Technical Jargon

“Well, let’s move that deal so we can get the things in,” are words that came out of my mouth as I was helping load several hundred pounds of posts that couldn’t fit in the back of the pick up until a stray pin from our baler was moved.  Between grunts and frustration, I couldn’t find those words, and I’m shocked when deal and thing not only stood in for easy nouns, but my husband said “Good idea!”  Not that I had a good idea but that he knew what I meant in my lack of specificity.  I am a college educated, high school English teacher and college composition instructor with a vocabulary intent on saving the beauty of the English language as an art form, and I filled my imperative sentence with meaningless nouns and ended it with a preposition.  And no one thought twice about it.

When I met my husband ten years ago and I heard him exchange a day’s plans with his dad, I thought, “How the hell does either one know what to do today?”  It went something like this:

“Son, get out to the place and get the… the… ya know.”

“Yeah, by the one spot.”

“Yep.  And don’t forget to stop the thing.”

“Which one?”

“The one by the lady’s place.”

“Okay.  See ya.”

“See ya.”

That was about as clear as mud, yet as I tagged along like a puppy who didn’t know commands yet, I watched this young man arrive in a specific pasture, one of many, and drive up to a tank, one of two, and plug up a hole with some dirt.  My little puppy brain was blown.

A few years later, after being slightly trained in the ways of the agricultural lifestyle, and the lack of specificity in its language, I had a better idea of my surroundings and what they meant.  However I the analogies used to suffice for the lack of nouns still confused me.

“Babe, don’t forget to drop the arm.”

I looked at our portable loading chute.  It had two “legs” that held it up.  In order to keep the legs locked in position, a handle twists a screw into the leg.  That handle dangles around the screw above the legs; therefore, it was what I assumed was analogous to an “arm.”  To make the handle twist the screw, a small square opening on the handle needs to be fit snugly around a nut on the screw.  Once the twisting is done, we always disengage the handle so that it hangs freely and won’t break while driving down the road.  

Hmm.  It seemed strange that it would even matter if the arm were up or down to unload cows, but I could most definitely drop the arm if need be.

Very proudly, I disengaged the handle (what I thought was an arm) so that it hung down as I was instructed.  Yes, very safe.  What wasn’t safe was when 1500lb cows came barreling out of a pot, on a mission to find their babies with only the one leg on my side supporting their weight while the other on the opposite side was suspended in the air.

“Whoa!” he yelled.  “What were you thinking?”

What was he thinking?  Clearly he wasn’t or he would have chosen a more specific word.  Both “legs” needed to be down to safely unload cows, but in his hurry and with his mind moving even more quickly, he called it an arm instead, and I suppose it could have been if the wheels were legs.  That is water under the bridge at this point, but at the time, I was livid.

No cows were hurt in the miscommunication, but I spent a lot of breath clarifying to him the difference between an arm and a leg on a piece of equipment, and why they needed to make sense and stay consistent.  What is a leg one day can’t be an arm the next.  

The very next day I heard him on the phone with his dad,

“I know. Yep. Oh, the one? Alright.”  And off he went to do his work on the fields with as precise of an understanding as he would need to perform brain surgery.

After a few years of listening and not talking, words became clearer in context, and I stopped correcting everyone around me.  My students knew the difference between their verb tenses when writing an academic essay, but still code-shifted to say how they “win the round” last weekend when chatting rodeo with me.

Then it happened.  My daughter who has spoken perfectly from the time she started using syntax said, “We ain’t gonna feed them doggies (cows) now!” and I said, “nope.”  There was no need to correct any of her slang because she, at the wise old age of three, already understands and uses the technical jargon associated with agriculture.

In any culture or community, there is no quicker way to feel isolated when you don’t understand the terms, and there is no easier way to remove yourself than by not using it.  Regardless of the vocabulary used, or lack thereof, in order to assimilate oneself into a section of society, it is not sufficient to only live in the associated area, perform the work related to the profession, or even to participate in the social customs.  I moved 40 miles from town, dug irrigation ditches in the heat of the summer, and traded in all my slacks and skirts for jeans, but until I am able to communicate more matter in fewer words, I can’t fully claim my participation in this life I live.   

