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which_chickSo my hay guy was making hay this week. He cuts early (the May holiday or first week of June) so he's typically in a position to make a second cut in August. Things looked iffy for a bit but we got 3" of rain two weekends ago and everything has greened up and this past week was to be sunny after Monday, so he was planning to make hay.
Last weekend I cleaned out the upper part of the barn and got everything ready for hay so that if there was hay, I'd be ready. It is not fun to clean out the barn to get ready for hay but it's even LESS fun to do it while people are standing around waiting to unload hay. Best to be ready.
Late Thursday, hay guy was "I am baling Friday, when can you get hay?" Hay guy does not want to have to unload and stack hay in a barn, this is extra work and a pain in the ass. If he can get me to retrieve the hay before it needs to be stored in a barn, that's a savings for us all.
The hay guy has a kick baler for square bales, which kind of... flings the hay into the air where it hopefully lands in the following hay wagon. The tractor has a baler on the 3 point hitch and then following the baler is the hay wagon, it's like a little train. This works OK except on field corners. On the corners, the hay wagon is bent and not aligned with the kicker so the bales miss and just land on the ground. Because we're in the "valley" part of "ridge and valley" PA, the fields are smallish and there are proportionally a lot of field corners. So you'll get like 130 bales in the wagon and another 40 to 60 on the ground that have to be manually picked up. It's better than having to pick up all the bales by hand but it's definitely not a labor-free experience. No part of hay is a labor-free experience.
I was like "Hay guy, can we just tow your hay wagon to our barn and unload it?" This plan would cut down on handling the hay to just one time touched by human hands. It's a good plan. Less handling of the hay is good.
Hay guy: "Sure. Just don't bust up my hay wagon." (This is mentioned because I have Waylie as my helper and he's ... hard on machinery.)
So I assembled my helper, Waylie (yes, the same Waylon featured elsewhere around here, I only know one Waylon who isn't "Jennings") for Saturday morning. Saturday morning is a reasonable time to play hay.
Come Friday around 5 PM, Waylie is all "Hey, I have a job in Shipp for Saturday, can we pick up the wagon this evening instead?"
I called hay guy to find out. "Yes. Don't bust it up (again, I have Waylie and he's hard on machinery) and drop it off at Other Baling Location before 11 AM tomorrow 'cause I gotta bale into it tomorrow too."
Now, hay wagons are Farm Vehicles and they do not, as a rule, have lights. They have a reflective orange caution triangle on the back if you're lucky. If you're operating your hay wagon on paved roads after dark, best practices (locally, not "lawfully") are to have a "follow driver" which is just someone in a car who knows where you are going and follows you pretty closely so that there are not accidents and stuff.
I told Waylie that I wanted to round up the hay wagon and get it to Laur's house before it got dark so that we didn't have to have a follow vehicle. He said that was a good idea. It was, at this time, 6 PM. Sundown is at 8 PM.
Time goes by very slowly when you are waiting for someone.
Waylie was also in charge of locating a flat hitch (no ball, just the thing that goes into the receiver). He finally showed up at half past seven, without the flat hitch. He'd left it sitting on his porch. So we had to go get it. *sigh* Waylon's house is not a quick trip, it's twenty minutes there and twenty minutes back. Also on this fun trip, the guy Waylie was going to do the job with in Shipp on Saturday (the reason we were playing hay Friday night) called to say that the Saturday job had evaporated. So Waylie was in a stellar mood.
Now it's right up on getting dark. Waylie had arranged for a follow vehicle but by the time we got organized, the follow car was nowhere in sight, having bailed due to exhaustion from fucking around waiting for Waylie to align his perpetually disorganized waterfowl.
We hooked up the hay wagon to the diesel pickup truck and headed out of town "the back way" because it was getting dark and our follow vehicle had bailed and so forth. The back way has fewer chances of police and generally slower traffic because it's twisty and rural. People mostly don't speed because there could be deer and stuff.
