ribs

Long ago, in a land far away, there was an unfortunate incident. It involved trying to tie up hundreds of pounds of steel with a few wisps of baling twine I found blowing around in a field.

“This will never work,” my dad said.

“But look!” I said. “We have enough pieces!” In this sense, I was right. The number of twine scraps was indeed sufficient.

“It won’t work.” he said. In this sense, he was right. By the time the box truck made in to the top of the hill, our neatly stacked and tied hoops were in a giant tangled mess on the floor.

It was a miracle we made it to the top of the hill at all. As anyone who had to suffer through my nerves in the weeks leading up to the move can tell you, I was not confident that my rented box truck, hauling over two tons of equipment, was going to make the climb up this washed out logging road a few days after an historic rain storm. In fact, I thought we would get stuck.

We almost got stuck. Twice. We bounced around in the cab like little pieces of popcorn. The whole time. But we made it.

Back in Milton, we tied all the hoops back up, this time with proper rope, but there was some damage done. The hoops were never identical to begin with, and after the fall they were even less so. I don’t really have the equipment at my disposal to rebend steel hoops, so I am going to work with what I’ve got, but between that and the slight grade on the site, the second hoophouse looks a little like a kindergarten construction project made of popsicle sticks. I can’t wait to get the plastic on it so i can stop staring at those uneven metal ribs.

But it’s functional. And it’s mine. And that’s enough.