Sargie was driving Tuesday night when she spotted these deer under the street light in the front yard of the old Alpha High School

April 2, 2014 – Wednesday

11 degrees/clear/calm

Pentoga Road

After dawning wet, warm, and windy on Tuesday morning, the weather has done a complete 180. It’s to get up to near forty today and hopefully, the sap will run later this afternoon.

After writing on Tuesday morning, I spent the time grading final projects. Some are absolutely outstanding. A couple were sent back to their authors with some sort of notation saying that their works must have been meant for some other class like Kindergarten Literature or some such thing. I don’t care what the age group or level of education is, there are always one or two who try to sneak by in the easiest manner. I’ve been around way too long to play that game.

Yesterday’s walk was … well, wet and windy, but I made it in good shape. The county sheriff pulled over and asked if I was okay. I told him I was just out for a stroll and he gave me a look as if I was crazy. I might be, who knows?

Arriving home, I waded out to the greenhouse to retrieve a bit of potting soil. I needed to transplant a dozen pepper seeds that were sprouted indoors between wet paper towels placed in a baggie. With that finished, the rest of the bedding plants were watered and all I can do now is wait for gardening season to arrive.

A big winter storm is forecast for Friday and I wanted to get the buried snowmobile out of the south maple woods. You may recall that I stuck it Sunday afternoon when Sargie and I were tapping trees.

It took almost forty-five minutes of heavy work on Tuesday to get the thing back to the yard. Though the temperature had dropped way below freezing, the crust on the the snow wasn’t firm enough to hold the snowmobile’s weight… or mine. Each step saw me sinking past my knees. In the end, I had to stomp down all the snow around the machine and get up a head of steam so I could glide over the top of the crust and not through it. I got stuck several more times between the woods and yard, but in the end, the snowmobile and I both made it out in good shape.

Since Sargie was closing, I decided to go over to Iron Mountain and ride home with her. I hate that she has so much driving after dark and often, it’s close to 9 before she gets very far down the road. I dinged around at the shopping center adjacent to the Vision Center and even found a pair of Dickies work pants, normally selling for $29.95 on clearance for $2.99. Only problem.. they are black. Honestly, who does heavy outside work in black pants? I guess I do until these are worn out.

I’m going to ride with Sargie this morning, then turn around and come back home. Due to the cold weather, the freezer in the garage isn’t doing a very good job and I need to transfer the meat and valuable foods to the freezer downstairs. The only problem is that it’s fairly full. I’ll have to go through both big freezers and the one over the refrigerator and begin making priorities and throwing stuff out. I hate doing that, but it’s better than having valuable meat thawing and going to waste.

I hope to spend most the day working in the barn. After a very long and cold winter of haphazardly tossing tools on the workbench, I can hardly find the thing. It’s time.

But first, I think I’ll pour another cup of tea and think some deep thoughts.

After all, a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…