Today a chain broke on our swather.  What kind of chain?  A chain.  What part?  A part.  As I waited to reach cell phone service, I ran through the descriptive words in my head.  How would I explain this broken piece in order to acquire a new one?  Even as the phone call to my husband began, my carefully planned words were fumbled and confusing.  He eventually commanded the conversation not through words but from experience.  He’d seen it before.  He’d experienced it before, and it was through our shared experience and time together that we were able to find meaning without technical words.  In our hustle and our hurry, we lose words we know, or we don’t have time to give them their own names in the first place.  In any case, in my trial by verbal fire, we have a deal that fixed the thing, the deal made the thing stand, that other thing doesn’t leak, and we got them things in once the deal was moved.

Dirt Candles

It rained last night.  While a little bit of rain more often than not incites anxiety for hay farmers, this one did not.  The humidity left behind felt like a warm blanket for the night.  The morning was then cool, and even the bugs were laziIy humming near the damp grass and dirt.  I often wonder if people in town feel the same way about the rain.  I always hear the weather forecaster warn people to go inside in the summer afternoons, and return to enjoy the smell of rain in the evening.

I think we all love the smell of rain whether it is cleansing the pavement in town or refreshing the earth in the country, it has a rejuvenating effect on all of us.  How often have we asked to bottle up that scent for our homes, but of course to no avail?

Once you’re outside of town, beyond asphalt roads, concrete sidewalks, and Kentucky bluegrass lawns, the smell of rain is completed with a host of other aromas that complement each other like a home-cooked meal.  It might have rained a week ago, but in the spring, we smell dirt, and we love it!  If you ever hear a farmer or his wife say they want a dirt candle, you will now know why.  We have a lot of dirt, and not all of it is created equally.  While many spend time sweeping dirt out of their houses, we joyfully spend our time working in it and on it.  Each spring we smell fresh, moist dirt as farmers plow under last year’s stubble and volunteer crops.   Driving toward a field, one can usually smell it as quickly as they can see it; long lines of deep chocolate brown or red fields emanating a scent that is wholesome, earthy, and pure.  Sometimes it is accompanied by the sounds of a throttled-up tractor or if you’re really close, you might even hear the squeaky, creaky spinning of disks as they bring up the wet ground from below.  To have the pleasure of walking in this field with bare feet is what I imagine heaven feels like.  The ground is softer than anything felt in town or even elsewhere in the country.  The air mixed with the heavy soil creates a feathery footing that you could only selfishly take a few steps on before deciding to step back the way you came.  There is no sense in sullying the pristine field and all the work someone put into creating that perfect seedbed for planting, not for walking.

By early summer, there is a distinct cleanliness in the air.  Whatever dirt that was kicked up during cultivation is now settled on the roads and windowsills, and a new smell rises from little green crops poking their way out of the dirt.  Sprays mixed with ample water, a mini rain wets the ground once again.  Its remnants then hover, waiting for the wind to carry it gently into nothingness.  From a mile away, one can smell work.  The smell is attention to detail.  Persistence.  Love and dedication in ensuring a field stays green, healthy, and clean—free of pests that devour crops and weeds that spread noxious pollens and seeds.  The smell of summer spraying is like the smell of gasoline.  Some love it, and they can’t really explain why.   Some cringe at the uses and argue about ethics.  The common ground is that it is used for production that benefits us all.

Then the crops grow.  You can’t smell the growth, or even see it in a day, but it happens while we are busy.  Some drive into town each day and some are on the fields watering them, and one day after the initial olfactory pleasures have been forgotten until next season, we are given the gift of a finished crop.  

As harvests roll around, and the fall winds begin to blow, the haze of wheat dust should be captured for the coloring of wall paint or dish towels.  Purple flowers bloom out on soybeans, potatoes, and alfalfa.  If only perfume could come in the scent of crop flowers.  It is soft and sweet and not quite fresh, but rather substantial as if it commands the respect it deserves for growing season after season and year after year, long before farmers were ever around to cultivate and enjoy it.  Alas, it must be harvested.  Hay crops in particular retain their beauty during harvest.  Though wheat looks beautiful while being cut and shines afterwards for a day or two like blonde hair in the sun, alfalfa unimpressively lumps onto the ground where it then most impressively begins its aura.  The cool moisture of the leaves begins to seep out taking with it a smell of purpose.  It is a masculine smell, heavy and strong--staying only a day or two before it is lost to the next venture.  It is a smell of work and drive.  It takes weeks of water and hours in a swather to make it, and breathing it in deeply reminds us of the work still left to do.  It is a time-consuming crop that demands constant attention and arduous tenacity to have a final product.  Because of its depth and need for dedication, it becomes that much more alluring to the farmers that have the grit to grow it.

