Shopping Cart Corral Update

I love when people ask me what I did over the weekend.  My response to those questions is usually something fairly generic like, "Oh, we got a lot of projects done outside."  I guess because that makes me sounds like less of a lunatic and doesn't provoke as many follow-up questions as a more specific answer does, like, "We built-out and painted some shopping cart corrals and moved them into the vineyard with the tractor." 

Which is what we did today.  Generic answers are just easier.  If you are just starting to read now and wondering why the heck we have shopping cart corrals to begin with, you can catch up here.  

Once we finished enclosing them, Aaron drove the tractor, which held up one cart corral with a big yellow bar.

I was supposed to be directing him since we were moving it from the garage, (where we had enclosed it with plywood, put doors and locks on, and painted it), out into a spot in the middle of the vineyard to be used as a storage shed. 

As you can image, Aaron couldn't see very well from inside..

So he was relying on me to direct him on where to go and where to turn. 

And you can see by the number of pictures I took, I was clearly very focused on my duties as a shopping cart corral traffic director.

While we were performing this circus act, I couldn't help but think of the movie The Jerk, an all-time favorite of mine.

I was remembering the scene where Steve Martin was a gas pumper and called the cops to describe the criminals who had just left his gas station. After he failed to keep them at the gas station by hooking a rope from the bumper of their car to the building next door he said to the police very non-challantly, "They'll be driving a blue Chevy 4-door.  And they'll be heading south on Furtado Street.....And they'll be pulling a small church.  So any blue, Chevy 4-door going south on Furtado Street, pulling a small church.  That'd probably be them."

And this looked about as ridiculous.

I waved to some neighbors who were out on their deck, watching, what appeared to them to be, just a white shed-like structure moving at the speed of 3 miles an hour across the field.

Hey Neighbors!  Nothing to see here!  Just a typical day at Schram Vineyards.

And I couldn't help but think of The Jerk again and putting that into my own movie script. 

"Yeah, he'll be driving a red, Massey Ferguson tractor.  About 28 horsepower."

"The driver will have brown hair, about 6'3."

        "He'll be going west through Schram Vineyards...

...And he'll be hauling a large shopping cart corral."

"So any red, Massey Ferguson, 28 horsepower tractor driving west through Schram Vineyards...

hauling a large shopping cart corral....

Yeah, that'd probably be him.  That's your guy."

It's a lot funnier if you've actually seen the movie.  

 And if you haven't seen The Jerk...you should. 

It's a classic.

And finally we got the new shopping cart shed settled into place in the vineyard. 

Phew!  We made it.  There it is!

And when we walked back up, I snapped a picture from up above, thankful that the white shed in the field looked more like a charming barn from a distance.  I also wanted to get a picture of Aaron, who was going out in the vineyard to spray with his spray backpack on. Just because I thought it was cute, like he was going out on his first day of school. 

Aaron?  Aaron?  What are you looking at?  Smile for the camera.

"Don't take a picture of me!" He said. 

"Get a picture of that! What's going on?"

So I turned around...

And saw this!

All of these pictures were taken from our yard as I watched traffic on our road pick up.  The whole Township was out trying to find out the source of all that black smoke. 

And then I saw our neighbor jump in his plane on the grass strip right next to our house. 

I've always thought this was the coolest looking plane.

 I watched him take off into the smoke, probably trying to get a view from above.

But then I lost him, right as he was about to fly right into it.  At least it looked that way to me, but he probably was just circling around it.. 

I went inside the house shortly after this and when I came back out, Aaron said I had missed all the fire trucks and the helicopter that landed on our lake to get water for the fire.  Dang it!  So much for my thorough photo-journalistic reporting.

I thought about sending my pictures to the news station, but figured they probably didn't care that much about our little Township out here.  Until I went to Kare11.com and saw this on the front page!  At least now we know it was a grass fire!  And thank goodness it didn't spread over to us! 

I don't call this Adventures in Vineyardland for nothing.  What did you do this weekend?