Chapter 53

The first day of Autumn, or Fall, but for me its just the first day of the coming cold weather. More and more I don’t like cold weather. Been trying to get my wife to move to a warmer place on the planet, and what does she do, decide that we will be living in Pennsylvania for the next year. Snow belt! Brrrrrr.

But trying to stop the cold is like trying to stop the rain . . . and now that I mention that, it is precisely what I spent a beautiful Fall day doing yesterday at my dad’s insistence. At least it was a pretty day, even if it will prove to be a futile effort. The way we ended up trying to stop the rain was like this; this is high erosion country. Which means that this Georgia red mud here, washes away pretty easily and you are always building terraces in your fields in order to thwart erosion. It rains hard, and the water has to go somewhere, and it cuts deep into the earth when it does.

We should have built a terrace yesterday, but instead I spent the afternoon mixing 1000 pounds of cement with a wheel barrel and hoe, and shovels and more shovels. The worse injury was that I had to pay for the cement! At least my dad got sunburnt out of the whole process, that was some comfort. Pouring cement into an erosion hole, is like stopping the rain, and it ain’t gonna happen. 

Better to come to terms with where you built the road and own up to the fact that all that water is gonna cut into your red clay, and be happy with it. Now its just going to wash away my 1000 pounds of cement.

Definitely time to move to SE Asia!