In the end, the more the sights and smells of agriculture provide a sensory playground for us, we more we realize we can’t ever take them with us.  We cannot and should not have the smells of nature and hard work in our homes because they only smell so powerfully after putting forth the effort to enjoy them.  We don’t deserve the smell of a plowed field without doing the plowing, and to selfishly take inside the smell of rain on our cities and fields would mean no one is going outside to appreciate the gifts given to us, a reward for work and appreciation.  Harvest above all deserves to be recognized as the quintessential smell of labor.  It is the culmination of a season or more of stamina in cultivating the crop, ensuring its safety and growth, and patiently waiting to harvest it.  It brings a year’s worth of income in the days or weeks of a harvest, but the sensory pleasure it provides is a perk of the job that only the farmer can deeply enjoy as reward for our labors.

Just One Day

Just the other day, I sat looking like a trophy wife, rodeo version, in the Hospitality Tent1 at a rodeo.  My bracelets were jingling as manicured fingers applied a fresh coat of lip gloss.  I ate a salad.  An older woman asked where “we” were from, figuring I was married to a tour cowboy2.  Instead she was astonished as I answered every askance question she had about living on the eastern plains of Colorado raising hay and cattle.  When her eyes couldn’t get much wider, staring at my best attempt to look good for just that evening, she asked, “Do you like  it?”

And for once, something beautiful and true came to mind, “It has to be a lifestyle and cannot just be a livelihood, or you won’t make it.”

She nodded and seemed to finally understand that a young woman in patterned pants and dangling earrings could possibly gear-shift into a role in agriculture.  For nine years, this has been our lives.  Everyday begins with chores, feeding dogs and horses, and cattle in the winter.  Those days then pick up speed as we dress for the work we’re taking on-- coveralls over jeans and long-handles in the winter, and jeans, boots, and lightweight tee shirts are standard in the hot summer.   I’m particularly fond of my Cat-brand baseball cap to hold back this ultra-trendy A-line hair cut I’m sporting.  My hair teases nicely for big-hair at the rodeo or church, but tucks behind my ears well in this hat for daily work.  Before long, equipment is roaring or we are otherwise out in the sun, working.  Trips to town are few, and eating lunch while we’re there depends on which place will take us when we smell of diesel.  

Just once, I’d like to get dressed nicely for town just to eat lunch in a sit-down restaurant, but the back of a gas station has good company when we sit next to over-the-road truckers or farmers that have thirty or sixty years of this life on their faces and hands.  Sandwiches and ice cream are devoured without a thought of calories because we will burn it off faster than we ate it.  

Some afternoons are hot enough we take our evening in the middle of the day.  Equipment overheating and our inability to keep cool means we come in for a few hours until the sun gets a little lower.  Just one day, I’d like to take that time and vacuum the floor or work on my bookkeeping.  Instead exhaustion always wins, and we often doze off in the dim light of our purposely-placed northeastern bedroom, the only cool room in the house.  Someday I’d like to choose a home layout based on flow, not necessity.  Maybe I wouldn’t need an entire room dedicated to muddy boots.  When we awake, we know there is no “evening” in store for us.  We rarely have time to do household chores or watch weekly reality TV shows, and we don’t even have a lawn on which we would run sprinklers.  We load or unload hay.  We follow each other to different fields so that we will have a ride back.  We utilize the shadowy evening to avoid overheating our machinery.  We work well into the night nearly every day including Sundays.

One particular evening, after I’d been to town during the day to buy bolts at the farm store, junk food for a trip, and had my nails done for said trip, we were cutting twine for hay tarping.  I grumbled, “For just one day, I thought I could keep my nails pretty to go on this trip!”  I didn’t even make it two hours before I was effectively ruining them, 12 hours before leaving.  Meanwhile, I started mechanically measuring a yard at a time from chin to fingertip, chin to fingertip, chin to fingertip.  Cut. Start again.  Dig into the tangled ball of splintery twine, get dust and dirt under my nails, let the dryness crack my cuticles, get a blister cutting with dull scissors.  Start again.  The chore is a common one, and I’m used to doing it.  I know the lengths by heart and have systems that work from years of doing it.

