Any person who has spent an appreciable amount of time hiking through the hills and hollers of the Ozarks undoubtedly owns and loves a favorite pair of boots.  It does not matter how many pairs of boots one may own, nor for what purpose, there will always be one favored pair among them.  I own few shoes.  But I own many boots.  When your activities revolve around the outdoors, you tend to get that way.  And indeed, I do have a favorite pair of boots.  I just call them “my boots”.

Now in the winter, just after 6″ of snow has fallen and it is 10 degrees outside, I would probably choose to put on my insulated high-top hunting style boots to tromp around in the woods.  If the snow conditions happened to be just right, and I had the energy, and if my back weren’t hurting from lugging diesel fuel, then I might elect to lace up my cross country ski boots, step into my cross country skis, grab the ski poles and pretend that I were still young enough to do these sort of things.  Afterwards, I would probably want to lounge around a warm fire in the fireplace, which means that I would have to trek through the snow to get firewood.  This would call for my lightweight, zip-up insulated snow boots, which are perfectly matched to this task.

When a more formal occasion presents itself, such as an anniversary or birthday dinner at a sit-down restaurant, then the footwear of choice would be a pair of western boots (cowboys wear cowboy boots, and I’m not a cowboy – hence, western boots).  When a less formal occasion presents itself, such as manure management in the paddock, then mucking boots are called for and nothing less will do (note to self: never economize on mucking boots …yuck).

Now that it is springtime, and the spring rains have (fortunately) begun in earnest, the boot I might select during a prolonged rainy period might be my pull-on high top waterproof work boots.  They will keep my feet dry, they have good traction and fair ankle support, but best of all, they can be slipped on and off easily and quickly (a godsend when a chore involves going in and out of the house repeatedly with muddy boots).

In the summertime, I usually reach for my light weight, waterproof lace-up work boots, which are an excellent choice as a general purpose boot, and due to their sturdiness and light weight, perform very well for a hiking boot.

All of the boots that I have just mentioned are specialized boots of one sort or another.  To recap, there were insulated high-top hunting boots, cross country ski boots, insulated snow boots, western boots, mucking boots, high top pull-on work boots, and lightweight waterproof lace-up work boots.  In total, I might wear these boots for a combined total of ten percent of my shod time.

The other ninety percent of the time I simply wear “my boots”.

Just as I clicked on the “publish” button for my last post, Retta pulled up the driveway, back from visiting her parents in Ozark, Missouri.  Along the way home, just off the highway, she noticed what looked to be two tiny kittens.  Not one to look the other way when situations such as this occur, Retta stopped the truck and investigated.  She found the two little kittens, but found no evidence of any siblings or mother cat.  Apparently, these two marvelous creatures were abandoned along the side of the road by some sick, heartless individual who could not think of any other way to handle a new litter of kittens.

Retta did what most caring, nurturing people would do under the circumstances – she gathered the kittens up and brought them home.  So it looks as if we shall now be a three cat family.  And this is what they look like:

Hopefully we can teach them to get along with the other cat, the dogs, the horses, the guineas, the chickens, the wild birds and the squirrels.  Anything else is fair game.

The WildBlue satellite spot beam 35 was out for most of the day, so I have not had access to the internet until this afternoon.  So this photo is being posted a day later than I would have liked.

We were fortunate enough to receive 2 inches of rain Friday and into Saturday.  With the 2 1/2 inches we received the prior week, it looks as if our pastures and fields will be growing like gangbusters.  Once dry creeks are now flowing again, and the catfish pond will regain it’s previous glorious fullness soon, which is a big relief to me (not to mention the catfish).

After the rain stopped, we were again fortunate enough to be presented with a superbly brilliant rainbow.  I figured that, no matter how you happened upon this page, you would appreciate a moment to enjoy a beautiful rainbow with us.

PS – In case you were wondering, I raced over to this pasture to find the pot of gold, but somebody must have beat me to it!

The photo above shows how we obtain our off-road diesel fuel to supply the needs of our tractor.  In order to purchase off-road diesel (which is devoid of state road taxes), we must travel 16 miles each way to the nearest supplier.  Safe fuel handling practices dictate that fuel containers be removed from the bed of the truck before filling, so we place the cans on the ground to pump fuel into them.  The containers are then lifted back into the bed of the truck for the journey home, where they are off-loaded from the truck and carried into the barn for storage.  When it is time to fuel the tractor, a container is carried from the barn out to the tractor, where it is emptied by hand into the tractor’s fuel tank. If I were to attempt this feat while standing on the ground, then the fuel filler neck would be at eye-level, which is not a particularly safe way to fill a tank with hazardous liquids!  As you can see from the photo below, by elevating the bush-hog into the uppermost position, I can accomplish the refueling from a position that affords eye safety.  On the other hand, it isn’t a position that is easy on the back!   Ouch!!!

