Backhoes

Spending most of my life in an area known for droughts, I was unprepared for living where the water table is high.  Our pasture is full of green grass and doesn’t need irrigating! Unheard of.  We even had a spring come up behind the barn.  It was getting boggy out there with water running into the shed earmarked for Pat’s workshop.  If we didn’t do something soon, we were destined to turn into a swamp.

Have you ever wondered what it is with little boys, big boys, men and machinery.  Backhoes especially bring a gleam to their eye.  Yep, we needed one.  If I wasn’t worried about going underwater, I could  have waited and called this digging opportunity my son Corey’s birthday present and it would have been a hit!  Renting a backhoe is a bit like renting a taxi cab, they charge you by how long you run the meter.  We were set for 8 hours.  “We’ll never use that much time”, Pat assured me.  All we needed to do was dig a ditch through the ‘bog’ to run the water back to the irrigation channel, pull a few fence posts and maybe dig out a few stumps.  How could that possibly take 8 hours?

The first thing I learned is that I am extremely patient.  I waited 4 hours for my turn!  Now that is love honey!  I also learned that ripping out fence posts is much more fun than digging a ditch, you can get whiplash from a backhoe and Corey & Pat only let me drive it because it was so darn cold they had to go inside to thaw out.  Our favorite local, Jacob, young enough to appreciate a free meal had no interest in coming over for pizza, but changed his mind in a nano-second when he learned there was a backhoe to drive, dig, work, play, whatever.  Since it stays light out until past 9pm, there was more ‘working’ after dinner with son Corey out ripping down dead tree branches until the hydraulic line broke.  As he said, “I know I was ‘working’, but I was having so much fun it felt like I should be in trouble.”

To all my other sons, brothers, and men friends who have not yet visited the farm, I’m sorry to say that the ditch is working great and the bog is gone.  No need to rent another backhoe any time soon.  Oh, and the rental company called, we owe them for another 2 hours!