Circus Smirkus and Waterville progress

It's been awhile since I've posted. We worked quite a bit over at Waterville and also have been doing some real estate. Caroline has a closing tomorrow and I hopefully have one at the end of the week. Not much else on the horizon but at least we will have some funds coming in.

We got the first line of posts completed towards the end of last week. The weather cooperated and things were moving along well. I also got the first hole for the second row of posts dug after much calculating and measuring to make sure we had things squared up. Hopefully we do. Then Disaster struck over the weekend.

I had taken time out from the building to put in a culvert up in the woods. It's been an ongoing trouble spot, always wet and difficult to traverse. They were predicting rain for Sunday so I wanted to get it in before things were too wet to get it done again. While working I noticed a bolt on the ground. Looking around I couldn't figure where it was off but then I noticed some leakage from the rear axle. I quickly took the tractor out of the woods to the shed to make sure if it died it could be towed out of there. I then took a closer look. It appears the frame for the backhoe lost a number of bolts and finally came down on top the rear axle. I think it displaced it enough that hydraulic fluid is leaking out of the transmission. Actually, I don't have a clue but that sounds good. I called the kubota dealer today and they are going to go pick it up. I suspect we are looking at big bucks.

Unfortunately not having the tractor is going to slow things down quite a bit. Much of what we do requires the tractor to make it feasible. The ATV ("Red") can help but doesn't compare with the work the tractor can do. Hopefully it won't take too long to get it repaired.

Last night we went to see a Circus Smirkus show over in Greensboro. We've talked about doing it for years and finally Deb, who Caroline works with at Food Share, got us tickets. It was a lot of fun. Pretty amazing that these kids put on 70 shows over the course of the summer after only 3 weeks of rehearsals. Very impressive. It was the last show of the year so I think there was more passion in the performance than usual. Definitely worth going to see. Bring dinner if you go. They had some food but a picnic would have been better before the show.