So I usually post pictures on the blog, but I thought this time (since I didn’t have a camera with me) I would try to paint a picture with words.  Not sure if I’m very good at this, but I’ll give it a whirl.

                                                                                 

There use to be a young kid around Hickman who had an ad in the Voice newspaper “Two Goats and a Boy”, making a play on the “Two Men and a Truck” advertisement.  This boy would take two goats to peoples’ place where they needed their lagoon grass “mowed”.  Sounds like a good idea, so we decided since we have 3 horses, much bigger animals, they could have most of the grass chewed down in our lagoon in just a few days.  The grass on the inside of the lagoon and along the outside edge is chest high to the horses. Unfortunately, they pretty much live by the motto ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’.  The fence around the lagoon is just hog wire, no electric fence or barbed wire, so at least one of them was leaning over the fence making it bend down all the time.  One of us would have to keep an eye on them most of the time, so this really wasn’t working the best.

This Tuesday was the last time we put them in the lagoon. It was a nice cool night and since the horses were always leaning over the fence, I made a comment to Ken that if he wanted to actually mow the grass this would be a good evening to do it.  With the surrounding trees and being down in a hole there is not much air circulating which makes it a very hot job.  So we put the horses back in the corral and he mowed.

The next night he decided he might as well get rid of the cattails growing around the water’s edge so he took his John Deere mower and Dumpy (his little black trailer that his John Deere pulls) into the lagoon.  In the meantime, I was starting to cook some fish on the grill.  I had cut up some cucumber for Ken for a salad and I thought I would check the garden for some fresh tomatoes to go with it.  On my way back from the garden, Ken hollered that he needed my help.  Now I’m torn between going to help him and tending to the fish on the grill.  I ran over and turned off the grill and went out to help.  When I get there I see that he has dumpy completely full of weeds and cattails and one tire stuck in the mud since he was right at the water’s edge. He’s soaked in sweat; his shoes are covered with mud along with most of his jeans and the front of his t-shirt.  He wants me to drive the John Deere while he pushes.  As it usually goes when I’m asked to jump in and help, I must not have done it quite right because we didn’t make it out of the mud.  Now we’re really stuck, the back tire on the right side of the John Deere is spinning because it’s tipping to the left.  If I try to scoot over to the right side to put more weight on that tire, the engine will shut off because of the safety mechanism.  So Ken decided to unhook dumpy so we could at least get the John Deere out.  I back the John Deere up to take the pressure off of the hitch and finally Ken is able to get the pin pulled out . . .  and then the plop!  Dumpy tips backwards dumping a lot of the cattails and Ken’s pitch fork into the lagoon – yuk!

Ken starts unloading the rest of the cattails from Dumpy so he can get it pulled out of the mud and water.  He got Dumpy pulled out and hooked back up to the mower while I ran off to the barn to get another pitch fork and a rake.  Here I am, out there in my flip-flops (not a good idea, no traction) reaching with the rake trying to bring in the cattails and hopefully the pitch fork. Sometimes it was a stretch and I was certain I would slip right in. But we did get all of the cattails out of the lagoon water and Ken got them loaded them in Dumpy. Thankfully the pitch fork was tangled up with some of them so it was easy to retrieve.  At one point  I came pretty darn close to sliding right into the lagoon.  I’m always thankful for the physical abilities I still have which I attribute to dancingJ 

Needless to say, Ken had to hose down his mower, Dumpy, the pitch fork and all of his clothes . . . and then he took a shower.  I had a little mud on my legs so I took a shower too.  I think next time maybe we should hire the kid with the two goats.