Great Rolls of.... Hay!




I was on the road again today, to Truro to visit Edith... that's my Mom. Its a long drive made
short by the beauty and by the fact that I can take about
twenty different routes... from divided highway to dirt roads.
I take my camera with me, but usually am in too distracted to stop and take the pictures that record that beauty of central Nova Scotia. I go along the Musquodoboit River through a valley of the same name
(I don't dare spell it again), over into the Shubenacadie River Valley, thru Stewiake to Truro.
Today I decided to take some of those pictures, and describe them in several postings...
here they are...

When we were kids, we used to love the opportunity to spend a day in the freshly cut hay fields
and help to throw newly bailed fifty and eighty (for the big guys) pound squares onto the wagon that was attached
to the tractor we longed to drive. The sun beat on us, we got sweaty and by noon we were
ready for more than just water, we wanted CoolAid and icecream... and by evening it was into to the
steamed corn and hot dogs...
good pay for a day of proving oneself a man. And Ohhh was the sleep to come early, and our sweet dreams were more of going to school on Monday, 'cause this Sunday work thing was tough... hands cut on the bailing twine, cuts up the arms, stinging in the sweat that rolled from head to toe.
But the memories were, and are great.

I have always wondered what the kids do today to grow-up in stature, and self-confidence. I don't know what happened to fifty and eighty pounders, those measures of strength and maturity and rites of passage...

When I see the Great Rolls of Hay on the horizon like the top picture here, I wonder... today I drove into the fields for some close-ups of the way they bail hay now-a-days...
These weigh hundreds of pounds, don't need a barn in which to stack and store them, and are moved around by a tractor with a unicorn like dagger on the front that stabs the bail, lifts it, and carries it to a resting place... covered in plastic.

Why? I asked the farmer, and he told me that there were no kids to help bail; hay stored in plastic outside wouldn't burn down barns as in the ragging, spontaneous combustion infernos of bygone years. Yes, they are harder to
handle on a day-to-day basis... but they are more efficient financially.

What ever happened to growing up...

Comments

Popular Posts