This morning I called the firefighter. There was a dang tractor rolling all up and down our land. I was wondering if I needed to go out there in my pjs, with Eva Tennessee on my hip, brandishing a rifle, hollering at him “You best git offa my land or we kin both see what kinda shot I am.” Turns out this farmhand was doing us a big ol’ favor. He had offered to plow the land for us, and what took him about 20 minutes to do in his tractor, would have taken us a full day or two to do by hand. The firefighter was so thankful at this act of kindness that he started asking me what we might have to share with the man.

Firefighter: “Do we have any cookies?”

Me: “Not that you’re aware of. Just kidding. No, the grocery store was sold out of my favorite cookies.” (Oh yeah, I don’t bake.)

Firefighter: “Well, do we have anything like that? How about that bread we got from The Apple Orchard this weekend?”

(Now here’s the thing. We have a gluten intolerant kiddo and I am trying to lose weight, so I try to not have stuff like bread, cake, and other things that make life delicious in this house. So when we do, it doesn’t last long. Because I ate it.)

Me: “Um, there’s maybe two slices left.”

Firefighter: “Well, what if you put some of the apple butter we got on it and took it out to him?”

In theory, that sounds pretty nice. But in reality it would look like this:

Man in tractor hears shrill screaming, looks around to find a red-faced woman hollering at him. She is dressed in her pjs and is sweating and coughing in the wake of the freshly plowed dirt cloud. He notices she is only wearing one red Croc, because the other flew off in her awkward haste and he sees she is carrying some sort of food offering on a paper plate. He opens the tractor door to see what the heck this crazy woman wants to give him and sees she has three pajama clad children sprinting after her shouting, “Momma, the baby needs you, the dog just threw up, and we don’t have any more underwear!!!!!!”

She hollers back, “Well, hang on a sec!!!!” then smiles sweetly and offers him her two pieces of bread, smeared with some kind of adhesive that has attracted dirt and flies. She says, “Thanks for plowing our land!” paper plate held high above her head, nearly reaching the base of the tractor door. The man looks down in pity upon this scene and vows to leave sacks of potatoes by their front door for the rest of his life. “You keep it, ma’am. For the children.”

Me: “Hmmm, how ‘bout I just make brownies and give them to him on Friday?”