Sunday morning was beautiful, sunny and breezy, still a tad muggy though, wind from the southeast. Dad and I met up with Harvey in the barn. “Rain’s over!” I announced. “Guess we’ll be mowing hay tomorrow.”
“We might be mowing hay tomorrow,” Harvey responded, “but the rain isn’t quite over. Wind’s still the wrong way. It will pump moist air in from the ocean. Besides, the old saying is, ‘When a rain stops during the night, it’s not finished raining’. It will rain today again.”
“You believe that, Dad?” I asked.
“Harvey’s dad believed it,” he answered.
“So did my Uncle Lester and your great-grandfather,” Harvey added. “It held out for them, many, many times.”
“All the times?” I quizzed.
“Well, probably not,” Dad replied, “but just like every other old saying, every time it did hold out, that built up the credibility of the saying. And when it didn’t hold out… well, that was kinda forgotten.”
Harvey chuckled, and then added, “I reckon your Dad’s right, but now mind you, the corollary isn’t true though.”
“Huh?” I went.
Dad explained, “what’s not true is the opposite: when a rain stops during the day, it is finished raining.”
“Right,” Harvey agreed, “then it can go either way.”
“I’m still confused,” I said.
“So, just watch and learn,” Dad exhorted. “Later today we’ll see who’s right.”
We had a little church service at Poppop’s house just before noon, and then, sure enough, a little thundershower came through about midway through the afternoon. Why are these old guys always right? The wind had shifted to a northeast one and by evening from the north.
“Now we’re cooking,” Harvey announced. “I’ll make the final call tomorrow morning, but every one get a good nights rest; I suspect we’ll go at the hay tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Labor Day,” Amy lamented, “won’t we be having a picnic?”
“That’s right sweetie,” Uncle Jeremiah answered. “Tomorrow is Labor Day, and that’s what we’re going to do. And if you call the fine meal that Sandy and Jean will prepare and we’ll eat under the trees next to the hayfield a picnic, then, yep, we’re having one of those too.”
The wind blew all night. By morning it was from the northwest. “That’s the ticket,” Harvey gave the word. “Everyone eat a good breakfast, there’s a lot of work to do today.” Larry almost wanted to skip breakfast, so anxious he was to drive tractor again. “Let the air do its work a little, first,” Harvey told him. “It’s drying the grass and the ground. Everything will go better as the fields dry out.”
With all the cattle taken care of, Brutus was hitched to the wagon of tools and before we could all pile on, Larry started up his tractor and up the road with the mower he went. He was once more in his element. I believe everyone felt happy for him. Before we left, Mom brought out a dozen bonnets she and Jean had made from some old pillowcases that we had plenty of. When they found the time to sew them by hand, I had no idea.
“Everyone keep your head covered,” she ordered. “That’s still a summer sun out there.” Some of the men and boys had straw hats. Others had baseball caps like I wore. The women who weren’t raised working outside on a farm weren’t used to wearing hats, but no one needed sunburn either, so they dutifully followed Mom’s order. In spite of the hot temperature, several of our crew wore loose fitting long sleeved shirts, too, to keep our arms from burning.
When we got to Crystal View farm, we stopped at the water trough and filled up a few water jugs. Mom stayed at the house with Clare to watch the younger children as Donna Smith and Julie the teacher headed to the field with the rest of their families. Poppop drove Brutus about halfway down the edge of the field and unhooked the wagon, then tied him in the shade of the meadow near the creek. By then, Larry had mowed three times around the field and had parked the tractor. This gave us plenty of room to work. He also said the outside of a field is usually the hardest to dry, so it received a head start, plus the grass that had been mowed with the machine was conditioned or crimped by it. That would help it dry faster.
We split into four groups, headed by Harvey, Joe, Jeremiah, and Larry. Each group went to a different corner, so we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. Adding Butch’s tools to the stockpile provided one or two scythes and three or four sickles, for a total of five cutting implements per group. There were seven or eight workers in each group, so there were always two or three waiting in the wings to spell someone, or to run for water if we needed it. I was in Jeremiah’s group with Ben and his wife, Denise, one of their sons, Clark, Dad and Robbie. Everyone started with fervor with the men manning the scythes. It looked pretty awkward at first; only a few had ever used a scythe. It has a long handle with about a three foot blade. It works best with a long sweeping motion. Once they got the hang of it, they could really knock a lot of hay down, but we with the sickles learned to stay out of their way. You see a sickle only has a short handle and blade, so you have to bend over and get close to your work. We didn’t need our noses cut off by a scythe, so we kept our distance. In due time, as the mowers progressed down the edge of the mowed crop, the distance between us lengthened, decreasing the danger factor. As most of us were right handed and because scythes were built that way, the motion was always right to left. Because you wanted to pull the fresh cut hay away from the hay that was still standing, we kept migrating to our left or clockwise around the field. Even though we had started at the corners, we were soon strung out all around the outside of the unmown portion of the field.
