I would prefer to have witnessed the happenstance myself this morning rather than rely on Jude’s description of it, but I’ll try to capture the gist.

She was mowing the inside edge of the Baker Field which is one of our hayfields here at Tuckaway, named in recognition of the folks who owned it prior to us. Part of farm maintenance is the seasonal mowing of the hayfield edges , actually for two reasons.

First, the fields are surrounded by woods. Trees occasionally drop dead branches onto the ground which are then obscured by tall springtime grass. It behooves any farmer to check these edges for fallen branches prior to hay mowing. Either do that, or run those branches through your $25,000 discbine (mowing machine) which does NOT double as a wood chipper !

Second reason: the mowed edge makes for perfect horseback riding. Riding, of course, is what anyone of sound mind lives to do, so no further explanation needed here. The mowed edge path is only about six feet wide through the tall grass.

Anyway, Jude is pudding along this morning on her tractor and Bush Hog mower in the field . Note that I say ‘her’ tractor. We do have His and Her tractors . (You might consider this macho that hers is about 35 horsepower and mine is 70 ) Oh well, our job descriptions vary on the farm. Different jobs call for different machines.

Turns out that while mowing , Jude gets a little tangled in some wild berry bushes . The berries were bluish and apparently dead ripe. Unbeknownst to Jude, quite the volume of them were shaken from the bush and fell onto the tractor seat.

At length Jude detected a wetness in her seat and reached around to decipher what was happening, only to discover that she was sitting in a pool of berry juice that her butt had so expertly squished. Ah, the lyrics that could be written for the new tune: Blue Berry Butt Blues.

I’ll save that for another day !