The Hay Delivery

Ok, so I promised in a previous post I would tell the story of our most recent hay delivery. To take a 15 minute break from work, and prevent myself from sticking toothpicks in my eyes to prop open the lids......I'll tell the story now!

As I have mentioned many a times, nothing, even the most mundane things, go without some kind of drama at our house. It's my husbands curse! I should have consider this before I told him I would marry him! (Just Kiddin'....obviously....I think....)

So, hay, as regular readers may also know, is my pet peeve of having my horses at home with me. The only true complaint I can honestly make. Trying to find hay at a decent cost....DECENT HAY might I add, and someone to deliver it and stock it is like try to find a needle in that hay order ;( I have finally found a guy who charges an almost decent price for nice hay! He delivers it when I am not even home, leaves me an invoice, and doesn't blow up my phone if I am a week or so in getting the payment to him. What more could a gal ask for, huh?

Unfortunately, my hay guy has had some personal things come up that has made it difficult for him to deliver hay so he's called in some friends to help. On my last delivery, it was the friend. I was on my way home from work; Allen was at home. When the hay guy arrived, Allen was in the house and I had told the hay man we may or may not be home, so he probably assumed we were both gone. I am about 10 minutes away from home and get a call from Allen (you know this is where the drama unfolds right!)

Me: Hello
Allen: Where are you?
Me: Umm, didn't I just talk to you....I am on my way home.
Allen: Well you better hurry up because your hay guy is here and they just backed over the water spicket.
Me: WHAT?
Allen: Yeah. He just backed over the spicket. Hurry up and get home. 'Click'

Ok, so first of all, why do I have to hurry up and get home when he is already THERE? This was one of those days for Allen when it was 'My Hay' so I had to go deal with the situation. Nice huh!

So I pull up to the front garage and go into the house. As I enter, Allen comes walking into the mud room hunched over. Okaaaaaaaaay - clearly he was trying to get through the kitchen with out the hay guy seeing him through the window *SIGH* This is where we bickered back and forth about who was going to go out there to confront the hay guy about the spicket he had just backed over. I'll spare you the dialogue!

And you guessed it. Out I went .... and I was pissed .... at my big baby of a husband...not the hay guy!! Funny, someone shoots up our fence and he has no issues whatsoever stampeding straight to their front door. Someone runs over our water spicket and he hunches down when he walks past the windows. Men, I guess!

As I walk toward the hay guy and his family, I steer to the side of their jeep (yes they towed 50 bales of hay on a trailer hitched to a jeep!) that the spicket was NOT on. I wanted to see if they would mention it to me first, before I had to say "Ah hem, oh um gesh, our spicket wasn't bent down towards the ground when I left this morning".

The good news is, they were honest people. Whewwwww! I sure didn't want to have to be the cranky beotch (like I was when my fence got shot up) and throw out my raging diva about a water spicket! They pointed out to me that they backed over it (how they didn't see it I don't know, seeing as the tractor was sitting directly behind it! But that's besides the point) and they were going to try and fix it. The husband [hay guy] said he was going to try and pull it back upright. I suggested I see if my husband was in the house and that maybe he could help. I didn't want hay guy to try and fix something and in turn make it worse without my husband there to see what was happening....in the event he'd have to fix it all again later.

So, in true Allen fashion for that day, as I pop my head in the back door and call for him, this is the response I get: "I am NOT going out there; no way, too bad". Okay, I didn't know this was preschool...but again, besides the point! So I head back over to the hay guy and he asks if my husband is coming. I quickly reply "Uh, I think he is in the basement and he must have not heard me" *sigh* So hay guy and his wife try to pull/push the spicket back into a upright position. Then, once he gets it as straight as he possibly can [it was still bent a tad] he turned it on and water came out. He then removes the handle and said he'd take it with him to flatten it back out on his work bench and then he'd bring it back with the second load of hay. The problem with this is, we had the pump to this spicket turned off so NO water should have been coming out. *UGH* Whatever.

Hay guy returned later that evening with my second load of hay ... and my now only slightly bent spicket handle. Since then, Allen has fixed the pump that controls that spicket so we are now using it again to water the horses and so far, so good. However, when it is 2 degrees outside, if there is an issue underground with any of the piping, I am wondering if we won't know until the ground thaws anyways?

To be continued.....I am sure........

Here is a picture of the spicket as it stands today!

You cannot see where it is still bent. And after I wrote this whole thing, I realized maybe the 'technical' term for it is not a spicket as that is what is attached to the house.....but whatever....I am calling it the barn spicket...whether spell check likes it or not!!