Portraits from the hayfields

Our main farm crop is hay; cow hay and horse hay. Cow hay goes into huge rolls and is toted from here to there with a tractor. (I love that word: "tote." So quaint and southern. I also love it when people use "carry" in cute ways - like this statement my blacksmith made one day about his top-notch Paso Fino Stallion - "I 'carried' him down to Georgia for the World Championships, and he came in third." Oh. Ok. So, he carried him there. Wow. That must've been exhausting! :)) ANYWAY - the horse hay we pile onto trailers and store in barns until we use it or sell it. It is a tedious, sweaty, back breaking job and we pick up hundreds of bales at a time.

 

Never let anyone make you believe that picking up hundreds of bales of hay and heaving them onto trailers and then stacking them 20 feet high "isn't exercise". Or that it "doesn't get your heart rate up enough." Believe me, if you told that to my sweat drenched husband, or my brothers, or my sister, or my friends or even me, as we are huffing and puffing and gasping for air and our backs and arms burn with the effort, and your palms sting from the blisters you're getting through your leather gloves, you might just find yourself with a bloody nose and a terrible headache.

 

While I look like a frumpy Hay Bale Nazi woman with a look on my face like a pro wrestler when I am in the hayfield,

 

my sister looks ever cute and angelic and like a farm girl calendar photo, even in her Subway t-shirt. (And did she bring a tray of Subway sandwiches with her to the hayfield on her way home from work - I don't think so! *sniff*)

 

Zander expertly stacks the 250 bale load that towered 15 feet or so above the ground that I drove home by myself and it wasn't even strapped down. Yeah, baby. I can drive me a monster load of hay!

Once the hay is put on trailers it all has to be handled again when it is loaded into barns. So, I get double the exercise from each bale. It works my back, shoulders, core, and heart/lungs. Whoo hoo! We should open the "Blanchard Gym" and get folks to pay us to come work out in our hayfields! I am such a genius!