Gathering the Hay.

Today we gathered the hay. And it sucked. First off while it was technically only 82 degrees out, it was also humid as fuck. Like your sweat does nothing puny mortal humid. It was like the weather gods were laughing at me while I slaved away under the fucking sun. Also whenever I would give in and take a break a cloud would roll through but whenever I was like, whelp, time to get back at it the sky would be clear forever.

Asshole sky motherfucker.

Second, they were calling for thunderstorms later in the day because of course they were. Of course at this point I probably really wouldn't have been surprised by a rain of frogs or snakes or someshit either.

So we only waited until noon for the dew to burn off before we staggered out of the house with pitchforks got the truck and headed off to meadow number one. This was the sparsest meadow, so it only filled up the entire pickup truck. So the whole time we are filling it I am eye balling the storage shed, hoping that this entire load fits in there because if it doesn't they the other three fields are going to have to be tarped and we will be back to square one where I am fighting a foot of snow off a giant tarp every time I need hay in the winter.

And nobody wants that.

Of course we try to cram another entire meadow into the truck along the way because ha ha why not? I mean it's not like there's any reason to keep the hay below the cab right? I mean it's totally not my fault that Scott got too hot to work and there was a bunch of hay that got caught in the drivers side door right? I mean like, when I'm all like, it's time to move the truck and he's all like I need a moment I should totally continue to pack it right?

Right?

Anywho. Finally we get to the point where we can't pack hay into the back of the truck anymore because it is starting to list to one side like a rusty container ship with a leak. So we go offload it into the storage shed. Which only really fills it up halfway. So then I feel super awesome that this shed is shedding like a champ and then we have to go fill the truck again.

Which if I haven't made it clear, is the really shitty part.

But we got it filled and everywhere on my body was sweating by this point but the breeze was being a dick so I pretty much had to deal with feeling like I had been caught by one of those plant misters. Except one that had been filled with salt water.

Anyway, despite my complaining we filled up the truck with another two meadows worth of hay. Which I was desperately hoping would all fit into the storage shed it had only taken us, like a fucking month of our lives to build. And then we drove over there and started cramming hay in and more and more kept fitting like some sort of fucked up reverse clown car until I was looking at an empty truck. And then we both looked at the shed.

Which I am pretty sure at this point was folding space time in on itself.

And then we went to do the last meadow and repeated the whole process again. Except this time I had to climb up into the shed and squash the hay back down, which was both the most comfortable and also the most itchy thing ever. You would think those two would be mutually exclusive, but it turns out they aren't. Yeah I know I was surprised too. Either that or it was the heat talking.

So then we really did have to shove hay in until we couldn't get anymore in there and then I made a separate pile to use this summer and stored some for the bunnies in there spare cages and told everyone that they had better fucking appreciate this come winter.

And then the chickens showed me their appreciation by jumping up in the shed and pulling the hay back out so I had to cram boards in the door way like the worst puzzle ever and then they had to content themselves with pooping all over my porch.

In appreciation.

Making Hay and Storing Hay.

So a lot has happened and I meant to write separate posts about it but then I started putting the slats on the sides of the hay storage shed, but then I was so busy that I could only put a few on a day and it felt like I was making no progress and there was never a convenient time to write about it.

Mostly I was putting them on myself because Scott was trying to fix our old/new car and that was more important then putting like, a billion or so slats on this thing because we need to be able to get back and forth to work and shit.

Anyway after what seemed like forever in which it kept raining and I couldn't make hay and we kept treating the cats eyeballs and the car kept demanding that we replace all the oxygen sensors and the office was not giving us enough work I think at some point I finished the damn slats and then went and had some sort of quiet nervous money based breakdown in the woods where I reenacted that scene from Gone with the Wind where Scarlett holds up that motherfucking turnip and yells at the sky that with god as her witness that she will never be hungry again. Except being me I just cried a whole lot and yelled a few obscenities at the sky and then fell back to worrying that I am going to freeze/starve this winter.

It was all a little fuzzy.

And of course the cats eyeballs are still shitty and we have to keep treating her and I feel like I might have more luck just rubbing hundred dollar bills on her eyelids at this point but whatever. Oh and it seems like a bunch of shit like corn and beans that we Scott planted didn't come up at all because ha ha fuck you and your shit dreams Holly.

Sorry. I'm a bit bitter. Here have a picture.

This. This looks like Tim Burton made it. I am absurdly proud.

So in the midst of all this we had three sunny days coming up. Or at least not rainy. So we made hay. Sorry I mean Scott had to take the car in and get new expensive ass tires and I had to make hay. In which Holly was haunted by the ghost of back injury's past, and also haunted by by the fact that when you run yourself to nothing and life is grinding you down like the rocks at a sea shore suddenly finding you have to make two meadows of shit balls thick hay yourself until your man gets back is like trying to climb Everest while wearing tennis shoes and a swim suit made out of tissue paper.

