A good father puts his family ahead of himself. And a truly dedicated alpaca farmer puts the well-being of alpacas above his own personal desires. But, it is a stretch to move 18 tons of hay on your birthday!
Today is Michael's birthday - woohoo! And the old man decided to celebrate by loading a 42" trailer 7 rows high and 13 rows deep with hay. The remaining ~100 bales we loaded into the barn and, as temporary storage, in our large horse trailer!
Now, he did have help -- our oldest son (10 yrs), myself (with what help I could provide), my Dad and the great folks at Circle M (Doug and Kathy), from whom we bought the hay and who delivered it to us.
Connor helped pull the 65 lb small bales toward the back of the trailer on our rollers as Kathy placed them there from the hay elevator (a great tool and worth having) they brought with them. Dad, Michael and I stacked them, with Michael doing most of the heavy lifting. Towards the end, there was precious little room for him at the end of the trailer!
The remainder, Doug and Dad threw off Circle M's trailer.
In all, this took us a little over 4 hours.
Of this ~ 100 bales we put just over half in a temporary storage trailer and the reset we stacked these on pallets to move by skid steer to the barn. Whew!!! That was a good work out! So, about 5 hours of hard labor!
I think that Doug and Cathy really went out of their way to help us out. Even though I threw hay in Kathy's face at least a couple of times, she was a great sport! The hay looked great, the price was good, the service was great! We really enjoyed working with Circle M.
Then, we set about doing the farm work. Making sure the trailer roof was water tight, cleaning up the paca pens and feeding the alpacas. THEN, we ate dinner and opened Michael's gifts. Rather than stay and feel our bodies stiffen, we wearily headed home, with sleeping kids in the vehicle and tired parents waiting for day's end. Baths for all! Kids in bed. The litter box can wait. A quick moment on the computer... Now - time to sleep!
A good alpaca farmer, for sure :).
and I thought picking up my 60 bales from my favorite farm was a taxing move?
ReplyDeleteHopefully that birthday ended with a back rub.