I’ve often written that there are people who know how the world really works and people who write about the people who know how the world really works and take their photos. A great team of big men in big trucks and tractors who know how things work came to the farm this morning, dug up half the back yard, moved tons of earth around, planted water pipes wrapped in metal sleeves, dug up huge rocks and chunks of slate and put almost all of it back together again by mid-afternoon.

I have to admit I took a deep breath when I saw the huge ditch in the back yard by Jay Bridge (an engineer by training,) Chad Vecchio and his father Vince (contractors, builders and excavators), and my friend Jack Macmillan (Jack-of-all-trades) know what to do, they scurried around in the mud and rain, punched a huge hole in our basement foundation, hooked up pipes and stanchions to the big barn. In the morning, they will return to tidy up, drop some stone and gravel off (for the Pole Barn and the yard) and get the frost-free water line working.

The frost-free is buried in four feet of dirt and wrapped in a metal tube or sleeve, when you shut the handle off, the water in the tube slides down into the ground and stays warm. We put it in the barn to give it some added protection, as the winter wind won’t get to it out there. This is an invaluable thing in a farm, where buckets of water have to be hauled out to the animals several times a day in the winter. It is a miraculous thing to have a frost-free on a winter’s morning in a storm.

I have to say I am unlike these men but I admire them greatly, they work unbelievably hard, they are among the world’s best story-tellers, they love to gossip, trade stories and laugh with one another. They make the world work, they move the earth around. I rarely understand what they are talking about, but they never tire of trying to explain it to me.

I learned early on when I came to the country that it is important not to pretend to know more than you do, the big men in trucks will forgive ignorance, but not arrogance. I gave up trying to know what they know, I just admit it and trust them, they have never failed to be honest or competent or fair in their dealings with me. Tomorrow afternoon, water to the pasture. I admit to a sense of urgency after my surgery, I can’t haul buckets right now and I don’t want Maria to have to do it now or down the road. This makes me feel good. Thanks to the big diggers.