Whose Story should We Listen To?
September 24, 2010
This morning the full moon reflects white from the sun while at the same moment the mountain’s snow reflects peach colors from the rising sun. Two massive forms of creation speak two stories of the same light rolling over the eastern horizon. I find it curious and good how the created birds, mountains, wind, and deer can experience the same sun yet have much different experiences.
Hay holds many experiences these days. With rain on and off over the last three weeks everyone is trying to find the right time to cut, dry, bale, and load hay out of the fields. To get hay off a field without any rain has been near impossible. This holds true for us. We did not cut all the fields at once, but left a gap hoping some would be harvested without rain. Didn’t happen. Instead we found ourselves picking up the early cutting hay yesterday, which had caught rain last week, as the sky over the southern ridge spoke of rain. As we loaded one bale after the next onto the flatbed trailer, the clouds deepened and soon there was little doubt we would hear rain soon.
As we backed a full trailer into the barn, rain began to fall. Our hope was a light sprinkle that could easily dry the next day. There rain said a little more than we cared for. This morning, though, I wonder who listened to the same rain and heard a song of joy, or wonderment, or laughter? I imagine grass roots and rain danced yesterday. Perhaps the local mallards in the creek sang along. I wonder if this morning’s relationship between the mountain, moon, and sun call for another hearing of rain. Might be, it is best to put my own story off to the side for a moment and take the time to hear or at least imagine other stories creation might tell of yesterday’s rain.
© David B. Bell 2010
Flowers and Rain
September 19, 2010
Having cut hay the other day and then having rain most days since, I probably should feel unhappy. I cannot say at times I do not. Yet, something about rain this time of year is special. Moderate temperatures, clouds and midst settling into the hollows of the ridge, the sharp line of the ridge against clouds moving high above, makes one settle down for a moment and enjoy the smell of damp earth. Where the grays of midst and clouds, the browns of the ridge, and the golds of grasses don’t get it, then there is the bright flowers of garden and flower beds calling for attention and a moment, a bit of silence, and shear enjoyment.
© David B. Bell 2010
Venus south of Pahto
August 19, 2010
Venus is just to the south of Pahto and even with her peak when I shut down the tractor and finished baling for the evening. Forty bales of Alfalfa and about the same of orchard grass sat in the field in the moonlight as the tractor and baler wound down. Stars, moon, and planets help give a magical feel to the air as I walked from the field to the house. A wonderful way to end the day.
Today, though, with nearly a hundred bales in the field it is time to pick them up and stack them for the winter. Our charity for the month is Noah’s Ark homeless shelter in Wapato. Anyone who would like to help move bales from the field to the stack is welcome to come by (please call first) and help. We will donate $.75 for every bale (the cost of having someone pick up bales) picked up and stacked to Noah’s Ark.
Hay Bales for the Homeless
August 1, 2010
Tomorrow evening we are baling hay. Of course, once the hay is baled someone must pick it up out of the field and stack it. Normally we have someone come to the farm with a bale wagon and mechanically pick up and stack each bale. Great on our backs, but it does cost us money.
Now, here is our incredible offer to you! If we can get a group of folks to the farm Tuesday evening to help load bales out of the field and stack them, then we will donate 75 cents to Noah’s Ark for every bale stacked! (Noah’s Ark is the only homeless shelter in the entire lower valley. Donations are hard to come by these days and it is important to make sure they are around come winter when the temperatures are in the single digits!) That means other than the cost of tractor time, all the money we normally pay someone to ease the strain on our backs will go to the homeless of the lower valley!
So, here’s the deal. We will begin at 6pm Tuesday evening loading bales. Eat well before you come and bring some fruit, drink, desert, etc. We’ll then load bales. After we’re all done we’ll sit in the cool evening breeze, admire our work, congratulate one another on making a donation possible, have some desert and watch the sun set!
We need to make sure we have enough people to make this a go. Email me at dave@justlivingfarm.org and let me know you are coming. If enough folks email by 7pm Monday evening we’re on for Tuesday evening. If not, we will give it another try with the next cutting. In either case, I will let everyone who responds know what is going on with a Tuesday morning email.
I hope you can make it!
