preparing for Ohio

11/29/09 Sunday
Preparations for my trip to Ohio are high on the list. Reassuring Cherie is a big part of that. She caught some sales and bought clothes for me to wear up there and made the strawberry shortcake she knows I love last night. Sure wish I could take her with me but she can’t get off work. So I want to make sure she’s as comfortable as possible while I’m gone and that everything’s taken care of. At least everything I can do. To that end I’ll cut and split a log from our mulberry tree that I cut down two years ago. Much of the firewood we have for this winter was given to us but is old and partly rotted. It burns good but still has some bugs in it and some of the pieces are pretty big and hard to handle. I got a lot of wood from Midland that is still not fully dried and seasoned so am saving it for the end of the year. The mulberry wood is seasoned and I’ll cut it into pieces that are easier for Cherie to handle. Tomorrow I’ll make a run to the landfill where I’ll dump the garbage and get rid of lots of other stuff that’s been accumulating.

Last night I was out on the tractor with a flashlight trying to see where I was going as rushed to finish covering the rye seed. That didn’t work out. The flashlight wasn’t strong enough for me to see where I’d already passed and needed to go so I guessed a lot and just zig zagged to cover as much as I could. Went out this morning after the sun came up to see how I did. Not too bad but missed some spots. Running this tractor beats me up and then frustrates me. It will run well until it gets hot and then quit so I must let it cool off to start up again. Add to that things like the power steering doesn’t work, reverse quits working once it warms up, the gas tank leaks so I only put a gallon or two in at a time, thus it runs out of gas regularly so I must carry the gas out to were it stopped, and that I must press so hard on the accelerator that my leg wears out you can see how physically demanding it can be. But despite that the tractor is a blessing and makes work much easier. I was reminded of that when I pulled the seed broadcaster by hand to sow rye in plots too small for the tractor to go. Didn’t take long for me to get out of breath. Hard to believe I did the whole five acres by hand before.