Not the best...

...birthday I have had, but one that will be hard to forget!

The plan was to change a pipe on our road (in the extra) and then have coffee and cake with the family. That far it went as planned. The excavator came at 9 am and it was ready four hours later.

As I was showing photos of our holiday in Estonia to my parents, a neighbour called that as he and his friend were collecting firewood, the friend's tractor had sunk in the underground cable trench on the path through the woods. It was 3 pm, so sunset would be after half an hour. I took the small tractor and drove there to help. Attached a chain between the tractors and pulled. As soon as the wheels slipped, the wet soil in the trench collapsed under my wheels, too. I thought that it's not too bad, just take the chain off and the tractor will come up. It did, when the same happened when I was ploughing by the lake. It didn't come up now, it just went deeper. The photo was taken after that.

So, I called my father and he came to help with our excavator (mounted on the old tractor), which did the trick when I got in deep with the plough a few years ago. He almost got stuck before even getting there! Trying to pull the tractor out had unexpected consequences: the front went deeper and the left rear wheel started rising off the ground, with the tractor ending up even more tilted than in the photo! We had to stop as it was almost dark. I had been there for less than two hours, but I felt totally exhausted when I got home. To be continued...