That which Rolls

On Tuesday we picked up about ten tons of hay. Ten tons. My dad cut it on Monday. He cut about the same amount of acreage as last time, in late may, when we only got six tons. At least it wasn’t as hot out this time.

When I got home from work my aunt and two of my uncles were loading a wagon while my dad continued to bale. I assembled dinner and went out to help around 6:00. Brian got home and joined us around 6:30. We loaded three wagons and took one down to the barn, turned off the tractor and discovered we’d lost the tractor key somewhere in the hay field. The tractor only needs the key to start, but not to run. We started to comb the field looking for it. We needed to get the wagon close enough to the barn to unload.

I headed back to borrow a metal detector from my grandpa. By the time we found it and found batteries for it, Brian had figured out a way to ‘hotwire’ the tractor. My dad was still out baling so we unloaded the first hay wagon. The light was just starting to fade as we started to unload the next but it was supposed to rain in the morning so we couldn’t really stop. Halfway through getting that load in the barn, we got word that my dad wanted us to come back out to the field and pick up the rest. Whatever we could get on wagons we could get under cover or tarp if it did decide to rain.

We all walked back up to the field where my dad was loading a wagon by himself, driving the tractor a few feet, jumping off, throwing some bales on the wagon, driving the tractor a few more feet and jumping off again to repeat the process. There was still a whole lot of hay left to pick up. We were soon to be out of light so we were in a hurry but all pretty exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. That last wagon got stacked super high to try to fit as much hay on it as possible. Luckily I didn’t have to try pass the bales up to the top because somehow I got the gift of tractor driving duty. We get finished until about 9:30 in darkness. I was really really ready for dinner. And a shower.