Somebody Close The Gate

"There's never a dull moment around you, mom," my son and daughter have said. Yesterday my sister-in-law was saying the same thing. She had come to stay with me on my tiny ranch where I am early-retired but now working harder than ever. There was a snow storm coming in and I wanted to get some large bales of hay transferred out of the stack yard onto my trailer in case I was unable to access the stack yard due to snow drifts. I had blown a head-gasket on my little tractor a few weeks back. It was still moving, but had lost over half it's power. Since I can't afford to get it fixed, I'll just have to work with it. I took it to the stack yard and speared an 800 pound bale of hay, then discovered I could not back out of the stack yard. There was just enough snow that the drive wheels would just spin. Luckily, there was still room in the stack yard to get in with a pickup to load hay with a pitch fork. That's what we did. I told Connie we could leave it until the next day when my brother was supposed to be coming. He could help me retrieve it, or maybe the ground would be frozen enough to give the tires enough traction to move it. Freezing drizzle had already started when we emerged from the house the next morning. We went straight to the stack yard but the tractor still wouldn't move. Load hay by hand, feed all critters quickly as it starts to snow. Brother Bill decides not to come because of the weather, and we decide Connie had better get going or she would be spending Christmas with me. Connie headed out, got 20 miles away, but was having trouble driving with limited visibility, would have come back, but they closed the road behind her. Never a dull moment...