Cleaning up someone else's dream

As you can see in the main picture there is pipe laying obscurely in the grass. This was the case on about an acre of our land. We hadn't been able to cut the grass on it for fear of hitting a pipe with the mower. I haven't been able to get out and really work the land because of work, the heat, and a few minor speed bumps that happened in the house we live in now, but getting this land cleaned up has been a priority of mine since we bought it. This weekend brought much needed cooler temperatures to our area and I knew that this was my chance.

My wife and I got up early on Sunday morning and decided that we were going to start the tedious task of removing the pipe out of the field. I had seen 20 ft sticks of pipe on my walks over the land, and I had seen 3 inch pieces. With my wife at the steering wheel of my truck and me working the chains, we managed to pull approximately 3000 lbs of pipe, steel, barbed wire (rolled), t-post, etc. We work well as a team, almost as a fluid motion knowing what each other is thinking, and in 3 hours we had accomplished what I had feared days it would take.

We had all the pipe, steel, etc. piled up, the field was clean and I was satisfied. However, I think my wife, while pulling all of this out of the field, had aspirations of doing something else. What? You may ask. Pulling up saplings and trees and bushes with the truck. That's what. If she could find a paying job that all she had to do is yank trees, bushes, stumps out of the ground, I swear she would have found her dream job. I sometimes think the highlights of our marriage is her being able to "gas it" and yank stuff out the ground. Seeing her laugh and giggle every time she does, makes me laugh and look for more to do.

We took a quick lunch and potty break (the closest public restroom is about 13 miles), I loaded up the mower and went back and finished cleaning up the barn and land, and Shawna mowed our previously un-mowable land. It is a lot of hard work, but since this is ours, the work is all worth it and doesn't seem to feel like work but rather a sense of accomplishment and joy.

The pipe was placed on this land by the previous owner who had aspirations of making a pipe fence and corrals for bulls. His dream had somewhere fell short and the grass had eaten up pipe. So now, I have 3000 lbs of scrap to take to the recycler and a wonderful view of what our entire property looks like mowed. The barn still needs a little TLC and some deep cleaning, but that is another weekend.

Added: After I had typed this, I went to find our riding mower had four flat tires because of the massive thorns on the land.