What Does Friedrich Nietzsche Know about Baling?
July 22, 2010
I really don’t buy Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” or for that matter the often attributed but actually not Christian text, “God only gives you what you can handle.” It isn’t that these sayings might be helpful to some in times of difficultly. If thinking or believing one might become a better person or are a better person for sojourning days of unavoidable hurt and such belief gets one through painful times, I have a hard time knocking it. My fear is when one dies on the journey; others might choose to believe they just were not strong enough. And the theology that God would choose to make one suffer because one can handle it is questionable at best. However, there is appropriateness to acknowledging difficult situations come up in our lives and sometimes we get hurt—these events seldom make us stronger; but rather than a God giving us hurt as if it were a Christmas gift, a kind and gracious God is in the midst of our hurt helping us live through it.
But then again maybe God has a sense of humor and enjoys nudging us (or maybe it’s just me) a little. I began baling grass hay the other day and let’s say it didn’t go as smoothly as I would like. That’s to say the baler wasn’t baling. One or two bales would land out the back of the baler and then the next two or three would miss a tie and bust when they hit the ground. I’d take the baler in, adjust it, and head out to the field and try again. Only to watch bales come out the back in of the baler and fall apart, again. Now this occurred more than once and after a while, I started feeling like what came out the back end of the baler was the same as what comes out the back end of an animal after digesting the same hay going in the front end. After being taken to the brink of madness (I know, some would say that wasn’t too far of a trip.), the field got itself baled.
Come to think of it though, in hindsight, maybe I’m a little stronger for it! After all, the experience didn’t kill me! Yep, I think due to all that climbing on and off the tractor, walking to the baler, and making adjustments, walking back to the tractor, my legs are stronger! My stamina is buffer! My patience and resolve is tougher more resilient! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all, now, that when I climb into the tractor cab and see baling twine, from all those busted bales, piled next to the seat I will think, “Yep, I am fortunate! God didn’t give me any more than I could handle!” Then again, maybe God just wants me to talk a little more with my neighbors and learn how to bale grass!
Morning Rake
July 3, 2010
Walking out the door in the early morning to rake hay with the morning dew has a number of upsides. There is something about heading out of the house while others are sleeping. There is comfort in knowing there is peace in the cool morning. As hay winds itself off the end of the rake with a rousing sunrise over the northeast ridge one can only wish, maybe even pray, the sleep of all creation could be as peaceful as it is on a July morning in the landscape of this valley.
© David B. Bell 2010
Second Cutting of Alfalfa
June 27, 2010
The alfalfa is now down. The grass field will go a little longer before we cut it for hay. The forecasted temperature is for seventies and eighties this week, so the hay should dry down fine. If temperatures and wind stay as forecasted baling should begin mid to late week.
© David B. Bell 2010
When does the Back trump Community?
June 1, 2010
Our neighbor came by late Saturday afternoon with his bale wagon and picked up the last of hay in
the field. Timing worked out well. Rain returned Sunday morning after a few days of wind and partial sun. We’ll now list the hay in the stack on Craigslist as feeder hay. The first inch or so of the bales weathered edge have mostly dried out, but remain damp enough not to have them graded (as far as we’re concerned) better than feeder quality. Dropping the quality of a bale isn’t easy because most of the bale is good hay. Yet, we figure the bottom line is, some animals do not do well picking around that one to ten percent that is not helpful to their health.
Earlier Saturday afternoon, before our neighbor came, Belinda and I went through the field and loaded the hay bales we thought would be troublesome for the bale wagon, onto our flatbed trailer. Until last year, this work was typical. Someone drives the tractor while others walk along and load hay. Sometimes just family loaded hay and sometimes friends and neighbors came by and helped. Now though, Belinda and I load the troublesome bales and our neighbor does the rest.
There is an upside and a downside to loading by mechanical means. An upside, the back feels much better the next morning! Hanging out with our neighbor for a while is also an upside. The downside is we no longer have a bunch of neighbors show up all at once. There is a sadness to this, because when everyone showed up it meant folk became community through working and then eating together after the hay was put up. There is also a loss because new stories are not begun and old stories are not told.
