Shupe Shire: A dark dank hole

You would think that I would learn. Don't start a job in the dark. HA! I don't think that I will learn from this, but I hope so. Anyway, I was milking our Jersey cows last night and my dad asked me if I was going to fix that tile I busted while putting in a waterline at my house a couple of weeks ago with my father-in-law. I thought about it and after moving some of our heifers onto fresh oats and turnips (for grazing) I said, "Heck, its not dark yet I might as well go and fix that tile, shouldn't be too much of a job. All's I have to do is dig a bit of a hole and put a tile or two down and bam I'm done. That was at about 5 o'clock last night. Well, I got the back-hoe started and headed on down the road (slowly because the little gasser is gutless, effective but gutless). By the time I got to my place it was getting dark. The sun was setting somewhere behind the near continual MI cloud cover and I had to try to find some lighting (the back-hoe has no working lights, as in no lights that work let alone working lights:) but I digress) After finding a flashlight I got to work.

Things were going fairly well and in short order I was down to the cement tile (used for soil drainage). I managed to get the hole dug without tearing up the new water line that was there but found that two tile were broke and that I needed a wider hole. Well I started shoveling cause I couldn't see very well and didn't want to tear up more than I needed to. This worked rather poorly as the soil at our place is really really sticky clay when it is wet and the tile were still running so there was plenty of wet clay. After about 30 minutes of trying to dig while holding a flashlight I thought "this is ridiculous, I am standing next to a back-hoe and I am digging by hand. So I hopped back on the back hoe, maneuvered it around so that I would be digging in line with the tile and proceeded to dig a much bigger hole so I could get at the tile better

I finished digging the hole and then thought, "Hmm I wonder if I reach out real far if I can dig on the other side and reach the back side of the southern most broken tile, then I won't have to dig hardly at all." Action follow thought and in the process I tore the new water line in two!! ARGH!! not good! By now it was 6:45 and starting to sprinkle. Thankfully we have lots of 1inch water line and couplers and all that stuff from our pasturing but it is not as high psi as the water line I ripped up.
So I called Joe (fella that works for us) to see when he would be done feeding cows. Thankfully he was and came over right away. In the next 45 minutes we got the couplers and hose clamps and all that jazz and were back in the hole. Then we figured out that the line wouldn't reach so Joe had to go back and find a 90 degree coupler and some water line to get it connected. Thankfully He brought a long chuck.

Because, after getting the 90 connected in very cold water, in the rain, in the boot deep mud, in the dark (at least now I had someone to hold a light!) and having the tile in place, the line kinked while connecting it to the other end!!!!!! So, I pulled it off and we cut another piece. Joe was breathing death threats if I kinked this one off but thanks to God and some boiling hot water fixed up by the lovely Angela (she got home from work in the middle of all of this) we got the water line connected!