Once again I was in the right spot at the right time on this beautiful, gorgeous, spring day in Louisville, Ky. A day of blue skies and a sweet, cool breeze. A day that had started out wonderful and would continue to be a great day to be alive. Then I saw them. I’m not sure if my eyes clued me in as I was driving towards Our Treehouse, or if the warm smell of hay hit my olfactory senses first. But the tootsie rolls as I call them, the hay bales rolled up into large cylinder shapes, were back out in the fields again for the first time this spring. The tall hay grasses had been cut this past Friday and the fields laid flat with rolls of hay scattered sporadically across the acres of land. It makes you want to take off your shoes and socks and just race across Mother Earth, soaking up the sunshine and the fresh, country scent of cut clover and green grasses.

So now I was out on a late morning prayer walk with Reddogg, praying particularly for friends and acquaintances that have health issues. I decided to hike back up to the road and walk over to the field to check out the tootsie rolls, to be a little more up close and personal and smell that sweet, clover scent again. I know if I could bottle up that scent I could sell thousands of bottles a day. Bring that warm, country smell of outdoors into our indoors.

I noticed right away a tractor moving around the field and one by one picking up a hay roll, then bringing it back to a huge truck pulling some type of wagon. Through the glass window of the tractor I could see it was Layne driving it. Layne is the eighteen year young son of one of the farmers who live across from Our Treehouse. I waved as Reddogg and I walked across the field and he drove over the short grass to meet me.

“Hi, Layne! Good to see you!”

“You, too,” he says, giving me a big smile. His brown eyes matched his thick, brown hair sitting under a baseball cap.

I tell him I want to blog about this topic of gathering up hay for their cows. I tell him I need his brain to teach me things I probably don’t know. I look at the tractor and big truck with the trailer.

“Tell me the names of this equipment and what you use it for. Is this a forklift?” I point to a large, green piece of metal attached to the front of the tractor. It has a long, thin piece of dark metal sticking out on it like a four foot pencil. Think Pinocchio’s nose! :O)

“No. That’s a spear. That’s what picks up the hay roll as I jab it through the center of the roll.” (Strike one, Joan)

“O.K. So what’s that?” I ask, pointing once again, only this time to the huge truck pulling some type of trailer with several tootsie rolls already stacked on it. “A trailer?”

“No. That’s a tipper wagon. I pull it back to the barn where I want to unload the hay. It has a hydraulic motor, so when I turn it on both metal flat beds fall to their sides and spill the hay rolls off onto the ground. It’s so easy!” (Strike two, Joan)

I look out over the fields and all the tootsie rolls still left to pick up. I watch Layne demonstrate with his tractor and spear how to pick up one huge, round bale of hay and place it on the tipper wagon. He then moves the tractor forward and pushes the line of tootsie rolls as far to the front of the wagon as he can. He’s done this before I think, as he moves this heavy equipment around with all the finesse of an artistic painter and his paintbrush, creating a new canvas. He slowly drives the tractor back to me.

“You doing this whole field all by yourself?” He nods his head yes. “Isn’t that a lot! You’ll be out here all day!”

“Nah”, Layne replies. “I love doing all this. I’ll be finished in two to three hours”. (Strike three, Joan. And I once again realize how very little I know about farming.)

“Is it true farmers wait till after Memorial day for the first cutting of hay because a baby deer might be lying in the field? I know mama deer leave their babies tucked in fields and go off to eat, that way any predators follow the scent of mama and do not find their babies.”

“Yeah. We wait. You have to be careful. I’ve seen a baby deer once or twice.”

“I’ve been told that turkey eggs can be lying in the field,too. Is that true?’

“Yeah, my dad’s seen those. Not me. I’ve seen bunnies, birds, bugs, and mice. The hawks will swoop in and grab up a mouse. They’re everywhere. Some snakes too. The fields are full of wildlife when the grass is tall.”

I smiled at him and thanked him for all his information. He waved at me and turned his tractor back on, heading towards another tootsie roll, the last one before he would drive with the truck and tipper wagon, back to the barn across the street. I counted the rolls, ten on each side. Lots of weight to pull but that truck drove out of the field with ease. Layne would return, and then repeat the whole process over again till the field was cleared of all the hay. He had told me they have a little over a hundred cows. Those cows could eat three full tootsie rolls in two days. And hopefully if the weather cooperated this summer he would gather hay two more times from this same field.

I walked back home with Reddogg, happy to have learned new things about the life of a farmer. It’s always good to learn, and hopefully when I walk this evening I still smell the warm, sweet scent of country air. Life is Good!

c   Love, Joan