Portage River Farm

Late last week, the sky opened up and dumped one quarter of a million gallons of water on our little farm. Rest assured that it came down slowly and gently over a number of hours but it came just the same. The roof and gutters dutifully routed it away from the foundations and the sandy soil quickly drained it away to somewhere beneath the surface.

I watched the rain from the front window, thinking to myself that it would be good for the vegetable and wildflower gardens. It gave me a good excuse to remain indoors for the evening and I worked on house projects instead. Little did I know that we were getting much more water than we needed.

After the storms had finally passed, I took a walk to survey the results. The wheel barrow had been left out and accumulated an impressive amount of water. It was at least six inches deep. I turned it over, releasing all of those gallons to soak into the yard and join up with the rest of the water somewhere below.

My inspection tour moved on to the gardens. The wildflower garden had only been seeded a few days earlier and had yet to sprout. I found myself peering at the heavily washed sand and wondering if all of those expensive seeds from the wildflower mixes had been washed away. A repeat inspection a few days later revealed that small seedlings were in fact coming up all over the place and everything seems to be fine.

The vegetable garden looked none the worse for wear but looks can be deceiving. After standing at the edge of the garden I decided to walk into the middle to have a closer look. Stepping off of the sod into the saturated soil, I found myself half-way up to my knees in sandy mud that was exactly the consistency of pudding! Seeing the potential for doing irreparable damage to my long-suffering seedlings, I quickly retreated to the solid safety of the untilled yard.

A couple of days later, Sean came home and asked to have a friend over to camp out on the farm for his thirteenth birthday. The boys selected a spot for the tent between the double rows of evergreens that crown a low ridge in our front pasture. Due to the high weeds, they asked if I could mow the area before they started setting up.

We hooked the bush hog to the tractor and I mowed a path through the high weeds to their selected spot. I carefully maneuvered my way through the trees and must say that I did a mighty fine job of prettying the area up for their camp. The job being accomplished, I began the drive back to our side yard where I customarily park the tractor.

Had I gone directly to that spot and quit for the day this tale would have a very different end. Instead, I emerged from the trees into the front field and surveyed the high weeds with the thought that I could quickly mow it as well while I was at it. I swung the tractor along the treeline and began mowing the edge of the field.

As I was rounding the far end of the field the tractor suddenly stopped moving forward. Looking down, I saw that it had sunken to the axles in mud! It took only a few minutes of attempting to back out of the mess to convince me that there was no hope of freeing it.

The transmission casing between the rear wheels was resting on the ground and preventing the big tires from getting any purchase on the muck. I walked back to the house all the while shaking my head at myself that I had not thought about all of that water that had saturated the ground only a few days before. This is not the first time that I have gotten the tractor stuck but it is certainly the worst.

I figure that I'll give it a week to dry out before giving it another try. Until then, there's no shortage of other things to do.