Another Mess

WORKING ON THE FARM

Prince had our work cut out for us yesterday and we plotted our course. Last weekend, he started trying to clear all the trash that was left behind when Frank(farm tenant for forty years) moved. Prince had picked up a whole truck load of trash. He had started on the right side of the old Mayes house and worked his way unto the porch. He only got to the first door on the right when the truck became full.

We moved all the items we could from the blue truck to Prince's truck and we headed to the dump. After we unload there, we headed to Ace Hardware to get some nails to fix the tin roof that had been damage during a recent windy day. While there I bought two gallons of Watercolor Blue to paint the kitchen.

When we got back to the house, it was close to lunch time so I suggested we have lunch before we headed down on the farm. The young man at Ace had taken my paint out and put it in the truck bed, so I reached over the bed and took the paint out of the truck and into the laundry room. Maggie was interested in the new items brought in but I did not know why. Her sharp nose smelled the paint leaking from the can. I was horrified and snatched up some plastic bags and set the offending can into them. Then I had to clean up the saucer size blue paint on the floor.

Prince said "Do you think it leaked in my truck?" I was on my hands and knees cleaning up the laundry room and I told him I was not tall enough to see the bed of his truck so I did not know. The can had leaked in his truck so while I cleaned up the floor he started cleaning his truck bed. He has a rhino bed so that a good thing.

After all was cleaned, we headed back to Ace Hardware and they poured the remaining paint into a new can and mixed some more to replace the missing paint. The young man offered to clean up the truck but Prince told him he had already done so. The only thing we can figure is there is a metal loop on each side of the truck bed and the young man had hit it when loading the paint. The paint can was dented on the side.

We satisfied the gnawing hungry put our tools in the back and headed down the hill. First off, we stopped and put out some corn at the corn pile for the animals. We circled the white barn and down by the still pitiful pond. We need more rain to fill it back up from last years drought. Driving by the red barn and up through the field to the Mayes house. This old house is over one hundred years old.

Prince showed me where he had picked up the trash and said we would do a little at a time and then maybe rent a dumpster to simplify the task. He started the Massey Ferguson and let it run for awhile and we took out the wooden ladder in order for him to get up on the roof. The tin was blown up and reaching for the sky near the chimney. My job was to hold the ladder as the roof is really steep.

While Prince was nailing the tin roof down on the shed, I began the task of picking up limbs that had blown out of the big tree in front of the old house. It was a bigger job than I anticipated. Finally, I was through and while Prince continued to hammer away, I got a water and sat in the truck bed resting. I enjoyed the view of the red barn and fields. The number eight on the farm address sign had come undone on the sign on our fence and we drove up the gravel road to where it hung. Prince took his drill and put the number back in place.

Back to the farm house so we could pick buttercups for Mimi. We both got a handful plus a few pieces of the Hawthorne bush. We brought them back to the house and put them in water and Mimi had the task of arranging them. We had planned to cut up about six trees that had fallen into the pastures impeding bush hogging in a straight line. However, we were running out of daylight fast, so we went down to the tree line just above the white barn and just across the field from the corn pile. Prince cut it up in three sections and pulled it off into the woods and then he cut a small hack berry tree which was also in the way of a straight cut with the hog.

I went exploring and found a nice stash of yellow rocks. I picked up six of them and put them in the back of the truck. I had a perennial bed that could use a border. When Prince pulled the first section of the fallen tree down into the woods, he spied my stack of rocks and said there was a really good one I had left. I proceed to tell him it was over my fifteen pound limit. On his way back up the hill, he rescued the rock and put it in the truck.

The small hack berry stood erect as it was being held up by honeysuckle vines. I grabbed the lower limb and yanked. Down it came on Prince's head. He said he was stupid for standing downhill while I yanked. As he was dragging it off into the woods, I went exploring up the hill near where the tree men had cleared the electric lines.

I spied a treasure gleaming up at me at the edge of the woods, it was an eight point antler that had just been shed. I picked it up and put it behind my back and when I got near Prince, I handed him the present. He smiled that gorgeous smile of his and thought it was worth a million bucks.

The Kitty Justice is that we worked hard but we were enjoying each others company. Today will probably be even better.