It took Lee over a month to talk me into it. He had been doing research on UTVs and the Kubota RTVs and thought I needed one. If you are like me, you are going, what’s that? Basically, it is a four wheeler with a small cab and a small truck bed, a bench seat, able to go into the woods, up and down hills, into small places in four wheel drive.

If you think about it, that would make a pretty good goat mobile for the hills of West Virginia. Lee argued that with my knee replacement it was going to be a long while before I could walk very far and up and down hills. I needed this UTV or RTV to keep up with the goats.

Now Lee is a good hearted person, wanting to help his poor ol’ crippled wife in any way he can, but I think I saw an ulterior motive. He was wanting to get me down the hill to the barn as quickly as possible and get back to work. He needed help with those chores!

So, I agreed. He loaded me up into the van, which took a while bending that knee up and wedging myself into the front seat, plus with all the whimpering sound effects I like to add, and off we went to look at a couple he liked. He put the pros and cons to me of the different UTVs, RTVs and we checked out two in particular.

I’ll have to admit, there’s something about the color orange that I like so the last place we stopped at was a Kubota dealer. When the salesman saw and heard me pathetically trying to get out of the van with that knee and my little cane, and then watched me hobble over and try to get into one of their Kubota RTVs, I think the poor man didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to handle this sorrowful acting, whimpering woman, crippling along.

He helped us figure out ways to get the poor ol’ woman into the RTV and all but stood there and wrung his hands trying to figure out how to help me. In desperation, to make me feel better, he knocked $2000 off the price, which was much cheaper than any other Kubota in the area, and offered to deliver it to us for free, even though it was a good ways away. What could I say? I said sold.

That cute little orange thing arrived the next day, the Kubota RTV 900 Workstation with canopy, plastic tinted windshield, brush guard, power steering, hydraulic dump bed, and plastic bed liner. I couldn’t even attempt to drive it the next two days because the little trip to go see it pretty much wiped my knee out and the pain would not quit. Finally, the knee forgave me and allowed me to carefully slide in and Lee showed me how to start the Kubota RTV, and off to the barn I went!

I know, I know I wasn’t suppose to go to the barn until three months was up and if the physical therapist had his say, it would have been six months. Now, this Thursday I go see the doctor and he’s supposedly going to allow me and my cane go down to the barn. . The knee is still stiff a lot, mildly swollen, and smarts, but it does bend reluctantly and I expect to keep getting better and better.

So, to celebrate me being at the barn, after I figured out how to get out of the RTV, Lee propped me up against a fence, handed me the hose and had me water a group of goats. Then I hobbled over to look at my Jan. girls and was shocked to see how much they had grown and changed in almost three months. I would definitely have to get my list out and relearn their tags and faces again. Surprisedly, the ones who had liked me before the knee surgery still remembered me and wasn’t worried I was lurching around and carrying a stick. They were just glad to see me. The others who didn’t like me before and thought I was a bit too free with the dewormers and shots, just glanced at me on the other side of the fence and said oh, it’s you.