Don't Try This at Home

Inside the heifer barn hay mow

Yesterday Liz and I continued our ongoing getting-ready-for-winter marathon. We took a break from food production and preservation to head to the heifer barn to bag up some sawdust and wood chips. Her goal was baby calf bedding. Mine was something to put in Nick's doghouse and run. (Come real cold weather, he will come inside, and have straw for when he is out, but for now sawdust is warm enough.)


While I waited for her to finish turning Mandy and Blitz out in the barnyard for the day I decided to start without her. Our heifer barn is an antiquated kind of tired-around-the-edges structure, which was once the milking barn for the farm that went with our house. Made for Jerseys, the stalls were too small for even Holstein heifers, so we replaced them with pens years ago.


During last winter, a gang of big heifers ran in and out of one of the pens as they wished and were fed outside along a fence. Over the course of the winter, a noticeable quantity of feed and its inevitable by product built up along that fence, which is right across the handiest way to the heifer mow where the sawdust is.


It has rained a lot this year.

I didn't think of that.


Rather than struggle through head-high weeds and grass, I started to cross that pile of feed and the after affects of feed with my grain bag and shovel. Yep, Nick was going to be comfy at night if I had anything to say about it.


I managed to take about eight steps out onto the "stuff". I could feel a little sinking sensation, but heck, how deep could it be? And if I used a sort of quick tippy toe action I ought to be able to get across.

Or not. Just about exactly in the middle my left foot sank right to the top of my rubber barn boot (thank God I decided to wear them instead of sneakers!)


I was really, really stuck. Could not move at all. Boot was about one inch from filling with water. Other foot was still on top, but mighty precariously so.

I hollered for Liz.


She couldn't hear me.


I couldn't just stay there until someone came, so finally I did what I had to.


No, it is not nice to be barefoot in those circumstances.
Yes, I am glad I had a shovel with which to extricate that left boot.
And yeah, after I finally got loose and got my foot clean and my wool sock back on and my boot back on I went down and chopped a path through the weeds and grass so we could get into the barn the other way.

I sure hope Nick appreciates what I went through for him.

Outside the heifer barn