Bringing In The Equipment For Winter And Grumblings from Mary Cat

Today Jim and I went out to the field to bring in the equipment with the plan of towing in the baler, rake and mower to Quinn's.

The work is done for the season, and the equipment will be stored by Jim's cousin, Frank at his farm. Unfortunately, we ended up only getting the baler and rake in for the winter, because as usual we had a time consuming, frustrating break down.

In my opinion my husband has the patience of a saint for dealing with old equipment.

I, on the other hand am so glad that we managed to get the two biggest, most cumbersome, antiquated, loathsome, wretched, ratty, vile, pieces ever known to man in from the field and deposited at Quinn's farm with only a small tear in my back muscle. This was accomplished by our extremely hard work, and Jim's ingenuity. Bless his big golden heart. So, never mind my rant. As you can see, I am not made of the same strong stuff as him.

Jim feels set backs are all in the game. I mildly asked him if we might be replacing the rake next year, the one with a large crack in the bushing above the trailing wheel which would not turn to allow the angle to set the pin in the socket so it would trail correctly behind the truck. Mmm-mm, No, Probably not. He thought all of that was small stuff as we strained and struggled and jacked the damned thing up and struggled more to no avail.

Finally, as I was holding the monstrosity forward as Jim battered away at it with a hammer, I felt a tearing sensation in my back. Jim had to stop hammering from time to time to catch his breath, but the socket was inching toward the pin. Finally the pin was in the socket, and we were able to tow the monster rake. This time with back aches and head aches, we decided to take the rake in to Quinn's farm and then head for Mobridge.

There we were, two old fogies looking out the truck window admiring the scenery and thanking the Good Lord for another perfect day, as we once again viewed the harvests and the huge waters of the Oahe. I would save my grumbling and whining for this blog.

Tomorrow the plan is to go back out with a lunch and coffee. First we will pick wild plums. Next is our days work, which will be picking sheep bones and rocks from the land. There is a lot of bones and a lot of acreage so it may take more than a day. In fact, I can't really estimate how long it will take to clean it all up.

We do know that we do not want sheep bones baled in our hay again.

Later, we may get together with our neighbor at the Elk Rank to see if he would like some of our rocks for a culvert on their land.

The last thing on our to do list is to bring our mower in to Frank's. That leaves only our tractor and we will leave that out there for any work left to do before we leave for the winter.

Pray for strength and patience, Mary Cat. We are making progress.

Update: We did pick wild plums that day, enough to can wonderful sweet plum jam. Not sure if I'll do that again because pitting the small plums was time consuming, but at least I know how to do it. Maybe someone can teach me some pitting shortcuts along the way.