Laddy Reckons Himself a Farmer

Things have been going all right this weekend. I've been working all weekend, and have accomplished a lot, but it looks like it has all been wasted.

I left Toronto right after work. I picked up my Pontiac G6 from the car rental place at Union Station and then made it to my Dad's house in 3 hours and 6 minutes. It was after 1:00 am so I went to bed.

I was up at 9:30 and in the field by 9:45. I started cutting hay and finished one of the small fields without incident. I headed over to the next field and for some reason, the knives wouldn't move. The PTO was working but I couldn't figure out why the cutting bar wasn't working. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to increase the belt pressure. I did, and was away. I cut the field, and headed off to number three.

The third one was a royal pain. The haybine kept getting plugged up and I had to struggle to get it cleaned out. It happened about 4 times and each occasion ate up about 30 minutes. Eventually I got the field finished. By the time I got up to the house again, it was 7:44pm.

I went for a 16.5 km run and then had some dinner and watched tv. My Dad has a satellite tv and so I watched Closer and I went to bed.

I was happy to wake up to bright sunshine. With a little bit of good weather, the hay would dry and be ready to go tomorrow or Tuesday. I decided to be daring and cut the last two fields. I left the house at 8:25am.

There was no problem cutting this morning because everything was nice and dry. It went very smoothly and I was back at the house at 12:22pm. I had some lunch and watched the British Open.

I headed back outside to pick up the bales of hay from the fields. There were about 75 bales that needed to be taken off of the fields and stacked for the winter. I did as much as I could before I ran out of rope (in order to tie doen the tarps). I drove into town, got a few groceries and then went to Canadian Tire to buy some rope. When I got back home, I finished collecting the bales and stacked them into a pile.

I had some dinner and then went back out to finish. I ran tarps up six stacks of hay and tied them all down. They will be good for the winter and the job is finished. The one stack will need to have more bales added to it, but five stacks are tucked in and ready for the snow. That means that all the hay that we've made so far this year is cleaned up and ready. That's a nice feeling.

The problem now is weather. There is now five fields of hay on the ground. It dried for most of yesterday and all day today, but right now it's raining. That's very very bad news since rain ruins dried hay. I'm hoping that it doesn't rain too much and that the damage is minimal. I'm also hoping that it will be nice enough tomorrow to finish drying the hay so that I can get it all finished tomorrow afternoon. It will mean having to work like a madman, but it will be worth it if I can put the bastard to bed.

I guess I'm an idiot for listening to the weather forcasters because the 28 degree sunny day that they predicted for tomorrow has now been changed to an 80% chance of rain. That means that the hay won't get a chance to dry, and I won't be able to bale it until dries. With the predicted cloud and scattered showers until Friday, I will have probably accomplished nothing more than ruining five fields of hay and basically wasting an entire weekend.

I suppose that that's the life of the farmer. I'm calling it quits though. I would stay until Tuesday and get it finished if the weather was supposed to be good, but since it's unlikely, if not imposible for the hay to dry tomorrow. I will probably just throw in the towel and head home. What a waste. It seems that that's what my live has become these days. Wasted time, wasted energy, wasted talents, and wasted opportunities. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. I feel a little gnawed right now.