Pulling Stumps with Subsoiler. Note that I am carefully working around the fruit trees that were planted earlier
On Monday we had our first tractor breakdown – but first for the good news – we are pulling stumps with our little Ford 8N tractor!
I had many a naysayer along the way who was convinced that the little tractor would not be able to do what we needed it to do. However, it is always good to be determined and dumb, not to mention being somewhat desperate. We are managing to pull out stumps and roots one by every precious one. Truth be told, we are pushing the tractor to the absolute extreme of its ability, and both the tractor and I are snorting with each yank, and we are both facing extreme metal and physical exhaustion at the end of each tedious day – the tractor the metal fatigue, I the physical exhaustion.
I don’t want to sound like a “wuss” or a broken record, but…man is it hot out there. It doesn’t seem to matter how much water I pour in, I just can’t seem to keep ahead of how much I loose through sweating – gallons upon gallons I am sure. So, I am convinced that some of the exhaustion and “brick wall” that one soon hits is due to dehydration and heat. For this reason we begin early in the morning and quit at about 1:00 o’clock. But by 1:00 I can barely move, let alone walk.
We got some much needed help on Sunday night – it rained. Last week I was pulling stumps out of hardened clay hard
The Breakdown
pan. Each yank on the stumps and roots was like pulling teeth – only worse. On Monday, after a nice soaking rain the night before, things moved much better. The ground was slicker to work with the tractor, but the soil was softer and the stumps pulled much easier. All in all a good compromise, and I will take the wet dirt any day.
But then on Monday, just about at quitting time we had our first breakdown. One of the front steering supports snapped in half. It had been welded before somewhere in its illustrious 64 year history and the old weld had obviously been done poorly as was evidenced by the breakline.
I was able to remove it and get it into a local welder who had it repaired the same afternoon. I reassembled it, and we were off again by Tuesday morning – more stumps and roots being stacked on the burn pile.
Javier using his machete to clear for tractor work. This is a never ending task at present.
Actually Mondays and Tuesdays are very heavy days for Javier and me. We begin at the landsite early in the morning and work until the heat drives us home. Then after resting a while and cleaning up we load the van and head out into the Huasteca to do evangelism through films. Usually we don’t get home on those nights until about 11:30 or midnight.
There is a nucleus of believers in two villages that we have been working in, and soon a cell church will be planted there. Javier also wants to begin in a third village next week, and continue to expand throughout the region as the Lord continues to provide helpers.
So far there have been two men besides Javier and me who have been faithfully working in the evangelism outreaches. Heriberto, an older retired man lives and breathes to evangelize. He is a great asset and friend. A young married man named Trinidad has begun to work with us as well. Trinidad, like Javier, is himself Tének. This makes it much easier for them to be accepted within the Huastecan (Tének) communities into which we have begun ministering.
Our sugarcane crop.
I am also having fun training the men on how to use the equipment and how to take care of the more “technical” parts of the projection and A.V. ministry. I am trying to hand over every aspect of the ministry as quickly as possible because I find that now every time Theresa and I have to leave for what ever reason to go back to Canada the whole film/evangelism outreach must stop. I don’t what to be the bottleneck any more. Besides, it is just right that the nationals should be leading national ministry. So, I am having fun taking my hands off.
Theresa is acquiring more and more students, and word of her sewing classes seems to be getting around. Soon we will be wall-to-wall sewing machines and students, but Theresa couldn’t be happier. Her Spanish classes are also going well, but she has been mentioning of late that it is also getting much harder. She is doing well, and is able to understand more all the time. She is following conversations around her much more, although of course, responding back in Spanish is still difficult for her.
Today we had a heavy rain again – a blessing for the sugarcane. But we did not attempt to work on the land with the tractor due to the mud. I hope that I will be able to work it again tomorrow. I am determined to get the whole front section cleared and into cultivation before Theresa and I must leave for Canada in early July. The deadline is coming closer and we still have much to accomplish before we leave.
The never ending task ahead. Note the trees behind the tractor. All of these will need to be cleared out and the stumps pulled. The little Ford is dwarfed by a pile to be burned.
Actually we are kind of melding the old and the new on the farm right now. Much of our work still is done with a machete, and without that simple tool nothing could be accomplished. With machetes we are cutting down trees, clearing the heavy weed and grass overgrowth, and just generally doing what chainsaws, “Bushhogs”, and mowers normally would do. We are also lugging the brush and grass onto piles by hand and burning it. However, we are now also able to use the tractor to do the impossibly heavy work of digging and pulling out stumps. We still lack many implements that would help so much – a simple disk being the most needed right now – but things are much better now than they were before we had the tractor.
Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and financial support. We love and thank each of you.
We will continue to keep in touch through this blogsite.
Blessings,
Steven and Theresa
