No driving adventure today as we all stayed home to do some projects. I cleaned the meaties' coop, took apart some old metal roofing pallets, stored leftover siding material and stacked the rest of the wood. When cleaning the chicken coop I brought the tractor over to the doorway so that I could scoop the soiled shavings right into the bucket. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but all of the sudden I realized that the loader bucket was stuck in the door way. Sideways.
I didn't feel the tractor slide sideways, but perhaps I sunk a bit in the mud because getting the bucket stuck in a doorway is a bit of a head-scratcher. I muttered some combination of expletives as I contemplated my course of action. The last thing I wanted to do was to take the bucket off the tractor, but neither did I want to inadvertently rip the casing, door and wall off my new chicken coop.
I put the transmission in "turtle", shifted into first and very slowly inched back while turning the wheels hard right. This is difficult to do at the best of times, even with power assisted steering. But without moving very far in a backwards direction, it was nearly impossible. Undaunted, and with Die-Hard type images of my coop being blown apart in some amazing Hollywood pyrotechnics display, I forced the wheel right and turned the tractor just enough. Because the bucket is so far ahead of the wheels, there is a bit of "tail-swing" when conducing a sharp turn. I was able to move the loader almost straight out from the doorway and back up without any damage.
Phew.
I completed my chores and took a moment to watch the wee layer chicks chase each other around the run. Worms are plentiful in the mornings because of all the humidity and dew. It seems they come to the surface just to sacrifice themselves to the birds. One bird would find a worm and run around cheeping triumphantly, whilst the others chased it, hoping for a mouthful. Soon, almost all the birds had worms. It was almost comical as each ran around trying to entice all the others.
While all of this was transpiring, Laur was downstairs rewiring the pantry for a motion-sensing light. Of course, The Boy set up a paint-can drum set downstairs and was beating out some tunes whilst Laur was trouble-shooting her light. Seems she can get the light to stay on or stay off, but not not operate properly.
She still has some weed-eating on her agenda and will likely get that done after supper - roast duck!
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