Farm Work Day “After Party” 2.24.24

I just realized that when I was writing this morning’s “before” post that I wrote the wrong date. I was living in the future or suffering from an apparent caffeine deficiency. It’s actually wild that I caught this post-chigger-removal shower while getting into bed.

What is a chigger removal shower? Well, it’s a lot like a regular shower but you scrub extra hard. For at least the last seven hours, multiple chiggers or equally annoying bugs have been crawling around in my bra. I have had my hands down my bra a big majority of the day. When I wasn’t moving junk into the roll off dumpster, I had my hands making a swipe at my itchy boobs.

Just thinking about the things make me itch. But I’m almost too tired to scratch. I think the shower got them all. I had the water hot enough to make my skin super pink. Either that, or the chigger bites have just made me one big red blob.

Today’s project was to clean out the shed that is going to become the place for men to escape during events. It’s going to be a redneck haven meets a juke joint type of place. We decided that men deserve their own party space while the women are doting over flowers or something sparkly. The outside walls of the shed are covered in tin, much like the roof. The covered porch was completely full of old stuff, dirt, and you guessed it, chiggers.

I didn’t get a good beige picture. This was about midway through the front porch. Inside, we found boxes and boxes and boxes and more boxes of magazines. May’s husband had been a collector of magazines. But not the kind of collector that put them in clear sleeves for protection and appraisal by an expert. He was rather the kind of collector that put them in bankers boxes on the top shelves of a shed for incidental raccoon beds.

After the porch was cleared, we went to work inside the shed and we found every nail ever made. There were boxes, coffee cans, empty peanut jugs, and pretty much anything else you can think of full of nails. There were long nails, short nails, rusted nails, and things that were equally as sharp as nails but looked like screws. In the midst of the Great American Nail Revival, we found a busted bag of moth balls that had almost completely disintegrated into a bag of moth ball dust. Did you know that sweeping moth ball dust can have you tasting it hours later? Hmmph. Me neither.

We took frequent breaks, partially because of the dust and partially because we really wanted to do most anything to escape carrying a new found bucket of nails. There were really other things that we didn’t want to touch. For example, I really should have passed on carrying the suspicious looking carpet covered boards but I hugged them like my life depended on it and stomp walked over to the roll off. Off topic, but I am still itching as I write this.

Regardless of how much itching, how many nails, or how many boxes full of thirty year old magazines, we pulled together and completely filled the roll off. We are making progress and we have tons of ideas for the venue. I managed to save a few things that we plan to repurpose for the man cave. My favorite find of the day was a pink toilet that was hidden in the bushes. I plan to use the bowl part as a planter and the tank will convert to a cooler for beer. Unconventional? Yes. Precisely the kind of potty humor men can appreciate? On point.

All in all, it was a good day and we are able to see progress. We teased that this is not the business model we would recommend. In a perfect world, we would have paid a crew to come do the dirty work. But the grunt work that we are putting forth to make this a success will make the actual success so much sweeter. I can’t wait for the day when we can stand back and bask in the glory. For now, I’m just basking in chiggers.