"Kids would give their right arm to be able to ride these horses," - My dad, explaining to my brother and I that we loved horses.

Need a side hustle idea?  How about rock picking?

I grew up in a small town in Northwest Montana.  I was lucky enough to live on the edge of a 45-acre meadow and be in a family that owned several horses.  It was, and still is, an idyllic place to have yourself a childhood.  All 9-year-old girls love horses. Unfortunately for my brother and I, neither of us were ever 9-year-old girls.

We didn’t really like horses. Mostly because horses equated to hours of involuntary labor.  The juice was not worth the squeeze, as it were.

It’s worth noting that neither myself nor my brother ever asked to own horses.  My dad is the horse person in the family.  This was not a Christmas present we begged for.  We just had them because my dad liked them.  Our family did not run under democratic law.

My father taught us kids the value of hard work.

I will always be thankful for the way he instilled a hard work ethic into our lives.   Once I was old enough to stand on my own two feet for more than 30-seconds without falling I was old enough to be put to work.

The best form of work for any growing boys, with no real labor needing done, was to send them out into a field literally filled with rocks and tell them, without laughing, to pick up all the rocks and put them in a pile so the horses wouldn’t trip.

"Go out there and pick those rocks like you're killing snakes," Dad.
*Blank stares between my brother and I*
"Wait are there snakes out there?" My brother.
"No, there's no snakes.  Well there might be some.  Just pick up the rocks LIKE you're killing snakes.  You probably won't have to actually kill any snakes though," Dad.
"Can you please say words that mean things?" Me
"Yeah, dad.  Even for you this is confusing," My brother.
"Just go outside and pick rocks until the meadow is clean.  Should take 4-5 hours," Dad circa 1991.

My dad was very inventive and creative with a number of never-ending tasks for us to do, all of which he estimated should take 4-5 hours if we really hustle.  One such activity was picking up all the fist sized rocks out of the 45-acre meadow.  This was done so that the horses wouldn’t accidentally trip on them.

Hot Fact: If a horse gets within 10 feet of a fist sized rock they immediately roll at least one ankle, possible more.

It was never clearly laid out whose fist we would be using to measure said rocks.  It was just kind of assumed we all had the same sized fist.  Looking back, some clarity would have been nice since there are approximately 74,000,000 rocks the size of a 5-year-olds fist, or bigger, in a given 45-acre piece of land.  Our land was no exception.

We were paid handsomely for this forced labor: a penny a rock.  That was the mantra.  It didn’t matter if the rock was the size of a child’s hand or the size of my dad’s 1980s station wagon.  A penny a rock.  It also didn’t matter if the year was 1991, roughly the year we started the project, or 2005, the year I finally moved away. A penny a rock was the reward.

My dad is a staunch Republican and doesn’t believe in inflation.

“You didn’t pick 975 rocks…”

I remember one glorious day when my dad decided it was high time to drag the gravel road.  If you don’t know what that is it’s probably because it’s not a real thing.  In our lives it was when your dad drags an enormous metal grate behind his truck along the road in hopes of kicking up roughly 47,000 rocks. The idea is, once those are removed, it will make for a smoother road. He did this every once in a while.  Usually when he felt either he, or we, were bored.

My brother is 5 years older than I am and had decided rock picking was not in his best interest long before I did.  He HAD to be outside picking rocks but there was no set rule for how many rocks per hour he had to pick.

My dad had just grated the gravel road until it was littered with fresh rocks for us to harvest.  We stayed out for a few hours that morning until lunch time.  I picked up 975 rocks.  My brother, picked up 25 rocks.  Being the kind older brother that he was, he gave me his 25 rocks so I could get an even $10 for my effort as long as I agreed to split the money with him.  Just kidding, he just gave me his 25 rocks.

The Final Tally…

Beaming with pride, I reported that I picked up 975 rocks and Luke gave me his 25 for an even 1000 rocks.  Mind you, this was for roughly 4 hours of labor.

“You did not pick up 975 rocks…”  My father was skeptical.

Luckily my brother stood up for me so I was eventually awarded the $10 but it took some real convincing.

Sure it took several hours of work but that $10 was mine to keep.  The gravy train didn’t stop there either.  Over the next decade or so we spent countless hours aimlessly meandering around our meadow looking for rocks.  I bet we each made over $39 in just rock picking fees alone.

Conclusion:

We never did catch the horse riding bug.  My dad still owns horses and rides them in that very same meadow.  Today’s horses are a lot better at avoiding rolling their ankles though because I don’t think we ever did get all the rocks.  Horses in the 90s were so clumsy.

Overall, it was a great experience.  I mean, overall it was a learning experience.  It taught us kids to have a strong work ethic, or at least that we wanted to avoid manual labor when we got older.  It also taught us to never be bored around dad.  We played long drawn out games of hide and seek with him over those summer days because we knew if he spotted us there was a great chance we would be given the opportunity to earn a few bucks picking rocks.

My dad was great at teaching kids the value of not looking bored.  He wasn’t great at estimating though, because that 4-5 hour project took over 17 years and we never actually finished.  To our credit though, to this day no horse has ever rolled an ankle in that field.

Rock picking- The Original Side Hustle

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