either of those storage spaces. It was primarily due to convenience, just like leaving the key in the tractor.

Earlier this summer I noticed something. Items sitting in the same place for a decade seem to have moved. Once in a while a light was left on. After I found evidence of smoking in the barn I installed locks on all the doors. There are two rules in rural when it comes to locks. The rules are extremes. Make it like Fort Knox or make the locks a nominal inconvenience. The good rural thieves have bolt cutters. The meth heads have a screwdriver, maybe.

A week ago someone had taken a lock bracket off.

These are things I eyeball daily. It was reinstalled and a game camera was hidden inside the buiding. Two days later there was a call from the sheriff in

response to a burglary. If you don't have a bolt cutter or a screwdriver you just kick the door in.

To make a long story short the perp stole a pressure washer and the game camera. The next day the perp's friend turned him in and now the guy is in jail.

So one day you shake hands with the youth of America and a few months later they steal from you. You get your stuff back but you drive all over the planet, repair a door that was previously undamaged since 1946 and lose a couple of days of billable time. Law enforcement and neighbors wonder along with you what will come of the youth of America and especially the youth of rural America.

Growing up on the southern MN prairie I am comfortable with more or less flat vistas and the distant horizon. It's getting to the point where I want to move to a place where everyone else is downhill.