F&F Day 19: Fire Breaks and Ditch Work

Day two at John and Sue’s place provided all the activity I needed and time to relax as well.  As I noted yesterday, bush hogging was the primary activity for this morning and I was like a kid with a new Tonka toy driving that tractor, dragging the bush hog and even learning to use the grabber thingy (that’s as technical as I get with farm equipment) on the front of the tractor.  Following the last hurricane, there were a couple of trees down on the fire breaks I was mowing and I had to move the logs off the road.  Up, down, forward, back, down, up, back, forward, grab, move, dump the log in the woods.  Lot’s of fun for a city boy.  After about two hours of bush hogging and planting, we headed back to the house for a little lunch and a rejuvenating nap.

More work in the afternoon as we worked on a ditch and culvert that had been washing out for several years and was beginning to encroach on the entrance road to an area where John grows trees and hunts.  It wasn’t a big job, but it needed to be done before the erosion got worse, so we both felt as though we had accomplished something with our afternoon.

John finishes up the ditch/culvert repair after driving about six stakes into the ground, adding some rock and about 300 lbs of concrete.  That ought to stabilize it for a few years.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sue tended to her livestock, making sure that Aragon and Ruger stayed cool in the late fall heat and had plenty of hay in their clean stalls.

We showered, grabbed a couple of books and settled down to read for an hour or so before dinner, but, work for the day wasn’t done.  A friend of John’s called and said he could come pick up a sprayer attachment for his tractor and twenty, 60-pound bags of corn, so we hooked up the trailer, drove over and loaded up what he had.  Then finally the work day was over.

I really love coming to John and Sue’s retirement place in South Carolina.  The work isn’t hard (even at my advanced age) but it’s rewarding, and time spent with John and Sue is always good.

Tomorrow morning early I’m headed back to Maggie Valley.   I’ve been gone three weeks and covered nearly 4,000 miles.  I’m ready to see the mountains and Marilyn again.