I’d Rather Fix a Fence Than Fight a Website

The other day I spent far too long trying to change a credit card on a website. Not fix a fence. Not stack hay. Not wrestle a goat. Just change a number. At one point, I seriously thought I’d rather have a goat buck pee on my leg than deal with this. At least with a goat, you know exactly what just happened and why. There’s no mystery, no hidden menu, no tiny link tucked in a corner pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s unpleasant, sure—but it’s honest.

Give me a problem I can see any day. A broken fence post doesn’t hide behind three screens and a
button labeled something vague like “manage subscription.” It just stands there, leaning, waiting for me to fix it. I grab the tools, set it straight, tamp it in, and I’m done. Problem solved. No passwords required.

Now, I’ll admit there are times I don’t know how to do something that I’m not above looking it up. I’ve gone online to figure out how to stop a rooster from attacking my shoe, and I built my porch steps with the help of a YouTube video. That’s the good side of all this technology—it can teach you things you didn’t know yesterday. Although, as a bit of a side note, while I was looking up porch steps, I also somehow learned how to artificially inseminate a pig. Being a farmer, every time I hear “AI,” that’s still the first thing that comes to mind. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the tech folks are talking about.

And that’s really the difference. Technology is a tool, and a useful one at times. It can help a business run smoother, keep track of invoices, schedule jobs, and organize records. It handles the behind-the-scenes work that used to eat up hours of a day. But the customer doesn’t care how neat your bookkeeping is or how efficient your software might be. What they care about is whether you can come when something breaks and fix it.

Let’s talk about farming, for instance. You can have all the technology in the world, but at some point someone still has to show up, feed the animals, fix the fence, deliver a calf, doctor a sick goat, and deal with whatever went wrong overnight. There’s no app for that. You don’t get to reschedule chores because the weather’s bad or you’re not in the mood. The work is there, every day, and it doesn’t wait.

There’s a fellow online, Iowa Dairy Farmer, who uses robotic milking systems and can track everything from a cow’s temperature to how efficiently she chews her cud. It’s pretty amazing what technology can do. But even with all of that, when it’s time for a cow to calve and something doesn’t go as planned, it still takes a person. No robot is stepping in to handle that.

We just hired a contractor to re-side our house, and he can’t even start for three or four months. Not because he doesn’t want the work, but because he’s already buried in it and can’t find enough reliable help. Try calling a plumber, an electrician, or someone to fix your furnace in the middle of winter on short notice. You’ll find out pretty quickly how irreplaceable those jobs really are.

Mike Rowe has been saying this for years. The trades aren’t going away. They’re starving for people willing to do the work. These are jobs that don’t happen on a screen. They happen in crawl spaces, on rooftops, in barns, in mud, and in weather that doesn’t care whether you’re comfortable or not.

I have a friend who works for Asplundh. Every time there’s a storm, I say a silent prayer of gratitude for people like him. While the rest of us are inside hoping the lights stay on, they’re out there in the wind and the cold, clearing trees off power lines so we can keep the heat running—and not be digging through drawers in the dark, hoping we can find a flashlight that still works. That’s not a job you do from behind a screen. That’s a job you show up for, no matter the weather.

The truth is, there are jobs you can do from anywhere, and then there are jobs you have to show up for. And when something breaks in the real world, nobody calls an app. They call a person.

So no, I’m not too worried about AI taking over everything. It might help run the office, keep the books straight, and maybe even show you how to build a set of porch steps. But when the pipes freeze, the power goes out, or the barn door comes off its hinges, we’re still going to need people who can look at a problem, roll up their sleeves, and fix it.

In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I’ll be outside, fixing something that doesn’t require a password.

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