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Avoiding yoga for a while

3 min read

A month ago, my husband broke his knee. As he was loading square bales onto our 28-foot gooseneck trailer, the truck started to coast down the driveway. He jumped down to attempt to stop the truck, trailer and load of hay from careening over the hill. He landed on his feet, but immediately went down injured. (The truck, on the other hand, coasted up a bank and came to rest, quite uninjured, a few feet away.)

Since that time, I have been on leave from work to care for him and our farm. It has been quite a learning experience for me. Sure, I have helped for many years, but to actually be the one responsible for how things turn out is different.

Last week, he was able to get on the 4-wheeler and ride down to where I was building fence. He talked me through some of the trickier parts, but ultimately, it was up to me to make sure our bull couldn’t get out.

The hardest part was pounding all of the staples in overtop of the wire. More than 40 posts, each with 10 strands of wire needing attached, meant about 35,000 swings with the hammer. (My aim ain’t so grand.) I finally called in reinforcements for some of the staple-pounding activity – namely, my dad – because my husband’s knee was on track to be healed before I finished building the fence.

Saturday evening, I rigged up some jumper wires so the fence was electrified and went to move the bull. The bull is generally a pretty docile fellow, and is only about 18 months old. When you feed him in the barn, he will toss his head some, but will let you scratch his face and pat his rump without much of a fuss.

But turn him out into fresh pasture like I did Saturday, and apparently, he wants to play. I led him with a bucket of grain out near a manure pile in that field and fed him about 40 feet from the barn. Then, I continued to walk around the pile to head back to the gate. Suddenly, he realized he was free from the pen he was in for a few days and began to run towards me.

I took off running like a shot. (Thank God I’ve been training for a 5K!) He closed the distance by going over the manure pile instead of around it, so I threw my 5-gallon bucket away, hoping he would be distracted by it. He wasn’t.

When I turned back around, it was too late to stop myself from falling into the hole I had stepped in, and I fell. My feet continued over my head backwards – apparently in what yoga aficionados call the “scorpion” pose – before I righted myself and ran some more.

I slid into the corral and closed the gate at the same time that he reached it. He didn’t seem angry or aggressive, only slightly disappointed that I didn’t want to keep playing tag. I locked the gate and climbed out of the pen into a different field as he turned around and ran to the far end of the pasture, jumping and kicking his hooves together as he went.

I’m glad the bull is so happy, cause my husband is still on injured reserve, and I don’t plan to be doing any more jumping, running (or yoga) anytime soon.

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