Hay making, 2010

What a day! I woke up with certain plans that just flew away.

It was about 9:30 AM and I was enjoying Paradigm Farm's tales of horse bathing, when "ding dong" our doorbell rings. I'm in my pajamas, and so is my man. He answers it and I cannot quite make out what they are talking about, but I distinctly hear my man say DREI EINS VIER. 3 - 1 - 4. Our gate combo (Pi, what I use for all my combinations. But don't tell.).

I'm like, "Wha....OH! It must be Carsten!" Our Californian hay farmer. OK I just call him that cuz he looks so Californian. But when he talks, I understand nary a word. OK, like one word per sentence, and that doesn't help with meaning. I looked to my man pathetically, "What? What is he saying?"

"He will be back Friday to drag the field, but today he'll fertilize it."

"OH! Then I must go move my moveable fenceline out of his way!" and I RAN down there to do it. I put on jeans first though.

His tractor spewed a chemical fertilizer all over the place (I even had to scrub out the trough cuz there were a few kernels in there). I love how he doesn't use cow poo, cuz that stuff is nasty and I want to be a good neighbor. Yah, like our neighbors care - they all use cow poo! The fertilizer looks like hail balls.

I find this process fascinating, the process of hay farming. I cannot help it, I was raised in the city. I want to be a good land steward, and most of all I want to put good hay into circulation. We can do this with Carsten. I apologize for anyone reading this who grew up in the country and this is a matter of fact. We find it new and interesting and I hate to think of what Carsten tells his friends afterward, "That lady follows my tractor with a camera!"

In case you haven't been reading my blog for one year, when we went thru this before, we get free hay from Carsten. He gets whatever he can make off our field.

So today I had the pleasure of re-affixing my temporary fenceline, so that Baasha cannot come near the fertilizer. He told me to keep Baasha off the grass for 1.5 weeks or 2 good rains. I take it the stuff is poisonous. But then I heard from our shepherd that he will not graze his sheep on fields that have recently had cow poo spread. Intersting.

His tractor left ruts in our field, but it was the best time to do it. I noticed other farmers in our surrounding fields doing the same. It's crunch time for hay/silage farmers, while we enjoy spring break.


I've been avoiding taking pictures of our field, because I'm embarrassed about it. It's really Carsten's fault, though. He only made one cutting last year on a field that needed 2 or 3, or even 4. Instead, our field grew and grew, into inedible tufts that the 280 sheep couldn't help much. The neighbor fields had several, several cuttings, keeping them green and tidy all winter long. This year I confirmed with Carsten that he will take more than one cutting. He admitted his mistake: "Oh, I drove by last Autumn and saw your field and realized we could have harvested again."

After Carsten drove off, I kept hearing this neighing as I put up the new fence. I thought, that cannot be MY horse, he doesn't neigh like that. But indeed it was. As I worked, he could see/hear me, from standing outside his stall, and he was calling to me to get up there and give him breakfast. I actually thought, Oh, my man will hear the neighing and serve his meal, but no. I called to him, "I hear you, and I'm almost done!" but alas, it was 11:30 when my poor horse got his breakfast. I believe he'd given up all hope, cuz when I showed up, he turned his head away, as if pouting.

My man was inside on his laptop, in his pajamas, enjoying his spring break. I said, "Why couldn't you give Baasha his breakfast? Didn't you hear the neighing?" and he said, "I didn't hear a thing!" OK then.

I came in, made coffee, and watched Baasha eat while I avoided the impending grocery and hardware shopping trip. It took me a while but I eventually got out of here. But then it all changed again, just as I had paint stains all over my arms.

To be continued.