Whenever it felt as though I couldn't go on I would go back inside and drink tea and sharpen my scythe. At one point all I could do was drink tea and lay on the floor and stare up at the ceiling fan and pray that I could find the energy from somewhere to get back up.

I am telling you all this because those of you who have called me a badass and said that am I super strong amazing person with a work ethic the size of Texas were totally right, but that doesn't mean that I don't break down and end up laying on the floor trying desperately to will myself to get back up and go back to work even though I feel like everything is turning to ash in my hands the harder and harder I try to hold it. 

 I'm human too you know.

And then Scott got home and I made him get his ass back in those fields despite his feeble protests that he had just got home and had a sprained ankle and it was alike 86 degrees outside. So then we finished the field I was working on and did most of another and then I had to stop because heat exhaustion is a thing that I get very easily now and I think I was getting it.

Of course I didn't let that stop me because I woke up at like 6:30am the next day and cut as much of the meadow as I could get done before the sun found me because I am not going to let a pesky thing like possible illness fuck me out of my goddamned hay.

Also throughout all this I painted the damn storage shed with occasional help from Scott when he had the time.

Shapow! Motherfuckers.

Then I went and passed the fuck out and took a day off to just touch up the paint job on the shed and make cookies while the hay was drying so that all I have to do today is bring the hay in. Which of course it's going to be much cooler today because the weather just likes to fuck with me.

But I am stupid excited that I did my goddamned homework and get to put the hay INTO A SHED and not under a tarp in the middle of a field. Because putting all your hay under a tarp and then having it snow a shit-balls-ton was the most not fun thing ever. Like, oh I know you just shoveled the driveway and the paths to all the animals and the porches and around the wood stove shed, but here you go shovel a slippery ass tarp off in crotch deep snow. And don't forget the wind is a motherfucker so you'll have to do this again tomorrow.

Mostly though because it cut unacceptably into my Skyrim game.

Also I felt really good about my decision making skills when Scott came home and told me that everyone else was making hay too. Because I have only been doing this a few years and the rest of these guys have been farming for like ever, and that means that I win at hay making. I think.

In conclusion, yes even I too have days when just getting up off the floor was the hardest thing I have done in the history of ever, and yes I really did construct an entire hay shed to give me more video game time in the dead of winter, and it's all okay now because I have cookies. And that when life has kicked you right in the lady lips and has you down the best thing to do is give it the finger until you can stagger back up and punch it right in it's smug lifey face.

And tell it Holly sent you.

Harvesting Hay -now with Poor Planning!

Have you ever had one of those times when you can see a problem looming on the horizon, brewing up like a dark and unpleasant thunderstorm? And you just completely ignore it because you wore yourself out and then spent an entire day drinking because the pain in your arms was so bad you felt like the time you broke your finger was a fucking joy ride?

No?

Just me?

So yesterday we harvested the hay. At about 4 pm. Why so late you ask? Because I wanted to give the hay the maximum time to dry out before putting it somewhere. Also, it was super angry hot outside. Of course this meant that we were now in a race against the dew. And of course it was supposed to rain shit barrels the next day because none of my projects would be complete without some sort of weather imposed deadline.

The problem? The bunny barn, also known as the only place to store hay on this entire fucking farm, is not a barn, it's a shed. An ancient narrow shed. With a slim, tiny place to store hay. That I was now trying to cram full of hay from a meadow that was almost over my head when I harvested it.

Needless to say it didn't work.

Also, we had two more meadows to go. I looked at Scott, and he looked at me. “Where the hell are we going to put all this?” I asked. The thought of leaving it in the meadows to rot was unthinkable. Not after what I had gone through to get it. We tried several other ideas, such as putting it on the ground and tarping it, shoving it into the other mobile home, or maybe running it through the chipper shredder.

Then Scott said “I know, how about the roof?”

The roof. The upside down laying in the field roof to the old barn that neither one of us could move or indeed get apart because those people had built this motherfucker out of oak and by god this roof was going to stay together. The wonderful metal roof that was the perfect distance and location from both the bunny barn and the chicken coup.

So that is what we did. We piled hay on it. Except that, even with the roof, we vastly, VASTLY underestimated the mountain of hay that we had. We continued to collect the lower meadow hay, and pile it onto our new hay storage area. Except that we had almost filled up the foot print of the roof, which wasn't really that big to began with (it was a small, small barn.)

So we did what we always do in these situations, ignored the problem and kept on getting hay. We took the truck to the upper meadow and started to fill it. At one point I was standing in the truck bed stomping up and down on the hay trying to smash it down so we could cram some more on, and I realized that we were going to bury that roof under an avalanche of hay.

Which is exactly what ended up happening.

