(no subject)
Today has been the most rewardingly grueling day.
Up at the mostly arbitrary time of 5:41 and off to chores, where the cow kicked over the bucket and the chickens shat on my boots. After breakfast I played some touchy-feely folk music for the usual sunday service held on the Neck, then fell into a drooling slumber in the grass on the quad.
We got the call to attend a bailing, so I packed into a truck with my diabetic, liberal-arts educated co-farmer Brad and my teenage, bald-headed co-farmer Lilly. We were greeted at our destination by a wriggling little haymutt, tongue lapping at my chickenshit boots, and a pair of turkey-necked, beet-knuckled Mainers with gleaming buttcracks and twinlike grey stubble.
The others arrived and we all sat in the shade of a row of old pickups drinking lemonade while the bailer's son, glistening with machismo under hayfilthy jeans and a dirty straw hat, ran the hay tetter through the field once over.
Then the machine broke and the bailer, asscheeks like a pair of harvest moons, pun noted, set to work fixing it. His lobsterhued wife handed him lugnuts and wrenches with exasperated sighs as he cursed under the growling twine-spool.
By the time we started to load the bails, the day had begun to wane. Preempting the hayflecks that threatened to chaffe our nipples, Lilly and I removed our bras, plopped them next to Brad in the driver's seat of the Ford, and began to lug the forty-pound bails, titties afly.
We loaded bails 'till seven, unloaded 'till eight, and deliberated 'till eight-thirty over whether or not we should risk accepting damp bails for the second load. [PSA: Wet hay is prime real-estate for bacteria (see composting), and if left unattended, can become so hot that it actually combusts and lights all of your other hay, and subsequently your barn, on fire. We decided to forgo the damp bails.]
When we got back to the Neck for the evening, Brad's wife Emily had pizza and root beer waiting for us, so we all took off our haystuffed shoes and ate like slumpy ragdolls in Brad's living room while his seven-year-old nephew repeated the phrase "rip roarin' rootin' tootin'" in various contexts.
And now I'm here. And I'm ready to go to bed. And I'm ready to wake up at 5:41 again tomorrow, because that's what my alarm is set to, and that's how I like it. Glory, I love this place.
Up at the mostly arbitrary time of 5:41 and off to chores, where the cow kicked over the bucket and the chickens shat on my boots. After breakfast I played some touchy-feely folk music for the usual sunday service held on the Neck, then fell into a drooling slumber in the grass on the quad.
We got the call to attend a bailing, so I packed into a truck with my diabetic, liberal-arts educated co-farmer Brad and my teenage, bald-headed co-farmer Lilly. We were greeted at our destination by a wriggling little haymutt, tongue lapping at my chickenshit boots, and a pair of turkey-necked, beet-knuckled Mainers with gleaming buttcracks and twinlike grey stubble.
The others arrived and we all sat in the shade of a row of old pickups drinking lemonade while the bailer's son, glistening with machismo under hayfilthy jeans and a dirty straw hat, ran the hay tetter through the field once over.
Then the machine broke and the bailer, asscheeks like a pair of harvest moons, pun noted, set to work fixing it. His lobsterhued wife handed him lugnuts and wrenches with exasperated sighs as he cursed under the growling twine-spool.
By the time we started to load the bails, the day had begun to wane. Preempting the hayflecks that threatened to chaffe our nipples, Lilly and I removed our bras, plopped them next to Brad in the driver's seat of the Ford, and began to lug the forty-pound bails, titties afly.
We loaded bails 'till seven, unloaded 'till eight, and deliberated 'till eight-thirty over whether or not we should risk accepting damp bails for the second load. [PSA: Wet hay is prime real-estate for bacteria (see composting), and if left unattended, can become so hot that it actually combusts and lights all of your other hay, and subsequently your barn, on fire. We decided to forgo the damp bails.]
When we got back to the Neck for the evening, Brad's wife Emily had pizza and root beer waiting for us, so we all took off our haystuffed shoes and ate like slumpy ragdolls in Brad's living room while his seven-year-old nephew repeated the phrase "rip roarin' rootin' tootin'" in various contexts.
And now I'm here. And I'm ready to go to bed. And I'm ready to wake up at 5:41 again tomorrow, because that's what my alarm is set to, and that's how I like it. Glory, I love this place.