To supplement our newly-planted hay fields and ensure both a sellable farm product and food for our own animals, we decided to pick up another 10-acre hay field.
Well, the honest truth is, a buddy of Erik had a 10 acre field that had been leased-out by a farmer. Last year the farmer had planted hay and promptly retied this year, leaving the field uncut.
After quickly looking the field over, we decided it would be an excellent idea to lease the field.
Leasing a field means driving all your hay equipment down . . . and back again.
Luckily, the field was a 10 minute drive by car from the house . . . or a 30 minute drive by tractor! Easily do-able.
Now, it’s not at all uncommon for tractors to be driving equipment down the roads around here. In fact, I passed several others going the opposite direction.
Its IS, however, not common to see a GIRL driving a tractor with equipment down the road, and I certainly received some startled looks, and a few paused to pull-out their camera phones.
On one such unfortunate trip, I was running late getting to the field and Erik offered to get Earen from preschool and meet me at the field. He’d brought along lunch, so after he left I sat Earen down in the shade of a bush with his lunch and told him I’d stop at every lap to see if he was done and ready to sit with me.
We don’t have a cab tractor, so Earen has to sit behind me in the seat, which makes it impossible to eat.
It took me maybe 15 minutes to complete the first lap, but as I circled closer I could see something was amiss. Earen appeared to be crying, and he was standing up . . . with his pants down.
I quickly parked the tractor and ran over thinking he must have to pee and didn’t know if he was allowed to pee in the field.
And then with horror, I realized how wrong I was.
(I’m going to do my best to NOT make this too graphic)
He had to go #2, and had already attempted to do so. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do it correctly and some of it landed down his pants and a good portion sat still attached to his back end.
I stood there crying, feeling bad for the poor little guy and feeling quite helpless since I had no toilet paper or tissues, and Wendy’s had not put any napkins in the bag. I knew very well I’d be laughing about it all later that day, but at the moment, I was stuck. Even the leaves on the trees were too high to reach. I calmed myself back down and forced myself to calmly evaluate the situation. There had to be SOMETHING.
A grapevine on the back of the bush had a few promising leaves, and looking at the bag I figured tearing off sections might work for toilet paper.
With the help of both, I managed to clean both the little guy up AND his pants, which actually came out pretty darn good.
We then had a discussion on how to properly poop in the weeds.
And, since this IS the start of summer, I think I need to make sure to keep a pack of wet wipes on the tractor.
Just in case.
This website is so awesome. I just found it. You all do a great job.