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How to make hay:
First, you have to be dressed right. Find a sleeveless shirt and your oldest pair of jeans. Faded is best. If you're driving the truck, you can go barefoot, but if you've got to wear shoes, go for ratty sneakers. Wear a baseball hat, and put a bandanna in your back pocket.
Turn off the A/C in the truck. Roll the windows down.
Play country or bluegrass music. If you would normally find these genres embarrassing to listen to (and you shouldn't), don't worry. They'll never be more appropriate. The more outrageously silly the better. I recommend Dierks Bentley's CD "Modern Day Drifter", especially the songs "Domestic, Light, and Cold" and "Cab of My Truck". "So So Long" is good, too.
Sweat a lot.
Get covered with stray alfalfa and orchard grass. It's going to itch. You're probably allergic. Expect to break out everywhere it scratches you. (This is why you're wearing jeans and not shorts.)
If you're not driving the truck, load the hay waggon with the bales. Hope the tension is right. If it's not, your bales will be too heavy (nearly one-hundred pounds) or too loose (the hay will fall out of the twine when you try to pick it up). If it's just right, your bales will weight forty to fifty pounds and will be pure alfalfa and orchard grass, no dead stems, sticks, rocks, dead animals, live animals, or chunks of wood.
In one or two hours, when you've loaded nearly three tonnes of hay into the waggon (that's about one-hundred bales), take it to the barn and stack it in the haymow. The best way to do this is by hand, but you can use a hay elevator if you like. This will probably hurt. You should be wearing gloves, or the skin on your hands will rub off completely. Your clothes will be completely soaked with sweat. The haymow is so hot that you're in danger of passing out. At this point you should probably offer to make dinner (it is now eight o'clock and no one has eaten), so that you don't have to break your back in the mow. That way you also won't get saddled with the arduous task of working the hay waggon back into the barn.
Make dinner by yourself. The new potatoes you just dug out of the garden, boiling on the stovetop, will generate enough heat to keep you sweating. Chop up the beans. Cut yourself. The meatloaf at least was made the night before, so all you had to do was put it in the oven and wait for it to cook.
When you've finished dinner, and you're ready to eat (your sister, personally, hasn't eaten since the biscuits she made for breakfast), wait for your father to come in and have a complete meltdown, involving yelling and passive-aggressive comments, because you want to eat dinner before he tries to fit the broken-down baler back into the equipment shed OH WAIT THAT'S JUST OUR FAMILY.
Maria and I rebelled and ate dinner anyway; he can't understand why we're mad. Now we're going to watch X-Men and can stuff and eat ice cream and probably not speak to him. :P We were discussing whether or not Mama will be sympathetic when she gets home from work, or whether she'll have had a worse day--the care centre has somebody who hits with her cane.
But at least there's ice cream!
First, you have to be dressed right. Find a sleeveless shirt and your oldest pair of jeans. Faded is best. If you're driving the truck, you can go barefoot, but if you've got to wear shoes, go for ratty sneakers. Wear a baseball hat, and put a bandanna in your back pocket.
Turn off the A/C in the truck. Roll the windows down.
Play country or bluegrass music. If you would normally find these genres embarrassing to listen to (and you shouldn't), don't worry. They'll never be more appropriate. The more outrageously silly the better. I recommend Dierks Bentley's CD "Modern Day Drifter", especially the songs "Domestic, Light, and Cold" and "Cab of My Truck". "So So Long" is good, too.
Sweat a lot.
Get covered with stray alfalfa and orchard grass. It's going to itch. You're probably allergic. Expect to break out everywhere it scratches you. (This is why you're wearing jeans and not shorts.)
If you're not driving the truck, load the hay waggon with the bales. Hope the tension is right. If it's not, your bales will be too heavy (nearly one-hundred pounds) or too loose (the hay will fall out of the twine when you try to pick it up). If it's just right, your bales will weight forty to fifty pounds and will be pure alfalfa and orchard grass, no dead stems, sticks, rocks, dead animals, live animals, or chunks of wood.
In one or two hours, when you've loaded nearly three tonnes of hay into the waggon (that's about one-hundred bales), take it to the barn and stack it in the haymow. The best way to do this is by hand, but you can use a hay elevator if you like. This will probably hurt. You should be wearing gloves, or the skin on your hands will rub off completely. Your clothes will be completely soaked with sweat. The haymow is so hot that you're in danger of passing out. At this point you should probably offer to make dinner (it is now eight o'clock and no one has eaten), so that you don't have to break your back in the mow. That way you also won't get saddled with the arduous task of working the hay waggon back into the barn.
Make dinner by yourself. The new potatoes you just dug out of the garden, boiling on the stovetop, will generate enough heat to keep you sweating. Chop up the beans. Cut yourself. The meatloaf at least was made the night before, so all you had to do was put it in the oven and wait for it to cook.
When you've finished dinner, and you're ready to eat (your sister, personally, hasn't eaten since the biscuits she made for breakfast), wait for your father to come in and have a complete meltdown, involving yelling and passive-aggressive comments, because you want to eat dinner before he tries to fit the broken-down baler back into the equipment shed OH WAIT THAT'S JUST OUR FAMILY.
Maria and I rebelled and ate dinner anyway; he can't understand why we're mad. Now we're going to watch X-Men and can stuff and eat ice cream and probably not speak to him. :P We were discussing whether or not Mama will be sympathetic when she gets home from work, or whether she'll have had a worse day--the care centre has somebody who hits with her cane.
But at least there's ice cream!
