While my parents and sisters and their significant others are traveling about the country, they asked me to farm sit. My dad was kind enough to include a suggested list of chores so I wouldn't get bored.
The first chore was finish the weed eating under the electric fence on the upper portion of their farm. I first tried to go to the top, which had the added benefit of taking me up to "signal ridge," where I was able to call my fiancee, Lori Kokales. After the wonderful conversation, I wasn't able to make it up the last little rise.
Then, coming down, I was sliding down more than rolling down the hill. Fortunately it was all on the road. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I didn't have to walk up the hill nearly as far as I would have had to, if I had started at the top.
As with other weed eating expeditions, there are always things discovered about the fence that need repairing. This time two connectors were completely gone on one post and another was still on the post but not holding any wire. This was easily enough repaired--all I had to do was find the connectors and walk back to the trouble spot.
Another problem didn't have such a simple solution. This was an extremely loose wire. The good thing was that it was the second from the top and not likely to cause substantial problems like touching the ground, but it did need to be fixed.
This necessitated another trip up to "signal ridge," which wasn't happening. This time I found myself slipping down the road backwards until I got to a relatively flat spot that was wide enough to turn around.
When I got back to the house, I discovered that I had the ATV on 2-wheel drive. After lunch and a nap, I went back up to tighten the one strand. This time on 4-wheel drive I made it up with no problem. When I walked down the hill to the loose wire, I expected to see a set of wire stretchers which would let me tighten one. There were none. Thank goodness I went prepared with a single stretcher of my own.
At least Bowser got two runs out of it.
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