Our lives are all encompassing.  Farmers and ranchers can’t pick and choose when they will be farmers and ranchers.  We work when work needs to be done, and we aren’t finished until there is no work left.  To expect to get back from town with five hours until dark and not be asked to help out was foolishness!  To even get a manicure was squeezed in between other errands, making the most of time in town, and finishing first cutting before I left.  There’s no such thing as, “I’ll do that when I get back” and you certainly can’t telecommute.  

The following morning we were ready to visit family in East Chicago, 17 hours away.  As I had my kids packed in the car, and a few days to put on make-up, wear clean clothes, and relax with family, I thought I’d have my “just one day…” feelings all resolved for a whole week!  

...

Three hours in, I passed a flat-bed pickup hauling minerals to cattle somewhere, and I already missed home.  

While away from the farm, I spoke with my husband often, and got updates on how the second3 was coming in, what he would be doing with the horse when he was going to leave for a rodeo run, and how the pivot4 was holding pressure with its new nozzles5.  In the midst of relaxing in my grandparent’s gazebo and preparing for fireworks over a lush, park-like lawn, I was my thoughts went back to our young grass field.  I was concerned about getting it cut or sprayed and how the milo was coming in during these hot couple of days that I was gone.  

A genuine interest in our farm never left me while I was away.  Relaxing was well-earned, but somehow it is no longer a part of my lifestyle.  Our livelihood is on the farm, and the lifestyle that comes with it cannot be left behind.  I dressed for the part in Chicago and at the rodeo, but taking even one day away from our lives took away one little piece from me.  Asking for “just one day” to live like a suburbanite or to relinquish farm responsibility is futile because it would be like someone from town asking to jump into my life for just one day.  Though the novelty is always fun for them when they do come to visit, it takes years of work, dedication, selflessness, sacrifices, and a whole lot of sweat to live this life.  It cannot be obtained, or forsaken, for just one day.  With those pretty nails growing out, and ready to be clipped off, I’m thankful that our livelihood afforded them to me, but this lifestyle is why they won’t last for long.

_______________________

1. Hospitality tent: n. a covered area for rodeo contestants and their families to eat before or after a rodeo.  Usually catered and provided by a local restaurant.  
2. Tour cowboy: n. a rodeo contestant following a select series of rodeos in order to make enough money to compete in a finals.
3. Second: n. a shortened way of saying “second cutting” which is the new growth after a first harvest, of perennial crops that are cut and baled/harvested multiple times per season.  Many hay farmers have first through fourth cuttings.
4. Pivot: n. one of many regional synonyms for an above-ground sprinkler irrigation system.  Many pivots water tens up to hundreds of acres in a circle, pivoting around from the center.  
5. “holding pressure with its new nozzles”: phrase. Pivots have dozens to hundreds of hoses that water the crops.  At the end of each hose is a tip, nozzle, that allows a certain amount of water through.  If the tips are too big and too much water is used, the pressure will drop and the pivot will shut off.  In this case, the pivot had extra pressure, so new nozzles were added to use as much water as possible while still maintaining appropriate pressure.

Tying off the Rain

The day was warm though dull and hazy like clouds would soon roll in to cool us off and set the scene for for a well-deserved afternoon nap.  The threat of rain had come and gone, then rained on a 10% chance, and then left again for several days of the forecast, so we had ample time to let our sprinkled bales get some sun and wind in the stack before we covered them with tarps.  After an extended first cutting, with rain on two of the three fields and all of the bales, five segmented days of erratic sleeping patterns during baling, and a marriage that needed a return to normalcy, a nap together seemed like just the solution.  We expected to awake refreshed to do chores in the cool of the evening.  We expected to find time to do those chores.  We expected to have a hefty but manageable workload in setting tarps, cutting and tying strings, and securing them to the bales.  We expected calm winds and sleeping children while we finished this last important part of first cutting.  We were only granted half of those expectations but somehow something so much more.

It may have been 5 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening; when a body needs rest, the specific times blur together.  In either case, we awoke to the lull skies turning to an oppressive blanket of gray clouds.  There was an eerie still in the air for only a moment as if we’d slept through the placid part of the day, and the littlest inklings of a breeze were catching on the kochia weed and yellow petals of wild sunflowers growing around our arena.  Beyond our property, a little dust devil trailed mysteriously across a planted field.  Wiping our eyes, we suddenly felt God and Nature’s admonishment for sleeping before a job was done.  We didn’t waste time in pulling on our last pairs of work jeans and scrambling to find gloves and hats, hoof picks and scissors--only half of which made it out-- followed by the chirping of kids tagging along oblivious to the circumstance.  