The right rear tire on the hay wagon blew when we were about a mile and a half away from the hay guy's location. As, y'know, they are prone to do because every hay wagon on the planet (in my experience) is running around on half bald, sun-rotted shitty used car tires. This Is The Way. Like, tire explosions are a very possible thing. You're playing hay and you decide to take a wagon out on the road. Roll a 1d6, 5 or 6 means you blow a tire.
Hay wagons do not have spares. Ever. That's also just normal. Part of the fun of playing hay wagon is that the tires randomly explode and leave you dead in the water for hours if not a whole day. But why don't you just get fresh tires for the hay wagon? Fresh tires are expensive. Nobody does that.
Used, not sun-rotted tires are affordable and maybe you did that some mumble years ago but the hay wagons only get used a couple of times a year and then they just sit... until hay season next year... and the years get away from you and the tires still hold air and the sun keeps shining on the tires and dry rot is a thing and suddenly it's been six years or ten or fifteen and the tire has a network of barely visible spiderwebbing cracks that portend your doom except you're hooking up the fucking wagon at 8 PM and it is DARK so you can't see the future that awaits you and so it's *pop-flop-flop-flop* when the dry rotted tire explodes and your evening is shot to hell.
Fortunately we were able to get the hay wagon off the road and parked safely while we came up with a plan. Winning?
Plan: Disconnect hay wagon, go over to Waylie's dad's and gather up impact wrench, sockets, etc. for changing tire to put all that stuff IN THE TRUCK so that we'll be ready for the morning, get Laur's gooseneck flatbed trailer, move hay (130 bales) off hay wagon onto flatbed trailer, take to farm and park close to hay mow (here "mow" is pronounced like bow and sow. Er. Boat Front and Girl Pig, respectively. Not at all bow "for use with arrows" or sow "put seeds in the earth". Fuck it all, hay MOW rhymes with COW. Dang English why are you like this?). Following morning, gather up Waylie, go to Tire Place and get another shitty used tire put on the rim for ten dollars, reinstall tire on hay wagon, drag hay wagon to new baling location for Hay Guy, go back to barn and unload hay.
The plan is deemed acceptable. We get started on the plan, step 1 of which is to go over to his dad's and get the tire changing stuff. During this part of the plan an argument ensues about the size of the lug nuts on the hay wagon wheel. Waylie gets a 22 mm socket and a 20 mm socket (six sided) because that's what he thinks we will need. He does not get any English unit sockets and he doesn't get the 21 mm socket. I allow as how it's virtually impossible for the lug nuts on the hay wagon wheel to be metric because that fucking hay wagon is OLDER THAN WAYLIE and it predates metric shit and it is 100% going to be English units. Waylie: "That'd be some dumb fucking shit like 13/16 or whatever." Me: "Yes." Waylie: "No way."
When we arrive at the hay wagon, it turns out that 20mm is too small and 22mm is way too big and he didn't bring the 21mm socket because reasons. We checked the sockets because I am not an idiot and I don't want fuckery in the morning because the tire place is only open until noon and we have to get things right on the first try.
At that point, before there is any murdering, Waylie's two friend show up to help us throw a hundred and thirty bales of hay from the hay guy's hay wagon onto Laur's flatbed gooseneck by way of headlights and 4 way flashers at 10:30 PM on a Friday night. The help you can get in these circumstances is the help you can get, so I didn't bitch. The helpers helped and we got the hay moved (I stacked it all on the flatbed) and then I had to sit there beside a State Route with flashers going and headlights lit on a Friday night while Waylie and his idiot friends did bong rips. *sigh* Then Waylie is like... "Can you give the guys a twenty apiece?" Yes. Yes, I can. But Waylie, this job is a job I contracted with you. YOU. I did not tell you to rope in these other people. They are your subcontractors and they come out of your money. (This was a lie. What happened was that I paid the guys forty bucks and I found other help for the bales beyond the first hundred and thirty so the remaining hundred and seventy dollars you had lined up just fucking evaporated. LOL.)
