The hay is in at Russell’s farm in North Newcastle. (Photo courtesy Doug Wright)
I am sitting here in front of the windows watching the feeders and can’t help observing that the great birches and my large crab apple are turning brown. My lawn is long gone, as is the house water. There is no water at the kitchen sink.
I have been doing a delicate toe dance to keep the garden watered, along with the strawberries and raspberries, without draining the artesian well up at church. We have hoses all the way down the hill and the sun kept boiling the water and exploding the hose connections.
It is not fun to get soaked with very hot water. The plants don’t like it either. So Dougie sat on his butt with a can of white paint and a small brush and painted the hoses all white to reflect the sun. I worked my way downhill laying on the ground, wiggling my way down, painting as fast as I could.
To temper my day-after symptoms, I remember Mamma carrying two galvanized water pails down across the the field to our spring, lugging them home, and putting the pails on the shelf by the kitchen sink for kitchen use. She did it trudging through the snow too. I had to do it when I got older. We got plumbing when I was 15 and Grammy Newell came to live with us.
Driving to Scotty, I notice that Russell’s farm has got its hay in. That is, the big field next to the cow barn and milking parlor is crammed full of huge, white, wrapped bundles of hay/silage.
There are few farms active now. Many have been divided and subdivided. There are few barns left. I know I have many readers who only know about baled hay with string and rolled hay. They have no conception of how we did it in the old days. They have never had the chance to do backflips off the high beams into the loose hay below.
We had a large barn, divided in the middle with a pass-through. On one side it was walled off and a floor ceiling put in for the cow stalls with posts and neck chains. The whole south wall had windows to throw out the manure. The other side of the pass-through was for loose hay. We also stacked it on the ceiling over the cows till the whole barn was stuffed full for the winter. Pappa and Mamma milked 10 cows by hand, morning and night.
When Pappa went to work at Hyde Windlass, Mamma took over the haying and we kids had to help. Pappa would mow with the one-horse mower, which had an 8-foot blade, most of our big field on Sunday afternoon and Mamma would rake it on Monday into long rows across the field. She rode the rake and held the reins, though old King knew what to do, and I can see her in my mind, trotting that horse up and down the field raking that hay. She could hit a foot pedal which tripped the rake and dumped the roll of hay.
This ended up with the field full of long rows of raked hay. We then had to take our hay forks, go down the rows, and turn them into piles, ending up with a field full of dried hay piles. From that second on, it became a rush to take the big hay cart (again, old King knew what to do) and get it into the hay barn as fast as possible.
Mamma kept watch for thunderstorms like a paranoid. The horse would take the cart down the field through the piles and from both sides we pitched it up into the haywagon with a kid to walk back and forth to pack it down. Old King would respond to a cluck of the tongue and would move to the next row and stop.
My folks were both lavish with vocal praise to all their animals and Pappa or Mamma would say “good boy” when he stopped correctly. This was a horse that would let a baby walk unharmed underneath him, hanging onto his legs. He would turn his head to see what it was, and would sniff with big, wet nose, making the kid laugh. I saw it myself. Mamma wasn’t happy though.
We piled the wagon high and then Mamma would climb into the high seat and drive the horse down into the barn and stop. Then we pitched it up into the hay mow, piling it higher and higher in the mows. Lovely work on a hot, muggy day.
When we were kids, we used to jump in the hay, much to Pappa’s displeasure. The cows don’t like it! We also tunneled into the mow, making hidden rooms in the hay. Miracle we didn’t get suffocated.
Think of it. There are kids who have never jumped in the hay!
(Doug Wright lives over Head Tide Hill in Whitefield. He welcomes feedback at douglas.wright22@yahoo.com.)
