Morphine! I need morphine. Tylenol and Aleve just are'nt cutting it. Don't get me started on hydrocodone. Sure it dulls pain but then I can't sleep at night. What's wrong with good old-fashioned opiates anyway? They've worked for thousands of years and they'll work today.
No, I haven't been in a car crash or suffered an unintential amputation from a chain saw. This is the result of putting up the first cutting of hay. Roughly 520 bales of slightly overaged grass- alfalfa mix that will carry me through the winter and then some. The bales are roughly twice the weight of the ones in the past. My previous hay balerperson found himself partially paralysed after a surprise diabetes episode. No, diabetes doesn't nomally cause paralysis but hitting the edge of the table on the way down can be devastating. He's up and walking with use of his hands now but he won't be farming this year. The haymaker that baled for me this year has a newer, more powerfull baler that packs them tighter. That takes up less space but makes the bale stacking a lot more work.
I had a 4 man crew to help. Well, not exactly. My cousin brought his 2 daughters and a girl cousin out and we got to work. Teenage girls CAN work and work well. There was some pouting and early exhaustion but less than with some boys. I had my share of stoppages as well. When it's 94 degrees and no breeze, you're lifting 65lb. bales one after another and it goes on and on, you have to sit down once in a while. The balewagon was dropping 160 bales at a time and we couldn't keep up. The balewagon was shuttling between our farm and another to make best use of his time.
Let me take time to praise whoever invented the bale elevator.It saves an incredible amount of work turning a long exhausting painful job into a quick exhausting painful job. Technically, what I have is an ear corn elevator but it works well with hay bales.
After we finished, we had a meal. I've never seen watermelon disappear so fast.
In other news, we're going to have another ewe and lamb in the Babyland area of the fair again. The ewes lambed late this year and I wasn't sure we'd have any. We'll have some really small lambs to choose from.
The garden is a month behind but catching up. It's really hard to keep the weeds down. I only got about half of my garden planted. I'm trying to do weed suppression and get ready for a winter garden. Just to be clear, a winter garden is not expected to produce all through the winter. What you do is plant crops that grow well in the colder days of fall. Cabbage and other cole crops, turnips, radishes and greens can be planted as seed in August and be harvested before frost. It worked last year so I'll try it again.
With the wet spring, I lost any chance to get any normal crops out. I plan on trying to plant some winter wheat. Maybe I can do better next year.
I'm enclosing picture of the hay, the magnificent elevator and my weedy garden. I have recovered somewhat. A meal of tomato-dill soup, Fleur Verte cheese with crackers and a bit of fresh fig did wonders for me. Oh Woe, the life of the poor farmer.
