Hay Baby!
The Wee Farm just got a buzz cut this afternoon, and the John Deere barber who lives down our country road did an outstanding job! Three times a year we let a farmer neighbor use our back 7 acres to grow and process hay for his cows and horses. Farmer Rick (my husband) and The Goat Girl Gone Cat Crazy (me) stand on our back patio like we’re at the drive-in theater, mesmerized by the whole thing. We stand out there for a whole hour or better watching him roll that tractor up and down the land like it’s the best thing on TV. I mean, really, paint drying would be right under this experience…but there’s something about it that fascinates us, lol.
When we lucked up on purchasing this homey, peaceful place, we didn’t know a thing about farming or what we were going to do with this stretch of land, just that we were crazy happy to look at it. Then I did an interview with the late Bill Cody at WSM radio one morning shortly after moving out here, and he was asking about our Wee Farm and what we were planning on doing with it. Well, I told him we traveled too much to have animals, and I wouldn’t know what to do with farm animals, anyway.
Also, I was afraid of dirt because of the bugs and other things that slither in the grass and weeds, soooo…I was stumped on what we would do except to look at it…and then Bill said the greatest line! He said, If you let the grasses grow tall enough, you can call it hay.” BRILLIANT! Hay! Real, bona fide farm stuff. In the “rookie farmer” mind of me, that made us here on the Wee Farm legitimate! The only thing was, how to make hay, well, the kind that grows outside anyway, lol. I knew enough to leave the land alone and let it grow, but then what?
Well, here in the country, you don’t have to wonder long. I love that folks just drive up in your driveway and talk “farmy” stuff right out of the blue and assume we know what they are talking about. Heck, we try to play along and shake our heads and slap our leg every now and then. One farmer asked if we knew that out this way, we would have to haul our own trash. I didn’t even know how to respond. I had never had to wonder about that in my whole life. Where we had come from in Nashville, trucks would pull up and dump our cans and leave with our trash. The same farmer looked around and said, “Where’s your pickup truck? You’re gonna need one out here.”
AHHHHH, we were gonna have to buy a pickup and figure out where to bring the trash. Just as a side note, we traded my brother my 4-Runner for his pick-up truck and named her Bessie, and Farmer Rick loves hauling our trash…go figure. Also, in those early days, I was hoping we could get a gas line and city water out here. We went to the city hall and talked with the most charming woman. I posed the question to her, asking when we could expect city water and a gas line run out our way, and she politely said “Oh honey, that ain’t happ’nin’ in my lifetime.” Sigh.
After a rude awakening to farm living, I almost dreaded the trucks that would randomly roll down our driveway. This one really nice gentleman farmer pulled in and asked what we wanted to do with this place and being the novice I was, I chirped that I’d love to have some chickens. I mean, how hard could that be, right? The farmer shook his head and said there were opossums that would eat the chickens if we didn’t have a really great coop. He also said we had coyotes, and they love a chicken dinner every now and then, too. Great! After the horror movie playing out in my mind, I just said we would probably write songs out here and call it a day. Then he asked the million-dollar question…would we think about letting him sow our field and have the hay off the land for his cows and horses. WOW! The slow dawning of knowing we would look like a real farm with a real tractor rolling in our field making real hay for real animals was the most romantic thing I had heard since moving into our country place. Why, Farmer Rick couldn’t say yes fast enough. In fact, we rushed to Tractor Supply right after that farmer pulled out of our driveway just to celebrate our soon to be success as Farmers! We sang the theme to Green Acres all the way there and back.
That was almost 11 years ago now, and it’s still surreal when that tractor pulls down the land and starts rolling. The haying doesn’t get old to us, ever. I’m sure we must be the talk of the country diner because that farmer has to be compelled to tell the story of the two grown adults who keep waving at him from our back porch every time he makes another pass. After he mows and lets the grasses sit for a couple of days in the sun, he comes back with some other serious-looking equipment and spins them into round bales, my favorite part! He leaves those important looking bales in the field for a few more days before he loads them on a trailer and hauls them to his farm. We are so goofy, like two kids, my farm darling and me, running down the field snapping pictures when the farmer leaves. Both of us feel like we are giving back to the good earth and to the animals, and our land is working and thriving and making us feel like geniuses. I should have been a farmer years before we bought this place because I feel whole here! Oh, don’t get me wrong, we enjoy growing songs here, too, and they give back to the good earth in their own melodic way. At the end of the day, it’s all about haying it forward.
Until next time…
Donna Ulisse
