It was a workout day at the farm. With snow on the way, I decided I needed to do some work on the drive and parking lot, cold patching cracks and holes. For me, that means using a heavy spud bar to dig out and square off holes in the black top, then filling with cold patch and using a heavy tamper to flatten the fill. In all, it gives the arms and shoulders a decent workout. As I was pounding away, I noticed a huge trailer loaded with hay driving towards the farm. I had a delivery due tomorrow, so it wasn’t for me. Then it pulled in our drive.
“You guys are a day early and my arms are tired. Take that stuff back,” I said when they pulled up next to me.
“Yeah...well...Justin can help us,” Eli shot back.
“He retired. I’m on my own,” I said.
Justin is 33 and he didn’t retire, but he did take another job so I was on my own. I headed for the loft and moved around 30 bales to make way for the new stuff before acknowledging the elevator they were trying to send bales up to me. It went quickly with the light, intellectual banter you can get only from two guys who cut, store and deliver hay for a living. Good, old farm boys who think I’m a real city slicker. I am, of course.
I drove from the farm to Mimi’s to see if I could get the 200-pound leaf blower out of the Jeep and put to good use blowing around her remaining leaves. I managed to wrestle it to the ground and after starting it up, found it rather useless. The winds were blowing and it seemed I was just getting the leaves in the air to be blown twenty feet before they settled mockingly to the ground again. Bastards.
I pulled out the rake and tarp and spent the next 90 minutes fighting the wind in an effort to make small, manageable leaf piles. Once done, I had even more fun trying to keep the tarp on the ground long enough to actually get leaves on top of it. I was determined though, and finally completed the front lawn. Two heavy tarp drags the 100 yards uphill into the woods completed the exhausting work. When I climbed into the Jeep for the ride home, I was pretty sure it would be to collapse on the couch.
And then I remembered Copper was in my house and would need some serious activity and attention. I fed her and Dakota, took them out to play and then spent the rest of the evening trying to convince her that I’d just brought her in and she didn’t need to walk back and forth from the back door to my perch on the sofa asking for more attention.
My stomach continued to feel bloated and upset and so I passed on dinner and moved directly to dessert. I was pretty sure I’d read somewhere that Breyer’s vanilla ice cream smothered in peanut butter and topped with maple syrup was an antidote to the h-pylori bacteria. I was determined to discover if this was true. It turned out not to be, but I’m a thrill seeking kind of guy.
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