Waylie was not pleased about this, but w/e. I flip a twenty to each of the friends like I'm grandma and it's their birthdays. I drive the (well strapped-down) hay carefully home and we park the trailer until the following day.
I drop Waylie (no driver's license and no vehicle because his truck's fucked up, shocker, hard on machinery like I said) at his house, out back of beyond but at least it's not fucking Saxton and is just the hinterlands of Ray's Cove. I got home at midnight.
Following morning, I got Waylie at 8 AM (texted him three times, called him twice, beat on the door of his trailer, took 30 minutes to get his ass out of bed), drove back over to his dad's to get the 21mm socket and also a 13/16 one just to "prove me wrong", got to the hay wagon, removed the shredded tire (13/16 socket, TYVM), got a new tire from the tire place (40 minutes, they're busy on Saturday and they're only open till noon), replaced tire on hay wagon, delivered hay wagon to Other Baling Location before 10 AM, rounded up one of Waylie's helper friends, went back to the barn, unloaded the hay, and stacked it in the barn. I pay Waylie his hundred and thirty bucks. He paid his idiot friend who came along to help out of his money, which irritated him more.
And then Saturday afternoon, Hay guy called. "I have refilled the wagon and it's in the field at Other Baling Location where you left it with a hundred and thirty bales on it. Can you empty it out tomorrow? You can't drive the wagon, it's got a wheel with the lug nuts all loose." Immediately I think it's Waylie and his impact drill that is at fault, idiot boy can't change a fucking tire, but NO. This turns out to be not the case, it's some other wheel on the hay wagon that has all loose lug nuts so not our fault. Yay. Also good thing I didn't yell at Waylie because his soft weak little man feelings would have been sorely bruised over that and I might need him again someday. Double yay.
Me: "Yes."
So I got Laur at 8 AM on Sunday morning and we went over to the hay wagon and proceeded to move the hay (130 bales) from the wagon to the flatbed trailer, in daylight. I could have gotten Waylie but he costs a dollar a bale, so a hundred and thirty bucks. It's also half an hour of dicking around to wake him up, listening to him bicker with his baby mama, waiting for him to round up some of his useless friends, etc. It's just so much wasted time.
Lala is just... "Hey, Lala, wanna do hay at 8? I'll make you Corn and Kidney Salad for dinner." And she's up at eight and dressed and has her gloves and is ready to go. Efficient. I like it.
Anyway, it was going to be two fifty-odd year old women (me and Lala) doing the moving of the hay, but we were joined by a third fifty-odd year old woman because Kimmie was coming back with coffee for her husband who was not out of bed yet and could totally wait for his coffee anyway and she had her gloves in her car (of course) and so she hopped out to help us. Kimmie's mom had the ponies I learned to ride on. Also one of Kimmie's nephews is Dead Jared from that whole mess back at Christmastime. Hay Guy is another of her nephews from another of her sisters. (That family had seven children.) And Kimmie's daughter is living in Harrisburg while attending law school and she's hanging out with my mom so that she knows someone in Harrisburg and isn't all alone in the big city. Mom's husband made Kimmie's daughter thumbprint fig cookies, the which Kimmie had tried when she was visiting Brittany (the daughter) the week before. (There are a lot of thumbprint fig cookies being made because the fig tree made like fifteen pounds of figs this year. Very Mediterranean weather we've been having and apparently the fig is pleased. I will be getting mine Tuesday evening.) But even given the relationships at play, stopping to help us throw hay was a legit mensch move of a Sunday morning. Thanks for the assist, Kimmie!
We hauled the hay back to the barn (added to the Saturday hay, we're now at 260 bales of lovely not-rained-on second cut) and I start unloading the hay. Lala goes for a second cup of coffee and to summon her brother so that he can come get the elevator working. The elevator is a ramp thing that kind of carries hay up to the top of the hay stack so that you don't have to throw the bales up. It's very convenient when it works, but it needs... a bit of help to get working. (It's electric but ancient and kind of fussy. Also the motor overheats after about a hundred bales and you need to turn it off and let it rest when that happens.) I get a hundred bales in (off the trailer and stacked) before Theron and Lala show back up, get the elevator running, and help me get the last thirty bales sorted out. We just threw the last thirty bales up the elevator to the top of the pile and didn't see to them because it was getting hotter and we were tired. I allowed as how I'd sort out the last thirty bales later in the week.
