It is about 54 degrees this morning. That means that the mud is still soft and it is not a good time to drive anywhere on the lawn. I had hoped to sneak the trailer into the back yard one of these days to load up wood from a tree we had to remove, but will have to wait until either we get a cold morning with frost or the ground dries out a little.

We saw plenty of mud yesterday when we delivered firewood to Eagle Butte. The thaw had left a rather soupy mess in the yard where we leave the wood for distribution to churches and homes. Our woodlot at the church is just as muddy and we are trying to avoid driving back there until things dry out a bit. We have delivered most of the firewood that we had split, which is a good thing. We have a small reserve in case of an emergency and we are ready to start splitting and stacking for next year’s deliveries as soon as things dry out a bit.

It was a beautiful day to deliver firewood yesterday. A bit of morning fog around the creeks burned off to reveal a bright, sunny and warm day. It is rare for us to make a trip without lots of wind, but the weather cooperated fully with our little caravan of five trucks and trailers. We estimated that the haul was about 9 cords - more than the total delivery the first year of our project.

Well, we’ve banked our extra hour for the summer. It isn’t much of a savings plan, really. In the fall when we set our clocks back we won’t get any interest on the time that we have put into “daylight savings.” On the other hand, I am a morning person and so enjoy getting up a bit earlier. If we didn’t change our clocks, I wouldn’t be able to catch the sunrise on the lake and still make it to work on time during the summer. Today, however, it feels a bit like I got up in the middle of the night and it is very dark outside as I write my morning thoughts.

Since I’m rambling on about random topics, I was looking at some of the pictures I’ve taken over the past few weeks. Here is a picture I took in our local grocery store on a day when it was -5 outside. I had rushed across the parking lot from my car and stamped the snow off of my boots as I entered the store. I had just a couple of staple items to pick up and knew that Susan had stew in the crock pot for a hearty supper. And there, in the produce department, I saw that they had a selection of honeydew melons and watermelons. It made me wonder, “who develops an urge for watermelon when it is -5 outside?” I just didn’t feel like buying one on that particular day. A friend later told the story of his wife craving watermelon when she was pregnant and how there were not watermelons to be found at the time. It seems unlikely, however, that there are enough pregnant women in our community who happen to crave watermelon to justify keeping the fruit in stock all winter long.

Let’s see, if a 53’ reefer trailer can haul 10,000+ pounds (the limiting factor with watermelons isn’t weight but space), and the tractor is getting 5 - 7 mpg on the 1,250 mile trip from the Mexico border to Rapid City, and the refrigeration unit takes more fuel, and diesel is running over $4 per gallon these days, let’s say it takes 2 1/2 days and $800 worth of fuel to get the truck one way with the watermelons. Of course the real way that groceries are distributed doesn’t work that way at all. Trucks cary mixed loads to warehouse where the loads are reconfigured and distributed. The truck that reaches Rapid City has all sorts of different refrigerated goods in it. And because of the hub system, the watermelon may have actually traveled another 800 miles or more getting from wherever it was grown to our grocery store.

I guess if times get rough and we need to cut back a little, I might be able to forego watermelon in the winter to save a little fuel. Of course the watermelon were probably hitching a ride in a truck that was carrying lettuce and tomatoes and I haven’t completely given up those foods even though the weather here doesn’t support those crops at this time of the year. It just seems possible that we may have become a bit attached to the luxury of having whatever we want to eat all year round.

There was a time when the folks living in the hills and on the plains had a rather limited choice when it came to fruit during the winter. The crushed chokecherries in the pemmican was about all they had all winter long. And when winters were long and harsh like the one we’ve been having, the food supplies sometimes ran short. Hunting might provide some fresh meat, but other foods were often in short supply by the time the weather began to warm up.

Unlike the watermelon, I do buy apples year round. Apples are probably one of my favorite foods and these days you can find good apples in the store each trip. I am not a fan of the really large and carefully polished apples that greet you when you enter the produce department. I see little value in a piece of fruit that contains more than one serving. I prefer the smaller apples that they keep in bags, but these days I can always finis apples when I stop by the grocery store. We are a bit spoiled when compared to the people who endured the winters in this part of the world centuries ago. Truth be told, we’re spoiled compared to most of the people in the world.

Spring is coming. We’ll be dreaming over seed catalogues before too long. The mud is a sure sign of things that are yet to come.

Copyright © 2014 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.