Haying
Last Sunday was a hay crazy day. Two people wanted help haying, same day, same time. At first Arlan and Lachlan were going to try and do Ingrid W. and Kim D. (who were going in on hay together) as quickly as they could with my help and then go work for Frank the Farmer. Wisely, more wisely than we knew, we decided this was not the best idea. We managed to convince Teman to pitch in and help, and with four people we were able to split the work 50-50. Arlan and Lachlan went to help Frank, Teman and myself went to work for Ingrid and Kim.
This was all very good because it turned out there was no possible way we could have finished off Ingrid and Kim in time for Frank to get any help. This was because of difficulties at Ingrid’s place. Part of the problem was the unloading situation at Ingrid’s (she took most of the hay) was poor. Part of the problem was the baler broke and the machine had to be fixed before the rest of the hay was baled.
The setup was very hard for two people to work in. Teman and I had no elevator to work with, so anyplace the hay had to go in the barn, Teman or I had to move it there by hand. This was made more difficult by the fact that Ingrid no longer had a ramp leading to the upper half of the barn, so there was a ditch that could only be traversed by a thin plank, or else stepped across. All these things came together to make it the hardest haying job I’ve done in a long time.
Unloading hay into Ingrid’s barn went like this: I would throw the hay off the wagon until I had a pile of ten or so bales. Then I would climb out of the wagon and throw the bales across the ditch into the barn. Teman could then take the bales and throw them into the hay mow where he then climbed up and stacked them. In this set up we both had to handle the bales at least twice. On top of this the bales were on the heavy side, and the stringer on the baler wasn’t working properly which made every other bale or so have one bad string. This meant we could only carry and throw many of the bales by the one good string, and we had to do this with considerable care besides.
Work started a little after 2:00 PM. It was slow from the very beginning, but Ingrid helped for the first wagon so it wasn’t too slow. After the first wagon the unloading grew progressively slower as the stack in the mow grew ever higher. The hay was coming from a field at the end of the street, so there was a bit of a delay in the arrival of the wagons, and when the baler broke there was an even longer delay. This meant that the time we were out working ticked on by until it was well into the evening. By then not only was simple exhuastion beginning to wear at us, but hunger was making itself known as well.
The last wagon at Ingrid’s was the hardest, our energy flagging, daylight failing, and our fingers growing very sore from so much handling of the hay bale strings. Then it began to rain and we had to rush down the road to Kim’s to put in the one wagon of hay for her. Only then, at 9:00 PM, could we call it a day and go home for some food.
In all we put away 621 bales of hay . . . not a particularly large amount, but considering we each handled 502 of them about twice each, this made for a physical total of 1,123 bales that we each handled. That is enough.
An important thing to do while haying is drink plenty of water. It is dusty, hard, work. In the middle of a hot day the sweat can be pouring off my body. Working high up in a metal roofed barn (which we weren’t doing this time) is like working in an oven. In my teen years I worked as a stacker way up in the mow of one such building and there were several times I came very close to getting heat stroke–and in the process built up something of a tolerance for working in the heat. The fundamental key to working under these conditions is to drink lots and lots of liquid . . . Preferably very cold water or orange juice, but we drink whatever is provided.
Ingrid provided Pepsi, which she bought especially for us. They were the tall 24 oz. containers. Both Teman and I swigged down one bottle each between wagons (except after one wagon when we drank water). By the time we left Ingrid’s we had each drunk 72 oz of caffeinated Pepsi. I normally don’t drink caffeine or soda. I joked to Teman that I ought to be wired for the rest of the night. The sugar rush of 24 oz of soda hitting my system did give me a quick energy boost after every bottle, but in the long term it didn’t seem to affect me much, either because I was so tired after I was done working, or because I sweated it all out. I sweated so much the color was beginning to bleed out of my jeans.
The Willow Tree Comes Down
This year seems to be a year for storms–from January snow storms that take down huge swaths of pine trees to summer thunderstorms which also take down trees. On the fourth of July there was a violent rainstorm that took out the power in our area for four hours. We weren’t at home then, but this Monday we had another fierce storm. Actually, we had two. The first came in around 6:00 PM and the second about the middle of the night.
The first storm blew over our huge willow tree in the back yard.
Yes, indeed. The towering willow tree that was a fixture of the backyard since before we moved in came down in one swift fall. The fact that it went was no surprise to anyone. The tree was rotting out in the middle and had been leaning severely for the longest time. The only question was when it would fall, and what would it fall on. The tree was so big, and leaning so badly, it was a hazard to cut down, and also a tree we really didn’t want to cut down because it was leaning in the direction of one of our fully grown apple trees.
The tree was leaning, and fell, away from the house, for which we are very glad. The sad part is that it didn’t entirely miss the apple tree. The willow tree rose like a giant over this apple tree and when it came down it did not kindly turn aside. It wasn’t a direct hit, but the glancing blow was enough to smash and maul about a quarter of the top of the apple tree, and one of the main lower limbs was pinned to the ground.
Stepping back and being very cool and analytical, I can say the situation could have been much worse. The apple tree did not take a direct hit from the mega-ton beast and end up squashed flat. The tree was grazed, and as such it will probably survive with some drastic, or maybe not quite so drastic, pruning. That would be the analysis if I were very cool and intelligent about the matter. As it was, when I went out and saw the little green apples scattered everywhere, and the mauled condition of the tree, I wanted to run around in a circle shouting “Why me? Why me?”
The most disturbing damage for the tree was the large swath of bark ripped from the top upper section of the trunk, and the fact that when the willow landed on the lower apple tree limb it feel with such force it lifted some of the apple tree roots from their resting place, creating a huge bulge in the earth.
It all looked very grim for the apple tree, intelligent thoughts disregarded.
Since the willow was still lying on the lower limb of the apple tree, it was important that the willow be cut up as soon as possible. Original plans for Tuesday were thrown aside, and I ended up spending several hours improving my chain saw skills, slicing and dicing up the willow tree.
The willow tree wood was very wet, and this made the saw bind up some, but the wood was also very soft, so over all it cut easy. The thickest cut I had to make was 28 inches–the base of the tree was actually wider but half was rotted away–which is a fair sized diameter, I think. To a skilled saw handler this would have been a “nothing” job. I’m not a suave chainsaw master, so by the end of my labors I felt like I had earned a pair of woodsmen stripes for completing the job.
Now I need to haul all the wood up to the burn pile so I can mow the lawn which really needs mowing.
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