Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: COVID 19 Diary, Part 3

Life continues in these strange times. The first two weeks of living in voluntary quarantine I longed for life BC - Before Coronavirus. Someone else coined that term but I think it is so appropriate I have incorporated it into my vocabulary. BC life seemed easier. You didn't have to plan jaunts off the farm for simple things like groceries days in advance. You just got in the car and drove to the grocery store. Now I'm starting to get used to life WC - With Coronoavirus - in some strange way. I drove to the bank today to make a deposit. It felt weird driving to town because we just don't hop in the car and drive anywhere these days. In the last three weeks I've run in and out of the post office twice and gone through the drive through at the bank. That's it.

On the homeschooling front I'll be honest and say we haven't bothered the last couple of days. We've been crazy busy and just didn't have time. Jason did start teaching Carter the basics of how to operate our zero turn lawn mower and we've labeled that as part of our homeschooling. After all, life skills are important. Jason's theory is it's best to start kids on manual labor when they are still innocent enough to think it is fun. Carter was a bit intimidated at first but quickly decided spinning around on the mower was, indeed, pretty fun.

Our excitement of the week was a semi trailer bringing a new horse to us getting stuck in the middle of the night. We had two separate trailers arriving on the same night. Both were supposed to arrive in the wee hours of the morning. As I've said before, Jason's theory is that horse shippers are all vampires because they always show up between 1am - 3am. I get a phone call at 1am Tuesday night/Wednesday morning letting me know he was 30 minutes away. I said, "oh, you're ahead of schedule, thanks for calling." I wake myself all the way up, get dressed, find the truck keys, and as I'm walking out the door my phone rings again. Same shipper. "Sorry, I made a mistake when I called. I'm about two hours away." I was nice about it but I was not happy. Thanks for waking me up two hours early for no reason.

I sat in bed, of course wide awake, for about two hours. I get back to back phone calls from both shippers at 3am telling me they are about 30 minutes out. I get dressed again, go to the barn, turn on the lights, open the gates at the road and wait. The two trailers pull in together, the 4-horse trailer first, then the semi. The driver of the 4 horse trailer, who has been here many times, politely pulls well past the barn so the semi can have all of the room to turn around. The semi driver gets out and asks me about turning around. "Can I just make a big U-turn, it looks like there is plenty of room?" I told him no as he'd have to get his front wheels in the grass and we'd had tons of rain. I told him he'd need to pull in through the gates at the barn - the 25 foot wide opening so not exactly threading a needle - back in and then turn around. That way he would never leave gravel.

He completely ignored my instructions, made the U-turn, went in the grass, and promptly got stuck. He was blocking the entire driveway so the other shipper couldn't unload and leave while he got unstuck. He'd also blocked my truck on the wrong side of his trailer. He got out of the semi and said with a smile, "I tried it my way but it didn't work. I'm stuck, do you have any way to get me out?" It took everything I had not to punch the smile off his face. I then had to walk more than a half mile in the dark at 4am to the house since my truck was trapped on the wrong side of his semi trailer. I made the long hike in the dark, got Jason up, and told him we needed to get a tractor because the driver of the semi drove in the grass and got stuck. Jason took this news surprisingly well given it was 4am and he had been blissfully sleeping through wee hour horse arrivals.

Jason gets our biggest tractor, gets some chains, and drives to the scene. He just barely manages to maneuver the tractor around the semi and back up to it. The guy had helpfully put his tow hook on the semi . . . on the wrong side. Jason asks him to move it to the other side. The guy starts to argue. Jason tells him in a don't mess with me voice, "I'm not the one that's stuck. I am the one that can possibly get you unstuck. Do what I say or I'm going back to bed." There were a couple of extra words in there for emphasis. The guy changes the tow hook to the other side. Jason chains up the truck and tractor, gives the driver instructions, and gets to work. By a miracle he manages to pull the semi out of the six inch ruts the guy had made in our grass. We unload horses from both trailers, they leave, the end. What should have taken about 15 minutes to unload a couple of horses ended up taking an hour. For me Wednesday started at 1am and ended at 10pm. I slept well Wednesday night.

Aside from our stuck semi at 3am, I think the most exciting thing that has happened in the past week is we got takeout food from one of our favorite restaurants a few nights ago. We are very much eating what we have and wasting nothing, so the pickings start to get slim after about 14 days. Jason saw that we could get takeout Saturday night from the Dotted Lime, and he was beyond excited. When he got home with the food he ate with so much enthusiasm he all but smashed the plate into his face. Even Carter commented on Dad's extreme enthusiasm for the food. We're all learning to take things less for granted these days.

And that's how we've been living WC - with coronavirus - for the past week. We essentially never the leave the farm for anything, we had a vampire horse shipper get his semi-trailer stuck in the middle of the night, and a meal of take-out food was incredibly exciting.

What happens when people don't listen to you, "try it their way," and get stuck.

Practicing our social distancing means not riding in vehicles together. Jason is always the gentleman so Kate had to ride in the bed of the truck while he rode in comfort in the cab

We've passed on learning proper use of commas and the metric system and instead worked on "life skills." Jason has been anxious to start teaching Carter how to mow, he says it is important to get him started when he still thinks it is fun.