Do It Yourself Disasters

It is a commonly known fact that do-it-yourself home improvement projects drastically increase a couple’s risk for divorce, but they don’t hold a candle to farm chores done jointly by a husband and wife.

Take, for instance, chasing steers back into their yard after they’ve gotten out.  I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person and, therefore, do not make it a habit to stand directly in the path of a 1500-pound moving animal; unless Captain tells me I have to if I ever want to get the steers back in the yard so we can go work on some home improvement project.  

So I plant my feet wide apart, set my shoulders straight, and bravely face a thundering mass of horns and hooves.  Okay, so there aren’t really any horns, but there could be.  When I succeed in keeping the steers from sneaking past me, my sense of accomplishment quickly evaporates in the deafening tirade from Captain that the steers, while not getting past me, still did not go in the yard because as luck, and his instructions, would have it, I WAS NOT IN THE RIGHT PLACE!  By the time we got all the steers where they belonged, the only home improvement project on our minds was building separate bedrooms.

Silo unloaders are another good catalyst for farm divorces--ask any farm wife, and she will tell you the same thing.  Silo unloaders have a tendency to break down, requiring someone (Captain) to climb the silo to see what is wrong and try to fix it.  Because this usually takes several attempts in which the silo unloader needs to be started and stopped, another person (me) is required to stand at the bottom of silo running the power switch.  

For those of you who don't know Captain, he has a very soft voice that doesn’t usually carry across the kitchen table, much less down a 75-foot silo to where I am.  Add to that disadvantage the fact that I am standing in the middle of 80 very hungry cows who are complaining at the top of their lungs.  Captain can’t quite understand that “yes” and “no” can sound very similar from inside a silo in this setting, causing confusion as to whether I am supposed to start the silo unloader or not.  I once deciphered a message incorrectly and nearly took his finger off.

Perhaps the worst episode of silo unloader repair was the time Captain needed to adjust a doohickey attached to the thingamabob.  Before he climbed up to check it out, he gave me my instructions.  “Wait until I get up there and yell to turn it on.  While it’s running, don’t worry that there isn’t much feed coming down; I’ll get it adjusted and yell for you to turn it off.”  Simple, right?  WRONG!

He climbed the silo and yelled to turn it on.  So far, so good.  After I watched the silage trickle out of the chute for 20 minutes or so, it dawned on me there had to be a problem because I could here a distinct banging on the silo chute.  So, against direct orders, I shut the silo unloader off without his say-so.  At that point, above the banging, I could hear muffled words filtering down the chute.  Direct and immediate action seemed to be in order.

A little investigation on my part revealed the silo chute was plugged tight with silage.  In a panic, I reached into the chute and began frantically digging out the silage.  As I dug, the dialogue from inside the silo became more distinct, and I began to get a bad feeling.  After 30 minutes of digging and hearing phrases that not only questioned my intelligence but cast doubt on my parentage as well, I almost quit digging to leave him in there, but I finally got the last of the silage out…and Captain.  

When he asked what I thought I’d been doing and why hadn’t I shut the silo off sooner, I reminded him (gently, mind you; I’m no fool) that he had said the silage would not be coming out fast.  I won’t go into his reply, but you can use your imagination to know what he said to me for plugging the silo chute with a good 20 feet of silage.

One story Captain likes to tell is about the time, on a bitterly cold day, he had to scale the roof to clean the wood stove chimney.  I, of course, had to stand at the bottom of the ladder to make sure it didn’t blow down while he was on the roof.  When he finished, he found that the roof was too slippery to try and slide down to the ladder.  So I told him to wait while I got a length of clothesline to use as a rescue rope.  Disgust does not begin to cover how he viewed my offering of a 3-1/2 foot section of nearly-frayed clothesline.  He actually suggested I might have an ulterior motive of trying to “do him in” for his life insurance.  He has since learned that one does not insult the guard of the ladder or one ends up stranded on the roof on a bitterly cold day until such time as the guard of the ladder is sufficiently satisfied with the apology offered from the rooftop and puts the ladder back against the house.

I was, in time, forgiven for these incidents and have since experienced others.  Through it all, Captain and I have managed to keep our marriage intact.  Our buzz phrase now if such an episode occurs is “We married for better or worser..we just didn’t know it would be this worser.”  It is our way of saying to each other, “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you.”  It is comforting to have such an informal way to apologize and be pardoned.  Most of all, though, the phrase says, “ I love you.”