the Walnut Diary

Our granddaughter Ada had spent her March break chasing lizards and bats around Curaco, some Dutch colony originally developed as a guano mine.  Frankly, the photos looked a little bleak.  Lots of fossilized coral and caves, with the odd shot of Ada chasing things in shallow water.  The land seemed deprived of vegetation and very dry. 

Colours seemed rather flat.  This was supposed to be a snorkelling vacation, but until Roz and Ada decided to go all tourist, Curaco looked pretty flat.  Then came a shot of an ocean liner on the dock, and a boardwalk through a Disney version of a mangrove grove.  Ada posed in the pool for a kiss from a dolphin, and colour seemed to bleed back into pictures on the tourist side of the island.

After a winter of ski lesson, Ada had announced that she wanted more farm time, so she and Charlie arrived Thursday evening in hope of good weather for outdoor activities. Friday, Ada and I cleaned up a stand of walnut trees I had pruned just before the snow.  Many of the branches were too heavy to chip, so I asked Ada to skid them to a pile at the edge of the field.  She was quite willing to do all of the work, leaving me to lean against the UTV and offer advice on how to hook multiple 12’ branches to the hitch with a 6’ chain.  She did the driving, of course.  Bet shot photos of the geezer and the gazelle.  We zipped back to the house for food quite frequently, but a remarkable amount of clearing was done.

The rest of the day involved each family member crouched over their personal electronic device in companionable silence.

Saturday morning produced an empty spot in the Kioti’s shed.  It was gone.  I racked my brain to think of where I had left it this time, but gradually it became clear that someone had stolen our UTV.  There was nothing for it but to go the farm store in Forfar for rubber boots for Ada.  I let word out that the UTV had been stolen.  Then we called the police and Charlie and I met with the Officer.  Nice guy, badly needed to use our privy.  He told us that there had been a number of thefts the night before, including the taking of a pickup truck in Phillipsville.  Charlie and Bet insisted that I not report the theft to the insurance companies lest the thing come back.

Ada was keen to work so I hooked up my little diesel tractor with its dump trailer and we toured the sloping parts of the lawn while she flitted around nabbing twigs and dumping them into the trailer.  Amazing how quickly kids move when they are picking up sticks on a hill.  In the back of my mind I was wondering how much of a hole in my operation the missing UTV would make, especially in the context of the heart valve work on April 14 and recovery time after that.  Ada was happy to take over the driving when we got to flat ground, remembering her session skidding with the Bolens last year when she had mastered its clutch and double brakes.  She kept warning me to “Keep your feet away from the tires!” as she took the loaded trailer down a long hill to the burn pile.  Hill descents are problematical for tractors, but 4wd models have the advantage of engine braking on the front wheels, as long as the driver does not touch the clutch.  Ada had that well internalized as we made our way down through another walnut grove.  She got a great kick out of running the hoist up until the trailer box towered over us.  She popped the clutch to free the brush, then shifted out of gear and used both arms to pull the lever ahead to lower the box.  At that point she instructed me to drive up the hill.  I hadn’t realized until later that she wanted to save me from the steep climb which would have been a chore.  She asked to ride in the trailer.  She overcame my reluctance by telling me, “People in Curaco ride in trailers all of the time, and they sit down.”  We compromised with Ada crouched in the trailer where she had a good grip of the front of the box.  Another day of this and she’ll be standing like a farm kid, relying on legs to level out the bumps.

I had told her that last year three turkey vultures were clearly hungry when they first came back and so I had fed them a couple of frozen pork tenderloins from the freezer.  This time we found some six- month-old hamburger and two bags of turkey parts.  The hamburger went out to the field first while we sat in the shop, building a fire for lunch.  The birds know me from previous years.  They are very smart, and their lookout over the woodlot spotted meal service. Twenty minutes later we had seven vultures and a crow outside the window.  When they had finished that we decided to bring out some turkey, and back they came.  I insisted that Ada pull on a toque so as not to set her hair on fire. Soon she had the fire going (first time ever to strike a match) and a can of beans bubbling on the stove.  The laser thermometer allowed her to explore the mysteries of heat until the beans, now in a sauce pan, reached optimum temp for spooning out.

By then it had started to rain, so we retired to our devices and silences in the house for the afternoon.  More quiet worries about the Kioti from me.

This morning I drove a tractor around the farm for over an hour, looking for tracks, or for a miraculous re-appearance through a fold in memory.  No. 

A bit later my neighbour, the guy who cut the walnut logs, called me with very good news.  Eric Daye, another firewood guy in Phillipsville, was out on a bike ride with his daughters this morning and one had pointed out the UTV in the trees behind the Masonic Hall.  He called Daniel Gordon, my neighbour, because he had seen the machine on Daniel’s road and assumed he owned it.  Daniel passed on the news.  Everyone called the police.  By the time Charlie and I got to the Masonic Hall two cruisers, two Day families,  and I, the old guy up on Young’s Hill, had arrived.

Charlie, Constable Chris, and I hurried over to my Kioti.  It seemed undamaged, though missing its key.  I had brought the spare.  A new red fuel can loaded with 20 litres of gasoline sat in the bed.  Charlie warned me not to start the engine until we checked that the diesel had not been diluted.  He and Chris took turns sniffing the gas cap and pronouncing a gasoline smell.  I was pretty sure the tank had been almost full, but I took a good whiff of the diesel in the tank, pronounced it safe, and started it up.  “How does Charlie know?  He drives a Tesla.”

The cops couldn’t think of any reason not to let me take my machine home right then, so I sent Charlie home for my helmet, then when a break came in the conversation, asked if I had to have it for the trip home.  Chris said, “You have an orange sign;  it won’t go over forty miles per hour;  you’re good.”

So off I went into a ferocious cross-wind and rain, taking the Kioti home before it disappeared again, feeling grateful that the machine had proven so slow, cold, and loud that the thieves had ditched it in favour of a Dodge pickup with a heater and $9K of pavement equipment in the back.  It hardly seemed fair to me that the old guy from Young’s Hill got to drive his toy home while Earl Day was without his truck and the tools he’ll need to start work April 13^th.