Its miller time!
yes, those are the rafters of my barn!
Me, Javier, Tim and the Semi, before it got hard!
HAAAAAAAY!(said in two octaves like a greeting) When I first heard this joke the person who told it to me said it would grow on me and it has! Who would have thunk it? grin. The whole reason hay is on my mind is the fact that yesterday Tim, Diana and I and 4 wonderful, hired hands. tackled a semi truck full of hay. That's 640 bales or 41,300 pounds of hay. Why you ask? Well you have all read my mumblings before on this blog about the state of hay here in NC....I still cant get my mind around it.....but leaving off that train of thought I decided to take the bull by the horns and stock our larders for winter. Nothings worse than frantically driving from feed store to feed store looking for reasonable hay for our precious ponies to tide them over until the "hay guy" shows up from parts north.....enough already! So as luck would have it I answered a small ad and made a brand new friend in our new hay broker. She has found a wonderful Ohio Amish connection and the hay is just fabulous! Hay is a challenging crop in the best of times, and this year has not been the best of times. There was all kinds of rain, which is good for growing, but bad for cutting and curing( that's when you leave you hay cut in the fields to dry out before baling) So under these conditions hay is either ruined because it gets rained on after its cut or more heart breaking after its baled, but before it can be safely stowed in a barn! The other option is to leave it growing to long awaiting a good day to cut and bale and stack. That makes the hay less palatable and less nutritious. So I feel for all those hay farmers out there, I really do. It just doesn't solve my hay dilemma and its all about me really! hahaha. So the ambitious project began of scheduling, unloading and stacking ridiculous amounts of the green stuff. The easiest part was to pay for it. Write a huge check and put it in an overnight envelope to wonderful hay broker, then it got a bit more challenging. Find help. I know! All you Cali friends are going "just down to the corner to hand pick the ones least likely to be murderers on the lamb"...right? Not so here in the south. I KNOW! right? Using deductive reasoning, I figure the feed stores should have leads for burly, non-felonesque help. After all, they unload tons of hay for sale at their stores. Er...not so much. It was all, bewildered looks and head scratching and phrases I hate to hear like " Well, I don't rightly know" OMG! Many phone calls later, we get two painters( Diego and Javier) and two yard guys ( Bill and Oiche) Mind you they are only able to help because they have been working at their other jobs since dawn and knock off at noon, the purported hay delivery time! Skip ahead to Friday( yesterday) and Bill and Oiche show up on time. At that moment our semi truck driver calls from over an hour away. Okay, so I got my round pen moved to a new location, but poor Diego and Javier are cooling their heels at our pick up spot, and do I have their phone number? eh nope. We hired them through an intermediary. In my endeavor to speed to their location in my truck, I get exactly 5 feet into the yard and presto.....MUD! 4 wheel drive defying mud. Picture Tims face about now... But wait it gets better, as we are laboring away to free my truck with planks and and old hay being liberally sprinkled about, it clouds up and starts to rain! Hay unloading in the rain is not kosher. I'm breathing, I'm breathing. Om mani padmeh om! 40 minutes later with my truck freed I go bumping down our road with Diana to pick up Javier and Diego hoping like heck they are still there! As I round the one bend in our road( THE bend as its known, when being used as a land mark for things such a pizza delivery...as in " are ya'll before or after THE bend?") I almost run smack into a giant semi taking up the entire two lanes! Well, the nerve! What fool driver is gonna take up two lanes....oh....Its our hay delivery. greeeeeaaaaaat! I shout encouragement to the guy driving (who looks like some ones pappaw) and continue on my way. Really really, hoping that the guys are still waiting for us! On the bright side , it has stopped raining! One missed turn later we arrive at the meeting spot and YES, we have helpers! The fun was just beginning. We began work like a well oiled machine.....OK, well not well oiled more like, a kinda hiccupy and screechy machine. In any case the job was certainly separating the men from the boys after the first two hours. Distinguished honors go to Tim, who has already informed me that hay unloading in any form is now no longer a service provided by Collins Specialty Contractors, and Javier, the Incan power ranger,who even though he was about an inch taller than me, patented the shoulder carry for these 60 pound bales of gorgeous teff hay. It has already been inducted into our family vernacular as the "Javier carry" and doing a "Javier" means you worked your butt off! He literally scampered( yes scampered!) up the growing pile of hay with bales over his shoulders like nothing. I think he is part ant.
After all the fun we could stand here at our house, bales to the rafters! We took the last third a semi of hay to Diana's. Using pick up trucks we shuttle the stuff from the road up her drive and into her barn,. The wash rack was stacked full so we can use that stack as stair case to the loft. Who builds a barn with no outside door to a loft? sigh...but it worked great. And by 6 pm all hay was stowed and 7 very tired, very dirty people where ready to call it a day. Last night before bed I was standing in my barn surveying the mountain of hay and breathing its sweet aroma. I turned off the lights very satisfied with myself for pulling it all off. Horses wont starve, and hay doesn't have to be purchased again until about march! Now that's a good days work.
