I had three things I wanted to get done this week: mow the backyard, wash the pickup and clean out my pond. I thought Thursday was the day I'd get those things accomplished--wrong! My new mower was at R's, and he hadn't had time to bring it back over. He was busy hauling water for M who was spraying so he asked if I would come to his house with the pickup and he'd load the mower into the trailer and I could bring it home. On the way, I was supposed to stop in Opheim and pick up chemical at the co-op station. I did that and had a little chat with my brother who works there. M thought it was going to get too hot so he was just going to finish spraying off the load he had on and then we'd come back home together. He thought I could hang out with my Mom and wait for him. No problem. I had a nice lunch with Mom and then M called and said he was stuck with the sprayer. Actually, what he said was "my ass end fell in". There was a tractor where I was so he asked if I could air up the tire (it's perpetually flat) and bring a chain and come down to him. I went to start the tractor, and it was dead and R was off getting water so I went and got M. We had to do a little hunting to find jumper cables, and by the time we got the tractor started R was back so he took the tractor to the field.
M was trying to cross a grass coulee when the back wheels sunk while the front wheels were high and dry. The wheels on the sprayer are huge, 8 feet tall maybe, and were in the ground halfway up the hub, so maybe 4 feet. They hooked up the chain and tried to pull it out, but it was just churning up more mud. After several tries and a lot of cursing and hair pulling, we went to an old home site and found some old wood posts and put them in the holes to try to keep the sprayer from sinking any further and maybe to gain some traction. They tried pulling again to no avail, so off we went to get a bigger tractor. They hooked that tractor to the chain and tried to pull and the chain broke. They tied a knot in the chain and it held, but the sprayer still would not come out. M was a bit concerned that they were putting too much stress on the sprayer. I was getting sick to my stomach just thinking that a $100,000+ piece of machinery was going to be ruined. I'm pretty sure M was feeling it, too, especially when he mentioned that a friend once had to use a crane to get his sprayer out of a wet spot! We finally decided that we were going to have to drop the load, 800 gallons of water plus chemical. That would lighten the load by 6400 pounds. The cost of the wasted chemical would be negligible compared to the cost of a ruined sprayer. A couple more pulls and out it came--my prayers were answered!!
I thought we'd be done for the night since it was about 7:30 but no, the wind was right so M could spray next to the neighbor's crop so he sprayed off one more load while R and I hooked up the trailer and loaded the mower. We got home about 10 pm so my day was shot. I did get to visit with my mom and had some time to pull weeds and grass from my dad's grave site, so it wasn't a totally wasted day. I told M that I like to hear about the big problems after they are solved and not be in the middle of it. He doesn't want to tell J and C about the incident, but they were wondering why he didn't finish the spraying that day. Someone will eventually spill the beans.
I had to work yesterday and then get my nails done and then had supper at my in-laws to visit with some relatives from Canada. They got to hear the story and M told them about my blog. I told them that I didn't know my life was so interesting until I started this. Now it seems it's just something every day!
I wanted to go to the lake today, but it was cool and rainy this morning so we didn't go. Instead, we moved a bunch of cows and calves to a different pasture with 4-wheelers. We thought it would be a good day to do it since it was cool. We probably put on 20 miles after checking gates and fences and making sure we had both bulls.
This afternoon I finally got to mowing and got the backyard done. Then I cleaned my pond. M had gone to check some other cows, and when he came back he started washing the pickup. We thought about going out tonight, but we both are now thinking the couch and a movie is a better idea.
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