First Crop Hay

The life of a farmer is full of angst.  So is the life of a farmer's wife.

Where most farmers cut, dry, and bale their hay, we have always chopped and bagged ours.  This means that the hay is cut, allowed to dry in the field for maybe 18 hours, and then chopped and bagged.  Farmers that bale their hay have to leave it lying in rows in the field for a week or more, waiting for it to dry out enough to bale.  The risk is that it will rain, which ruins the hay.  I don't know how many times I've talked to a fellow farmer at church or in town and they've bemoaned the rain, asking me if we, too, had hay lying out in the field.  It was always with sympathy that I told them that actually, we chop our hay so the rain doesn't affect us.  Fake sympathy, maybe.  Inside I was always pretty glad and maybe a little smug that we weren't affected so much by the weather.

It's funny how those things come back to bite you in the butt.

We started harvesting first crop hay about ten days ago.  After they'd been going only about two hours, Craig came in and said that the bagger was shot.  Dead.  Broken.

New baggers run about $200,000.

I tried not to hyperventilate over that.  I reminded myself that Craig was on it, that it was his problem to worry about and not mine.  I'm just the listening ear.  This self talk works only some of the time.

So the cut hay has been laying out in the field.  Getting rained on - twice.  Getting older and older and yuckier and browner.  I have to drive by it every time I go anywhere and I try to avert my eyes.  It's such an eyesore.  And now the second crop hay is growing up green around it,  making it look even worse.  Craig and I have driven by fields that looked like this, shaking our heads and wondering what would cause a farmer to have so little ambition and work ethic to allow this to happen to his hay.

By this past weekend, my anxiety over it was at a high.  Craig contracted a guy to rake and bale it but it hasn't happened yet.  For the love of all that is holy, get that hay off the field!

At least the bagger is fixed now.  I hope.  It's making a bit of a funny sound.  That bagger is held together with paper clips and baling twine - like most of our equipment.  But we're bagging.  The season has officially begun.