Hauling The Hay

What do you do when your daughter comes home from her job with a head cold and you know she has plans to move three bales of hay weighing up to eighty pounds each and two fifty pound bags of animal feed and the hauling cart has a crack in it? Oh, yeah, and the weather is predicted to be heavy rain all day. Of course, if you are like me, you help out.

I knew my daughter. If she decided the best thing to do was to move that hay, nothing would stop her, not a sore throat, not a bad cough and especially not a head cold. So, helping her was better than trying to convince her to wait a day. Hopefully, I could take some of the load off her so she would not end up completely exhausted.

The destination for the feed was up the road in an out of the way pasture. A crack in the hauling cart was a detriment to moving the hay. Emily had previously worked with that cart, but found that she was constantly fighting with it. She would try to stay on the path, and the cart would try to hurl her and the hay down the slope prior to reaching the stable. She had to continually wrest it back on the path. That was a sure route to exhaustion. And, I did not relish fighting a heavy cart just to move still heavier hay. I have always been impressed with how strong Emily has got to be. She hauls those eighty pound bales on a biweekly basis. It’s tiring work and all for the benefit of a horse and two goats. I’ve moved some heavy things in my day, but I am no match for Emily’s strength.

We used a large polyester tarp and some lightweight rope to move the hay and feed. There was about one half mile to travel from the car to the stable. Part of the trip involved walking through a steeply sloped meadow along a narrow trail and then, most challenging of all, through a sloping, sloppy area that became a river of mud on a rainy day.

The sloping area was not previously the challenge it was now. Emily’s new horse Fabio changed all that. Fabio loved to race around the meadow and then slide his way home to the stable across the slope. He was like a baseball player sliding into home plate, except Fabio stayed on his feet. He had a curiously surprised look on his face for those last few feet, like he didn’t expect to slide but somehow it happened every time! It was funny to watch him. His sliding turned that slope into a slick hill.

It was quite the traverse. We were grateful for sturdy, waterproof boots. Hauling by tarp was a new method for Emily and it took a bit of maneuvering to wrap the hay bales in the tarp and keep them dry during the trip down.

The first two bales were not too difficult to pull and blessedly, the meadow had been mowed the previous summer so there was not any stubble to catch on the underside. The major ick factor was walking through the horse manure. Emily had previously owned a horse, Lacey, who had been very particular where she chose to “leave her business”. But Lacey has died (see previous post in October 2014 “A Tribute to Lacey”). Emily now had a younger gelding (which means fixed male horse for us horse novices – like me!), Fabio. Fabio had no such particularities. He seemed to choose wherever he was standing at the moment, except he did avoid the path, and for that, we were grateful.

The muddy patch near the stable was another matter. This was where we found the most manure leavings scattered everywhere, so that area created a serious impediment to getting the hay to its destination. Mud in our area had a lot of clay in it which, as you may know, created a slicker surface, easier to slide and fall in. It became a little tricky getting down that slope and around the fence to the stable area, especially today with the driving rain flowing in sheets from the sky. The driving rain, the claylike mud, the slope where Fabio slide and the manure all were factors that labeled this spot a danger zone. I was mentally prepared to slip, but I came through unscathed. What a relief!

We got the hay unloaded and lifted into place in the storage area. Then, back up to the car to get the fifty pound bags and the last bale, rain still blowing into our faces, soaking everything else. It was a rough trek.

An interesting thing happened on our way back, though. My daughter began to talk about what we had to be thankful for. And, that changed everything about that day.

We were still wet and tired. The rain still fell heavily across our backs, faces and legs soaking us to the skin and we still had another load ahead of us. But it mattered less because of our focus.

“I’m glad it’s not hotter out,” she said, “Or, we would be really sweaty right now.”

“I’m glad it’s not colder now, or icy,” I countered. “Yeah”, she replied, “because we might be having ice pellets hitting our faces, instead of just raindrops!”

“We only have one more load to go.” I said. “Yes, we are halfway there,” she replied.

Suddenly our tiring adventure had turned into an epiphany of praise to God. We were no longer concentrating on getting this over with. Instead, we were focusing on the good things in the midst of this hard task.

The second load was still there to be done and it was still a big challenge. But we were okay. We were able to find blessing in the middle of the mud.