Northern Farmer

I’ve never seen so much hay in my entire life as this years first crop, and to think we didn’t have hardly any moister this year at all except for one slow four inch rain the end of April or so. Even the winter was open again, hardly any snow at all. It’s dry and dusty here but the hay sure did decide to give that one big crop. That’s what I’ve been up to the past few days, making hay. We’re off to a good start with a couple hundred practice bales rolled up and more hay cut, with more to cut tomorrow.

Today when I was cutting hay it was like being in some high class zoo, man, were there animals and birds running around that field. Seen two pheasant roosters fighting, stopped the tractor and watched from a few feet away. They were so intent on the fight they could care less about a big tractor almost on top of them. Finally one of the must have broke concentration and figured that big green thing almost on top of them should be something a smart pheasant runs away from. They ran a couple hundred yards away and resumed the fighting. Must be a slow pheasant day.

Five rounds later I was nodding off to sleep driving the tractor. Head bobbing, eyelids like lead, working off a big noon dinner you know and I almost jumped out of the seat when a big old hen turkey exploded right in front of the haybine. It took me a few seconds to wake myself up and by that time that big old thing flew a quarter mile to the neighbor’s fence line. By the time I was half way done making the next round my mind was waking up and I figured I better check for a turkey nest and see if I could find any eggs. Because that hen turkey will never set on them eggs no more after the tall hay was cut. Besides we still had to rake it and bale it in the next couple days. So when I got back to the spot where she took off from I got off the tractor and started snooping around and yes sir, found eight good eggs and two broken ones. Now, I’m three quarters of a mile from home, but I decided what the heck, I’ll get the job done today easy, so I dug my vest out from behind the seat in the tractor cab, it has deep pockets and put the eggs gently in there. Made it home safely without damaging the eggs and at this moment I’m in the wild turkey hatching business here in my office, with the incubator once again plugged in and cookin. I’m already planning the Thanksgiving meal, eh.

One of these days I’m almost expecting the Good Lord to give me the blueprints for the ark that Noah built with the way the critters are gathering here. The other day, when I wasn’t home, I was in the field, some folks from a town on the Mississippi River dropped in and dropped off a baby Canadian Honker goose. His name is Gilbert for anyone interested. I’ll admit that he(?) has a great personality, follows a person everywhere eating dandelion leaves. And ten steps later the dandelion leaves are a rich manure deposited everywhere. Thinks he’s a person too. Them folks must have got him young. I have Gilbert earmarked for a Christmas meal, so now my holiday meals are pretty well figured out. Things have a way of working out on the farm.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.