But then hay guy called me, again, having picked up all the missed bales (from the kicker missing the hay wagon, see above) onto his flatbed (not a hay wagon, a flatbed that they usually use during the week for his dad's business), about sixty bales, but he needed them off the flatbed *today* because his dad wanted it back for Monday. I was like "Can you bring the flatbed over here and we'll just unload them?" and he was "Yeah. About an hour. I'll bring a helper." And so I was "Right, then."
Meanwhile, I stacked the last thirty bales. Lala took her flatbed across the road and unhooked it, parked my truck in the driveway. We had some mint tea with ice. And then we went up into the garden to play cucumber hide and seek. We got four cucumbers in to that project when hay guy pulled in with his flatbed and wife-helper, backed it up to the barn, and we unloaded and stacked sixty more bales in very short order with the working elevator and four people.
People who helped play hay: Waylie, Idiot Friend, Other Idiot Friend, Me, Lala, Theron, Kimmie, Hay Guy, Hay Guy's Wife. It takes a village, it does. :)
And so now I have 320 lovely square bales all in the barn and ready to go for winter. On the way home Sunday, I blew a brake line on my diesel pickup, so that's on the agenda for Monday.
The horses are eating the very last of the old hay this week. (They need to finish up the old hay before they see the new hay because if they see the new hay, they will not eat the old hay anymore.) But we're done playing hay until after the winter. Yay! (Nobody likes playing hay in the snow. It sucks.)
Last weekend I cleaned out the upper part of the barn and got everything ready for hay so that if there was hay, I'd be ready. It is not fun to clean out the barn to get ready for hay but it's even LESS fun to do it while people are standing around waiting to unload hay. Best to be ready.
Late Thursday, hay guy was "I am baling Friday, when can you get hay?" Hay guy does not want to have to unload and stack hay in a barn, this is extra work and a pain in the ass. If he can get me to retrieve the hay before it needs to be stored in a barn, that's a savings for us all.
The hay guy has a kick baler for square bales, which kind of... flings the hay into the air where it hopefully lands in the following hay wagon. The tractor has a baler on the 3 point hitch and then following the baler is the hay wagon, it's like a little train. This works OK except on field corners. On the corners, the hay wagon is bent and not aligned with the kicker so the bales miss and just land on the ground. Because we're in the "valley" part of "ridge and valley" PA, the fields are smallish and there are proportionally a lot of field corners. So you'll get like 130 bales in the wagon and another 40 to 60 on the ground that have to be manually picked up. It's better than having to pick up all the bales by hand but it's definitely not a labor-free experience. No part of hay is a labor-free experience.
I was like "Hay guy, can we just tow your hay wagon to our barn and unload it?" This plan would cut down on handling the hay to just one time touched by human hands. It's a good plan. Less handling of the hay is good.
Hay guy: "Sure. Just don't bust up my hay wagon." (This is mentioned because I have Waylie as my helper and he's ... hard on machinery.)
So I assembled my helper, Waylie (yes, the same Waylon featured elsewhere around here, I only know one Waylon who isn't "Jennings") for Saturday morning. Saturday morning is a reasonable time to play hay.
Come Friday around 5 PM, Waylie is all "Hey, I have a job in Shipp for Saturday, can we pick up the wagon this evening instead?"
I called hay guy to find out. "Yes. Don't bust it up (again, I have Waylie and he's hard on machinery) and drop it off at Other Baling Location before 11 AM tomorrow 'cause I gotta bale into it tomorrow too."
