!! Trigger Warning for drunk driving, car wrecks, and drowned kohlrabi. May want to skip this one if that sounds like too much, I’ll be back to lighter content next week. !!
A note: I feel fairly confident posting this story as I was somewhat involved and it was in the newspaper the next morning. If I come to find out other involved parties are uncomfortable with this post, I’ll happily remove it
Hello Friends!
Well, we have some good news and some bad news about the state of the garden. The good news is the tomatoes and potatoes seem to be quite happy and are well on their way to growing big and strong and tasty. They seem wholly unaffected by the weird weather of crazy storms, just happy to have some ground to flourish in.
On the other hand, we may have lost the kohlrabi and the carrots. They were already unhappy about the continued fluctuations between hot and cold, but after the last crazy heavy downpour they had just had enough, they simply were done with the nonsense. While I am bummed, I cannot blame them as I also am not a big fan of standing out in a torrential downpour. It’s just been a very rough year for the garden. I don’t think we are going to end up with much of our intended yield.
I have a few squash plants waiting to go in the ground as well, but the weather hasn’t been nice for getting that done.
Seems like it’s going to be a routine, all week long we work to fix the storm damage, washed out driveways, destroyed plants, rutted and flooded corral and arena, and then each Sunday it storms hard enough to undo all of that in about a 15 minute period. We spent yesterday under flash flood warnings, it’s no wonder the garden is a state.
Speaking of “in a state”, you will not believe my last Friday night. We had quite the hubbub.
So, my sweet mom was looking out of the kitchen window as she passed by when she stopped in her tracks. My mom has what’s called aphasia, which means there’s a bit of a disconnect usually between what she’s thinking and what she is saying or trying to articulate. Names come out wrong, yes means no, sometimes whole new words are created. Generally we’ve noticed that in more serious situations, her words come out a little clearer, doc thinks that it’s maybe that the sudden concern is helping pull language from a different neural pathway. Whatever the reason, you can imagine how fast we moved Friday evening when, clear as day my mom goes “Jeff, there’s a car”. Not the most concerning phrase on its own but it was dripping with panic from my mom.
Looking out my kitchen window, easy as you please, just on the other side of my pasture, perched at the top of my neighbors field, was a little hatchback on its top. Mom was right, there was a car. A car doing things cars are not really meant to do.
Obviously, there was much ado after that. I called 911 and, because I didn’t know the extent of the wreck, I asked them to send out everything they might need to extract someone from a car. I didn’t know if there were injuries, or the car was on fire or leaking gas, or what have you, so when asked what services I wanted rolling toward me, my answer was firmly “all of it, I don’t know how bad this is fixing to get”.
Luckily I was grossly over-prepared. Worth a quick note here, as soon as I got off the phone with the dispatcher, we kenneled the dogs so they were safe. The horses had already opted to head to the barn, so they were safe as well.
While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, my dad grabbed my car (his was in the shop) and went out to assess the wreck. I was so afraid there were going to be kids in the car or, God forbid, someone no longer with us. At this point no one had seen the actual wreck so we didn’t know what happened, but we have a fair amount of older people on the roads around here and it’s not terribly uncommon to hear about an elderly person having a medical emergency and wrecking out as a result.
But amazingly, considering the car was, I’ll remind you, turned turtle, completely on its top, there were no serious injuries. When my dad got up there, he found a single occupant. She was definitely not totally understanding the gravity of her situation, as she was not in a state where she should have been driving.
I have a very strong distaste for those who drive under the influence, and she’s incredibly lucky she wasn’t more seriously injured or injured someone else. Around the time that I was graduating high school I remember thinking it was an absolute crime wave of drunk drivers killing classmates and family members of classmates. I don’t think you could go more than a week without hearing about someone else and let me tell you, that did more to teach us about drunk driving than Red Asphalt ever would have.
Overall this lady was incredibly lucky considering the choices she made. They landed in probably the softest dirt in the valley, on a back road where there wasn’t anyone else to injure. She wasn’t hurt, she landed in the nicest people’s field, where she probably won’t have to have consequences for destroying crops or property, and she was found by a retired first responder (my dad). If you’re going to make poor life choices, that’s probably the best possible outcome.
Plus, here in Idaho they don’t take drunk driving very seriously at all, which greatly infuriated me to find out, but I digress.
Anyways, it took them several hours to get the car pulled up on the road, because the dirt was so soft, the damage was not as bad as it could have been but the amount of “stuck” the car was proved incredible. It was also super warm so the poor tow truck driver was simply not having a great time. But we had a pretty good time watching it all happen.
Anyways, that’s been pure crazy set of nonsense for the week. Always something new on the farm. At least most of my stories end with “and everyone was okay”.
Until we chat again my friends.
The Farmer's Blogger 