The Beet goes on

My reversing skills were shown for what they were today, usually I can manage, hitch a trailer to the car and they are non existent. Today I managed, eventually, to reverse Hazel the almost 4x4 and Trixie through barn doors wide enough to accept Vulcan bombers and far enough back to a monster pile of fodder beets which are to be a new and exciting foodstuff for the critters.

Quite how exciting we had no idea, but the excitement began when Trixie was loaded. Now being smallholders we often have to make do, so instead of a nice open trailer that the front loader tractor could scoop up a ton and drop into the trailer in seconds, I had to throw each beet rugby pass style into Trixie's hold. Built for two small ponies Trixie was accommodating enough to be used for this but the tyres almost burst with the weight. In fact so heavy was the beet that the jockey wheel smashed into the concrete as we pulled away. This called for some trick driving, balancing Hazel on two wooden blocks allowed me to pull the wheel out of the concrete trough we had just dug. Broken wheel recovered we used the farms airline to put an extra 50lbs of pressure in each of the trailer tyres.

Problem solved we made it back to HQ, just as it began to snow. This made any attempt to get Hazel, Trixie and Beets to the root store (formerly a rabbit house) impossible.

So began the long slog of unloading. Barrow full after barrow full taken up the increasingly snowy slope until finally the task was done. As ever I had helpers, a goat that thought each beet was more tasty than the last and kept sampling, from the barrow from the store, from the bucket, from the trailer in fact from everywhere except the big pile labelled Beets goats for the use of. The Berners helped by being underfoot at every opportunity, or sitting on them.