My Exercise Program for the morning…

My Farmer came and found me this morning and says (after he says good morning, how are you this morning, of course), “I lost my phone. Would you want to go look for it for me?” I replied, “Well of course, dear. Where shall I look?” Haha, that’s probably not what I said, but it sounds good.
This is not the first time I have been asked to find his phone. And probably not the last. I always find it, but it’s mostly credited to him because he usually has a pretty good idea of where he lost it. The one time that I still laugh at was quite a few years back. He had lost it changing a hand line in a hay field. If you don’t know what a hand line is, let me explain. It is a line of many long pipes, each pipe is 40 feet long with a hook on one end and a sprinkler on the other. To change a line, you pick up each pipe walk to the next designated location usually 60 feet or so, hook it up and lay it down on the ground, in a straight row, (I add that because it is the hard part and it’s important) and continue until the whole line is moved. This particular line had around 20 pipes. So you can see there was a lot of bending over. And my Farmer carries his phone in his pocket. So it fell out during one of his bending over times. The phone was either in the area where the line was originally laying or in the area where he moved the pipes to. At least it was narrowed down to two strips in a small area, out in the 25 acre field. Perfect. Our phones were still relatively new to us. We had discovered that you could customize your ring tone. We decided it would be fun to have each of our voices as the ring tone. Yes, we are easily entertained. My Farmer’s recording for my ring tone was “Shirl, answer your phone“. My recording for his ring tone was “Hey, whatcha doin‘ “. We thought we were so cleaver. Back to finding my Farmer’s phone. I had the area pinned down, now I just have to wander around and listen for the phone. I dialed his number on my phone and walk around. I kept doing this, going back and forth in the designated area. After a while, and if I remember right, I was about to give up, I finally heard something. Sure enough it was my voice saying “Hey, whatcha doin“. Then it stopped. I called again, and followed my voice “Hey, whatcha doin“, “Hey, whatcha doin“, “Hey, whatcha doin“. Over and over. Every time it said it, the voice seemed to get louder and louder. And it seemed to develop an attitude. It was pissing me off by the time I found it. Needless to say, I picked up his phone and immediately changed the ring tone to something normal. Now back to today’s lost phone adventure.

My Farmer told me the field he lost his phone in. This time he was changing a wheel line. In a wheel line, the pipes are all hooked together with wheels and it has a mover in the middle. (there is a picture of the wheel line below) To move a wheel line, you start the motor on the mover and the whole line moves together. Way easier then hand lines. Most of the line. There is not a lot of bending down on a wheel line. So I’m thinking he either lost it at the mainline where it hooks up to the water source or at the mover area. No problem. Then he adds “I did walk along the whole line to straighten it out. Crap. What that means is, he literally walked the whole 1/4 mile line and manually lifted each pipe section and moved it over a bit. (Fyi….this is what you have to do when the line becomes crooked) Now, that just added a 1/4 mile stretch to where the phone could be. It’s all fine. It’ll be my exercise program for the day, I thought. This wheel line is on a hill, so it’ll be a good workout. Yeepee. 🤪(Ok, fine. That was the nice thought I had.)

This is what I see when I pulled up to the field. Ummm, this hay is a lot taller then it was the last time I was out here. This could be challenging. I check at the mainline first. This is when I had the flash back of the previous phone search. At least this time I won’t hear myself hollering “Hey, whatcha doin“. No ringing at the mainline, so I head down through the field. This is going to be worse then finding a needle in a haystack, was my thought. I head towards the mover area, out at the middle of the wheel line, which is my second guess, and hope that I will find it there. It’s a beautiful sunny day, walking through the fresh growing alfalfa, listening for a telephone ringing. Great exercise program. Really, it is. The hay is tall enough that it’s easy to trip on. So ever now and then I did a slight bend and catch yourself move. I’m sure it strengthens some muscle somewhere in the body. As I am almost to the mover, I hear a sound. I call again and sure enough, it’s my Farmers ring tone. I follow it and find his phone with no problem. Only because of the ring though. Here’s a picture.

Can you find it? It’s hidden pretty good.

Well, that was my exercise program for the morning. I wonder what my program will be tomorrow morning. That’s one thing I can count on here, you never can count on one day being the same as the other. There’s always something different happening when you are Livin’ the life, the farm life that is. That’s why I love it.

What was your exercise program today? Do you have a finding a lost phone story? Leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you.