While we were mowing it gave a lot of time for talking, even singing. In Larry’s group I heard Mel, Amy and Lynette singing some pop songs, but also a couple hymns. Uncle Bruce’s family was in that group and they were just singing right along. Soon it spread over the whole field for part of the morning.
It was Robbie who did the most talking. First, it was just chit-chat about the food or the cows. Did we still have cocoa puffs? But then his inquiries turned toward my cousin, Jennifer. Jenn and Vanetta both sort of stood out in the crowd. They weren’t dressed like farm girls, but then again, neither were half the other young women in the crew that day. Both had long well-kept hair and very light, smooth complexions. I wondered how long they stay that way after three or four days of hay making.
“Who is she?” Robbie asked.
“My Mom’s brother’s daughter,” I answered. “She’s my cousin, Jennifer.”
“Jennifer…..” he oozed, “a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“What?” I responded.
“Just what I said,” Robbie countered, “she’s hot!”
“We’re all hot today,” I wisecracked back.
“I really must get to know her.”
“Yeah right, and there’s a lot of hot air around here, too,” I retorted. “Do you know how old she is?”
“Was just about to ask.”
“Thirteen. She’ll be fourteen next week.”
“Aaaah, just right,” Robbie spoke like he was in a dream world.
“Get real,” I countered, “she’d be going to ninth grade. We’re only going to seventh.”
“No matter, ain’t no school anyway,” he said. “Yeah, you really have to introduce us.” Now I didn’t think that Robbie was so dense that he couldn’t sense my tone, so evidently, he being enthralled with Jenn was affecting his judgment. He still had the capability of reading the scowl on my face, however, for then he added, “Not that she compares to you.”
“Not that she what?!” I blurted out.
“You know, stacks up to you.”
“What, are we horses on the auction block, now?” I jawed.
Maybe, just maybe, Robbie was coming to his senses. He kinda stuttered a little and even thought a little before he finally said, “What I mean is… you see…. you don’t know….I thought… Well I guess… what I’m trying to say is that I know you. And you’re special. I know what’s inside you, and I like what’s in there. You’re tough and smart. Usually pleasant and very trustworthy and loyal.” (I felt like a boy scout.) “I like that you love animals, how hard you work, respect others and that you’re easy to talk to. I only see the outside of your cousin. Don’t know what’s inside her. Don’t even know if she has a brain. So what if she is a fox? Except she has that stupid bonnet on. You know you do look really good in that baseball cap; always thought you did. I should at least get to know her, though. I should be fair about it. Oh, forget it….. I’m an idiot….. and I talk too much.”
“Now that’s the first smart thing you’ve said,” I answered. “Don’t worry; you’ll get to talk to her.” Time would tell.
Wielding that sickle was both tedious and tiring. I was always glad to hand it off to Robbie or Denise. Whenever we were at the end of the field nearest to Harvey’s water trough, we’d go for water and carry jugs back for the men, who just kept rotating the swinging of those scythes and knocking down hay. That was how the men were spelled – just hand off their hay machine whenever they needed to. It was a chance for a drink, a bathroom break in the cornfield that ran alongside the hayfield, or to just plop down on the fresh mown grass for a rest.
While we were mowing, Butch and Poppop took one of Butch’s team of horses down to Harvey’s to bring up another wagon. On the trip back, they brought Lois, Grandmom, and Jean with our picnic. Would it be hot dogs, potato chips and cold soda? No, but they really did pretty well. Of course, the cold drink was milk – couldn’t escape that. They did surprise us though by using some of our dry packaged and canned food to make a monster macaroni salad that had a few cans of spam cut into it. With our cream, some mustard and some of the sugar Uncle Bruce had bought they created a pretty decent salad dressing. It was garnished with bits of onion and several handfuls of broccoli scrounged from Poppop’s garden. The “picnic” was topped off by the last watermelon we had bartered from Titus.
The afternoon went pretty quickly. I think by 3:00 PM we had the whole field mowed. Harvey said the field was about eight acres and would probably have yielded five to six hundred bales if we would bale it with a mechanical baler. That didn’t sound like a lot until Butch pointed out that an amount like that would feed his six horses for four months. That meant we’d only have to harvest the same amount two more times to provide a year’s supply. Of course, that wasn’t enough to feed all the cattle, but it gave some perspective to our labor; made it all appear worthwhile.
Before we loaded up for home, Larry hopped on his tractor and mowed three times around the outside of another hayfield on the other side of the cornfield.
“More to mow tomorrow?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Harvey answered, “just getting a head start, in case the weather still looks promising. That field is even bigger, so I wouldn’t want to mow all of it. I need to get a feel on how much time it takes us to put away the hay we’ve already mown.”
To be continued……Is that all there is to haymaking? Mort
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