Hay bales.

I am really quite tired and ready to go to bed, but I want to get out a quick post about what I did on the farm today. Normally I wake up around 6:30, feed the cats, make myself a peanut butter sandwich (breakfast cereal just doesn't provide enough energy for the morning stretch to lunchtime), and jet off to work, which starts around 7AM. Then it's a clusterfuck of harvesting and weeding and whatever else needs to be done until noon or so, when I head home for a 2 or 3 hour break. I think I may have talked about this in a previous post. The reason I mention my schedule shall momentarily become apparent.

At about 11AM today, a plump, sun-worn, and slow-talking farmer showed up at the garden (the garden is what we call the part of the farm in which vegetable crops are raised) and explained to me that he had 2 wagons of hay for us and that he needed one of those wagons back by 2PM. In other words, we (Mary, the farm manager, and myself) had to kick our asses into high-gear and go and unload the hay bales. Normally, Austin and some other workers would be on the farm with us to help, but Austin had called in sick, and our other workers have pretty much left for the season, so it fell on Mary and I to deal with the hay. I knew right away that this new information from the old-timey farmer meant that my lunch would come late or not at all.

Mary and I rushed down the hill to the central area of the farm where we began unloading and stacking a wagon full of hay bales into a corner of the barn. I should mention two things here. First, this is the first time we have ever had to deal with hay bales as it's just not a normal, or at least regular part of working with the vegetable side of the farm. The second thing I want to note is how much of a strain on your muscles (back muscles in particular) it is to work with with hay bales. Another farm worker, Ryan, who normally works with the chickens and such showed up to help us, but it was still quite the laborious task to unload several dozen of these stringed clumps of dead plant matter. The trailers are about 12 feet long, (maybe 15?) and about 8 feet high. Use this to try and figure out how many bales we are talking about.

We unloaded the first wagon, then loaded all of the old and rotting hay bales from the barn back into the same wagon. The unloading part was hard, but the loading part was harder, for most of the old bales had rotted twine and so when you tried to pick the up, they just fell apart into a fluffy (and sometimes wet) mess on the barn floor. I'm sorry this isn't more interesting to write about, but I just wanted to get out my experience before I passed out.

Anyway, I actually got to use a pitchfork for one of it's intended purposes today: to stab and gather hay into clumps and then toss those same clumps into this wagon. It might sound easy to you, because you would imagine that hay is light and easy to move around, and this is partially true to some degree, but over time, the movement of picking up the hay and tossing it 7 feet into the air and over your shoulder, over, and over, and over again, becomes VERY tiring. My muscles ached after the first five minutes and we did this for 2 hours straight.

I'll finish writing out the rest of my thoughts about this tomorrow or Saturday.