My grandfather use to say, “Any fool can break an ax handle”. Well today we did it twice. Those involved in the actual breaking of said handles shall remain nameless as they were indeed working at their level best at the time and no, it wasn’t me. We tend to break a fair amount of ‘stuff’ around here. Just ask my loving spouse, who claims half his day is spent repairing the tools we farm-neophytes use. We seem to be on the low-end of the learning curve. What we lack in ability, however, we do make up for with enthusiasm and a sense of accomplishment at the smallest things, which is a fairly endearing quality.
Cleaning out the pasture of dead trees, tree limbs and debris has long been on the to-do list and with Number One son here, now seemed like a good time to make a start. Knocking ‘stuff’ down is his all time favorite thing to do, but running the chain saw and cutting stuff up runs a close second, believe me, we are blessed! With the chain saw running, I went off to procure more ax handles, even upgrading to a fancy new sledge-hammer with a fiberglass handle, which is supposed to be harder to break. (Oh, be still my soul, who knew they made such cool stuff.) At my return the work force was found to be fishing at the pond, but only because they’d worked the chain saw into over heating.
Our little work crew quickly jumped into see how well the new sledge-hammer and axes worked. The best part of the day was watching the English teen learn how to swing an ax, cut the wood, overcome the learning curve, have pride at the accomplishment and at the end of the day have all his fingers and toes still intact. Perhaps Number One son did not fall far from the tree, as I was quite eager to whack up those logs into tidy wood burning sized wedges as well. I’m sure it will get ‘old’, but secretly, I’m sort of looking forward to more log whacking again today.
The after dinner game of croquet was a slow event, not because we were sore from log splitting, (which I was), but because it was declared a one-armed game. The teen’s boyfriend broke his collar-bone and has one arm in a sling, so to be fair we all assumed the same handicap. Let me tell you, croquet is a two armed sport. Still at the end of the day, the old folks were last standing, with my loving spouse declared the winner. A nice moment for him, as today he’ll fix all the stuff we break.
I do so enjoy reading your blogs because they often make me laugh out loud. You are such “good medicine”. Is that the dog run in the background? When I last saw it, there were a fair amount of “plants” inside the fence. Just wondering about where on the farm this was taken.
The dog run became my eyesore. We took the John Deere in and mowed down the wind-break weed filled area. All the wood needing to be split is behind the wood shed.
Thanks, friend!