Roller Coaster Yard Sale

We had dug enough mums and filled the red trailer full, around 60 potted mums the night before. We got up about 5:30 AM and started slicing ham, packing coolers, taking medicine, loading pumpkins, card table, lawn chairs, jackets, and a bunch of other stuff. It looked like we were moving out of town. The pickup bed was full of hay and pumpkins, the back seat was full of who knows what, and the front seat was full of Stacey, Linda and me. We pulled out of the driveway at 6:25 AM with just enough daylight to see where we were going. We stopped in Burkesville and grabbed a biscuit sandwich for each of us and headed to Marrowbone, 16 miles from our house.
We pulled into an area beside our neighbors, Nancy and Steve Riddle. He had picked the area and we agreed, who ever got there first would save a space for the other. I backed the trailer up to where we were going to setup our 'mum stand'. I unloaded the hay bales and placed them near the road while Linda was setting the mums on the hay and Stacey was carrying the pumpkins and setting them around the hay and mums. That went pretty well, so next was setting up the canopy. That took about 5 minutes, as it is an expandable type that is simple to put up and take down. There's no need for stakes and ropes. Finally, we got the cooler and lawn chairs and we were 'open for business'. The entire time Nancy and Steve were unpacking the items in their Coke collection. We made it look like we had done it before, but we hadn't!
There was a lot of traffic and people were stopping fairly often. Some were interested in looking at our mums, but lot's of them were looking at the Coke stuff and there was also a 'wood carver' setup on the other side of Nancy and Steve. We made some sales of pumpkins and mums and were feeling good about our plan, but then a snag popped up.
A woman walked around our mums and I asked her if she wanted to buy some mums, she said, "Well, I thought you might give me some, since you are setup on MY property! I looked at Steve and then said "Are you kidding?" NO, she wasn't kidding. I showed her the sign saying Roller Coaster Yard Sale right where we had put all our stuff. She told me they put those everywhere and this was her property, not the park like we thought. I started apologizing and said we didn't know that and we would have never setup there had we known it was hers and not the park. Steve ended up knowing her and she knew him, so he began talking to her and told her the same thing. She stayed and talked for about a half hour and once she knew who we were and where we lived, she said she had been through our house at the Christmas Tour. She eventually said it was ok we were there and I told her she could have a free mum for letting us stay. Crisis averted.
The rest of the day went smooth with Regina showing up and us selling mums, eating ham sandwiches, drinking pop, laughing and enjoying the nice weather while selling mums, pumpkins and bales of hay. We became better acquainted with our neighbors, Nancy and Steve and made some money too. They packed their stuff up and left about 4 PM. We waited longer as I wanted to let it cool off before I loaded our hay bales back into the truck and packed up the mums we didn't sell. We took our stand down about 5:30 PM and headed home. We figured we had sold a little over half the mums. We were talking about that we would put the mums that we left on the wagon in the front yard the next day.
As we were about to pull in the driveway, I looked at the hay field and Garmons had baled the hay. I knew that was for us, but I parked the truck and trailer and jumped on a 4-wheeler and headed down to Phil's place to make sure. He told me yep, to get what ever I needed to finish the 100 bale deal we had made for them using our barns. I might have cussed a couple times on the ride back home. I was already tired and there were about 66 bales of hay we needed to pick up and put in the hay shed. I checked the computer using the radar image to see if we could wait till morning, but there was rain showers within 75 miles and if the hay gets rained on after it's baled, it will ruin it. I told Stacey to come on, we needed her to drive the 4-wheeler while Linda and I picked up hay bales and put them on the black trailer. We decided to use it because it is a lot lower to the ground which means less lifting than if we used the hay wagon. We could also pull the 4-wheeler and trailer inside the hay shed so it would require less hand carrying of the hay bales too. It was completely dark by the time we started. Stacey drove the 4-wheeler between rows of baled hay while Linda and I stacked it on the trailer. Then I drove out of the field and across the road into the hay shed and Linda and I unloaded the hay as I stacked it on wood pallets. Stacey kept the other 4 wheeler running with the lights on so we could see what we were doing since there are no lights in the hay shed. We were getting 18 bales per load and after several trips we had become soaked in sweat, covered with hay and had the job done. I actually think this was a lot better than doing it in the daylight as it was in the low 70s and if we had done it the next day the forecast called for upper 80s. Picking up hay at night, maybe a new innovation, but it worked for us.
Once back to the house, a shower was first on my list, before a drink of water or anything. After that about 5 glasses of ice water, I think partly because of eating ham sandwiches during the day, but especially because of the picking up hay. It was about 9 PM.