vituperation

“You got it looking good!”

The woman’s voice startled me, because it came from behind me, where there shouldn’t be anyone. I was crouched at the far end of the garden, cutting up seed potatoes and laying them on the fresh compost I’d spent the last hour spreading. Waiting by tractor was a couple of bales of straw and some chicken wire to complete my experiment in growing unburied potatoes this season.

Assuming she had been talking about the garden plot and not my ass, I stood and said, “Thanks. It’s a lot of work, but all the good veggies more than pay for it.”

The woman was our neighbor from a couple of doors down, Stacy. We’ve talked a few times, mostly about animals. The very back of her yard borders near the corner of our property, so she’d stepped through the brush there with her youngest daughter in tow.

“Made it a little bigger this year, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I did a couple of extra passes with the tractor. We wanted to try growing a little more this year, especially tomatoes for canning.”

“You guys have made this place so much better. It looks completely different. I really like that building you did over there,” she said, pointing.

“That’s where the chickens live. I got tired of crawling around in all the, you know, when I needed to get an egg that was outside a nest box. We have more chicks now too, so they were going to need a bigger space anyway. I figured I might as well make it nice and big.”

“Well, it looks great.”

She caught sight of the pigs rooting around in their pen.

“So that’s what you got. I been wondering since I saw you out there working. I love pigs. Are they pets, or…”

“They’re food,” I said with a smile. “We can go out and see them if you want. They’re still pretty cute.”

“Can we go see the pigs, mama?” the little girl asked.

“Let’s do it some other time,” the woman said. “It’s still pretty wet out there.”

She was right. On Saturday it stormed for a good deal of the day, and now, one day later, the back part of our property was still pretty boggy. The water runs off, but it takes its time.

“I’ll let you get back to your work, but I was wondering what you’d charge to come till up a little garden area for me. I was plannin’ on getting a tiller, but then thought he’s got a tractor and figured it would cost me less if you’d do it.”

“You don’t have to pay me. I look for any reason I can to use the tractor. Just give the ground a couple of days to dry out and I’ll come down and knock it out for you.”

We made small talk for another few minutes, then she and her daughter picked their way back through the brush to her yard.

On Monday, the water guy came and ran water out to the pigs and over to the chickens. He’d planned to come Saturday, but the aforementioned storms kept him inside. He made pretty short work of it, running 320 feet of pipe and installing two pumps in four or five hours.

To do the grunt work, he had a rubber-tracked excavator with a 24-inch bucket on the front. Watching that thing scoop out a trench 2-feet wide and 2-feet deep at a rate of about 100 feet every half hour made me want one.

After all the PVC was laid, he used the bucket on the excavator to push the dirt and mud back in, mounding it high along the way. When he was finished, it looked like the world’s largest mole had been rooting around on our property.

I pulled the shed doors open yesterday afternoon and chocked them with pieces of cinder block. The wind was starting to kick up in front of storms that are moving through today, and I wanted to make sure the doors wouldn’t swing shut while I was backing the tractor out.

A short time later I was atop the tractor, rolling alongside the chicken yard while the chickens trotted with me in hopes that I’d throw them some goodies like a Christmas parade Santa. I slowed as I approached the mounded dirt covering the water line that went into the chicken yard, and the tractor rocked back and forth as I went over it.

Beyond, in the area where the pond once was, I skirted the standing water in the depressed center and went along the ditch that runoff water goes to. When I got to the second line of mounded dirt — the one out to the pigs — I opted for the lowest part of the mound and started over it. As it turns out, that part was the lowest because it wasn’t dirt.

It was mud.

The front tires of the tractor plunged into the trench, sinking in the muck all the way up to the axle. It dropped so quickly I came up out of the seat a little.

I sat there for a second, looking for water to boil up and alert me to a broken pipe. Nothing. I put the tractor in reverse and tried to back out. All four tires spun uselessly.

Time for plan B, I thought, and dropped the bucket of the loader. The loader is rated to lift / carry 800 pounds, and you can easily use it to lift the front end of the tractor by pushing the bucket into the ground.

Easily lift the front end of the tractor if it’s not stuck in sucking mud, that is.

The tractor barely moved when I tried to raise the front end with the loader. I tried and tried, then tried a little more. Nothing. I tried switching into two-wheel drive so the front tires wouldn’t spin. No go.

I climbed down, slipping and sliding in the mud, and went for some pieces of wood to wedge under the rear tires for traction. They did no good.

I got the truck out and chained it to the tractor. It sat in place and spun its tires uselessly.

From the garage, I fetched the 3-ton hydraulic jack, intent on using it to jack up the loader bucket, thus lifting the front end of the tractor enough for me to get some wood under the tires. The jack merely raised the bucket and arm, while the front of the tractor didn’t move.

At my wits’ end, I decided to drive down to the corner store so I could once again embarrass myself in front of all the old men there by telling them I’d gotten my tractor stuck in the mud. Before I got to my car, I heard a magical sound: the roar of a big engine coming to life.

While I watched, our neighbor across the street — whom we’ve never met because we really believe in keeping to ourselves — drove his backhoe around his yard and attached it with a chain to the front of a big-rig truck (without the trailer). He used the backhoe to pull that giant truck out of the way so he could get another truck out.

A gigantic light bulb went on over my head.

“Excuse me,” I called when I got over there. The man was in his shed, a cavernous thing that could hold both of my sheds with room to spare. He came out, wiping grease-stained hands on his pants.

I introduced myself and explained my predicament, then asked what he’d charge to use his backhoe to pull my tractor out of the mud.

“Wouldn’t charge nothin’,” he said. “Reckon it’s the neighborly thing to do.”

I thanked him profusely and went home to get everything out of the way. He showed up a few minutes later, tooling across the road on his Caterpillar with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a small boy in his lap.

“I brought my helper,” he said by way of explanation once he’d parked. He took a look at the mired tractor. “How much you know about farm equipment?”

“Not a whole lot,” I admitted. “It’s all kind of new to me.”

“You got everything you need to get yourself out of this. Climb on up there and start ‘er up. I’ll teach you something, instead of just pulling you out.”

Dutifully, I climbed into the seat, pretty sure I knew what was coming.

“Roll that bucket all the way under and drop it to the ground,” he said.

I did.

“Now raise the front end up and lift yourself out.”

“It won’t do it,” I said, then pushed the lever controlling the loader up. The tractor didn’t budge.

“Ain’t strong enough to lift the front end?” he asked.

“Yessir, it’s strong enough, but this mud’s sucking it down.”

“Really stuck, ain’t she?” he asked with a grin.

He pulled a long rusty chain out of a compartment on the Cat and attached it to the tractor. When he’d positioned the backhoe, I took the chain and hooked the clevis hook on the end to the body of the Cat. He revved up the machine and pulled forward.

And the tractor popped out of the muck like a cork.

I thanked him profusely again while he put the chain away.

“Come ask if you need anything,” he said. “I got all kinds of junk over there.”

“You have a lot of good toys,” I replied, and smiled. Men never really grow up, they just get bigger things for playing in the dirt.

He went on his way, raising a hand to wave as he pulled out. I hooked up the tiller and went to Stacy’s, reflecting on how sometimes it’s right nice to have neighbors.