That Time Has Arrived

I dunno, I could be mistakin’, but I’m thinkin’ that this is my favorite time of the year.  Not time of the year as in season, as in, I like summer.  I do, sort of, but I’m talking about haying time. 

Yeah a lot of what I love and look forward to happens in summer, but summer is not my favorite season, it is only third up on the favorite list, right after winter which is right after fall, which is my all time favorite season.  Spring is dead last and actually there could be about five more seasons in between my third favorite and my least favorite season.    Not unlike summer, there are things that I like and they happen to come around in the spring but that doesn’t make me like spring, just those things.  I sorta hate spring, if I can be allowed to hate or despise any thing including a season.

Back to haying time.  I love haying.  I really don’t think I can adequately express all that I love about it.  But for sure it makes me feel like a real farmer.  It makes me love my horse more.  And I’m not sure that that is possible really, but boy howdy along comes haying time and my horse looks prettier, livelier and smells even more like a horse.  Dirt is ten pounds slimmer, and we’ve never fought a day in our lives.  And my girls are the best, oh wait they always are… they are just, even better.

So what’s on the docket besides hayin’?

The last of the corn plugs will go in tomorrow, the beans will go in – yes I know!  Be quiet or I will, I will, I don’t know what I will do, maybe cry, so don’t you dare say, “my, isn’t it awfully late for the beans to go in?”  Yes, it is.  Enough already. 

Tomorrow, while the planting is happening in the Market Garden, I will be out showing Larry, our hay cutter, where Dirt told me we were cutting this year.  Some new spots have been added to the roster and some spots we have determined need to wait another year.

Wednesday the girls will be seeding flats with all of the brassica family selections for fall and winter.   Hopefully we can get another batch of carrots in along with some more lettuce and stuff this week.  On Friday I have to help with my friend’s daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner and then on Saturday the actual wedding.  Sunday we’re home free and we will either be hauling in the rest of the hay or on to somethin’ new.

But sometime between now and Monday if you can’t find me, I will either be out marveling at the way the cut hay glistens in the late sun, cheering Martin and Fluffy on in their hunt for hay field rodentia, listening to the clatter of the rake, countin’ bales and flipping them out of damp spots or resting on the bales of hay and marveling at the cloudless sky. 

By next Monday, the barn will be full, my arms will be very tore up – that oughta look nice in the fancy wedding duds on Saturday – my back will ache, but I’ll be high atop the hay, dreaming of real farmin’.