Mid November Was Just Beautiful

Today was the annual gathering of the pine branches for holiday decor. Today was simply gorgeous, as far as autumn days go. It was ridiculously warm at mid 60 something degrees and blue skies as far as the eye could see. I thought a nice walk would be good exercise to the back 40 on my parents' farm, but then remembered that I'd have to drag home all the pine branches, the large cutters, and probably Micah. That's why we have the Gator. That thing is so very handy to have around.

As Sam was putting gas in the Gator for me, and the boys were getting the chain saw out of the shed because my large trimmers weren't manly enough for them, I went to look at the pine trees by the chicken coop. Why drive the whole way to the back 40 when we've got pine trees in our front field? Well, okay, we do, because Sam wouldn't be happy if I hacked his trees up. Dad, however, doesn't mind so much if I hack at his trees because they're so far from public eyes that it doesn't matter what they look like.

Micah and Luke crawled in the back of the Gator, I stood on the fender, and Josh drove us through the fields, down the hill, through the pastures, back up another hill and across the meadow to the pines. I'm not kidding when I say it's the back 40. And I was glad for that chain saw, because Josh made short work of cutting some large branches for me to trim down to more manageable sizes with my pruning nippers. Micah, however, was not a fan of any of this because he was NOT riding in the back with those branches. If they touched him, he'd probably die a slow and painful death.

Josh is an awesome big brother and let him ride in front of him on the seat on the way home. And we took the easy way home, which pretty much involved opening the fence onto the neighbor's property, and zipping full speed over the field to the road that leads home. There were no obstacles in the way, which was rather nice. So now I've got some decorating to do.