My neighbor's son, home from college for the summer, is doing lotsa
work for me in the yard/barn. I didn't know this until I noticed the
barn was all cleaned out, including the removal of 18 " of hay/manure
from 10 yrs ago, and a hundred bales of hay from the loft, just as old.
He's also building a fence for my horse, rototilling, and knocking down
a decrepit old playhouse. I asked him to keep track of the hours he was
spending, so I can pay him a fair wage (he apparently was going to do
the barn out of the goodness of his heart). Neither of us knows what a
fair hourly rate is, however. What should I pay him? (His younger brother
gets $30 when he mows my lawn, for those of you who know the size of my
lawn, and would like a reference point.)

4 responses total.

How much could he make elsewhere?  I'd say somewhere between $5 and $10
per hour.

  If he is good, $10/hr isn't bad at all.  Landscape places charge upwards
of that, and they usually aren't so great.

You might divide that $30 by the number of hours he spends on the job and 
call that your base rate...between $5 and $10 does sound about right, tho.

Except that riding around on a tractor mower is a lot easier than the
work the other brother is going to do.
I also was thinking $6 or up.

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