Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Worst Job Ever Revisited

Jason and I have been busy worker bees the lately. The weather has been so nice it has certainly made for pleasant working conditions, even if the work itself hasn't always been pleasant. You may recall me complaining writing about the worst job ever a few months ago. We've had the pleasure of revisiting that job in the last few days.

As my original post on the Worst Job Ever describes, Jason and I spent several days ripping out old barb wire fencing. The worst part was that it wasn't just one row of old wire fencing. Thanks to the wisdom of the dumbasses previous stewards of our land instead of replacing old wire fencing, they would just put up another row of it right next to the old one. So we actually ripped out two rows of field fencing and a third row of fencing that was triple strand barb wire. As detailed in the previous post I had a pretty spectacular meltdown during the days of misery as we tackled that job. I spouted off a classic "this is why I went to college" speech as I had a meltdown/I can't do this anymore moment. Jason pretty much ignored me, I got over it, and went back to shredding myself to bits while traipsing through the woods pulling out old, rusted, tangled wire fence.

A few days of that did us in so badly that we have not been able to muster up the gumption to finish the job. In an effort to spruce up the place and win over our neighbors, all of that wire that we pulled out has been sitting in piles along the driveway. In fact, one commenter on my original blog on this topic, Funder, even pointed out that not only did we have to rip out the wire, but then we had to dispose of it. Well Funder, we've chosen to simply ignore that part of the job for awhile. Maybe if you had come to help us we would have gotten this done sooner! :)

Alas, it is going to be time to start mowing the grass soon, and the last thing we wanted was to have to pull these nasty, large piles of old wire out of the weeds that were surely going to grow up around it. We also need to harrow in some grass seed along this section of our driveway so it will grow grass instead of weeds (to build this section of fence we had to bulldozed a path so the ground has been mostly bare). It is hard to harrow in grass seed when the path is covered in piles of wire. We could ignore this no longer.

Our original plan was to wrangle all of this wire into our stock trailer and then haul it to the dump. Jason, being the genius he is, pointed out the major flaw in this plan. We would have to wrestle with this old, rusted barbed wire TWO more times. Once to get it in the trailer, and another time to unload it at the dump. We quickly rethought this plan and had a very lovely dumpster delivered to the farm so we could fill it with wire. Now we would only have to have the pleasure of dealing with this mess one more time.

I think the dumpster adds almost as much charm to the place as the piles of wire. Don't you think it looks nice?

Our routine has been to wrestle large piles of rusted, uncooperative, tangled wire into the bucket of the tractor. Then carefully drive the tractor to the dumpster and dump the wire. Then Jason gets to have a bit of fun while using the bucket of the tractor to smush the wire down in the dumpster. Yes, I do realize this sounds easy enough. However if anyone would like to come and wrestle a few loads of wire into the bucket of the tractor we would welcome your visit. We'll even video you in action so we can all see how easy this is to accomplish.

the piles of wire felt endless; given that there was 3,000 feet of wire fence the piles were pretty endless

See, the wire really doesn't want to be crammed into the bucket. Nor does it want to stay there once it is in.

But we were determined, and now our dumpster is full of wire

We also cleared logs and sticks while we were at it to get ready to harrow grass seed

Occasionally some of the horses wondered what on earth we were doing (Fuzzy and Renny are the ones watching us)

Jason giving me two thumbs up because the Worst Job Ever is finally done, the last load of wire is in the bucket.

My back and shoulders killing me after the constant bending, pulling and lifting. However as of this evening the last of the wire was wrestled into the dumpster. I will admit that I almost gave another version of my "this is why I went to college speech" during round two of the Worst Job Ever. But then I really thought about things, and what life was like during my corporate days with my recruiting company. Rush hour traffic, office politics, corporate politics, boring meetings, wearing suits every day (I will confess that I do miss a few of my power suits, but not many of them), being trapped inside most of the time, did I mention rush hour traffic . . . ? After I took a few minutes to reflect upon things, I went back to wrestling the wire with a little more enthusiasm. After all it was 75 sunny degrees, I had on a comfortable pair of jeans and I wasn't sitting in a boring meeting trying to pretend I wasn't glancing at my watch every 4 second. It makes a bunch of barb wire cuts seem a lot more bearable. I'll even take all of the rain I will be working in off and on the next few days.

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Rocky

Norman and Cinnamon

Lightening shaking and showing off his new pinto markings after a good roll

Wiz and Dutch

Faune, Winston and Chimano

The big boys walking in two polite, single file rows. Not their usual style! Thomas, Hemi and Moe on the left. Levendi, Homer, Apollo and Baby on the right.

Maisie was giving Lily a really good grooming. She was pulling off chunks of Lily hair with her teeth.

Sebastian, Fuzzy, Wiz, Dutch and Renny

8 comments:

Laura said...

ugh - that does sound like the worst job ever! Nice to have it done though...

I think you should leave the dumpster there - it looks sooo nice! Maybe add some broken down machinery and some old lumber? lol

Anonymous said...

Dumpsters are very, very good. Glad you both survived - barbed wire is very nasty stuff indeed.

Calm, Forward, Straight said...

Dumpster was a very good call.

This month we've been mulching everything under the sun. 40 pallets x 70 bags x 50lbs. Not having to heave a single bag one extra time is my utmost concern at the moment.

Still beats working indoors any day of the week. I like to think of it as aerobics + weightlifting... no bill for the gym membership. ;)

Anonymous said...

I know exactly what you mean. I have had many of those "is this what I went to college and grad school for?" moments and sometimes I do miss those power suits but I'd take being outside with the chickens and a horse any time!

Bif said...

"Jason giving me two thumbs up because the Worst Job Ever is finally done, the last load of wire is in the bucket."

Why, I'd love to come down and help y'all out! My timing is perfect.

Jason said...

Melissa isn't the only one who went to college around here but I never did have any power suits unless coveralls count ! :)

Bif said...

Coveralls count ~ if you were a tie with them.

Funder said...

I swear I posted a comment like two days ago, but I guess I only thought really hard about it. Sigh. TOTALLY JEALOUS of the dumpster, not so jealous of the wire that went in it. Next ugly house I buy I'm renting a dumpster the day after we close! I am so over taking truckloads to the dump.