Still clipping my hay chaps while walking, I arrived at the stack to find several strings already cut from the crunchy decade-old baling twine.  I threw them over the back of my neck for later.  Now would be the time for some extra hay hauling as my husband lifted 6-9 small bales at a time on the forks of the tractor to put on top of the five-high stack of 3x3 bales. With the wind at my back, I would precariously pull them onto the stack to make a rail on top.  Because of the wind, tidy load on the forks turned into a pile of spitting and shredding bales on the stack, but incrementally, I placed them down the line.  As I moved, I squinted my eyes to use my eyelashes as protection from the stems and leaves getting separated and strewn about by the wind that was growing in intensity.  Slowly and steadily, I lifted them turning south and then to the east where the direction would grant a momentary reprieve as the breeze pressed on the side of my face then just as quickly tangle my hair in disarray, making it difficult to see.  One by one, all the bales were set, so down the ladder I went.

Efficiency

 

With a sideways glance, my husband hauled the tarp up the ladder; my snide comments about the necessity of a haybarn were not appreciated at the moment.  He unrolled the tarp and let the plastic wrapper drift lightly down between the stacks, the only place with a little protection from the wind.  As I reached up to tie the first string, I realized I was far too short, and five-high was far too tall to tie this tarp as we had done in the past.  With a side-arm throw, or two or three when contending with the wind, I sent all the strings up to my husband who tied them onto the grommets.  One corner, then the next, but as the string dangled down, it didn’t seem to cover as much area as it used to either.  My comments turned to cussing, and my husband laughed and prided himself in “cost-effective efficiency” here at the Next Summer Farm & Ranch.  Perhaps savings on a ten-year-old ball of twine and the inefficiency created by struggling to make knots in short strings will help justify a haybarn before it causes a divorce.  

The playful bickering continued as we pulled the tarp to unfold it across the length of the stack.  It had been kept in place under its own weight before, but once unfolded, we needed to work quickly and carefully to avoid losing a finger or at least some plam-skin to a rope burn caused by wind taking the tarp and thus the string right out of my exposed hands.  Unbeknownst to our children that any source of tension was growing, we picked up our pace as the sky threatened the rain that it had promised it would not.  

The breeze stopped only as the calm before the storm, and our chattering ceased as well.  I ran up and down both sides of the stack, making sure the drops of tarps were even.  With the dexterity and artfulness of a well-rehearsed musician, I used the hoof pick to pull twine through the bales’ strings.  Four, then eight, then twelve, making sure all the corners were tied down.  Two, then four, then six sides tied, grunting and pulling to make my loops and knots.  

And then rain came.  

With each of the corners in place for holding, we still had to adjust each of the tarps to be square.  In big, wet drops, the rain rolled down the tarps and into our eyes as we looked up to tie our loops.  There was no more talk of efficiency or haybarns, and the kids had found a dry spot to play under a trailer.  He pulled the string; I tied it.  Moved on to the next, pulling and tying.  Pulling and tying.  

Therapy 

The conditions grew worse, and we recalled all the other times we’d tarped in the rain, and how it is excellent marriage therapy.  There are few other tangible experiences in which my husband needs me and I him; how we help each other in working together to accomplish a shared goal.  Despite less-than-ideal conditions, and finding nowhere to escape, we press on because it is what needs to be done, but we do so together.  Each of us can perform part of the work alone, but cutting strings, or setting hay on top, or hauling the tarp up the ladder all have an equally important counterpart and are meaningless without the partner needed to tie those strings, move that hay in place, or pull the tarp down the sides.  Neither of us shirks the responsibility or tries to take the easy way out.  There are no short cuts or hiding places, and everything is out in the open, vulnerable to the care of the other.

Between the stacks, a glitter caught our eyes.  The discarded plastic remained as if it had thought to escape the storm and settle where it was calm.  Instead, what was left of its shining surface quickly became sunken into mud created from the rain coming off of two stacks’ tarps.  The rain kept drowning it in clear drops that splashed off it as if they no longer wanted to associate together.  With our own throbbing, cold fingers, absence of arguing, and with the redeeming smell of rain on our skin, we stood in the weather and admired not what we expected, but instead the humbling experience God gave us that day.

