Makin' Hay while the sun 'shone'...

Yes, it's in past tense. Do you need to ask why? Ok, I'll tell you anyway. It's been raining and raining here. Where is summer??? This is ridiculous! Anyway, we are once again heading into a long season of haying. Rob took the May long weekend to cut his first batch of hay down. Now, we're not big time prairie farmers and don't pretend to be. We don't cut hectares of hay and sit in tractors for 24 hours solid. BUT, hubby does: worry about weather and constantly watch the weather network website, work like crazy to get it all done in a week before it rains again, wreck equipment because of hills and valleys, rocks and stumps instead of nice flat land, deal with customers who aren't happy, underpaid and overworked, well...you get the picture.

Despite all of this, haying is one of the parts of farming that we love the most. It is one of the craziest and most demanding parts of his job, but it brings him so much joy! For me it used to mean working with hubby, I would be on one tractor tedding the hay while he followed behind raking. I would drive the truck while we loaded bales, but now it means being the full time parent for days on end, delivering meals to my hungry man, not complaining about the long hours. Baking his favorite treats, delivering LOTS of cold, icy pop to keep his spirits up. And most of all, being supportive to Rob, teaching the kids to appreciate Daddy's hard work, and above all else, praying for safety. We will do this crazy cycle a few more times yet this summer to get it all done.

On the May Long Weekend he got all his hay cut, tedded, raked and dried, ready to be baled up into round bales by our friend George. We were waiting for George to come that evening (George does work around the clock) and so we fired up the bbq for a special supper I had prepared. Bro Ken was coming over for his usual Monday night feed and we had just started to relax and anticipate a nice evening together when....George pulled up...hours ahead of time. Hubby dropped the bbq lighter and ran for the fields, needing to rake a few more rows of hay. Well....there goes that. So, Kenny stepped up to the bbq, cooked the meat, helped me get the kids all fed and helped clean up. What a sweetie. After we were all done we took the kids for a walk out to the field (another favorite part of haying) and wandered through the fields while watching Daddy & George. It ended up being a great evening. So...that's a taste of what's going on over here. The clouds lifted yesterday with sunny skies in the forecast so.... here we go again.