It was late in the evening, when the last rays of the sun were gone, and it could just be seen hovering over the end of the valley while the sky turned into those watercolor shades of pink and blue. I shoved the last pitchfork full on hay onto the stack and stopped to admire our handy work. Then I turned to Scott and said those fateful words. “Wait, do we even have a tarp?”

Motherfucker.

We looked everywhere. We had two choices, we could forgo dinner since it was about nine at night and drive to Walmart, or we could do it in the morning. We chose morning, although it didn't fucking help that I hadn't eating anything since about two in the after noon and the neighbors were grilling steak out and I could fucking smell that shit.

Assholes.

So this morning we got up and checked the weather. We had a two hour window. So Scott threw breakfast in his face and jumped in the car and drove to town to buy a humongous tarp. But of course this is the country and you can't go to town just for a tarp because we also needed things like chicken feed and bread and shit.

So I was just milling around the house mobile home waiting for him to return. It was getting late. I sat down to write this entry and looked up. It was starting to rain. That light almost not raining but it is kinda mist raining. It was too late. The tarp had not arrived in time.

It was then I heard the crunch of gravel. He was back! With a tarp! I shoved my feet into my shoes and ran outside, where I promptly learned that trying to open a tarp while running with it means you will drop the tarp.

So we unfolded that bitch and shoved it onto the pile and weighted it down with whatever the hell we could fucking find at the time and then retreated back into the house knowing our hay was safe from the weather that keeps trying to fuck up our plans. Bitch ass weather.

We won this round sky.

We won this round like champions.

Cutting Hay the Really Hard Way.

So yesterday besides the excitement of rescuing a baby deer fawn, we made hay. Lot's and lot's of hay.

Probably too much hay. Because the weather had been uncooperative, I basically had one day in which to make all my hay so that it would be good and dry before I stored it because wet hay can catch on fire and burn your shit to the ground. No pressure or anything though.

Now being me, I make my hay by hand, with a scythe. Which is fun, but also requires a lot of upper body strength.

So I did what any red blooded American does when they are faced with a enormous, labor intensive task of herculean proportions, I drank a bitchshitton of caffeine. Which worked like a charm really. I was the first one out to scythe since Scott was cleaning his office that morning. It was a beautiful day. The temperature was perfect, with a deep blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds and a swift clear breeze. And about eighty bazillion flies. And we were out of bug spray.

After searching both mobile homes, I managed to find a tube of suntan lotion that also contained bug spray and smeared it all over me. Which did work, for about half an hour. Luckily, Scott dug through our travel bags and located some before the insects were able to lift me off and carry me to their terrible kingdom of itchiness.*

I was really enjoying myself. I could watch the birds in the sky, and see the shadows of the clouds slide along our ridge. The caffeine masked any tiredness and aching and I was left to enjoy the labor and the day.

That is until we finished with the upper meadows.

The upper meadows are more sparse, as they used to be grazing for horses and still shows the signs of overgrazing even all these years later. So cutting the hay out of them is relatively easy. But the lower meadows, oh god they are as dense as motherfucking antimatter.

Now the upper meadows we sort of seeded lazily if at all, same with weed removal.

But the lower meadow, I had a goal. I was going to make a hay field. Not just any hay field, the best goddamned hay field the world had ever seen. So I spent two years cutting the weeds back. And then we seeded it with grass seed and then when the grass came up I hand harvested it for fresh treats and bedding for my bunnies. Always being careful to never take to much from one area and to watch the ratio of plants to judge the health of the soil.

And this year the grass was as tall as me.

Which was both awesome and terrible. Awesome because that is some good ass hay right there, and terrible because cutting it by hand was pretty fucking awful.

I couldn't do a full swing, so moving forward one step involved several passes. Also, there was no way to see the ground beneath my feet, so I kept hitting my scythe on rocks and stumps and shit.

Fun.

But we goddamed did it. Even with an angry mama deer breathing down our necks and watching us from the safety of the forest thinking dark malevolent thoughts.

Except that by the end of day my arms were shot. I have to explain that my right arm takes almost the full wight of the scythe, and it hurt like a bitch. It hurt almost as bad as when I had broken my finger. Once the caffeine wore off I sent Scott to the store for beer. Except I had forgotten that my painkillers were in the car that he had left in to obtain said beer.

Fuck.

Even taking a shower didn't help. It was like a achy dull pain that would intermittently form a sharp stabbing pain whenever the fuck it felt like it. So that evening was spent crawling around trying to find a position where my arm wouldn't hurt like hell (there wasn't one.)

It was one of those nights were you count down the minutes until you can reasonably go to bed because your body is shot and you are covered in bug bites. And sunburn.

Yeah.

Nothing quite like this glamorous farm life.

Kill me.

*It 'tis a terrible place.