Let me explain… and no Alison, I am not making “Baby Brother Stew!”  (I’ll tell that story, but only if I get enough requests from you dear readers.)

We have been doing a lot around the Farmlet and that included tearing down the old shack and lean-tos.  All the tearing down and rebuilding has left us with a chicken yard full holes… one of which is big enough for the geese to swim in.  This might have been a good thing  if it were big enough.   Well it just isn’t,  and it is right in front of the roll up door of the garage/barn.  Now way back when, the builder of that shack had set the supports for the lean-to onto very large cement blocks that he’d buried in the clay.   Fast forward:   when it  all was torn down somehow one block remained, and it was next to the aforementioned mud hole.  So naturally, before I could bury the mud hole I had to dig out the cement cinderblock.

Yeah right!  No mere shovel was going to penetrate that clay, wet or no!  So I grabbed my handy garden fork to do the job.  Working with force I managed to nibble out bits of the red mass and eventually free the block.  But how to get it out?   HEAVY, packed with mud,  I imagined it weighed about 4o pounds.  It is a very LARGE cinder block.  I didn’t know they made them that big actually.  But I digress…Coming at it from all sides I try to work it up out of the hole using the garden fork and it slipped, thus I stab myself in the shin with a blunt end of a fork tine.  OUCH!  “Well actually what was said was more along the lines of  “@#$%#&@##$$%@!!!”

Into the house I limp looking for an ice pack and of course there is no ice.  I’m digging in the freezer when I spot it, that old forgotten bag of cut okra.  I investigate its contents and sure enough it is compost fodder!  So I wrapped  it in a dishtowel and used it.

Lesson for the day:  Never throw away those old half used bags of ice encrusted veggies.  They are actually quite handy on a bruise.

Yeah, I know…     “;<>