Tarping is a Crazy Word

Think about the last time you were determined.  Truly, deeply, determined.  People probably thought you looked crazy!  Pushing on despite the odds.  Frowning, sleep-deprived, and busy, you endured. Remember that time?  Maybe not…

Was your determination a matter of life and death? Was someone depending on you in dire circumstances? Maybe it was something you had set out to do and had an audience cheering you on. Or was it something deep within your heart; your own desire to achieve?

When your first attempt may have failed, did you try again?  Or did you give up and chalk it up to, "not meant to be"?  If you fell short of your goal, were you still proud of your progress?  Did you learn from the experience and formulate a Plan B?  And if you succeeded, do you know you could have done more?

Hard work is rewarding, and determination is the link that gets a person from working hard to the reward.  Determination seethes out the pores of every farmer putting everything into the field, but few stop to think about the strength of character it takes to get a harvest off of the field.  Grain farmers cut and dump as they go in a seamless, efficient fashion.  Farmers of produce and baled forage have a different, longer story.

Background

A standard sprinkler of 120 acres takes approximately one week to cut it down, bale it up, and haul it in, assuming ideal weather prevails.  It is no secret that farming is not a 9-to-5 profession and takes more than a standard 40 hours on Monday through Friday.  Alfalfa and grass farmers have perhaps the most enduring schedule during harvest as it is 3 to 4 times per summer as opposed to a single fall harvest of wheat, corn, soybeans, potatoes, or sunflowers that get to keep growing all summer long.

This very patient and perseverant person carefully watches the weather to begin the first harvest.  Looking for a 7-10 day window of sunshine, we are still restricted by dewpoint during bailing.  It can’t be too humid or too dry, so the farmers wait for sunset and sunrise, sleeping only a few hours in between.  And even once all the alfalfa is carefully put into perfectly moisture-tested bales, they still need to be hauled in off the field as quickly as possible in order to resume watering on new growth coming in around the bales.  Should the selfish farmer want a nap in the afternoon, rain will surely take advantage of the situation, literally raining on the parade. Instead, with another cup of coffee and a splash of water on the face, bales get warily but stubbornly dragged in from the field and to the stack, where the job still is not complete.

A week later, friends and family have wondered what has happened to this family who have not answered phone calls, paid bills, or even checked the mail.  The field is clear, the water is on, and there hasn't been the hollering of a tractor waking the neighbors in the night. How could they still be working? Unless these bales are being housed in the barn, there is one final chore. Tarping.  No, it is not a real word, but it is pronounced as “tarp” – “ing,” used as a verb, and means the act of putting on a tarp.

The fact that the word tarping is not a real word is a slap in the face to anyone who has ever engaged in this hellacious activity that only a crazy person can justify doing on little sleep and with fatigued muscles.  

• ·       The danger involved in hauling 100 pounds of tarp thrown over the shoulder like Santa carrying his pack but climbing a ladder up a 17 foot haystack;
• ·       the exhaustion caused by careful steps on the uneven, corrugated surface of hay bales atop the stack, carrying 75lbs small bales, one by one to create a ridge;
• ·       the battle against even the slightest breeze that turns a tarp into an angry, billowing wind-sail capable of tossing a 200lb person to the ground;
• ·       and the 9 feet of bailing twine used to tie the tarp down turns into a whipping and slapping lacerator
• are all reasons that people should revere the word tarping and the farmer who does it with as much dignity as a soldier, teacher, doctor, nurse, fireman, policeman, or pastor, and not as a lunatic without reason completing the task.  The determination to get it done trumps all.

All in Vain

Like all parts of being a hay farmer, being a hay-houser requires just as much determination to get hay covered as quickly as possible in order to keep them green and dry, protected from the sun and rain.

After a few hours spent tarping, with a sore back from moving bales, a forehead encrusted with sweat and alfalfa dust, and shredded fingertips from tying twine, the farmer steps back to take a look, yet still knows the efforts, though insistent, are almost nearly in vain.

The tarp is no match for one resolute hailstorm, or several days of wind and rain. After being so intently set, the tarp gives up on its only duty, gets thin, cracks, or develops little holes.  Meanwhile, the twine frays or pulls grommets right out of the tarp, exposing edges and the top of the stack.  Should rainwater penetrate through any of those opportunities, it works it's magic like a petri dish in an incubator growing mold on the once pristine hay.  The tarp then becomes as detrimental to the hay as it once was protective of it, and all our efforts appear without purpose. 

