Hay Fever

I've been roaming through some old scribblings.  Found this one and laughed because all week we have been trying to make hay and one thing or another from rain to old, faulty equipment, has kept us from our appointed rounds in the hay fields.  It seemed appropriate to send this brief meditation on hay out to cyber space where other would-be farmers could read it and weep.

Hay Fever

Hay, Hay, Hay (with apologies to William Shakespeare)

To do hay or not to do hay: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to sleep through

The wind and rain of a stormy day,

Or to rise up and make hay? To rest: to sleep;

Once more; and by a sleep to say we end the back-ache from

A thousand bales of hay that we would have carried

Today,’ tis consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

To rest, to sleep; to sleep perchance to dream: aye there’s the rub;

For in that sleep so sweet what dreams nay come when we have

Shuffled off the hay for another day, must give us pause:

There’s the respect that makes hay take so long…

Enough with the Shakespeare!

“Get up Naomi, Dad’s waiting to make more hay!”

-Naomi Ilgenfritz (@age13)

      Every year my husband comes down with a severe attack of hay fever. It hits in May when the weather is fine and the pastures are growing out of control and lasts until the last possible cutting of hay in August or September.

      Nothing inspires my children to thoughts of mutiny quite as quickly as the words       “Its time to make hay”

     They have learned first hand what that little adage “make hay while the sun shines” really means.  When everyone was small, our neighbor came over with his equipment and helped us cut and bale the hay.  Sometimes Seth and Benjamin were able to help load the bales but as they grew, additional children were big enough to help and so the hay making project grew as well. 

     I would not call this endeavor a finely tuned process.  Usually it is fraught with stress.  First of all, the weather has to be cooperative.  In May we begin spending a great deal of time on the internet looking at the five and ten day forecasts.  There must be enough sunshine for several days to cut the hay, ted the hay, rake the hay, drying time, baling time and time to load it up in the barn before a thunderstorm hits.  Add to this the fact that we usually use older equipment and so there are breakdowns and time off to run for parts or see if any neighbors have equipment we can borrow while we are trying to fix ours.

     Hay making has led to many tales around the barber chair and fond memories which have been repeated so often they now have names such as the year we had the “Brown Steel Farm Encasement Project”.  This involved not only hay season, but all the spare time in between, building storage for the hay and covering each building with brown steel to keep out the rain.

      Seth’s big hay memory probably is the year he turned fifteen.  We always said if it was your birthday, you got the day off but that year on his fifteenth birthday, the hay was ready to cut and since he was the oldest he had to help.  Since then the age of helpfulness has been lowered to thirteen.  Egg sandwiches became popular during hay season.  You can fry up the eggs, slap some mayonnaise and mustard on a slab of bread and carry it out to the hay field without much trouble.  The only thing you need to remember is who likes mayonnaise and who will only consume miracle whip in their sandwich.

     On occasion we cut hay for our neighbors.  One year one of our Amish neighbors got behind and asked Mark to come cut some of his hay fields.  We mowed and mowed and baled and repaired and baled and repaired some more and then the rain began to move in.  Some of the hay was left lying in the fields since no one wants to be out on a metal tractor in a lighting storm.  That hay was ruined but it had to be brought in anyway so the new hay could grow.  After all that work, the farm was sold that fall, moldy hay and all and we saw no return for all that work.   I shouldn’t say no return, the kids have learned a great deal about agriculture, hay equipment, and the satisfaction of a good day of hard work.  They just haven’t realized all that yet.  Naomi wrote a poem about hay one year for the newsletter which helped me realize how big hay making figures in their memories.

     Another benefit of making hay is the driver education it provides.  Quite a few of the children have begun their driving careers either driving the old farm truck or driving our New Holland tractor with equipment on the back. As would be expected, this has occasionally added to the stress factor as our pastures are not flat but hilly and lumpy and require some ingenuity when driving.

     It’s March as I write this and the grass is just beginning to green.  There will probably be a snow or two on it yet and then suddenly it will begin to grow. 

     Over the winter we got a newer baler than the one we had and a hay bine for better cutting ability and so I called together my older children and said,

     ” Gird up your loins, a big hay harvest is coming.”

     I’m pretty sure we are not raising any farmers here in Dornsife but we are learning to work together and we are making some lasting memories of our time together as a family.