Keeping a Sense of Humor

Every season has its challenges. Spring brings on the mud, when everything gets stuck and rutted. Summer brings on the mosquitoes in droves, with ticks, and ground squirrels everywhere. Autumn brings its scramble before things freeze up, and winter has its ice and snow and frost heaving. So, you can’t say that winter has got all the miseries—each season has its own set of inconveniences. That’s why keeping a sense of humor through it all is an integral part of hygge (hoo-ga) culture.

It was so cold earlier this winter when I was scheduled for an eye appointment that the car simply wouldn’t start. We had a good chuckle on the phone when I called to reschedule. What can you do? It’s too far to walk to town at -20! “I was hoping to be there today, but…” It’s just one of those things that’s part of winter in the Northwoods. Learning to roll with it as best you can is part of what can turn a very grumpy moment into a shake-your-head-an-move-on situation.

Sometimes being able to laugh comes after the event itself. This week saw one of those scary near misses that is really quite funny when you get some space from the situation. There’s nothing like coming in for breakfast and saying, “Well, Kara tired to run me over with the Bobcat today.”

I’m sure that, from any other vantage point, it looked like a classic cartoon. I had pulled my black plastic toboggan sled up to the garage and loaded it with three 50-lb. bags of chicken feed. I knew that Kara was moving bales with her skid steer, and I always try to gauge where she’s going because I know she can’t always see me, especially when she’s backing up. It appeared that she was working on a round bale by the pigs, which are west of our garage, so I figured she was feeding it out to them and that I was safe.

My sled fully loaded, I headed back towards the chicken coops to finish chores. The road from the garage to the coops cuts across the barnyard and is lined with the round bales on either side, making an alley. We keep this lane plowed in the winter, so Kara can reach the round bales and bring feed back and forth. I was pulling my sled through this stretch when I heard the skid steer coming closer behind me. I turned around and saw she had a bale skewered on the front, and she was barreling down the trail my way. It’s a small Bobcat, and the bale was so big that in the narrows of the trail it obscured nearly all of the skid behind it.

I started walking faster, my ice cleats clinking on the hard path as I tried to trot my way to safety, but the speed of the Bobcat was greatly outpacing my ability to drag 150 pounds on a sled. The bale kept coming, like a gigantic comic-strip boulder rolling down the trail, and then one of the feed bags tried to fall off the sled. Now I was really slowing down and in a bind.

Thinking quickly, I stopped and drug the bag back on the sled, looking for an escape route. I knew the machine was too loud for Kara to hear me if I shouted at her. It was going to be my job to get out of the way because she obviously couldn’t see around the bale. I grabbed the side of the sled and tried to pull it enough to the side that she would miss it, but the path was too narrow and the plowed banks too steep, and I wasn’t strong enough to lift more weight in feed than me up over the snow, and the skid was nearly upon us.

In the very last moment, I let go of my attempt to drag the sled to safety and flung myself back against the round bale behind me, trying to be as flat as possible as the moving bale sped forward. I could just hear the crunch of the plastic sled under the tire in my mind when Kara suddenly came to an immediate stop, rocking forward. The sled had just come into view beneath her bale.

She later said her immediate thought was, “What is the sled doing there?” Followed by, “Oh no, where’s Laura?” She then looked up and over and saw me plastered against the bale, arms up, buggy-eyed. Her eyes were quite buggy too as she backed up, hoping the bale would stay on the spear, then, steering clear of the sled, continued on her way. The sled survived in one piece, the bale stayed on the rig, and I avoided being either run over or smushed like a sandwich between two bales.

There’s a reason that farming and ranching are in the 10 most dangerous occupations, and I’m sure that Kara will be making sure that no one is walking down the hay bale narrows next time she drives through! But goodness was it a funny story to tell over breakfast after chores, when everyone was safe and disaster obverted.

I could have been pissed, ranting and raving. But she couldn’t see, and I was not able to drag the sled fast enough, so it was a perfect setup for trouble. No one ended up getting hurt (including the sled), and apparently the look on my face while pressed against the snow-frosted bale was priceless. So, this winter, stay safe and keep your sense of humor! See you down on the farm sometime.