Dirty Jobs

After we finished morning chores today Jason unhappily stomped off to go hook up the Bush Hog. His exact words as he stalked away were something along the lines of “I hate hooking up this bleeping thing.” Well, obviously I did not type his exact words here but you get the drift. Typically I am the first person to offer to help with just about any task, however hooking up the bush hog is one that I never, ever volunteer to help with anymore. It never seems to go as planned and Jason always ends up seriously unhappy. So I avoid the whole thing.

When I next saw him, about thirty minutes later, I was rather taken aback by his appearance. About a million comments went through my mind at once when I saw him, however I wisely, in my opinion, went with the fairly neutral “What happened? Are you ok?”

These are the shorts Jason was wearing. Now imagine his shirt, his legs, socks, arms, etc. all looking like this.

In response to my query Jason immediately unleashed a tirade about the bleeping bush hog, how much he hated the bleeping bush hog, how much of a pain the bleeping bush hog was, etc. I could go on but you get the idea. So I tried again and this time asked “what happened?”

This led to another tirade about the jack breaking in half (I was like WTF how does a jack break in half?? but didn’t feel it was the right time to question that statement further), the PTO shaft not moving and he had to use the loader on the tractor to get it move (another WTF moment for me) and on and on and on. From what I pieced together from these rants the end result appeared to be a bush hog that was not hooked up and Jason covered from head to toe in grease and dirt.

our headstrong bush hog finally hooked up and ready to mow

Jason mowing away with the bleeping bush hog

Timbit supervising the mowing of his pasture. Mostly I think he was happy that the grass wasn’t as tall as him anymore.

Jason then left to attempt to de-grease himself, change clothes and go get some parts. Amazingly about an hour later he was much cleaner and the bush hog was finally hooked up and ready to mow. Most of the pastures do not need much mowing yet with the exception of one pasture where the grass was three feet tall. But there are patches here and there that need to be mowed. So Jason only has to deal with the bleeping bush hog for a few hours this go round. The next mowing will take him 2 or 3 days.

I will admit that I am kind of sad to see a few of the weeds get mowed down. Most of the weeds I am happy to see go and I hope they never come back but a few of them are pretty. Undoubtedly a small piece of Jason’s soul just died when he read that. It causes him physical pain to see weeds growing in his pastures, but when you have horses, the grazing species that is harder on pasture than any other grazing species, you are going to have weeds. It doesn’t matter what you do. The fact that I even mention weeds is damaging enough to Jason’s psyche. But the fact that I just said a few weeds were pretty I’m sure makes Jason feel like I am throwing poisoned darts at him right now. When he sees that I posted a few pictures of said weeds, well, like I said I’m pretty sure a small piece of him just died.

the pretty weeds