Hay

Phil Burpee

Phil Burpee, Columnist, Pincher Creek Voice

     Head out in any direction these days across the landscape and you’ll run into somebody making hay. It seems like the most ordinary of things, but it is far from that – it is the most extraordinary of things. It is a physical embodiment of the great cycle of seasons that we have carried with us for thousands of years. Making a cache is one of the most fundamental contingencies in nature. Our species has had to learn it progressively as we slowly migrated up out of the equatorial zones of our deep history where food was available, though sometimes hard-won, all year round. And inventive though we are, it is unlikely that we developed this talent spontaneously, but rather learned it from our fellow creatures. For it is to the bees and the ants that we must give the nod for such frugality. The putting up of winter preserves is perhaps the most basic of communitarian impulses. We have extended it to setting aside stores of food for other animals that we choose to keep with us. It is this husbandry that has allowed us to prosper and create agricultural civilizations. And it is this solemn recognition of the coming of winter’s chill that allows us to partake in the immense, global ritual of dancing with the planet’s orbit round the
Sun. A season is nothing more than a rotational angle of incidence, as we hurtle along the gravitational track of our star.

Burpee makes hay

     The first hay was cut from meadows, sickled or scythed into stukes, and hauled to a central place for stacking against the weather. Today it is a fantastically streamlined operation where great machines swiftly render a field into 1500 lb. round bales that are themselves almost impervious to weather. Smaller operations like our farm still use the old small square bales, which were the stock in trade for decades before the advent of the big rounds. But what an achievement in human ingenuity is this 50 to 80 lb. package of livestock nourishment. The machinery we use on this place is ancient – been around the block a time or two, but still gets the job done. There’s a Case 1590 Haybine, a John Deere 347 baler, and a New Holland 1033 Stackliner, all hauled behind a venerable JD 2130 tractor. Needless to say, the whole process is a whirring, grinding choreography of weather and machinery that all too often confounds the patience of the farmer. The process almost never happens without some sort of breakdown and/or conflagration of adverse meteorology. It is a well known fact that the best way to achieve a significant change in the weather towards moisture is to lay down a field of windrows of prime hay. And yet, sometimes the whole thing amazingly comes off with barely a hitch – and the sense of satisfaction at having a nice stack of good, dry hay out in the stackyard is one of life’s small but intense pleasures.

Yet, probably more people have been hurt or killed over the years making hay than any other activity, with the possible exception of logging trees. Last year a fellow not too far from here managed to bale himself, and came out a helluva lot the worse for wear. A woman I knew went out to bring her husband a coffee one time who was haying on a slope and found him under his rolled tractor – no longer in need of that javaline. Arms have been torn off by PTO shafts – loose shirt – in a hurry. Guys have been squished under falling tables on bale-wagons, jammed into bale chambers, augered and crimped through mower/conditioners, suffocated by falling stacks, run over, beat up, mangled, scratched, gouged, knocked senseless, scalped, skinned and bone-crunched without mercy. These machines are all strong, pounding and furious – and they do not stop for mere flesh. So it ought to be with a certain sombre admiration that we consider the heritage of putting up the winter’s hay. Many honest and otherwise careful folk with the simplest and best of intentions have suffered as a result of doing this most basic of chores. And anyone who enjoys the benefits of such agriculture in the supermarket would do well to pause for a moment and reflect on the sweat, dedication and sometimes anguish that has been invested in that nice cut of beef or chug of cold milk.

     But never mind the gory stats. Mostly hay is a celebration of diligence over adversity. And today, it is a vastly more safe process with modern methods of harvest and storage. Also, putting up hay is a beautifully sustainable form of agriculture, assuming good foraging practices and rotational fallow are employed. And with the advent of legume crops such as alfalfa and sain foin, and their ability to draw nitrogen from deep in the soil, topsoils can actually be built and improved even as they are being used to support animal husbandry. Sun, water, chaff and manure are the constituents elements that allow for the production and removal of proteins and fats in the form of animal meats. Photosynthesis in grass gives rise to the carbohydrates that the ruminant cow converts into useable elements in its rumen. That cow is a marvellous mechanism – she is only one remove from tapping directly into the energy of the Sun, from which is derived virtually all food-energy forms. If we could munch on grass directly and stay healthy, Burger King and McGavin’s Bakeries would go belly up in short order. But we can’t do that trick, and we have thrown in with the secondary eaters who harvest the flesh of plant-eaters and the grains of the plants in order to gain access to the life-giving power of solar rays. Let us not, however, be under the delusion that we are eating anything other than sunshine – we just choose to do it in a rather roundabout sort of way. Hence hay.

So, I’m sitting in here today with a bunch of bales picked up and a bunch of windrows out languishing in the morning rain. I’ll get them baled and picked next week when the Sun comes back, a little browner than they might have been, but still good feed for our cows. It pays to be reflective, though. Hay is one of those things that provide a glimpse of broader realities. It is a recognition and acceptance of the future. It is an investment in true, living conservatism, as distinct from political claimants to such. It is seemingly simple, yet, in truth, possessed of a complexity that spans and suffuses time and space. We are extolled to seek the divine in the mundane, to ‘see a world in a grain of sand’. A bale of hay is not a flamboyant thing, but it is a beautiful thing. It is a thoughtful and dignified arrangement made between a human being and the limitless roilings and turnings of the Cosmos. We might speak to it thus – “Oh, little bale, I recognize in you the cycles of Nature. I recognize in you the need to be thankful. I recognize in you the bond that ties us all.” Assuming, of course, that a person was in a mood to be having a conversation with a bale of hay. But that’s a rainy day for you.

Phil Burpee

July 14, 2012