Now, hay wagons are Farm Vehicles and they do not, as a rule, have lights. They have a reflective orange caution triangle on the back if you're lucky. If you're operating your hay wagon on paved roads after dark, best practices (locally, not "lawfully") are to have a "follow driver" which is just someone in a car who knows where you are going and follows you pretty closely so that there are not accidents and stuff.
I told Waylie that I wanted to round up the hay wagon and get it to Laur's house before it got dark so that we didn't have to have a follow vehicle. He said that was a good idea. It was, at this time, 6 PM. Sundown is at 8 PM.
Time goes by very slowly when you are waiting for someone.
Waylie was also in charge of locating a flat hitch (no ball, just the thing that goes into the receiver). He finally showed up at half past seven, without the flat hitch. He'd left it sitting on his porch. So we had to go get it. *sigh* Waylon's house is not a quick trip, it's twenty minutes there and twenty minutes back. Also on this fun trip, the guy Waylie was going to do the job with in Shipp on Saturday (the reason we were playing hay Friday night) called to say that the Saturday job had evaporated. So Waylie was in a stellar mood.
Now it's right up on getting dark. Waylie had arranged for a follow vehicle but by the time we got organized, the follow car was nowhere in sight, having bailed due to exhaustion from fucking around waiting for Waylie to align his perpetually disorganized waterfowl.
We hooked up the hay wagon to the diesel pickup truck and headed out of town "the back way" because it was getting dark and our follow vehicle had bailed and so forth. The back way has fewer chances of police and generally slower traffic because it's twisty and rural. People mostly don't speed because there could be deer and stuff.
The right rear tire on the hay wagon blew when we were about a mile and a half away from the hay guy's location. As, y'know, they are prone to do because every hay wagon on the planet (in my experience) is running around on half bald, sun-rotted shitty used car tires. This Is The Way. Like, tire explosions are a very possible thing. You're playing hay and you decide to take a wagon out on the road. Roll a 1d6, 5 or 6 means you blow a tire.
Hay wagons do not have spares. Ever. That's also just normal. Part of the fun of playing hay wagon is that the tires randomly explode and leave you dead in the water for hours if not a whole day. But why don't you just get fresh tires for the hay wagon? Fresh tires are expensive. Nobody does that.
Used, not sun-rotted tires are affordable and maybe you did that some mumble years ago but the hay wagons only get used a couple of times a year and then they just sit... until hay season next year... and the years get away from you and the tires still hold air and the sun keeps shining on the tires and dry rot is a thing and suddenly it's been six years or ten or fifteen and the tire has a network of barely visible spiderwebbing cracks that portend your doom except you're hooking up the fucking wagon at 8 PM and it is DARK so you can't see the future that awaits you and so it's *pop-flop-flop-flop* when the dry rotted tire explodes and your evening is shot to hell.
Fortunately we were able to get the hay wagon off the road and parked safely while we came up with a plan. Winning?
Plan: Disconnect hay wagon, go over to Waylie's dad's and gather up impact wrench, sockets, etc. for changing tire to put all that stuff IN THE TRUCK so that we'll be ready for the morning, get Laur's gooseneck flatbed trailer, move hay (130 bales) off hay wagon onto flatbed trailer, take to farm and park close to hay mow (here "mow" is pronounced like bow and sow. Er. Boat Front and Girl Pig, respectively. Not at all bow "for use with arrows" or sow "put seeds in the earth". Fuck it all, hay MOW rhymes with COW. Dang English why are you like this?). Following morning, gather up Waylie, go to Tire Place and get another shitty used tire put on the rim for ten dollars, reinstall tire on hay wagon, drag hay wagon to new baling location for Hay Guy, go back to barn and unload hay.
The plan is deemed acceptable. We get started on the plan, step 1 of which is to go over to his dad's and get the tire changing stuff. During this part of the plan an argument ensues about the size of the lug nuts on the hay wagon wheel. Waylie gets a 22 mm socket and a 20 mm socket (six sided) because that's what he thinks we will need. He does not get any English unit sockets and he doesn't get the 21 mm socket. I allow as how it's virtually impossible for the lug nuts on the hay wagon wheel to be metric because that fucking hay wagon is OLDER THAN WAYLIE and it predates metric shit and it is 100% going to be English units. Waylie: "That'd be some dumb fucking shit like 13/16 or whatever." Me: "Yes." Waylie: "No way."
