The Claw

This fancy little piece of equipment spent the last couple of days sitting in the orchard road just to the east of our house. Previously it was further down the road and best I can tell "The Claw" is used to rip old apple trees up by the roots, but I never really witnessed it in action. I don't know what mission it was sent here to accomplish or whether it ever finished the job. Everything I can see in the orchard looks the same and this afternoon "The Claw" was loaded back onto this trailer and hauled away, maybe to another unfortunate old orchard. Maybe its purpose is simply to pile up the already uprooted trees so they can be burned. That appears what happened down the road. Maybe I will never know, and then again, maybe it will return to finish the job. In any case, its a pretty impressive looking machine.

This morning I left for town earlier than usual and gave myself enough time to walk around the block before it was time to pick up Troy from preschool. Hannah and I took a twenty minute walk down and around past Shelly's house and back up to Main Street. It was cold and I had to pull my hood up onto my head, but at least the wind wasn't blowing too hard. I need about a gazillion more walks like that to get me back in shape. One down, ... (I had to look up how much a gazillion was. I don't think I could ever walk that far in a lifetime!)