Pullin' Pipe

(Suggested music - International Harvester)

Bruce's parents have a grass hay farm about half an hour away from here, and since it was Labor Day, Bruce decided we needed to labor on the farm. Isn't there something twisted with that logic? No, but really, this is the only time we had to do it without having to miss all sorts of stuff.

Bruce put Libby to work picking apples, since she is too little still to help with the pipe.

The rest of us got to bring in the irrigation pipe - which we call "pullin' pipe" for short.

Peter drives Grandpa's four-wheeler with the pipe trailer behind it. He'll drive a little, then stop and wait while we bring the pipe and load it on the trailer.

Today we had three teams: Dad and Jesse, Mary and I, and Josh and Joseph.

We can pick up three rows of pipe at a time this way because Dad and Jesse do one side, Josh and Joseph the other, and Mary and I do the one right down the middle.

Jesse was a Shera today doing the pipe. Man, she is one tough chick. It's challenging to carry two pipes at the same time, but putting them on the trailer two at a time is even harder. She did it all morning with Bruce without any complaint whatsoever. She just informed me that it is not challenging, and that she and Dad did three at a time. Sheesh!

Mary has grown enough this year that she is finally tall enough to lift the pipe over the guard rails on the trailer and get the pipe on. That means she is a full time worker, and she does a great job.

Libby in pink in the hay. :)

It's a great experience to work together as a family and get this job done. I would like to say that it was all kindness and cheerfulness and hard work, but it was not. It gets a little tense sometimes, but in the end, in the overall picture, it's good.

We take a lot of breaks. After every load, we go in to Grandma and Grandpa's shed (it's more like a warehouse) and raid Grandma's freezer. She leaves all kinds of frozen food there that we can microwave and munch on. I was musing today about how she provides food for us, even when she is in another state. They don't actually live on the farm - they own 20 acres, and plan to build a house on it someday, but for now, they just live in their trailer when they come.

The farm is beautiful, and working out in the open on the farm is a different feeling than any other kind of work that I've done. I frankly quite enjoy it, and I love living in Idaho and having the chance to have these kinds of experiences with our family!