Now let us do some math.  Ouch!!!  Okay, I’ll do the math, you just follow along with my reasoning.  This tractor burns 1 gallon of fuel per hour.  According to the tractor’s hour meter, I have run the tractor for a total of 1200 hours in the past 5 years.  That amounts to 1200 gallons of diesel fuel.  There seems to be some controversy over the weight of diesel fuel, but assuming a conservative 7 pounds per gallon as the factor, that translates into 8400 pounds of diesel fuel that the tractor has consumed.  Each gallon of fuel had to be handled several times; 1) loaded onto the truck for the ride home, 2) transferred from the truck to the barn 3) carried from the barn to the tractor 4) lifted and poured into the tractor’s fuel tank.  So now we have determined that I have handled a total of 33,600 pounds, or nearly 17 TONS of fuel!  Ouch!!!  No wonder my back sometimes hurts.

Now for some more math.  Ouch!!!  As you can see from the first photo, I fill 6 fuel cans at a time, because that is the number that will fit across the back of the pickup bed, affording lateral stability as I wind my way around the Ozarks landscape on my way to the filling station.  I fill each container with 4.5 gallons of fuel, therefore each round trip to the station yields 27 gallons of fuel (4.5 X 6).  We know from the paragraph above that we have used a total of 1200 gallons of diesel fuel, therefore we can conclude that there has been a total of 44 round trips made to obtain this fuel (1200/27=44.44).  Now if we multiply the 44 round trips by 32 miles, we obtain 1408 miles traveled to fetch diesel fuel.  Dividing by the abysmal 16 miles/gallon that my truck manages to achieve (he admits, covering his face in shame), and then multiplying by an average fuel price of, say, $2.00/gallon, we can determine that I have spent close to $200 just to fetch the fuel!  Ouch!!!  No wonder my wallet sometimes hurts.

As an aside, well, I’m almost too embarrassed to share it with you, but here goes.  Over the years, I have been purchasing off-road diesel fuel for use in my tractor.  As mentioned previously, off-road diesel fuel is devoid of road taxes.  Sometime in the past (I don’t know when), the state legislature decided that off-road diesel should be subject to the state sales tax of 7%.  So now, using today’s fuel prices, the calculus (ouch!!!) goes something like this:

Off-road diesel (16 miles away)= $2.65/gal + 7% sales tax = $2.84/gallon

On-road diesel (available locally) = $2.79/gallon

Price of my embarrassment = ???   Ouch!!! 

But I digress.

My father used to frequently say “Son, the legs go first!”  But then, he spent the better part of his life running a factory.  He put many miles on the soles of his shoes, so one would expect the legs to go first.  While I do lots of hiking around the property here, I find that I am called upon to perform heavy lifting much more than I recall doing since my younger days.  And so I would have to say “Dad, the back goes first!”

So the question that nags at me is this – is there a better way to accomplish this task of fueling the tractor, which, while seeming to be a trivial task, can wreak havoc on the backs of those of us who don’t feel as young as we once were?

One popular option that many farmers turn to involves the installation of an elevated, above-ground fuel storage tank, which is periodically replenished by a local fuel distributor.  These systems are gravity driven, which is both a blessing and a bane.  A blessing, because pumping equipment is not required.  A bane, because gravity cannot be shut off.  There are many potential points of leakage in a fueling system.  With gravity continuously at work, any leakage, no matter how slight, will eventually empty the tank.  There was an incident that occurred about 5 years ago in an area around Beaver Lake, about 75 miles away.  A fishing resort owner had a 300 gallon elevated tank installed for the convenience of his guests.  The tank valve developed a leak sometime during the night, and approximately 200 gallons of fuel seeped into the water table.  To make a long story short, 5 years later there are about 100 households with contaminated wells.  Their water has to be delivered weekly by truck and pumped into plastic holding tanks placed on their property.  The owners of the resort had to declare bankruptcy when their insurance policy reached the limit of the insurance company’s contracted liability.  Ouch!!! 

And this scenario, with some slight variations, is played out repeatedly across the country.  As I was driving down the road this winter, I saw these tanks on a neighbors  farm, so I stopped to take a picture.  To me, this looks like a disaster waiting to happen. 

Were I to install a fuel tank, it would have to be built of quality parts.  I would have to keep the tank, fittings, hose, valve and nozzle in tip-top condition.  And the entire assembly would have have a seepage-proof containment system with capacity at least equal to the capacity of the tank.  All-in-all, this would be a safe and effective system, which would certainly relieve the pains in my back, but man, would it be costly!

So it’s off to the station to fill those darn fuel cans.  Ouch!!!  Ouch!!!  Ouch!!!

This fine looking fellow is Pedro.  Pedro dropped by this morning for a visit.  Pedro didn’t tell our neighbors next door that he was going out for a walk.  He just found a way out of his pasture, and wandered on over to chat with our horses, Chipper and Tojo.  Pedro’s owners will be mad at him for misbehaving.  Retta would like to keep him.  Hmmm, maybe I can broker some kind of deal…..