With all of the rain this summer there has been a precariousness to hay, not just knowing when we might get it, but if we would get it at all.
Good haying weather requires at least three dry days and we have struggled to have even one day without rain. The internet has been full of chatter about where to get hay if your local producer can’t cut. I have found that scrolling through panicked posts is infectious, so I don’t. Our hay guy is a man of few words but has always arrived pulling a full hay trailer rocking slightly as it makes its way down our dirt road. Maya Angelou once said: Chaos today does not dictate chaos tomorrow, so I worked hard to stay calm and patient. I figured I would panic only when/if he told me that it was time to do just that. At this point we had six bales of hay left in our barn.
At the beginning of this week we had a miraculous stretch of four full days of dry weather. Passing our hives, I stopped and watched the bee interstate system at work, the drones launching into the sky to gather pollen from the budding Goldenrod plants, coming back with pockets full of nectar. The garden enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine and I knelt happily and pulled vegetables while Muir, the youngest of our border collies, entertained himself by pushing his nose through the fat leaves of the bean plants until he eventually bumped into my hand. The lower pasture remained squishy underfoot so we kept the sheep up on higher, drier ground. Freshly shorn they lay curled in the grass, contentedly chewing with their eyes closed.
We received an email on Wednesday with a photo of a covered hay trailer filled with 300 bales of hay. For us. No other text. A man of few words.
We knew that we would, hopefully, be spending one of our weekend days throwing bales so proceeded to work on getting a crew together. First call to our son, because he is built like a tree and because we knew, with a promise of food, we had a good chance of getting him. By the time we got the call on Friday that hay would be delivered on Saturday morning by 7:00, we were ready.
We rose quickly to move things, including sheep, out of the way of both trailer and bales. Paul and I stood with the morning sunshine filtering through our maples, and made a tentative plan. I plugged in the coffee pot and put out a folding table of lemonade and coffee cake for fuel. The chickens stood at their fence and followed the activity, chatting about it to each other.
Cars began to arrive, some bringing adult muscle, others dropping off high school kids. Two middle- school neighbors walked down the road. Fifteen minutes early, as we suspected, we heard the big truck rumble down our road and into sight. His wife jumped out of the cab to help him back the truck bed down the hill as close to our barn space as possible. Their Bernese Mountain puppy bounded around our feet, creating and enjoying the chaos. The truck threaded the needle between garden and chicken coop without effort, almost without him looking. Once out of the cab, he tugged on the rim of his baseball hat, hiked up his jeans and smiled. 300 bales had arrived. As promised.
He had other haying to do so decided to leave the filled truck for the night. If we had been less experienced, we might feel lulled into taking our time with the process. However, we knew that we were still racing a clock containing rain. You cannot store wet hay.
We split into two “teams.” Josh and I pulled bales down from their stacked height of about eight feet, dragged them to the edge of the truck and tossed them to the next crew who were standing, arms up, waiting. Some of the hay went up the elevator to Paul and Ari in the hayloft, some thrown left to the hay storage barn: every available space would be filled.
Although a relatively cool morning, within a few minutes we were all sweating. Jeff pulled the two binders of twine at the top of the bales together and carried them easily, like a purse, to the barn. Morgan, young and slight, dragged the bale with two hands locked under the rope, her flannel tied round her waist. I noticed her breathing hard after a while and we took a break. We all climbed down from our various perches and grabbed food and drink.
It didn’t take long before there were growing piles of hay, like neatly cut squares of brownies, their sweet smell almost overpowering.
While dragging bales, time dragged as well. My skin, sensitive to the sharp hay stalks, sported raised welts that I scratched between bales. Sweat and mosquitoes gathered at the back of my neck as I swatted with work gloves. However, when the interior back of the trailer came into sight we checked our time and discovered that it had taken us just a little over one hour to empty the entire container and fill our barns.
Paul and I glanced over at each other understanding our common sense of fulfillment. This work ensured that our animals will eat all winter. Standing in the August sunshine, winter felt far in the future but when a breeze came up, leaves wafted past me to the ground: a beautiful but serious reminder that summer in Vermont is just a long preparation for winter.
The next morning we heard the familiar rumble as the cab of the truck arrived in search of its empty back half. Our hay guy lowered himself to the ground, I set down my bucket for cleaning the chicken coop and we chatted. I wrote him a check and expressed our appreciation for getting us our hay, especially this year. Once again he tugged on the brim of his baseball cap and hiked up his jeans. Knowing that he had made sure we got our feed made me emotional so I took three steps forward and gave him a hug. It was awkward, like it usually is: he turned slightly sideways, like one of my teenage sons trying to avoid the encounter, and used his stiff arms, more accustomed to lifting hay bales than giving hugs, to pat me back. But beneath the dusty brim of his cap I caught the flash of a grin. Within minutes he was back up into his put-back-together truck, bouncing down the road not to be seen again until next time.