People, especially men, do not understand why so much of the work at my horse lot is done by hand, usually my hand. I am often asked what kind of excavator I will be using for a certain project and when I tell them,"a shovel" people wait for the punch line. What kind of power saw did you use to cut down those mimosa trees? A tool called lopper which is like a hedge trimmer.
Sometimes people tell me that what I am planning to do is impossible to do with a shovel. But I have seen things that they have not seen. In all of these years I have only lost one foal to natural causes. A big strong, healthy weanling developed pneumonia of an undetermined cause and died despite treatment.
I had to go to town and planned to bury him when I got back. Instead, upon my return I could only see a huge hole in the ground that was so deep that the person shoveling out sand at lightning speed was out of my sight.
I walked up to the hole, thanked Lido and told him that the hole was big enough. Lido dug that hole with a shovel, using the left side of his body. Cerebral palsy made the right side of nearly no value to him.
As the plaque says on the bridge dedicated to Lido, "If I can do it then why can't you?'
4 comments:
What a touching story. I miss him.
Real men use a shovel and dig deep holes. Real girls cut down big trees with hand saws. I am not a real girl yet.
- Lydia
Am laughing and laughing at Lydia's comment!
Through all the years i have worked with you Steve, as many times as you have led me well, whenever you describe intensive manual labor I cringe. About an hour later its done and I'm happy.
-Christian
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