This morning, looking out over brown fields and drizzle from leaden skies, my thoughts ran to climbing up the long wooden ladder to the top of the haymow to throw down hay. Good thoughts for the first week in December, the beginning of Advent, the ascent from the deep pit of a woeful world to the birth of new life.
Throwing down hay is a symbol for winter that begins long before the short days of December. Bales of hay stacked high in the barn are the remains of summer. On the hottest days of the year, farm families, their neighbors, and distant friends gathered to mow down the grass that springs up in the gentle spring rains and mild early summer sun. The crew exposes the cut blades to the piercing mid-summer sun, then stashes away the sun’s rays absorbed in the dry hay into the high loft of the barn. Mortally hard scorching work.
Haying was the first harvest on the farm. The second harvest came when the green fields of wheat, oats, and barley turned into seas of white and gold in September. Unlike haying, which began in late June and trailed into August, cutting and thrashing small grain took only a day or two. Baling up the straw into bedding for the cows was only another day– golden straw bales are light and easy to handle compared to hay.
The third harvest was potatoes in late September and early October. We only raised a few acres of potatoes, enough to supply ourselves, our friends, relatives, and a few small grocery stores on Dad’s weekly farm produce route.
Digging and picking was a one or two day gathering of friends and neighbors. No sweating under the summer sun. By potato digging time, the weather was cool and we wore jackets and boots. Some wore gloves to protect their hands, but soaking mud-caked gloves did not warm fingers. No matter: true warmth comes from the heart.
When all the potatoes were stored in the basement under the farm house or pits under redcedar boughs that nearly touched the ground in the woods, harvest was over and winter began.
The barn in December was not the hot place it was during summer haying. The hay mow was freezing in the pre-dawn; a single light bulb cast a weak yellow light; cold stung and stiffened fingers on the long ascent into the mow.
Throwing down hay was more than shoving fifty pound bales over the edge to fall thirty or forty feet to the deck below. The bales had to be tossed carefully. If they did not land squarely, the twine holding them together broke, imposing two or three times the work, picking up the loose hay with a pitch fork and carrying it in to the milking barn where the cows were moving impatiently, nervous low sighs and belches rising from empty stomachs.
A well thrown hay bale soared in glory, sailing in a smooth arc from the perilous edge of the stack, a brave swoosshhh downward, and a satisfying thwummppp when it hit the deck below. Repeat that performance four times, scramble down the ladder to spread the hay in the cows’ mangers in the milking barn, and, in December, wait another hour for sunrise and its daily winter blessing.