The alarm went off at 2 and honestly I was already awake. I don’t think I even slept because I kept going over in my head what Kyle should pack and bring with him. He has to pack for the next 6 months living in New York. I don’t know about you, but that’s quite an task for one suitcase. He usually gets it done and this time was the same. After we all got dressed, said good-bye to William, and the car packed, off to Minneapolis airport we went. We made good time and we were on our guard watching for deer. This was prime time for deer running out in front of you on the road. By the time we got to the airport, we were tired. All of us and especially Kyle. I know now that he never slept last night at all. He tried to sleep in the car while we drove to the airport, but it wasn’t the most comfortable and it really didn’t work so well. But it didn’t take long for him to get his boarding pass once we got to the airpot, and soon he was standing in the line for security check. As we walked away, it’s always kind of a weird feeling knowing that you will not see someone for 6 months. But it’s an exciting time for him and it’ll be such an adventure that I’m sure it’ll turn out just fine. I’ve come to realize that I’m not as emotional leaving Kyle or William at the airport as I am when we go and get them. Whew! That’s good
A very tired Kyle heading back to New York
So when Daryl and I got home we both took a well deserved nap. 7 hours driving with little or no sleep, makes anyone tired. I finally got up after around 2 hours and started to work on the garden. YIKES! Now when I’m saying it’s bad, it’s bad. I finally threw away the hoe and went to get the sand shovel to dig the weeds out of it. This wasn’t working the best and I had more sweat running off my face than a garden hose. So forget this process and I called my favorite hardware store to see if they had a tiller we could rent. SCORE! They did have a really big one and it wasn’t long until Daryl was heading off to town to pick it up. Now it’s kind of expensive to rent, but this shouldn’t take long right? Yea, not so right. I ended up clogging it up so bad that it just died. When I looked under the ‘hood’, you could see all the tall weeds and mud caked up in it. Daryl said that maybe we should have mowed the garden before we tilled it. I gave him a .. hahaha look, but honestly he’s probably right. Maybe then it wouldn’t have jammed it up so bad. But using a tire iron, we got her cleaned out and I was back in business. (I was really glad that it started!) It was really hot in the garden and I can’t believe that it was still so muddy. But I knew that I had to break the top layer to get it to dry out. I also was not going to give up. My face was full of dirt and sweat and if the world ended tonight, I was going to have that garden tilled no matter what! I’m pretty sure I had one of those intense looks on my face, because for awhile I could even feel it. And intense might just be a nice way of saying, kinda crazy looks. Finally I called it and asked Daryl if he would return it back to town. I knew that this garden wasn’t going to be perfect, but that was OK. I started to mow and Daryl finished up replanting some corn that needed it out in the field. Once William got home from work and Daryl was done in the field, he started to clean up the planter. When was he started to clean and vacuum the planter out, he had a lot of help from the chickens on the grain that fell. It looked kind of funny having all the chickens by his feet. Then the next thing was to work on getting some of the machinery back in the shed.
Next was to back it into the machine shed. We laughed because we were talking that when the machine shed was built, who would have thought that it might not be tall enough for our machinery. But with William on one side of the planter and me on the other, we had helped Daryl get it backed into the machine shed with inches to spare in the door opening. Another year done, and what a year of planting it was! 