It’s that time of the year again!

It is that time of the year when the hay wagons are turned into rock picking wagons and they seem to have a permanent spot in the farm yard to remind you that the rock picking season is happening. 

Now is it the worst thing in the world? Heck no. I mean you get exercise and well… I guess you can get some fresh air. And I think that’s about all the good things that I can think of right now. 

So when my second meeting was cancelled on Sunday and I didn’t have any excuses on why I shouldn’t go out and help, it was time to find some gloves and head out to the field. But with the rain that we’ve been having lately and our basement isn’t completely dry, my chore shoes were wet and were something that there was no way that I was going to put them on. After checking out all my options, I decided to grab my mud boots. They should work pretty good and Daryl said the we would only be out there for a couple of hours.

And I was sure glad that I wore them! You know why? Well because I found out something about myself that I had been wondering about for the past 10 years or even more!  See if you have ever picked rock you know that your best ‘tool’ is your feet. Depending on how the rock is buried, you use the side of your foot to get the rocks that are still kinda loose in the ground and push them sideways. You can also use the heel of your foot to try to catch a lip of the rock to get it out of the ground. But what I found out today is that I use my corner of my foot by my big toe and hit the rock to see if it’ll budge. OK, so I’m sure your’e wondering what they has to do with the past 10 years or so of my life right? Well because I had my mud boots on instead of any chore shoes it just about killed the side of my big toe the I kicked the rock. And the more that I thought about this, I realized that this is why I can’t keep my toe nail from splitting halfway down the nail for the past how many years! Now I’m not saying that this is for sure what is happening, but it’s pretty coincidental don’t you think? So I’m seeing my options so far for picking rocks are to always wear good farm shoes, don’t use your feet as the extra tools, or give up rock picking all together. Hmm.. I wonder which one I should choose?

I snapped a quick picture of the rock wagon when we were done. Even though it doesn’t look like a lot of rocks, I’m just saying that there is a lot of small ones on there.