Living at Whit's End: A Day on the Farm

Our grandson spent six days with us on the farm a few weeks ago. We had lots of outdoor chores to do, and Sunny was right there helping with everything. What a fun age three years old is. He wants to be independent and do things by himself. He also wants to do anything everyone else is doing...even the hard work. Encouraging his help is good training, I say.

A friend gave us this old Farmall tractor for Sunny to play with. It steers like an old Farmall too. Sunny's legs are a little too short to reach the pedals on the big tractor yet, so he likes to ride this one around.

Daily chores start and end with milking the goats. TBear was most patient to let Sunny help; however, Sunny really was a good watcher this week. One needs to be especially quiet around the first fresheners or they tend to jump around trying to get away from the scary, small noisemaker, which can be a real pain when you're milking. Three is a big boy age. Sunny was able to stay quiet and calm (as in no fast moves.) Here, he's explaining how to do the milking to TBear. Just in case he forgot. (I love it! He's naturally narrating what he's learned.)

The horses' pen isn't really that far from the barn, but it is a long way to try to carry the bale of hay and their feed pans, so Grampa uses the golf cart he's turned into a work cart (note the dump body on the back...excellent for transporting grass clippings to mulch the blueberries or take weeds to the compost pile.) Sunny is holding the horses' feed trays on the way back to the barn. He loves any job involving the golf cart.

We have a dear elderly neighbor a quarter of a mile down the road with beautiful fields that need to either be grazed or cut each summer, so we happily help her out and do both. The horses graze all day in a pasture behind her house where she enjoys watching them through her kitchen window. At the end of the day, Grampa, Sunny, and I go down and fetch the boys. Sunny got to ride Scooby home. I know I've mentioned this before, but we are going to be so distressed when Scooby goes...he is such a gentle, patient creature. Sunny can barely get his legs around the old boy.

Pat is not exactly a juvenile at 10 yrs old or so, but he gets a little antsy when he knows his dinner is waiting for him. Which is why Grampa is wearing that face...he's telling Pat to stand still while I take their pictures so as not to jostle Scooby and scare Sunny on his back, or worse yet knock him off.

Another day found us cutting up firewood to stack in our woodshed. It was not a good day for haying, but we don't have a chore shortage. There's that faithful old golf cart, so of course Sunny wanted to help. His job is to toss firewood into the back of the golf cart for transport to the wood shed while Grampa and TBear do the splitting.

It was kind of a high toss, so Grampa set up a stump for Sunny to climb onto so he could throw the wood into the back of the cart. I couldn't believe he lasted for the entire job. When the cart was full, he and I would drive it up to the shed and he played while I unloaded it. Then off we'd go for another load.

Some days are better than others in the haying operation. This particular week, both our Farmall C AND the H had serious issues requiring them to come back to the barn. Whit is diagnosing the issue with the C here, trying to decide which one can be repaired quickest to get back out to the field. It turned out that the C needed a new water pump. It went back to work. Sadly, the H is in the dead row with, hopefully, only a blown head gasket. Poor old H.