I’m from Detroit. If I’d ever been presented with a couple of hay hooks I’d have presumed they were a sort of weapon.
I knew from the moment my feet hit the floor it was going to be a busy day. The weekend promises to be intensively social, which means I have a lot of prepping to do. Bake rosemary bread. Clean the whole Lair. Take an actual bath. In addition to the usual daily chores and by my standards, a busy day.
Then the phone rang. D&L were returning 22 bales of hay to the local feed store. I don’t know – I guess it’s defective. The horses don’t like it.
Okay – I got the call just as I came in from morning chicken chores, which meant I grabbed my hat and gloves, patted LB on the head and bolted out the door. We loaded the hay on their flatbed, drove to town, unloaded it, loaded 22 bales of new and improved hay (and 2 bales of straw and three sacks of chicken pellets and one sack of sunflower seeds)…
…came back to D&L’s place and unloaded and stacked the hay. Again.
I’m not strong enough to actually buck a bale of hay, so stacking bales is not a quick process for me. About all I can do is bully and bother it until it finally forms a respectable stack. About halfway through the last part of the process I ran out of breakfast but I still have a lot to do – like everything I originally intended to do, plus now that I’ve eaten lunch I need to go to Landlady’s, unload the trash I already have in the Jeep trailer, drive to D&L’s, load up 2 straw bales and three sacks of pellets and seeds, drive back to Landlady’s, unload, et frickin’ cetera.
Then I can come home and bake rosemary bread, clean the whole Lair, take a bath (which I’ll sincerely need by that point) and so on.
Probably no more blogging today. 😉
I can’t figure it out. “Busy as a one legged man at a butt kicking contest” keeps coming to mind.
You’ve just made being a desert hermit sound like WAY too much work.
One day after I graduated from high school, my mom informed me she had signed me up on a custom baling crew. Before that time I had only a passing relationship with hay bales. By the end of the next day I was nearly incapable of moving, but still showed up at the specified location and appointed time next morning. It was an educational summer, slinging bales every day it didn’t rain for weeks on end. Did you know you can stack bales in an old silo? Neither did I. It takes considerable planning and the stupid enthusiasm of of youth. By the end of the season I was nearly bulletproof.
Last summer, I tried to help a neighbor unload a pickup load of semi-green bales. Only got thru about half the load and couldn’t get out of bed the next morning. Old age isn’t for sissies.
Damn! What a day! I’m exhausted just reading about it.
Hay? Or alfalfa? Looks awfully green for hay. Which might be why it was “off”, since green hay tends to moldew.
This summer, once the new growth on the Rosemary is going strong, cut it and strip the leaves off the stems. Spread them out on a cloth and let them dry until crisp. Then put them into a jar and put on the lid loosely. That keeps out the dust. Then you’ll have clean, fresh dried rosemary for your bread and anything else. I like to tuck a sprig or two in a roasting chicken. 🙂