How Bout Them Apples?

I have been trying to work on food storage this summer and for part of that I bottled applesauce. Golden's dad runs the property at a ghost town near where we live. The pioneers who settled there planted apple trees and now, years and years later, they have beautiful apples on them. Beautiful apples that wouldn't cost me anything. Brandi and Colony wanted to do some applesauce too, so the three of us packed into Golden's pickup with his dad's 15 foot ladder sticking way out the back, and headed up the road. We got there with about an hour of light left to work with, so we knew we kind of had to hurry.

The cows were used to being able to go into the field whenever someone was there so we had to quickly shut the gate or we would be invaded with a bunch of bovine menaces. The only problem was that the gate was broken! Colony figured out that if you bang on the gate with a stick, the cows don't come too near so we had one person picking apples, one person defending our territory, and one person holding the ladder so nobody gets hurt.

That got old, so we used bungee chords to shut the gate and we started climbing trees. Those trees were awesome for climbing! They are big and sturdy with all kinds of branches going in every direction. We had a blast acting like a bunch of six-year-olds, and our buckets were getting full of ripe, delicious apples.

I saw a spot where there were a ton of pretty apples and I decided to move the ladder over to that spot. Brandi handed me a bucket and I quickly filled it to the brim. I handed it back down to her and she went to dump the apples into the box in the back of the truck. While she was doing this, I noticed a beautiful apple just out of reach. I wanted that apple. I got on the next higher step to reach it. You know, the one that says "This is not a step!" I found out that they are actually pretty serious about that. I felt the ladder topple under me so I grabbed the nearest branch in hopes to save myself , but the branch was too small to hold my weight, and I fell 15 feet to the ground and landed flat on my back. It hurt. The wind was knocked out of me, and I was seeing stars. That pretty much put the kaibosh on the apples, and we headed down the canyon.

Brandi and Colony called Golden and told him to meet us at the instacare. They also called about everyone else that they could think of. We probably should have been panicking, but the whole situation just had us all laughing, which is good, except that it hurt to laugh! As soon as Golden got there, Brandi hunted down a preisthood holder to help with a blessing for me. After a few x-rays, the doc came to the conclusion that I have a small compression fracture on one of my vertebrae.

They gave me some happy pills (wich I had been whining about since we came in) and sent me home. They told me that I would probably be out of everything for about 2-3 weeks. Yeah, right. Actually, I am feeling a lot better than I thought that I would. I think that is because of the blessing. I think about this and it is a pretty funny story, but I could have very easily been seriously hurt or killed. Heavenly Father protected me, even through my stupidity. I am so grateful for the preisthood and for my Heavenly Father. For anyone who reads this, remember the top of the ladder is not a step! So much for my free apples!