on the halves
There are three pastures that get cut for hay here, the East Pasture, the Lower Pasture, and the North Pasture. I don’t have the equipment to do that, but Ronnie does. He has either cut hay or had cattle here for decades.
Usually in June he shows up with his cousin Eli and daughter Ronette and they cut the hay, let it dry, and then bale it into rolls. Then, if summer cooperates, they do it again in September.
My part in this is to gather the rolls together in groups once they are baled using a spear on my tractor.
Come winter, Ronnie wants his hay, so he pays me a little for it.
We do the following routine of misunderstanding every year. And every year I don’t do math the same way Ronnie does math, even though we end up with the same answer, causing us both to stumble a minute.
Our arrangement is “on the halves.”
Ronnie provides equipment, fuel, and time to cut and bale the hay. I don’t do anything except watch it grow.
“On the halves” means that he charges me half the value of the hay for his work. But I don’t want the hay. He does. I don’t actually pay him anything in cash for his work.
However, this all gets equaled out when he pays me for the rolls.
That’s where we have different approaches to math.
This week he asked what I wanted for the hay. I want him to get a deal, and I like easy math, so I told him ten dollars per roll. This is a bargain.
“I’ve been paying you twenty in years past,” he said. And my confusion starts.
Okay, fine. Pay me twenty. Hay is high right now, and that’s more than I really wanted.
There were 56 rolls.
Ronnie took his checkbook from his shirt pocket, signed it, and handed it to Ronette to have her finish filling it out. Ronette and I walked to the hood of their Ford while Ronnie went about loading hay on the trailer. The truck shook as Ronnie placed rolls on the trailer.
All I wanted was ten dollars per roll. In my mind that is $560. But Ronnie had offered twenty. On the halves.
Ronette took out her calculator, divided 56 rolls by two, and then multiplied that by twenty.
She filled out a check for $560. What I initially wanted.
But whereas I had multiplied 56 rolls by my $10, they had put the value of the rolls at $20, halved the number of rolls, and paid me $20, our agreed upon price per roll, times 28 rolls.
$560.
When I asked for clarification, they looked at me as if I didn’t understand basic math. I do; it’s just that mine is even more basic.
Why go through the extra step?
Because it allows them to put a dollar figure, at least in theory, on their work. It’s not just that I wanted $10 per roll of hay sitting in my field. By doing the math their way they know that they were being compensated $10 per roll to do the work and were also buying those rolls for $10.
Half of them. Times two.