Friday, July 20, 2012

Make Hay While the Sun Shines


This year, making hay while the sun shines seems to be nearly impossible!  With a constantly rotating cycle of hot, muggy days (which is totally abnormal for our area) and violent, soaking thunderstorms, our farmers have had to rely on quick decisions and an ever ready company of hay hands.

Master Hand Grenade and Miss Serenity have been on stand-by, awaiting phone calls from our neighboring farmers.  A couple of days ago, the phone calls started rolling in.  And so did the thunder.  It has been a frantic few days, trying to get the harvest in between rain storms but I am happy to report that most of the cut hay has been bailed and safely stored in the barn.  Sadly, fields all around us are filled with windrows of wet, soggy hay that is beginning to mold on the ground.  As the sky's clear, the farmers will return to the fields and turn and fluff their hay, hoping to salvage at least some hay and in turn keep their financial losses from being complete.

Keep our farmers in your prayers.  We may be in for a wild ride.

Adjusting the baler
Nothing runs like a deer!
The boss lady keeping an eye on things
Country kid transportation
(Master Hand Grenade & Miss Serenity are on the 4-wheeler)
Instructing the hay hands
Miss Serenity bucking a bale onto the stack
Master Hand Grenade bucks over the side

5 comments:

  1. It was hard work I'm sure. But it's honest work. The kind of work you can look at, at the end of the day, and be proud of. Kudos to all of them! I don't see many people their ages doing honest work anymore. Around here they all seem to have that gimme, gimme, gimme attitude... like the world owes them something. Oh, good grief! I get so tired of it! Enola, it is so nice to come to your blog and see people with the same types of values I have! I'll be heading for the country someday (that's the dream anyway), it just won't be soon enough.

    Enjoy the weekend everyone!

    Mark

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  2. We're being blessed with fields and fields of hay...cause everybody in Texas had to sell their cows last year. I think the nation fed and bought Texas cows last year and now Texas gets to return the favor this year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. On a political note, remember the federal government tried to ban kids from these jobs last year? Total nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I remember those days very well, especially the scrambling to get the hay in before the rain. My heart goes out to the farmers and ranchers this year.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You were very blessed to get the rains to grow the meadows to make hay. We spent the year with no rains, no grass, no feed for the critters. Two years in a row now. Never before so deeply realized how everything we do depends on rains and water. Hay prices here are astronomical -- good thing there are some areas of the country that did get moisture that can ship hay to areas like ours...

    ReplyDelete