Does the upside outweigh the downside? Truthfully, sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. What I believe is also true, is if we are to keep using a bale wagon, we need to find another way to keep connected and to build community, with old friends, new friends, and neighbors alike.
© David B. Bell 2010
Proverbs raining Understanding, Grace, and Hay
May 29, 1020
On and off, we’ve had a fair amount of rain since Wednesday. As rain often is this time of year, it has benefited some and not others. Some without benefit are those who have cut hay or who have baled but the bales remain in the fields. Questions arise for those folk. Is it going to rain too much? Will the sun come out and stay out? Will the wind come and dry the hay? Will the undersides of bales mold?
I grew up in southern California. The landscape of my youth was full of canyons. The drainages, we called washes, were sand and gravel. Over the ages these washes wandered back and forth creating canyon floors of, yep, sand and gravel. From sand wash floor canyon forming ridges raised, fingering their way up to the mountains. This is a dry and arid land; a land where rain came seldom and first drops often vanished upon touching the ground. Growing up in arid canyon’s meant rain became important to me. More often than not, rain was something good. Waking in the morning hearing water drip from roof eave was comforting, and exciting.
The rains of the last week, have me looking around and wondering what it means for others who have hay on the ground. How do they feel? What does it mean emotionally? mentally? spiritually?
Yet, I imagine my thoughts are as much about me as they are about my neighbor. Who am I emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, when the rain isn’t lived out as my childhood memories would have it?
Ancient proverbial writings are not a bad place to turn to in times of wondering. Hebrew teachers living long before the Christian era used these writings and stories to teach their young folks basic stuff like how do we get along with one another, with the environment, and with ourselves? Like today, the teachers of Proverbs understood individuals, communities, and nation states did not always live up to the ethic principles they set for themselves, and as a result, the wellbeing of people and of creation were lacking.
The writings of Proverbs, though, strove for something more than ethics. Proverbs often strived to awaken that something residing deeply within ourselves that hungers for perfect relationship with the created universe. These writings awaken us to the possibility that if the people of creation could grasp, could fasten onto a moment of pure understanding, a foundational shift in all of creation—bringing forth exhilarated oneness, is within reach.
The Proverbs keep on hanging-on, through the centuries, for the day, for the moment, when all that is explodes with a gladness, a delight, a blissfulness that makes creation and Creator one forever.
Imagine humanity, earth and sky, fire and water, wind and silence, plant and animal, rock and star becoming fully, intentionally, one. Somewhere in this imagination, somewhere in believing the realm of all good is attainable, do we begin to hear proverbial poetry speaking to the hope and knowable created goodness flowing in and through and around all we are in the midst of all creation.
Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
(Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31)
The ancient proverbial writings are not the cure for angst when clouds rise up over the ridge and drops of water fall one after another into windrowed hay fields. Yet the wisdom of an ancient people reminds us, reminds me, the firm skies above and the fountains of the deep are not a transgression upon us, but simply us. There is perfectness where we perceive imperfectness. Not to say everything happens for a reason, that is far too simplistic. Rather, there is the unexplainable, that which is mystery, flowing in and through and around us giving us life, relationship, and connectedness. If we open ourselves to that which cannot be taught, only perceived, then we find our sister, our brother, in the next cloud folding over the ridge.
© David B. Bell 2010
Haying and Kittens
May 26, 2010
We stack most of our hay on a pad south of the house. About a quarter acre in size, the hay gets stacked on the pad during the haying season and then tarped before the fall rains. Our plan was when the last of this year’s hay was removed from the pad we would regrade the pad and put down gravel. Hopefully, making it both easier to drive in and out and load hay during the winter and keeping the bottom bales cleaner and dryer. The plan, I think, was a good one. There was only one hitch.
With about six tons of last year’s hay left, we were loading a ton of hay when we came to a nest of kittens. Their eyes were still shut, so we took hay from around them and left them alone. When the next day rolled around and we checked on them, we found their mamma had moved them. Then about a week later while loading the last ton of the stack, we ran into them again. Their eyes were open and they were staring to walk. This time, we threw a few bales of hay in the horse trailer, place the kittens in the middle of the hay, and hoped mamma would find them. Sure enough, by the next morning mamma had moved the kittens to the other end of the horse trailer. This worked pretty well until we regraded the hay pad.
