Before I go forward with the exciting details of Tractor 101, I should mention that we've taken Rheinhart over to Gwenn's twice now to see the animals. He loves it there. Last Friday, we took him for a ride on top of a sawdust pile in the wheelbarrow, and on top of a bale of hay. But his favorite activity at the farm is hanging out with the goats and sheep. Here he is with one of the kids:
...Okay, so back to tractors...First, full disclosure: I know almost nothing about cars beyond the owner's manual in the glove compartment of my faithful-but-wimpy '03 Saturn Ion. However, when Gwenn's husband Jonathan gave us a brief tour of his Kubota L4400 Series Basic Farmer's Tractor, I felt overwhelmed by the desire to turn grease monkey and geek out with all of its gears and levers. Terms like "hydrostatic transmission," "hydraulic PTO pitch," and "wet disc brakes" were some kind of strange, magical poetry --a new vocabulary I suddenly want to master and rotate into my next conversation with the mechanic at Jiffy Lube...
Anyway, when we arrived at 5, we met up with Gwenn on top of the hill where their home and barns are situated and spotted Jonathan down beyond the paddocks, ploughing through a thick green field of canary grass. You can just make him out in the background of the picture below:
She told us to head on down, so we hiked the gravel driveway to meet him, both excited and nervous to give hay-cutting a shot. As soon as Jonathan saw us, he hopped off the Kubota, gave us the verbal tour, then gave us each a turn on the tractor. We both did a lap, slicing through a tiny fraction of all of the grass Jonathan and his neighbors will turn into bales of hay by the end of the week. Here's Shelly about to give it a go:
The weather was perfect for cutting hay: not too hot, clear skies, low humidity. As we ploughed across the field, a dozen or so tree swallows swooped all around us, eating up all of the bugs displaced from the chopped grass. On the distant blue horizon I could just barely make out the white orb of Kent's water tower...
There's an intriguing chapter in Goat Song, by Brad Kessler, in which he explains the importance of good hay. The following passage is but one sample from that chapter that rings a little truer now that I've "gone haying":
The cut hay lay in fluffed windrows around an eight-acre field, narrow runners of emerald green. I walked to the nearest row and grabbed a handful. The grass was dry enough. Sweet smelling. Oregano-ish. A bit bleached of color, but considering all the recent rains, not bad...
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Today Shelly's at the creamery helping out with farmers market prep. Only one more day at the creamery and one more visit to Gwenn's and our summer of cheesemaking and farming will be over...
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