When we arrive at the hay wagon, it turns out that 20mm is too small and 22mm is way too big and he didn't bring the 21mm socket because reasons. We checked the sockets because I am not an idiot and I don't want fuckery in the morning because the tire place is only open until noon and we have to get things right on the first try.
At that point, before there is any murdering, Waylie's two friend show up to help us throw a hundred and thirty bales of hay from the hay guy's hay wagon onto Laur's flatbed gooseneck by way of headlights and 4 way flashers at 10:30 PM on a Friday night. The help you can get in these circumstances is the help you can get, so I didn't bitch. The helpers helped and we got the hay moved (I stacked it all on the flatbed) and then I had to sit there beside a State Route with flashers going and headlights lit on a Friday night while Waylie and his idiot friends did bong rips. *sigh* Then Waylie is like... "Can you give the guys a twenty apiece?" Yes. Yes, I can. But Waylie, this job is a job I contracted with you. YOU. I did not tell you to rope in these other people. They are your subcontractors and they come out of your money. (This was a lie. What happened was that I paid the guys forty bucks and I found other help for the bales beyond the first hundred and thirty so the remaining hundred and seventy dollars you had lined up just fucking evaporated. LOL.)
Waylie was not pleased about this, but w/e. I flip a twenty to each of the friends like I'm grandma and it's their birthdays. I drive the (well strapped-down) hay carefully home and we park the trailer until the following day.
I drop Waylie (no driver's license and no vehicle because his truck's fucked up, shocker, hard on machinery like I said) at his house, out back of beyond but at least it's not fucking Saxton and is just the hinterlands of Ray's Cove. I got home at midnight.
Following morning, I got Waylie at 8 AM (texted him three times, called him twice, beat on the door of his trailer, took 30 minutes to get his ass out of bed), drove back over to his dad's to get the 21mm socket and also a 13/16 one just to "prove me wrong", got to the hay wagon, removed the shredded tire (13/16 socket, TYVM), got a new tire from the tire place (40 minutes, they're busy on Saturday and they're only open till noon), replaced tire on hay wagon, delivered hay wagon to Other Baling Location before 10 AM, rounded up one of Waylie's helper friends, went back to the barn, unloaded the hay, and stacked it in the barn. I pay Waylie his hundred and thirty bucks. He paid his idiot friend who came along to help out of his money, which irritated him more.
And then Saturday afternoon, Hay guy called. "I have refilled the wagon and it's in the field at Other Baling Location where you left it with a hundred and thirty bales on it. Can you empty it out tomorrow? You can't drive the wagon, it's got a wheel with the lug nuts all loose." Immediately I think it's Waylie and his impact drill that is at fault, idiot boy can't change a fucking tire, but NO. This turns out to be not the case, it's some other wheel on the hay wagon that has all loose lug nuts so not our fault. Yay. Also good thing I didn't yell at Waylie because his soft weak little man feelings would have been sorely bruised over that and I might need him again someday. Double yay.
Me: "Yes."
So I got Laur at 8 AM on Sunday morning and we went over to the hay wagon and proceeded to move the hay (130 bales) from the wagon to the flatbed trailer, in daylight. I could have gotten Waylie but he costs a dollar a bale, so a hundred and thirty bucks. It's also half an hour of dicking around to wake him up, listening to him bicker with his baby mama, waiting for him to round up some of his useless friends, etc. It's just so much wasted time.
Lala is just... "Hey, Lala, wanna do hay at 8? I'll make you Corn and Kidney Salad for dinner." And she's up at eight and dressed and has her gloves and is ready to go. Efficient. I like it.