We wanted to make the hay pad a little larger this year. To do so meant that if we left the trailer where it was it would sit in the middle of pad. Question was, move the trailer and maybe have mamma not come back or leave it where it was? We left it where it was and graded around it.
A few days later, a strong mewing came from horse trailer. Figuring this was normal we walked on by. Come the next day though, mewing still came from the trailer, only a bit stronger. After taking a look, there were no kittens and no mamma, save this one. Grading must have been the last straw for the mamma cat. She had moved the kittens somewhere else, but missed this one.
Today we move the trailer. In the next day or so, we will gravel the hay pad. The kitten? Well, it lives inside now. Full belly, walking around tentatively, and mewing with what we think is satisfaction. Reckon it can’t hurt to have another barn cat.
© David B. Bell 2010
Raking with Hope
May 19, 2010
We had good wind all last evening and night. I thought the wind might have taken up the moisture in the hay from the day before. So, I went ahead and tried raking the outside rows of the field. I would say ninety percent of the moisture is gone. However, the grass can use another good day of drying and a day wouldn’t hurt the alfalfa. The National Weather Service is now saying a strong and fast moving cold front is coming through this evening, bringing with it very strong winds and scattered showers and thunderstorms. I’ll look forward to the wind and hope the scattered showers scatter somewhere else!
© David B. Bell 2010
Planning, Rain, and stuff that Matters
May 18, 2010
Rain isn’t what I hoped for today. Considered generationally, there are folk in my past who might think me a little funny knowing I’d rather not have rain. My grandfather farmed the windy arid panhandle of Texas. In those days, sixty to ninety years ago, if one was to farm in that landscape it was dryland farming. Rain mattered. You took it when you could get it. Certainly, rain could come at the wrong time, just as harvest began for instance, but more times than not, folks welcomed rain. Harvest rain, though, is where I’m at today.
Hay has been cut and down and drying for nearly a week now. I figured another few days and then baling. After last night and then this morning’s continuing rain, chances are baling will not happen until the first of next week. I am hoping this is neither good nor bad, but rather a moment to live out one more part of life that can neither be scheduled nor manipulated to what I prefer.
I never really knew my dryland grandfather. I imagine knowing or not knowing my grandfather could not have been planned anymore than I could plan for rain ten days out with absolute certainty. And maybe the unplanning of life is where life becomes full. The idea goes against business and political practices where planning for return-on-invest and votes become mathematical constructs. Life, though, might be best lived when the unplanned is experienced as soulful richness when blended with the planned. Where planning gives health and wellbeing by having a full pantry or root cellar and unplanning allows one to lift their head to the sky, open their mouth, and taste the remembrance of an ancestor.
© David B. Bell 2010
Omen of a Mountains Kippah
May 11, 2010
No clouds envelop Pahto this morning. The Cascade Range, from Toppenish Ridge in the south to beyond Ahtanum in the north, is clear with white peaks and ridges against a blue sky. One long and drawn out cloud floats between the farm and the range. Pahto has a cap of a cloud hovering above it—a mountains Kippah, promising more than can be seen.
How long will we have clear skies and should the first cutting of alfalfa begin today? We need at least ten days of good clear weather between cutting and baling and the mountains Kippah seems a good omen. That and online weather forecasts keep the chance of rain low during the next ten days. The alfalfa could grow longer and we could wait for a better forecast, but weeds are on the far end of their bloom. Since we don’t use herbicides in the hay fields, we try to cut at the end of bloom and before seeds ripen, with the hope weed seeds lessen with each cutting. Since weed going to seed and alfalfa reaching its full tonnage seldom coincide in the spring, we’re thinking of cutting in favor of fewer seeds than greater tonnage.
Cutting depends on the tractor and swather though. With both pieces of equipment being new to us this season, I don’t know exactly what to expect other than the unexpected. Air and hydraulic filters were replaced in the JD 4230 tractor yesterday. Both the tractor and swather were greased and oiled. The hydraulic reservoirs on each need filling this morning.
Sun, blue sky, and a Kippah to remind there is much good, let’s see where that takes us today.
© David B. Bell 2010
