Late June, early July was haying season on Waschke Road when I was growing up. The heat dome of the past weekend that everyone is talking about brought haying to mind. It was hot work. One hundred degree temperatures have never been common in our part of Whatcom County, but they were not unheard of either.
Waschke Road is about eight and a half miles from the Salish sea and then a good twenty miles of open water intervenes between the beach and the Southern Gulf Islands off Vancouver Island. That stretch of cool water drops the temperature of the on-shore breeze by a few degrees before it reaches the Waschke farm.
I have always been grateful for those gentle on-shore breezes. This weekend was hot, but I learned real heat in the haymow.
The job eased you in. When haying started, the haymow was a shaded and breezy cavern capped with a high cathedral dome ceiling. But as load after load of hay bales arrived from the fields, the top of the stack approached the cobwebbed rafters.
Tier upon tier of bales rise forty feet up in the dusty air, nearly touching the roof. The high stack blocks the airflow and the sun beating down on the roof turns the little space at the top of the barn into a bake oven as the loaf-like bales of hay come in, piping hot, steeped in sun from the fields.
Up near the roof, the haymow crew begged for gaps between the hay loads, a minute to climb down from the mow, feel the onshore breeze cool sweat-soaked jeans and tee-shirt, and gulp down cold well water from the milk house wash hose. Then, before these luxuries began to inspire resentment, scramble back up the long ladder, into the sweltering oven, and make ready for the next onslaught from the fields.
I couldn’t man a haymow today, but I haven’t forgotten why I loved it when I was sixteen. Oh, love it I did. Loved it because my resilient young body could do it, loved it because it gave me a role on the hay crew appreciated by Dad and the older men, who knew how hard the work was because they had been up in the fiery mow many times themselves.
Later, they would trade the heat and dust of the haymow for the adult worries of haying in a marine climate where rain always lurks off-shore, where a cloudless morning never guarantees a dry afternoon, entering a life in which summer rain always threatened to leach nutrients from hay drying in the field.
When spring and summer were over and the grass was no longer lush in the pasture, the cattle ate the hay and converted dry grass into milk and meat that eventually paid the bills and kept life on Waschke Road prosperous.
But when a summer rain washed the grass’s protein into the soil, winter became harder and longer for the family than any afternoon in a fiery summer hay mow; low milk yields, tiny checks from the co-op dairy, and big bills for expensive feed to bolster the poor hay.
Haymows aren’t used much anymore; today’s equipment is fast and powerful. I can only shake my head at the speed farmers today cut, rake, and bale up hay that is stored away by tractors instead of sweating teenagers.
For the time being, I’ll linger on the pleasure of climbing down from the haymow into the on-shore breezes and forget grownup worries. But if these heat domes make a habit of hanging over us, I hope I never forget those fiery haymows.
It’s been hot. Take care.