With the all of the rain we have been experiencing one of my first thoughts was about haying.
Really? Not about going to the beach? Or a backyard BBQ?
Nope – haying.
You can take the boy off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.
I’m the kind of person who has memories brought up from the basement of my mind by unusual triggers. In this case, the wet weather made me remember working with my father when he was baling hay – our annual summer task for years.
We had a pair of Jersey cows for a while that were replaced by a herd of dairy goats. We also raised our own beef. They all needed hay. There were also times when we had a mule, sheep and a donkey, all of which ate hay.
Now for you city folk – I loved writing that – there are several steps in this time-honored summer chore. First you wait until the grass is high enough in the field so it can be cut. Then it is raked into rows so it can dry. Then you get your bailer out attach it to the tractor and start pushing that loose grass into bales.
If you have a rig like my dad did, there is a trailer attached to the baler and you have someone in the trailer catching the bales as they are shot out of the contraption to neatly stack them.
There is nothing like the sensation of being hit in the head by a 65-pound bale of scratchy grass if you make the mistake of turning your back.
I once worked for a neighboring farmer who used his manure spreader as the trailer. That made the job even better and I did it for $1 an hour.
The phrase “making hay while the sun shines” – a reference to taking advantage of an opportunity – is based on a very real event.
The grass has to be dry so it won’t mold. Moldy hay is not what you want to feed your animals.
The best time to do this job is when you’ve had enough dry hot days in a row to be sure the cut grass is dry. Haying is hot work and when it is time to do it, you do it.
I remember clearly helping my dad until 10 p.m. one evening as the hay had to get in. We did the work by the light of the headlight on the tractor.
There are few tasks on even a small farm such as ours that were easy. From raising chickens from chicks – I learned how to pluck a bird and did so repeatedly – to cleaning out the barn to weeding gardens and harvesting the fruit of your labor, the work never seemed to end.
I know I’ve referenced our family farm in this column before but summer time is indeed the part of the year when so many of these memories come flooding back.
This is also I why I have supreme respect for people who are raising our food. The work is hard and thanks to the weather the outcome is not always assured.
When we go to a farmers market I’m very happy to support local farmers. I have a very good idea of what it has taken to produce those fruits and vegetables.
What we are seeing in southern California and parts of the west is incredibly frightening. Arid land had been transformed into productive fields thanks to the diversion of the Colorado River.
Now, with the worst drought in the history of this nation, the agricultural industry is in peril. If only we could take some of the rain we are receiving and shift it 3,000 miles to where it was needed.
As we pray for rain – and we should – let’s support our local farmers. We need what they do now more than ever.
G. Michael Dobbs is the managing editor of Reminder Publishing LLC, and Prime’s local columnist.
