Day 9 (6/23/12): Heavy Hauling on Hay Day

My bike rides are less for working out now and more for warming up sore muscles and having some leisurely time outside, without feeling the pressures of working as hard as I can.  I also talked to Mom and Dad who were on their way to a Great Aunt Sue’s memorial service that morning, a somber day.  Back in the farmhouse, people were already up and about, and I found the big bags of sugary cereal that Ellie had got finally eaten.  Katie and I gave our reports of what we had accomplished the day before, neither being stellar, and Mary gave the most cushioned and polite speech that basically said that we should be working faster.  I felt so bad!  Today, I was to finish weeding field 4 (it had been started by Katie); finish weeding herb garden (that last row that I had to stop because of the rain); finish weeding, suckering¹, and wrapping² tomatoes; and if there was time, start weeding field 5.  Mary made it clear that this was the worst weeding all year, and it had been so hot and wet recently that the weeds were just growing double-time. 

Although we had our tasks on our to-do list, today’s major objective was to haul the hay for Hay Day.  Hay Day comes once a year and requires us to haul 352 bails of hay out of Mary’s trailer (it takes 4 loads, about 1 hour and 45 min between each load) as quickly as possible so she can leave for the next load, and then to haul those bails up onto the 2^nd and 3^rd levels of the barn.  Because of the intensity of the hauling, Kenya recruited one of her friends, Jess, and her cousin, Caitlin, and Mary had Eli, her boyfriend, come over, and it was a pleasure meeting him.  With the first load, we had to build stairs going up to the 2^nd level and stairs going up to the 3^rd level to stand.  We had a nice system of people getting bails off the trailer, bringing bails over to the first stairs, someone lifting them up to a person on the first stair, someone lifting the bail onto the second level, and a few more people going up to the 3^rd level where Kenya was organizing the bails in rows.  We had to wear pants and gloves, or else have cut up and bloody legs and hands because of the sticky hay.  This hay would last the entire year.  In between loads, we returned to our to-do list tasks.  We fit lunch in between loads, so from 12:30 to 1:30, we had salad and overstuffed Rhubarb jam and peanut butter sandwiches, compliments of Kenya and Jess.  Kenya had me pick some parsley at the end of lunch, for I don’t know what, but she wanted the stems to fill to handfuls around.  While weeding again in the 4^th row, Katie announced to me that there would be no 4^th load of hay today because it was already raining at the hay place.  I had just finished my hardest row (it was like grass in some places) at about 4:10, when Katie also said that Mary wanted me to help Katie weed between the potato rows in field 7.  We had been dreading this job all week because of how densely covered in weeds these rows were.  Of the 3 rows to weed around the 2 potato rows, Katie had  gotten through a little over half in the entire day.  The weeds were so dense, she had taken to using a shovel to just skim off the weeds, and dump them over.  Turning the weeds upside as best as possible is crucial because weeds can reroot themselves if left on the ground.  We found quickly that the stirrup hoe that I had been working with all day was the magical tool for this job.  Katie and I flew through the field, and in about 25 minutes we had finished ~90% of the row.  At this time, Sage, Katie, and I determined that it was raining to hard, the thunder was getting to strong, and we had seen a couple of lightning flashes.  We took cover in the lower hoop house and spent the rest of the time until 5 weeding, suckering, and wrapping the tomato plants in there.  We headed in for Katie to get packed to go home that night for her brother’s confirmation, and I went in and read Sage a book.  Katie’s dad came to get her just as we were finishing Thursday’s The Daily Show, and then Kenya and I made fried rice with eggs, pok choi, kale, corn, brown rice, lemongrass³, tarragon⁴, and black pepper.  Mary was too tired to eat dinner with us, so it was us 4 kids at dinner, and Kenya and I cleaned all the dishes and headed out to the barn to do some P90X Ab Ripper X in the hay loft on some potato bags.  I hadn’t done core in a long time, so it was a bit of a struggle for me.  After all the hay lifting, weeding, and ab working out, Kenya and I agreed that we were solidly fatigued, and each of us crawled into bed after a well-deserved shower. 

¹Tomato plants want to grow as much as possible, but suckering makes sure that there’s only one main stem with branches coming off of it.  Often the tomato plant tries to grow another main stem between a branch and the main stem, and to sucker the plant, we must break off that renegade branch-turning-stem.  

² Tomatoes grow up a string, which is why they’re grown in the hoop house, so there’s a bar above them to tie the string to.  Otherwise, the tomato plant would fall over and not grow as efficiently.  As the tomato plant grows, we must wrap the top of the plant around the string to continue guiding its growth.  

³Lemongrass is a fragrant tropical grass that yields an oil that smells lemon and creates a strong lemony taste in food.  It is widely used in Asian cooking and in perfumery and medicine.  

 ⁴ Tarragon is a perennial plant of the daisy family from Southeastern Russia, with narrow aromatic leaves that used as a culinary herb.  I thought it smelled like tea smells like tea, and is used in a variety of dishes including chicken, vegetables, fish, and sauces.