The Flashlight

In her job as a milk inspector, Liz visits many farms each day. A number of her farmers are Amishmen. Such was the case one day last week when she stopped to perform a routine inspection. As she checked out things in the milk house, she observed a grain truck blowing corn meal into an overhead bin in the barn but didn't pay too much attention.

When she finished in the milk house she pushed open the door into the stable to check on things there.

The door was wedged almost completely shut. She crawled through into the stable to see what was wrong. Corn meal was falling from the open bottom of the grain bin chute and had piled up against the door. The farmer's mules had pulled the chute open with their teeth. Thus as the trucker blew the grain into the bin it flowed down onto the stable floor below, right in front of the cows, horses and mules.

She tried to get the trucker's attention but he couldn't hear her over the noisy truck.

So she climbed up on a cow stall and hammered the chute shut herself, twisting her back in the process.

Then, because the animals were eating the feed as fast as they could gobble, she raced to find the farmer.

He was not at home, but she knew he farmed with his brother, so she drove down to his house and roused him instead. Kids with shovels were just climbing into her truck to go sort out the mess, when the missing farmer arrived driving his horse and buggy.

She said he left her truck in the dust, pounding down the road to his barn to save his livestock from overeating on the rich corn meal. Those standardbreds can fly when they want to.

She offered to help with the clean up, but he thanked her over and over and said that she had done enough just closing the bin and running for help. At least a ton of corn meal had spilled onto the floor but that much again had been saved by her quick actions.

At home that night she realized that somewhere in all the excitement she had lost the fancy little flashlight she uses to check the inside of milk pipes and such. She figured that it was gone forever somewhere in the mess of corn meal at the farm.

However, a few days later our milk truck driver dropped it off right in our milk house. The Amish farmer had found it and made sure to send it home on the truck so she would have it if she needed it (he has the same driver as we do.)

When she turned it on she noticed that it was brighter than it had been....the batteries had been going a bit dead...so she popped it open....and there was a set of brand new batteries.