Papa informed me the other day that I would have to take 'skid steer lessons.' I wasn't super keen on the idea but as he still can't sit it sure would come in handy if one of us could use the skid steer. So after grabbing a pair of ear plugs and inwardly building myself up to learn a new skill, Papa and I headed out to fire up the skid steer. I climbed in and sat down and Papa started to tell me how to start it... I'm thinking turn a key.. he's going to great lengths to tell me about ether!! A few minutes later I'd gotten it started.. ether works wonders and we were OFF and crawling :)
First thing I got to do was move the pigs 1 ton bag of feed, only about half full, to the barn where we had just started feeding the piglets, creep feed style. It took me a while to figure out which directions of the petal moved the forks which way.. Feels totally backwards to me! But I moved the feed bag without any trouble! Then Papa attached a ball to on of the forks and I got to move this
Yup all the way from the back where Papa had cut it up this spring and the boys had filled the trailer earlier. It actually took almost as long to hook the trailer to the skid steer as it did to drive the trailer backwards all the way to the house! It steers really super easy believe it or not! As you can see though Papa was a bit leery of my 'driving' and moved both the car and the travelall out of the way!! The kids were watching a movie inside and the baby asleep so I didn't have to worry about them. Papa wanted to dump the trailer load himself which suited me just fine. As it was he ended up just lifting the trailer part way and pulling most of the wood out by hand. Then I drove the trailer back to the piles of firewood to be brought to the front and parked it so we could re-fill it. After I got back to the house I got to 'play with' the chunk of metal that we took off our old addition and move it to a better spot. It went pretty well :)
I learned a few things that day!
How to drive a skid steer and move the forks at the same time!
That Papa and I can hook a trailer to the skid steers fork ball without me having to see what was going on without too much frustration and only a bit of time :)
Papa has more patience on pain killers then he does normally :)
That driving a trailer bed backwards isn't as hard as it looks :)
If you hit a bump/stump with the skid steer Hang on!! It rocks pretty good.
If you happen to be 8 months pregnant and driving a skid steer and hit a few bumps/stumps your belly muscles will hurt afterwards!
Driving a skid steer while pregnant makes me motion sick :(
That starting an engine with ether is not as hard as you might think.
That it really is FUN to drive a skid steer :) Even if it makes me a little motion sick!!
