What I Did On My Winter Vacation

Originally written January 1998

Winter barely made it to Central Pennsylvania this year.  The kale, arugula and Chinese cabbage are still green in the field.  So on New Year’s day, as I lounged on the porch in my T-shirt, drinking my gin and tonic, I decided to take a cue from the odd weather and do something completely inappropriate for the time of year.  I decided to build an addition to the house. 

Becky and I have been talking for years, in a wistful sort of way, about expanding our living space, but our finances have never really kept pace with our fantasies.  As I squeezed the last bit of alcohol out of the lime and cooled myself with the melting ice cubes against the blazing January sun, it dawned on me that we never had any money for any of the major projects I’ve done to the house.  Instead, we have always depended on the threat of immanent disaster to improve our living conditions.  When we moved in and the ceiling leaked and I put my hand through the floor behind the stove, I knew it was time to rebuild the kitchen.  When the empty chinking in the logs behind the old horsehair wallboard was designated the official capital of the nation of rats and lesser rodents, I knew it was time to renovate the living room.  When Jake’s asthma became a matter of life and death I knew it was time to rip out the entire second floor so he wouldn’t be breathing centuries of dust.  Necessity, rather than fiscal stability, has always been the impetus for a new building project. So as I fixed myself another drink to fight off the morbid heat of winter, I wondered why I should start changing operating procedures that had always proved successful in the past.  All I needed was a really good excuse.

By this time, the temperature had climbed to 60 degrees and I was drenched in sweat.  If I hadn’t been enjoying it so much I could have used the weather as the disaster I needed to get me moving.  The anticipated increase in the bug population alone was enough to have farmers screaming for a government bailout.  But this was still only a theoretical disaster.  I needed something more immediate to rationalize spending money I didn’t really have.  But the sight of robins and bluebirds was lulling me into a deeper and deeper sense of satisfaction.  There was nothing so wrong with our living conditions that I couldn’t put the addition off for another year.

My epiphany finally came like a sideswipe on the Beltway.  Musing on all my winter chores one of my favorites came to mind – doing the taxes.  (I know this is going to sound a little sick, but I actually like doing our taxes.  After talking with a few other farmers about this perversion I realized I was not the only person who took secret delight in this Byzantine exercise.  I’m sure there will be a newspaper headline soon explaining a genetic link to this phenomenon.)  Usually, the IRS owes us a bill.  (Yeah, we’re that poor.)  But this year, I knew we’d be paying our dues.  Suddenly, I had this overwhelming urge to change my name to Forbes and rant uncontrollably about flat taxes.  That’s when I knew the crisis was upon me.  I could feel myself being inexorably pulled over to the supply side.  The idea of actually cutting a check to the IRS was so nauseating that I almost changed my party affiliation then and there.  I needed a distraction.

So I got out the crow bar and began poking around the old porch.  No doubt about it – it had to go.  If I didn’t tear it down soon the carpenter ants would finish the job for me.  Dismantling the porch took about a day and a half.  Then came the first snow.  Within two weeks I had the roof and the outside sheeting on.  By the end of January I’d fashioned new windows recycled from Becky’s parents’ old house.  By mid February, as I struggled with drywall, tax deadlines became a vague rumor in the back of my mind again.

Unlike most taxpayers farmers have to cough up their fair share by March 1.  This is just the government’s way of adding insult to injury to the 1% of the population that barely makes a living feeding the other 99%.  So, in the waning hours of February (the shortest and bleakest month of the year) I labored feverishly to find loopholes in the tax code.  Of course, my name really would have to be Forbes to take advantage of any.  Finally, as March 1st loomed ever closer, I wrote a check that seemed to have way too many place holders on the left side of the decimal point.  My reluctance to part so easily with our life savings subsided as the words “penalties” and “audit” kept recurring in big, bold letters at the end of each section of Circular A, The Agricultural Tax Guide.  The thought of last year’s Senate hearing on the IRS made me wonder whether I should add an extra zero someplace, just to be on the safe side.  

As natural disasters go, paying taxes was not as emotionally wrenching as I thought it would be.  Droughts and floods, after all, have an uncompromising force to them that make the government look whimpish by comparison.  (There are no loopholes in nature.)  The diversionary tactic of spending money on renovations instead of sitting around worrying about my tax liability for two months kept me relatively sane.  I may have less pocket change than I did on New Year’s day, but my consolation is a new living room and the thought that the next major building project is a few years off.