Got Hay?

September 19, 2009 | Posted by Black Horse Rider

A few months back I was lucky enough to find a beautiful pasture to lease for our four horses. It’s five acres of beautiful grass, trees, seasonal creek and two shelters. The pasture hadn’t been used in a while and although it was fenced, there was some work that needed to be done to the fencing as well as the main shelter in preparation for the horses. The last thing I needed to do before bringing the horses over was store some hay. This of course meant picking up hay, driving it over and unloading it.

Brad the hay man

I buy hay in bulk and my “hay man”, Brad, stores it for me at his place. I drive the 20 miles out there every so often to pick up a truck load for the horses. Normally, I just do this myself, sweating away as I load and unload about 10-15 bales on each trip. I figure I can suffer the sore muscles and sweat in my eyes every few months…it’s good for me! But, this time I needed to pick up a lot! And I was quickly plotting in my head how I could get A LOT of hay to the new pasture without breaking my back. And then it hit me…I have kids…and they have friends! So with careful strategic planning I went to get hay on the day my oldest daughter had two of her girlfriends over visiting (it wouldn’t have worked with my youngest daughter’s friends…10 & 11 year olds just have a hard time tossing around bales that weigh as much as they do). I also called Brad and enlisted his help in loading the bales once we got there.

A truck load of hay

Whoever said boys are better at manual labor than a bunch of teenage girls don’t know my girls! They worked their tails off!! We made two trips, stacking the truck almost to its max, and ended up with a total of about 58 bales or 2 tons. Loading went quickly as we could back right up to the stack and Brad was there to do the bulk of the ‘bale tossing’ onto the back of the truck bed. The big girls helped toss and stack, the little one, Ralen, tumbled bales from the top of the stack down to the worker drones. And me, I shuffled around keeping a low profile and trying to look busy…and even helped out a little – my sincere excuse was I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way and cause a tragic hay accident….

The girls planning for the hay loading event...

Now the hard part was at the other end! Where the hay needed to go and how close I could get the back of the truck to that spot differed by about 30 feet and included going around a corner. In order to spare any one of us from wrenching our backs out, we went 2 to a bale for carrying them to their destination. Worked perfectly because there were four of us big people. Ralen again rolled bales down off the stack from the truck bed. This was the part where I got sweat in my eyes and sore, achy muscles. And darn it, we had to do it twice! But, I have to say, those girls worked! I was impressed and very grateful for the help.

Just to impress upon you readers this was not entirely cruel child labor…we did have a little fun at Brad’s house. Ralen rode in her first golf cart…she would have liked to drive it but Brad’s girlfriend’s son was having none of that.

Ralen taking a ride in the golf cart

There also were the mini-ponies and their babies for us to play with! Brad’s girlfriend Julie raises these cute little critters and she had two foals that were born that spring and summer. The ponies were a bit wild so we had to corral them in a small section of the backyard in order to get close to them.

Momma pony and the two foals

Our target was the little palomino foal, about a month old and just cute as a button! But getting close to her was a real challenge. They are so darn cute that you just want to pick them up and cuddle them, squealing with delight like a pre-teen girl, but that’s about the LAST THING they want to do! Finally after a bit of chasing everyone around, we got Brad to hold Momma pony for us.

Brad holding Momma pony for us

Of course this didn’t slow either of the babies down unfortunately! Our target was still the little palomino foal because she was so small and cute it was like she was a little stuffed animal. A FAST stuffed animal however because all attempts to catch her without her dropping from sheer exhaustion or Momma going nuts, failed. We finally settled on catching the older, cremello foal who was only slightly less difficult to capture. We finally got her in a corner of the fence and she quickly gave in, game over, and let us love on her a bit and stage a few photo opps.

And so, our hay day had its moments of fun as well as the usual sweat, sore backs and muscles and the very occasional whimper of complaint during the two painful offloads. When all was said and done, we had a good-looking, neatly aligned stack of 2 tons of hay. That ought to last a few months before the process needs repeating. In the meantime, since the girls will be off to college with only an occasional visit back here, I’m going to have to carefully plan out the next hay moving foray. I wonder how many 11 year olds I’d need to move a few tons of hay…

On one last note…the child labor wasn’t exactly free…it cost me one full day at the state fair in Salem. Wasn’t too bad, a little hot but I didn’t have sweat in my eyes or an aching back…just a wallet that was a little emptier than when I started out that morning.