Shame

After breakfast, before anypony could start on their chores for the day, Jed made the announcement that Ruiz would be staying with them for an indeterminant amount of time. He neglected to tell them that it was to be an unpaid position until he could restore the household to a stable monetary state, but Ruiz didn't mind. He wasn't keen on hiding it, but he wasn't going to advertise the reasons for which he agreed to it.

They split up for their dailies. Sadie stayed in the house to wash the dishes and Mintberry went to feed the chickens. Normally, Jed and Maria would handle tending to the fields, but before they could start on that, there was a busted windmill on top of the corn that needed to be dealt with first and foremost.

The blades for the windmill itself were still in good condition. A little bent, but still functional once they pulled it out of the dirt. A wheel attached to a sail would redirect the mount for the blades to catch the wind, and a sprocket attached to the blades would turn a shaft that would automatically operate the pumps for their private well. Everything was still in working order, thankfully. It was just on its side and not attached to anything.

With Maria and Jed's strength combined, they were still having a bit of trouble starting the pull. "Do you need help, señor?" asked Ruiz, having cleared away the path for them.

"We're fine," grunted Maria. "Just take it easy today. Your injuries are too fresh to pull this up."

"Besides, I don't think you have a significant source of towing power," agreed Jed. "We'll handle it."

Ruiz looked back at the windmill. All they'd managed to do with their pulling was bend the frame. Considering the fact that it was a mesh of angle and flat iron building the tower, that was impressive strength. It really should have been up by now. "We'll need to sister the broken struts, señor."

"There's some spare angle iron in the barn's loft," huffed Maria, letting the rope fall slack. "The key's on the wall inside the utility room."

With a nod, Ruiz grabbed the key and went to the barn. All manner of machines were stored in the lower level. Some were used for watering crops, others planting and tilling. At the back was a combine harvester. He climbed up the ladder by the door and found the storage up top. It was neatly organised into two halves, with hoof tools on one side, many of them very old, and others still in good condition, and scrap materials of all variety on the other side, from wood cutoffs that were too long to throw out, three spools of baling wire, and a stack of flat and angle iron.

He grabbed two long rods of angle iron, much longer than he needed, opened the loft door, and slid them down to the ground outside. He certainly could not carry them down the ladder, and he definitely wasn't going to jump from the second floor.

By the time he'd closed and locked the door, Jed had made his way over. "We only needed one rod. We're going to cut it down to the length we need."

"Trust me, señor," nodded Ruiz, hoisting the load onto his good shoulder. "I know you don't want me to strain myself, but this is going to help."

He dug one end of each rod onto the ground next to the windmill's base, inside up. Into either of the two troughs he placed one of the ropes as Jed returned to his harness. The top ends of the rods extended up above the break, and as a result, when Jed and Maria pulled on the ropes, the top of the tower was pulled upward at a significantly steeper angle, making it much more inclined to go up.

Due to the bending previously done, the legs didn't quite line up, and as Jed ascended the tower to try to realign them, Maria called Ruiz over to talk while she cut the angle iron into patches. "How'd you do that?" she asked. "You made the whole thing move like it was nothing."

"It's just a lever, señorita," he shrugged. "Your method would have worked eventually, but when you want things to go a certain way while you're pulling another way, it can be beneficial to change the angle of attack to something steeper."

"I'll have to remember that," she smirked.

After the new braces were cut, Jed fastened them on with rivets. He could handle the rest, so Maria started looking over the damages to the cornfield. Thankfully, the only badly damaged stalks were the ones that the windmill had fallen on. The ones cut up by the gryphons were mostly damaged near the top, and the ears were mostly fine. A fair amount of the ripped-up stock was unfit to be sold as produce to the ponies of Sweetwater, but if removed from the cob and dried out, it would make good chicken feed, so it wasn't a total loss.

What with the sun being as hot as it was, Ruiz and Maria opted to put the corn into large baskets and move them to the front porch, where they would have shade while shucking the damaged earss. There was no letting them dry on the stalk, it was too late for that. They would just have to either find a way to dry it out as it was, or shell it manually, both of which required shucking it.

Ruiz was the first to begin shucking. As nopony wanted him to overextend himself, they thought it best that he handle shucking the corn while Maria carried the baskets. While he would have preferred being more helpful, he was content to just be doing something that could qualify as work. It wasn't much, and he couldn't see himself paying back his debt at this rate, but at least it was keeping him from accruing more of it.

"How are your injuries?" asked Sadie, stepping out of the front door. "They're not givin' you any trouble, are they?"

"I'm okay, señora," he nodded, and for once, he was sure of it. He didn't think he needed any further aid at the moment. The bandages looked clean, he was pretty sure he hadn't torn out the stitching again, and with the promise of a full day's work, he'd eaten well at breakfast.

"Well, I'll just be in here. Your poncho still has a few holes that need patching. Let me know if you need anything, alright?"

"Actually, señora, would you mind bringing my belt? I need a knife for some of these."

With a silent nod, she grabbed his belt from the desk and passed it to him. He wrapped it around his waist and clamped it in place. "Gracias, señora."