Anyway, it was going to be two fifty-odd year old women (me and Lala) doing the moving of the hay, but we were joined by a third fifty-odd year old woman because Kimmie was coming back with coffee for her husband who was not out of bed yet and could totally wait for his coffee anyway and she had her gloves in her car (of course) and so she hopped out to help us. Kimmie's mom had the ponies I learned to ride on. Also one of Kimmie's nephews is Dead Jared from that whole mess back at Christmastime. Hay Guy is another of her nephews from another of her sisters. (That family had seven children.) And Kimmie's daughter is living in Harrisburg while attending law school and she's hanging out with my mom so that she knows someone in Harrisburg and isn't all alone in the big city. Mom's husband made Kimmie's daughter thumbprint fig cookies, the which Kimmie had tried when she was visiting Brittany (the daughter) the week before. (There are a lot of thumbprint fig cookies being made because the fig tree made like fifteen pounds of figs this year. Very Mediterranean weather we've been having and apparently the fig is pleased. I will be getting mine Tuesday evening.) But even given the relationships at play, stopping to help us throw hay was a legit mensch move of a Sunday morning. Thanks for the assist, Kimmie!
We hauled the hay back to the barn (added to the Saturday hay, we're now at 260 bales of lovely not-rained-on second cut) and I start unloading the hay. Lala goes for a second cup of coffee and to summon her brother so that he can come get the elevator working. The elevator is a ramp thing that kind of carries hay up to the top of the hay stack so that you don't have to throw the bales up. It's very convenient when it works, but it needs... a bit of help to get working. (It's electric but ancient and kind of fussy. Also the motor overheats after about a hundred bales and you need to turn it off and let it rest when that happens.) I get a hundred bales in (off the trailer and stacked) before Theron and Lala show back up, get the elevator running, and help me get the last thirty bales sorted out. We just threw the last thirty bales up the elevator to the top of the pile and didn't see to them because it was getting hotter and we were tired. I allowed as how I'd sort out the last thirty bales later in the week.
But then hay guy called me, again, having picked up all the missed bales (from the kicker missing the hay wagon, see above) onto his flatbed (not a hay wagon, a flatbed that they usually use during the week for his dad's business), about sixty bales, but he needed them off the flatbed *today* because his dad wanted it back for Monday. I was like "Can you bring the flatbed over here and we'll just unload them?" and he was "Yeah. About an hour. I'll bring a helper." And so I was "Right, then."
Meanwhile, I stacked the last thirty bales. Lala took her flatbed across the road and unhooked it, parked my truck in the driveway. We had some mint tea with ice. And then we went up into the garden to play cucumber hide and seek. We got four cucumbers in to that project when hay guy pulled in with his flatbed and wife-helper, backed it up to the barn, and we unloaded and stacked sixty more bales in very short order with the working elevator and four people.
People who helped play hay: Waylie, Idiot Friend, Other Idiot Friend, Me, Lala, Theron, Kimmie, Hay Guy, Hay Guy's Wife. It takes a village, it does. :)
And so now I have 320 lovely square bales all in the barn and ready to go for winter. On the way home Sunday, I blew a brake line on my diesel pickup, so that's on the agenda for Monday.
The horses are eating the very last of the old hay this week. (They need to finish up the old hay before they see the new hay because if they see the new hay, they will not eat the old hay anymore.) But we're done playing hay until after the winter. Yay! (Nobody likes playing hay in the snow. It sucks.)
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Date: 2024-08-27 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-28 12:27 pm (UTC)*sigh*
It's a good thing he's cute.
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Date: 2024-08-28 02:40 pm (UTC)It's SUCH a good thing they're cute. The stories I've heard from my friend D about her various equines (including the escape artist, in pursuit of whom D shattered her ankle at one point a decade or more ago) make me glad to be a crazy cat lady. I can at least boss around my tiny predators. :)
no subject
Date: 2024-08-29 02:29 am (UTC)They need to finish up the old hay before they see the new hay because if they see the new hay, they will not eat the old hay anymore.
So true.