SOLUTIONS.

I have always enjoyed puzzles and riddles, so naturally farming was a good choice. There is never not a problem that needs solving around the farm. However, these problems aren't always small. I'm good for tying hay string around a stick to hold something in place, but when it comes to bigger problems like, say, how to get the area around our house to be less muddy, it's a little harder. And I'll break down why.Every big problem goes something like this: The first action we need to take is usually relatively simple. Most of the time we can––with enough work––do it ourselves. The mud for instance. I need to dig a few trenches and lay drainage tile. Okay, I can to that. Then we need to pay somebody a bunch of money to come spread one inch gravel all over our driveway. And voila––no more mud.You see what happened there? The "bunch of money" part of the equation stops the project flat. But that doesn't happen when you're trying to solve the NPR Weekend Edition Puzzle with Will Shortz. It doesn't happen when you're just trying to figure out how to fix the handle on your splitting maul. It happens when you're trying to do something big, and unfortunately, most of what need right now is big.But what I'm trying to keep in mind is that "big" doesn't mean it can't still be solved in a small way. We just have to be more creative. Perhaps scaling up the solutions, and thinking long term, is the next step to becoming a good problem solver. I suppose, with the mud to continue with that example, we could buy a couple buckets full of gravel every time we go into town and start making a pile. This would spread the cost out and eliminate the transportation fee. We go into town some forty times a year anyway, which means that by next winter, with enough diligence, we could have roughly a ton of gravel to work with and spread over the driveway. Now is that realistic? Not really. It assumes that we're going to a) remember the buckets, b) have the time, c) have the car space, or d) remember to pick up the gravel. But I will say that coming up with solutions like this, even in the hypothetical, makes all problems seem slightly less daunting. What we'll likely do to solve the mud is, well, nothing for a few more years anyway, so why not pick up a few buckets when we remember? At very worst, even if we're able to one day afford to pay someone to haul it, we'll just have an extra gravel pile around the house––not the worst thing in the world. To me, the worst thing is not trying to solve the problem at all.- Jesse.