Hay

     Today we did hay. Because my questions this morning only led to ambiguous proclamations: “hay farming is real farming!” and “you know, I just have this romantic feeling about making hay,” the exact process remained a mystery to me until we got there.

     On account of my increasing attraction to all things that disrupt our schedule, I blindly volunteered to go along and help. We would be leaving at five, and should dress for the combination of heat and abrasive projectiles.

     Bill, Benny, and I hitched the trailer to the pickup truck at five and drove over the hills and past the lake between innumerable farms to reach our destination. The field adjoins the farm of a friend who keeps wild blueberries, and told Bill about the hay harvest.

     We pull into the field to see other trucks similarly outfitted with trailers and young strong helpers (all male excepting myself), a tractor with a torture-device-looking attachment on the back, and dozens (hundreds?) of square bales of hay dotting the field. Our team efficiently divides the tasks so that Benny tosses the bales into stacks of four or five, I drive up next to the pile, and the two of us toss them up to Bill who arranges them in the truck bed and trailer. In no time, we have 50 bales in the truck, and 25 in the trailer. As we drive out, Bill talks with the man on the tractor, whose tractor appendage is bundling the loose hay into bales.

     We are given permission to come back for a second load of equal size- priced $2.50 per bale. Bill drives home somewhat more gingerly than normal, given our oversized load, and backs right into the barn where they two (effortlessly?!) toss the bales up to the second floor, where I sneezingly heave them into stacks against a wall. Once again, we work with an infectious efficiency which compels me to ignore the innumerable little cuts appearing on my forearms, the hay in my shirt, mouth, nose, socks, as well as all my misgivings about my insufficient strength. It’s a little intoxicating, and I feel all my previously unsensed tensions or concerns oomph out of existence with each bale.

     We take a short break and then head right back for the second load. Bill once again provides random pieces of farming knowledge or local lore, as prompted by the passing scenery. We pick Bill’s brain a bit more about hay-farming, which is at once a time-honored tradition and pesky inconvenience. Hay is vital to all farmers or anyone who keeps animals. Farmers feed animals hay in the case of insufficient pasture, but also just through the winter. The hay is produced from healthy pasture that has grown to sufficient size, and can be dried completely in the sun. In this area, there are two harvests of hay. The first is of less quality, because by the time the weather is warm enough to dry the cut grass completely, it has already gone to seed, and has fewer nutrients. For this reason, the first cut is cheaper.

     To harvest hay, one needs a tractor to cut the grass of sizeable fields, the attachment to ‘ted’ the hay, or spread around to dry, and the attachment to suck up the dried hay and shoot out tied bundles. Bill estimates that new, the equipment would cost something like $20,000. However, with a few days work, a field like the one we visited will yield 1200 bales. Twice a year at even very low prices would result in a profit after only a few years.

     Hay is cool because its distribution relies on the net of connections between land and farmer, and farmer and farmer, all on an intensely local scale. Although I think a good bit of the romance escaped me, I enjoyed the novelty of the task. Although not nearly as strong as my counterparts, I played my role and ended up as dirty and scratched as they did.