Once the storms have passed, the farmers, looking like escaped asylum patients, return to the haystack, remove the tattered tarp, and let the sun do it's drying work on the damp bales. With another round of steadfast determination, they re-cover the stack with yet another tarp or two, only to repeat the process again in the fall.

They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over but expecting a different outcome.  Tarping hay might look insane, feels insane during the process, but the adjective to apply it's not “insanity” but “determination,” and in a society full of instant gratification and entitlement, determination might look like insanity simply because it is not currently the norm; however, determination to complete the goal first attempted eventually ends in failure every time, but that is no matter.  We depend on the hay for our life and livelihood and feeding livestock who depend on us for sustenance.  Our desire to remain unfaltering in the circumstances and repeating as often as possible is still a source of pride and a measure of success—all made possible by inherent determination.

The Price of Patience

After a quick couple of drenching afternoon showers, there was no rain in the ten-day forecast, and the alfalfa’s deep green leaves covered the axle of the pivot tires.  It was prime, if not overdue, time to cut.

Tentative Curing

Two weeks later than usual Next Summer hay was cut and dried in four days, one over par for our area.  Out came the balers.  With warm days and humid nights, it should have baled quickly, but that was not the case.  Two hours here, three hours there.  Either the wind would blow making it too dry, or it wouldn’t blow making it too damp.  On the last night, waiting for dew to set in, it sprinkled. A drop, a second drop coming in sideways threatened to ruin the last 50 acres waiting to be baled.  But yet again, the wind came in right on cue and with a little too much force, not only drying those few minutes of agonizing raindrops, but also necessitating a final baling the following morning.  

It took four 6 am mornings and 11 o’clock nights to bale the 160 acres.  While the cutting seemed to drag on forever with a rollercoaster of excitement, disappointment, close calls, and two very tired farmers, our patience was rewarded with a 40% increase in yield over last year’s first cutting.  Our small bales were stacked by the house, and the beautiful bales sit so stately on the field waiting to be picked up.  One day, two days go by; the stacker was broke-down.  So we waited patiently.

Last Chance

From the top of our small bales stack, we had set tarps on an eerily still evening.  Intensity from baling and the nervousness that every Colorado afternoon in June brings, doesn’t juxtapose well with a calm, humid, evening.  From the top of the stack, one can see a year’s worth of income in big bales sitting on the field which was just budding back into existence.  The foreground green on green intersected by the pivot on a blue backdrop looked like a color setting from quiet generations past.  

A glance to the south affirmed the anxiety.  Shades of blue fought on the Front Range.  Twenty miles away there was rain. As the wind picked up, the tarps jerked away from the stack, sand storms gritted and burned our arms and faces, and we rushed to save these bales from rain.  Our fingers were raw from pushing twine along the stems of alfalfa and pulling it against the wind, tying knots to keep it down.  The cacophony of whipping and slapping against the stack was painful to hear, not for these bales but those.  Those big bales sit, and so do we.  Waiting patiently.  Watching patiently.  The storm pushes east of us, and our patience is rewarded yet again with dry green bales sitting in a cool green field.

Storm Symphony

This afternoon brings long bellowing thunder, flashes of lightning over streaks coming from a heavy purple cloud.  To the west, the gray rain curtain masks peach skies beyond.   As the wind picks up, the dogs are panting.  Storm.  One drop, two, and bales sit in the field.  It is a sickening feeling for a harvesting farmer to see heavy rain move in, like watching a tornado in the distance move closer to your home.  Your hard work and all its material rewards endangered.  The often awe-inspiring symphony of thunder, lightning, clear skies, and dark turns into a nightmare that settles in the pit of any farmer’s stomach.  A drop and another hit dry skin like needles.  The storm is directly overhead rattling up through the porch and our feet, and flashes illuminate the entire sky.  When the drops get big and splash as they fall, the windows get blurry.  They come with the force of hail and eventually turn.  For several more painful minutes, we watch the rain.  This time from inside because there is nothing that getting soaked outside will do to save our bales.  

With a few sad words of optimism for the hay, we retired for the night, listening to a gentle hum of soft rain on the walls and windows, and on our bales.  Patience will prevail.  So we will quietly wait.