Beech Tree News Network

Timing Is Nothing: Last Wednesday, I stood in the mud, holding an umbrella over my already-soaked body, watching my husband, Garey, lower a backhoe bucket over a wall of dirt, just above a concrete footer.  I was his extra pair of eyeballs.  That’s what he said I was anyway.  

Garey has been revamping an old block cistern into a new storm cellar.  I assumed he would simply dig out dirt from the back wall, slope it a bit then cut an opening in the existing block and frame it with a door.  I should have known better.  There were footers to pour and grade to shoot and drain pipes to lay and ditches to gravel.  If the state decides they need to inspect it, they can come on out, I’m not afraid.  I’m sure the structure and drainage system will more than measure up to the storm cellar building code.

Like I’ve told you before, if there’s a job to be done on our farm, we pretty much do the work ourselves; and to add insult to injury, our timing is far from impeccable.  It seems that by the time we get around to doing the job at hand, we are totally out of sync with the weather, and quite often, with the seasons themselves.

If I had been smart, at the conclusion of our first project together, I would have run screaming in the other direction.  But I have always been more curious than smart, so I stuck around to see what adventures the next project had in store for me.

Garey and I drained a silt pond in November, put tar paper on the outside of a building during a rather brisk wind in December, and fenced in forty acres and roofed a barn during 105 degree temperatures in July.  The jobs were hard and dirty and sometimes even dangerous.

Before we started the roofing project, Garey offered to tether me to the exposed beam just in case I lost my footing.  I told him I thought I had enough sense to know how to walk around on a barn roof without falling off.  Turns out I didn’t.  My behind bounced three times before becoming airborne.  Garey caught me by a belt loop before I plunged to certain impalement on the pointed farm instruments below.  “Where’s that rope?” were the first words out of my mouth after I gathered my composure.

We’ve done some back-breaking work together, and at times the only thing that has made it bearable is Garey’s sense of humor.  The summer we fenced in the forty acres, we had to hack our way through underbrush, just to get to where the existing fence had been.  When we couldn’t take the heat or bugs another minute, we would drag our sunburned, sweat-soaked bodies back to the house and cool off with the water hose.  All the while, Garey would be singing, I’m too sexy for my shirt.

We talked about adding a side shed to our shop building this fall, but the weather has been a bit too mild for the project.  The meteorologists are predicting a rather harsh winter, though.  We could get a blizzard or at least a heavy snow.  We’ll just have to gather our materials and tools, and hope for the worst.

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Cheryl Hughes lives on a farm in Butler County where she is wife to Garey; mom to Natalie and Nikki; grandmother to Sabria; and caretaker to two dogs, three cats and two horses.  She holds a bachelors degree in music and enjoys playing guitar and freelance writing.