Farm Day Sunday
When a person lives on a farm, there is a LOT of work to do. One might think that it is all work that lends itself to the production and maintenance of something worthy of selling, or growing, or . . .whatever farms are supposed to do. Today I realized that the things I categorize as farm work actually sometimes have ZERO to do with the farm and it’s intent, and more to do with what Prince Farming would like to do, or what he perceives I would like to have done. I have previously referred to work as "Farm Work" only because a tractor (or other farm implement of torture) is utilized. Today is a prime example. Let me preface this post by saying that I didn’t spend huge amounts of time doing farm work. But I did get called out at regular intervals throughout the day to do said work (hold things, read and call out numbers for signal strength. . . but I’m getting ahead of myself).
The first item on the to do list was to find a way to get a TV signal. I might have mentioned in the past that we never got around to hooking up TV when we first moved to TN 5 years ago. This was not by intent or design (of mine). It just never got done. And that was fine. There’s NO TIME for TV in this town. Doesn’t matter how small it is, and how lazy a person thinks small town living might be. There is really no time. The reason for this sudden burst of industry in order to get TV is . . . the OLYMPICS. I love watching the Olympics. Now you have to wonder where I’ve been for 5 years. I thought about it last night. How is it that I’ve lived for 5 years and not seen any Olympics. Did I miss the memo? Do I have amnesia? Probably it’s a conspiracy. I honestly don’t know anything about the last 2 (or three?) Olympic Games. Which is terrible. I started early this time – logged on to www.nbcolympics.com and watched swimming and gymnastics trials. And diving. And watched several other sporting events – BMX being the newest Olympic event. And I decided that since I didn’t have TV, computer would work out just fine. On demand (just the way I live). Prince Farming caught the bug early too. We decided that for his July birthday we’d get a new TV so we could watch the Olympics on it. Obviously that didn’t happen – but that will be the topic of another post on another day (if I remember it for that long – more likely I’ll read this and wonder "Why didn’t we go ahead and get that TV? What was more important? What was I referring to that would be blog-worthy?")
While I was on my trip, Prince Farming did some research and ordered an antennae (internet shopping). Then on Friday (that wonderful 08-08-08 day), we ran down to the big city and he purchased some sort of digital scanner/tuning thingy box (he knows about all this stuff, which totally blows me away – HOW does he know?)
So today was the day to get it all figured out. We put the antenna up on the electric post, and got a quality reading of 60% on 4 channels (none of which were NBC).
We live on the side of a mountain, so Prince Farming decided that if part way up is 60%, all the way up would be better. So we took DOWN the antenna and he went down to the barn and brought up a 16 foot 6" x 6" post. He attached the antenna to that and we hoisted it (with the help of the tractor) up against the electric post. There is no picture of this part – I am adding this photo to show how bloody tall that 16′ post was – it was equal to to top of this electrical post – and then the antenna went above that. I am not a fan of heights. I am not a fan of watching other people at heights. Except safely from my sofa when I’m watching the Olympics.
Then I had to haul him up to a level where he could adjust it on the tractor forks (a tractor is a wonderful thing). Guess what? The quality went way down – to like 20%. Who knew!??! Very disappointing. After we came in to eat (corn on the cob), we went back out and took that stupid 16′ beam down again (much easier taking it down than putting it up). And reattached the antenna to the original post. Back to better reception – maybe even 70% for some reason – including NBC. YIPPEE!!!!
After the whole crazy nonsense of putting up the antenna (how is that related to farm work again? - oh yes. We used a tractor. So it qualifies) we had to put in some fence posts we had dragged out. We dragged them out so Prince Farming could fix a drainage issue we had at the entrance to the farm. This truly does qualify as farm work. 1) we used a tractor, and 2) it will ultimately help to keep the cows in the field and off the railroad tracks (and neighbors hay fields) when we finish the job.
We pulled it out as carefully as we could, so as not to have to reconstruct the whole thing. Before today, this fence was lying on the road. Today we tried to put it in as gently as we could. I was in charge of digging the holes.
I did them all by myself. Well, me and JD. We work well together.
Prince Farming measured and put his foot right where the hole needed to be, and I carefully avoided his foot and drilled – I’m SO grateful for post-hole diggers and for farmers next door who own post-hold diggers so we can borrow them (it).
Now Prince Farming just needs to nail up the rest of those boards and we’ll be good to go. Good to go on to fixing the rest of the exterior fencing that STILL needs to be up. It won’t be a board fence, though. Barbed wire is looking pretty good. That’s another farm day.
Tags: Fencing, NBC, Olympics, post hole digger, Post holes, TV
August 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Hilarious! Is it supposed to be? I love the pole story.
We haven’t watched TV since we moved here 6 years ago, including Olympics. I actually did watch a couple hours of Hurrican Katrina when I was recovering from surgery, but couldn’t take it so quit watching. ANYWAY, we watched Olympics last night! I got too sleepy and couldn’t stay up for all of it. But we’re planning on watching it again tonight. I used to love them. I still do if I’m watching them, but just don’t have the gumption to really make a plan to do it.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:05 am
The harder you laugh, the higher my level of crisis. Glad to be one of your entertainers. Actually – I don’t think crisis is my state. I am enjoying the olympics – just in short snatches.