Big Equipment Farmer

Here's the Boss-Man farming the only way he knows how: Big equipment.

When driving by the CAT dealership, forget any conversation you might have been engaged in... someone just lost connection...and it wasn't me. "Uh, huh," I hear, from lips on the port bow of the truck, responding absently. Give it another block or so and he'll return to the land of human relationships, and pick up the dialog with no suggestion of distraction.

Most men hook their truck up to the travel trailer to move it. This is much more efficient, Mike might tell you. Some men may scoff. But then, every farmer knows his crop.

Have a truck that no longer runs, has flat tires? Need it flipped around? Say, try the a loader bucket!

Need a tree stump removed where there happens to be a hive nearby? Just wear your sister's beekeeper net!

No guts, no glory- or something like that.

Who said the Big Guy and I couldn't work in the garden together? We both move around soil with two hands and puff exhaust. My hoe turns delicate, detailed areas around beets and rutabagas, while his D3C XL (XL? duh.) cuts through hard pan and clay, falls trees, and shapes swaths of land.

I know women who require their husbands to shower before bed or keep clean fingernails. There's no doubt that makes housekeeping easier! For that matter, I know men who have a tidier dispositions than their wives, flannel wearing or not. As for me, give me a farmer, whatever the crop, covered in dust and smelling of diesel fuel-

White sheets can always be replaced!

One Ton of Fun

Big Daddy only drives big trucks.

When we go to Seattle for our annual Christmas dally and dinner, we have to take our small car, ’95 Chevy Suburban. He doesn’t enjoy it but it is the vehicle what fits in a parking garage.

Last year we found open parking on 7^th and Stewart so, (yep, you guessed it!) we all piled into the F-350 this last December!

Mike really, really likes his truck, and in part thanks to Chuck at the Powershop in Enumclaw, who brought it back from one wheel shy of the wrecking yard or a total rebuild with a Cummins block.

Needless then to say, we girls have few opportunities to drive the big blue one ton. Driving it is the next best thing to being with the Big Daddy- we take it when we can! We had it one day last week...

Out to buy groceries we saw our chance to park next to a SmartCar.

Wanna see?

Bwaaa! Ha-ha-aaaaaah!

Get a load of this (or rather we could take a load of this).

Fisherman, Shrimperman.

Mike, along with Pop and George, headed out to Point Defiance in the Puget Sound to launch George's boat and go shrimp-ing for the day. The Boss-man's done plenty of fishing before; welcome in a new adventure! North through the Colvis Passage to 'area ten' east of Bainbridge Island.

Shrimp pots dropped at 7am- season open.

Now, this was no "Deadliest Catch" episode, much to the daughters' dismay. They thought Big Daddy was going out to face wind and snow, ice and death! Hunter-gatherer, desperation of providing for his wife and children left back at home, keeping the home fires burning, risking his own life and limb for, for...

What?! This is all you get in a five gallon bucket?! That's the legal limit?! You've got to be joking! 4:30am for 80 lousy shrimp? an hour drive up the Sound to have caught limit in an hour?

Was it worth it? Is value not in eye of the beholder.

To share in the body of Christ for a day, to soak up some sun in the beauty of island coastlines of the Puget Sound, to see what captains Vancouver and Cook saw as they passed through these waters, to marvel at creation and the feast it provides for body and soul.

And the shrimp? Please don't make me buy frozen ever again-

Yep, it's that good!