Hay Day is a big event in small farmer's life. You spend months praying alternately for rain and sunshine so that the bloody stuff grows ... and then when -- healthy, unhealthy, lush or scrawny -- whatever has grown looks imminently ready for harvesting, you howl for Neil, the contractor, just at the time when (of course) everybody else is howling too ...
So you pray, and you pray, and the television stays daily on the weather channel .. we need five days, at least, with no rain, to allow the fields to be mown, the cut grass to be turned, and finally the whole lot baled and carted to the barn ...
Most years, something doesn't go perfectly. But you get by, and you get something in the barn. One year, I remember it was a pathetic eleven (large) bales. When winter came, we had to dig deep to buy in hay from other folk. Mostly we've filled the first bay of our barn, just occasionally we've done better, but it's a stressful season. A good crop of your own can save you thousands of dollars in expenses come the time when you need to hay out.
So round December the barn is tidied, emptied prepared ...
We've had a helluva expensive year at Gerolstein this year. Everything seemed to need renewing at the same time. So we were due a little bit of luck. It looked good on the ground ...
Don't rain. Don't rain. And it didn't. Neil rolled up for the grande finale today.
We crossed fingers as the raw material went down the throat of the baler ... and came out the other end ...
And here it comes!
How many! How many! Pleeeeease!
Forty-eight bales from the back paddocks! Wow! And the little front paddock ... another twelve! We got our luck, all right. Sixty bales is, I think, the best result we have ever had off our little place. Hey, horsies, lush winter coming up.
And, hey, Wendy, that pays for a trip to the Yamba seaside for us! Heigh-ho!!!!!!
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