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.