fitzw | A challenge, a challenge!

Well, accidentally, anyway.

I'm still suffering from a congested cough, left over from the illness that

helwen and I suffered from a couple of weeks ago, so my stamina is down. Stomach muscles are tired, as well as rib and back muscles.

Nevertheless, there was a hay wagon in the barn that needed to be loaded with small bales from the hay mows on the west side, for delivery later this week to a horse farm in a neighboring town. The wagon holds about 180 bales with the front gate closed; with the front gate down, it can hold 210 bales. We compromise and normally load it with about 200 bales at a time.

So, I had started loading the wagon (someone else had put in about 20 bales already), and my nephew C, who was in the barn with his friend and three children, decided that he should help me load the wagon. Believe me, I definitely appreciated it.

First, the wagon was about a foot too far forward, and the side gate couldn't be opened because a post was in the way. So, with 20 or so bales already on the wagon, C and I managed to push-pull it a little ways back, so that the side gate could open and the front gate was easier to reach from the mow.

Then we started loading the wagon. I would pick up bales from the mow and carry them to a wide plank resting on the railing at the edge of the mow and on the edge of the wagon and slide them to C, who would pick them up and stack them in the wagon. The kids would alternate between trying to help (not easy with these bales), climbing all over the stacked bales in the wagon, and going to the front of the barn to swings hanging from a beam, where they would be pushed by C's friend.

At one point, I decided that I needed to tease C a little bit, telling him and his friend that he had accidentally accepted my challenge. See, I'm 50 years old (!), and Curtis is turning 30 at the end of the month. So, he couldn't reasonably quit stacking the bales until I quit loading them onto the wagon from the mow.

Did I mention that the mow started at the same level as the wagon, but as time progressed, it became lower than the wagon, and that I had to climb rows of bales that I had left as steps up to the level of the plank as I picked up more and more bales?

Didn't think so.

C managed to get longer and longer breaks at the end, because it was taking me longer to bring the bales up to the wagon, what with climbing the "steps" and carrying the bales from farther away from the wagon.

I have no idea how long it took, but we got it done; C had accepted the challenge and stayed and helped until it was done. The hay will be delivered by my brother R and his son, probably on Wednesday.

And I'm still coughing. ;-)