making hay when the sun shines

       my brothers all had grown older and left the farm to work in the city as soon as they were old enough. having felt that working on the farm doesn't pay, and besides you had to put up with dad. dad was ok as long as everything went ok and in fact he could be quite amusing at times and at best he was still dad. now grandpa was different . maybe it was the generational difference but in my seventeenth year me and grandpa spent what was to be one of my greatest summers i ever had working with him. 

      it was nothing for him and i to put up three to four hundred bales / day of hay and then grab a hoe and head out to cornfield in the glaring sun to take a batch of thistles. he would ride the tractor and bale the hay while i stacked in he wagon .  we would plod along task after task all summer long . grandpa wasn't fast but he was relentless as he would pick one bale up and discharge it up the bale elevator to me in the mow , where i would stack the bales to allow us to get more hay in the barns. at the time we were share cropping on 3 farms and taking care of our own 2 . we would build fence one day then head out to a livestock sale the next. Sundays would be spent relaxing . and grandma or mom would see to a large dinner and plenty to drink by all who helped . but as my brothers left the farm ther was always more on the table than ny could eat. 

        there was times the stubborn plodding of grandpa at a task like unloading hay in a hot barn would make me speak my mind , and tell him  enough , he had beat me . lets take a break . but soon we were back at work toiling on as never before. working off the heat of anger between us. we had put up more hay with just the 2 of us than we ever did with all my brothers home. i had worked harder with grandpa than i ever did with my brothers. he had just retired from the u.s.government as a field supervisor and was ready to start farming full time and enjoy his retirement doing what he always wanted to do. he and grandma had acquired 2 farms and one is the one i live on now him and grandma had bought and paid for in 1942 in the midst of the war effort. at the time all their was here was a log cabin dating back to the early 1800's and grandpa and grandma refurbished it , and dug out the basement by hand as well as expanded it to include a kitchen and dining room and additional bedrooms. this was my home growing up. 

        after he had done this he also bought another farm in 1955 , that sits below mineral city and just above dover dam , and it has 128 acres and better fields for producing crops. this place also required extensive remodeling as the house needed work to modernize, and the barn had to be moved. these things grandpa did alone many times without help in the same plodding way. he was a relentless worker having achieved most of what he had set out to do , and most of all provide for his family. grandpa did get help many times to accomplish things such as moving the barn , an experienced house mover moved the barn but grandpa and my cousin george had laid up the new foundation. 

       some days , you would almost want to give up trying to keep up with this man and i remember this one day in particular when it had been exceptionally hot and  muggy, we had busted our butts trying to get the last of the raked hay baled and had just slid the last wagon under the door of the barn as the bales were starting to get rained on and decided to just let this wagon sit.this was a distant neighbors barn and it was huge . we had thousands of bales of hay in here and the smell of the dried hay was intoxicating , as it smelled of dried blossoms and in the darkness of the now dim barn as the rian pounded on the tin roof and at times made it hard to speak , grandpa talked of old days as he lay back on bales and reminisced of old days of teams of horse . 

         he would point to the ceiling and mention the hay trolley and describe how they would use a hay fork to bring in loose hay off a wagon and place it in the mow. a feat that usually took several men at the time. and how they would all go to the field and load hay with pitch forks or a hay loader onto wagons pulled by teams of horse. this storytelling would go on that day , but as it did the words became more sparse and slurred as i looked over at him and saw this gentile giant of a man drift off to sleep. and as much as i wanted him to finish . i let him drift off . knowing he full well deserved that needed sleep then. as one other old farmer i heard of had saying , and that was ' you know what you do when it rains? let it rain." - this was told to me by jackie turner an old friend of mine and it appropriately states where we were that day. grandpa only lived that summer and things changed and life moves on but i will never forget him laying there on that stack of bales as i got up and wandered to the door . and watched the rain come down out side and let it rain.