August, 2023

Harvesting hay is one of the oldest known activities required of any farmer who hopes his herd will survive the cold weather months in climates where winter grass grazing supplies for stock are inadequate to sustain them.  And if a modern farm cannot grow, harvest, and store its own hay the cost of purchasing hay can be devastatingly beyond the farmer’s economic reach.  We understood this reality, of course, but still were complete rookies in tall grass, not even knowing how to tell when the ideal time would be to harvest the hay growing on our farm in glorious meadows that were green and beautiful without our even having seeded them.

“Look here,” said the grizzled Saint George, “these seed heads are not quite ripe, which is exactly what you want to see to get your cutting time just right, with the grass leaves being about at their maximum growth, which these are.  You see it?”

Well sure we saw it.  Distinguishing it from earlier or later states of hay growth and maturity was another matter.  But George has been checking every day he’s visited the farm and a few of us had been walking out into the fields with him for daily five minute hay tutorials.  And as far as George can tell, he announces, if the rains hold off for three or four days this is the ideal day for the grass to be mowed in the field.  Now comes the hard part.

Before the advent of horse drawn or mechanical equipment all hay was cut by hand sickle or scythe.  We, of course, were centuries beyond such gleaning techniques and had already purchased for almost no money an old horse-drawn sickle mower with a seven foot long bar holding a few dozen very sharp triangular blades which moved back and forth as the mower wheels turned, sort of like a hair clipper works. Even farmers who rely on mechanized tractor drawn machinery use mowers not very different in design than the horse drawn ones.  This was an amazing and also a truly dangerous piece of equipment, the kind of mower that has been around since before the Civil War.  Ours may even have been that old, but with some sharpening and lots of oiling we were ready.
 Well, maybe ready, except for the slight matter of hitching our team of horses to the mower.  You may think that an easy task, but it is an immense commitment of time, first grooming the horses to remind them you are their friend and they are in your debt, then putting on their pulling yokes, fitting the harnesses and the reins, walking and then backing the horses into the space in front of the mower wheels, one on either side of the draw bar, hooking the draw and the pulling bars up to the harness, steadying the team, climbing onto the mower seat, walking the mower and the horses to the hay meadow, dropping the cutting bar so that it rides just inches of the ground, engaging the wheel driven gears, and then softly clucking to the horses to start moving forward without freaking out over the noise of the gears, the cutting blades, and the falling hay.  Easy. 
Except that first time I thought it was my turn – perhaps in ideological competition with tradition that holds only one person work a horse or a team no matter how steady and good the horse or the team is for consistency sake and perhaps in pursuit of my ideological credo that everyone had to share in the skilled and unskilled work … horse care and childcare, cutting hay and canning vegetables. Anyhow, horses in captivity appreciate consistency – and I was in waaay over my head – another Peter-Crow wisdom conflict in which Peter yielded, the team freaked out, literally bolted, flipped me out of the seat, and ran with a dangerously waiving seven foot long cutting bar with three inch long scissoring blades capable of cutting off a child’s foot at the ankle through the field, out the gate, and back to the barn, where they stood.  Embarrassed.  Pleased.  Panting.
So how many people should we trust to drive the team?  And why?  This was an ongoing debate.  Everyone had to do his or her share of childcare, at least ideally.  Everyone had to cook and wash dishes.  Everyone had to know how to wield a hammer, to drive a tractor, to muck out a stall, to milk a cow.  But in reality not everyone knew how to change brake pads when that was a need, and not everyone needed to learn.  And in fact Peter was the best handler of the horses.  And he liked doing it.  And it was better for the horses.  And ideology was confronted by practicality.  And on the day the team ran away from me with a seven foot long scissor slicing crazily in thin air I surrendered my hay mowing aspirations, much to the relief of the collective.

Once hay is cut it must be allowed to dry, ideally for a few days in hot sun.  Then it has to be turned and raked into long narrow linear piles known as windrows, originally done by hand with a pitchfork, but now again using a piece of horse drawn equipment.  And then, only when the hay has properly dried, is it ready for gathering in some form to be placed into the barn to protect it from moisture and rot.  Most modern farmers use a tractor driven hay baler for gathering, and when ours was working we did too.  At other times we used pitchforks to pile it loose onto a horse-drawn wagon and then off loaded into the haymow or loft.

Loose hay stored in a barn will compress down and cure. Hay stored before it is fully dry can literally produce enough heat to start a fire, due to bacterial fermentation.  Farmers have to be careful about moisture levels to avoid spontaneous combustion.  Who knew? The most familiarity any of us had with hay was seeing Monet’s haystacks.