Water Buffalo Farm Work

Water Buffalo Farm Work

In the summer of 1976, I went to work at a water buffalo farm in Northern California. This was not a job I had sought out. It was arranged by my mother's boyfriend, who had taken charge of me to teach me some discipline and responsibility. This is not an unusual thing for an Asian mother to do.

Also Read: Raising Water Buffalo For Profits >>>

I didn't like working on the farm. It was hard work, and it specifically involved handling things (pigs, horses, water buffaloes) that scared me. I had never done anything like this before, and what little I knew about it came from books and television, which told me that you could get kicked in the head by a horse or gored in the gut by a water buffalo.

The owner of the farm was named Richard, but everyone called him Red because he had red hair. He was in his late twenties when I first met him - at least twenty years older than me - but he spoke to me as if we were peers. He didn't talk down to me or try to inspire me with lectures about the value of hard work; he just asked if I wanted to help him with whatever needed doing on the farm that day and gave me time to decide on my own. 

Also Read: How To Start A Water Buffalo Farm >>>

The best time for working on your own projects is when you are young, and I mean really young.

I was lucky to have a fairly large amount of spare time before I was 8 years old. And during those years, there were two things I really had fun doing: making water buffalo farms, and programming computers.