Today we saw one of our long-laid dreams come to fruition. We actually put up hay from our own pasture field!
But let me go back a bit since I have not been taking the time to blog lately. It was an exciting moment on June 15th when we closed on the property 5 miles down the road from Pure Water Hollow. This property had been up for sale since early spring, and we first seriously began considering purchasing it back in April. After looking it over several times and counting up the cost, we decided that we could not pass it up.
It has a nice old 2 story house on the property and about 15 acres of mountain behind the house. On the other side of the road from the house and mountain is approximately another 14 acres containing a small barn, some level land that needs to be cleared, a large area of river bank, and an acre or two of a hay field. It is this part of the property that we are naming Pure Water Pastures, which is a name that Simon came up with. I was calling it Pure Water Bottoms, but Pure Water Pastures sounds much nicer, doesn't it?
For quite some time we had seen the need to have some flat land where we could raise our own animal food. Pure Water Hollow is a fantastic piece of land, but it has always been missing that nice, large piece of flat land. I never wanted to trade my hollow and mountain sides and ridges for a coulple acres of flat bottom land, but if we could just add some flat land to what we already owned, we knew we would be set up! Now that potential has arrived!
Now, on to some pictures that recorded this momentous event in Our Life at Pure Water Hollow! Here you can see some of the field with the tractor that was used to mow it. It was a 1957 International 200 tractor:
The tractor does not belong to me (sad face), but belongs to the Younce's who live across the river. I was so glad that they were able to help us out! Here is Neil on the tractor cutting the hay. This was on Thursday, June 30th:
And then today, July 2nd, the hay became square bales and was ready for a Purewater crew to pick up and get it into the barn. It was a hot 90 degree day, and the humidity was high. It was a bit overcast and we were afraid we might get some rain before we got the hay up into the barn. Our fears of a shower proved to be unfounded, however, as it continued to just be hot and sticky all afternoon with no rain. After all the bales were in the barn, I wouldn't have minded if God had allowed a nice cloud burst to cool off 3 hot field hands!
Here we are ready to start. We took the sides off of our 97 Dodge with the 12 foot dump bed. It made a perfect flat bed hay-hauler! You can see that the Younces were still baling the hay as Matthew and I threw the bales onto the truck for Christina to stack.
I've gotten used to Matthew working so hard, and he did today also. When I checked out the pictures I took, however, I discovered that I took more of Christina. She is always a hard worker, too, but I guess I just can't get used to the idea that such a pretty and petite girl could be such a big worker! She stacked the truck all by herself as we threw the bales up to her. Some of those bales weigh a good bit, too!
Here is one of Matthew in the driver's seat. He drove the truck all around the field to get it closer to the bales. If I had to do that, I would have had a hard time getting in and out of the truck so much! I'm sure Matthew still threw more bales of hay up to the truck than I did, even with him driving!
We only put 59 bales of hay on the truck on the first pick up, but we could have loaded many more. The barn is just above the field, so there was no need to work ourselves too hard. Since we had never done this before, Christina was ready in case the load shifted going up the hill. There was no problem at all, though. Going up the lane to the barn you can get a glimpse of the house that is on the other side of the road. That part of the house you can see was built around 1890!
Here is another one of Christina up at the barn. Can you believe she is still that pretty after working on a hay truck on a 90 degree afternoon for over an hour at that point? After a bit of a break that we all took, Christina would next drop all that hay off the truck for me and Matthew to put into the barn.
You can get an idea of the barn in this picture. It is not very big, but I like that the hay loft is on the same level with the road. So all we had to do was pull the truck up and put the hay directly into the barn loft without throwing it up so high like our barns up in Pure Water Hollow.
Putting the hay into the barn proved to be much more work than picking it up out of the field, and we took several breaks moving the hay. I took a couple of pictures in between the unloading of the hay.
I was fairly worn out after that first 59 bales of hay, I'm sorry to say. I'm not sure how many hundreds of bales of hay I used to put up in an afternoon when I was a teenager, but it was always several large wagon-fulls! It never affected me much back when I was 15, 16 and 17. I have come to a startling revelation that I am not able to do as much work now at 44 and 120 pounds heavier, compared to when I was 17! Time does have a way of catching up with a man...
But, our field only yielded 33 more bales of hay, so the second truck load wasn't nearly as strenuous on us. I was pleased that we were able to get 92 bales of hay from our new field! The fellows that baled it for us thought we could easily double that number if we cleared the rest of the flat land that has grown up and sow it with seed. Perhaps someday!
I'll end this post with a few pictures of the father and daughter ready to ride the hay truck driven by the son up to the barn to unload these last bales of hay. God sure has been good to me!
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