Summer finally arrives on the farm
Farmers everywhere are rejoicing and cursing at the same time. They rejoice because the incessant rain that has plagued our area for months has, at least temporarily, abated. They are cursing because all of the outdoor work that has been impossible to complete – due to said rain – is being attempted all at once during the window of time the weatherman has given.
We are no exception.
My husband insisted on starting hay this weekend. He claimed he’d only mow a little. He said that his surgical recovery would prevent him from overdoing it. He said that we were just going to knock the dust off of the equipment. (I think he actually believes it when he says these things.)
Our middle girl was at a friend’s for the weekend, and since she does much of the tetting and raking, I was asked to come out of retirement to assist. I dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, since I wasn’t going to be lifting any bales.
It was as beautiful a day as I’ve seen in some time, with visibility stretching miles in each direction. The top of the hill I was working on allowed me to see nearly the entire valley in which we live. The green of the trees became a little hazy the further out I looked, and I told myself that it was a sign of heat coming that afternoon, and not that my eyesight is getting worse with age.
I tetted for several hours before finishing. Just as I was getting done, my husband said some of the hay would be ready to bale that afternoon, so I switched implements and began raking. During the few points I had raked myself into a corner and needed to wait for him to bale a windrow, I pulled up a novel on my phone and read. It was quite relaxing.
By the time I arrived home late in the afternoon, I noticed I had some sunburn on my knees. My knees were the only place I was burned, but they were really red. Four inches up and a few inches down from the kneecaps was the only affected place, but there were white welts forming in the reddest areas. I hadn’t even realized there was enough sun to burn me.
We baled and unloaded several hundred bales before supper. The rest of the hay will be shaken out this morning and baled this afternoon. That will be several hundred more bales that will be loaded into our barn.
We will have many long days ahead of us, sweating in the sun and the dust. We will complain about the heat, and perhaps even pray for some of the rain that had us so upset this spring. We will be happy to complete the season and be able to clean the equipment to store for the winter.
And then, within a few weeks, we will begin to sigh that another season has passed us by and lament that winter’s cold will soon be upon us. Far before the first snows fly, we will have forgotten the dust and the heat and the breakdowns and the sweating. We will romanticize the summer sun and the warm weather and say that we miss it.
I’ll be among the first to complain, I’m sure. But it’ll take me awhile this year. I’m going to remember these sunburned knees for quite some time.
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.