IT'S JUNE!

Suddenly it’s June. It’s the month I’ve been waiting for all year. June ushers in summer for me here in Pennsylvania.

As a farm kid, it was the month of clover, alfalfa, and grasses drying in the rows in our fields. Smells were everywhere: The odor of gasoline from the tractor, hay truck, and lawn mower. The sweet fragrance of summer rag roses in the yard. The earthy aroma of rain as it approaches to soak the ground. The whiff of mint circling the old oak spring boxes in the pastures. These were all mixed together in the daily harmony of farm life.

There was also the unexpected that happened to throw a person off kilter. It was the black snake slithering over a stone wall as we tramped down the fields to the pasture to bring the herd of cows home for evening milking. Better yet, it was those aggravating times when the black racer’s lazy cousin, lying in the low branches of a hemlock tree, would drop down in front of the herd and send the cows racing willy-nilly up into the wooded hillside where we had to regroup them one by one. And we always counted. Numerous times we counted those cows to be sure we had them all before setting out for home.

When evening fell, we’d sit out on our front porch to catch a fading breeze and watch the barn swallows circle the sky and deftly snatch the last mosquito. Lightening bugs danced above the lawn and in the bushes. Windows were thrown open wide. If you were lucky, you had a window fan on the hottest night. The hum of insects in the grasses and trees were the songs that lulled us to sleep. Far off, you could hear the neighbor’s dog bark, upset by some night creature nearby. And everyone listened for the eerie hoots of an owl on his evening hunt.

When people ask if summers were the hard times of farm life, I’d have to say, they were the busy and tiring times with long days. But they were the good times.

It was June. It was summer. And it felt wonderful. 

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HAYING SEASON ON THE FARM

July has arrived this year after a blistering June which ended with temperatures in the 90s. Growing up on a farm, the muggy nights and heat waves during the day were part of farm life.

The scorching summer weather meant it was haying season. It meant that farm kids had the hot, sticky job of handling and storing those prickly rectangles of bound hay, tied with twine and full of itchy hayseeds, called bales. There is a particular smell to a haying operation. It’s the inviting sweet scent of dried clover and other grasses, tinged with the scent of gasoline from farm equipment. The work is hard and tiresome. We handled hundreds of bales kicked out from a baler, pulled by our Farmall C tractor.

If we were lucky, the baler was hitched to the tractor and the hay wagon hooked behind it. We only had to pull the bales up onto the wagon bed as they popped out and stack them four layers high before hauling the load to the barn for storage. Two-string bales can weigh anywhere from 40 to 75 pounds, depending upon the type of hay, how seasoned or dry it is, and how the baler is set to compact them.

Before we owned a hay baler that fed the bales onto the wagon, they were dropped onto the ground. Then, we’d have to toss them up onto the hay wagon first before stacking and carting them away.

In the barnyard, an elevator with a chain mechanism and paddles took the bales up to the very stifling mow where they were…(wait for it)…restacked once again. If I was lucky, I had the job of feeding the elevator below in the hot sun and would get a break from working the even hotter mow. Needless to say, we all vied for that open-air spot.

My father was particular about how he wanted his hay stored. The bales had to be stacked cut-side down in the mow. I always felt we were giving more attention to this hot sticky—and somewhat finicky—stacking routine than I cared to give.

Why cut-side down? Because the strings/twine will always be on the side of the bale when you look at the stack. It is said to also deter mice from gnawing on the twine, but it also allows moisture to run down through the stack to the bottom layer. Much

later, baler twine was treated with a chemical that discouraged barn mice. I do admit, come winter, when you have to throw bales down the shoot to feed the herd below, it was easier to walk on a layer of hay uniformly stacked.

Someone once asked me if I miss summer and haying season on the farm. A friend, who’s a farm kid as well, put it more eloquently than I ever could: “Be careful of the past, it always looks better than it was.”

Here's hoping July and your summer is a good one!

 

  

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