Hay season

August the 8th already! I spent the day working—a good thing, I suppose, since I spent the weekend spending. We drove to the Okanogan Highlands on Saturday, and I loved the meadows and scattered pines. I would have stayed a month or a year if only I hadn't had to get back to the pets and the house and work and school. My friends the chicken people, who will be sorely missed in Wickersham, promise to report back from their new home with winter weather updates (and I, to be honest, am half hoping for a dismal picture in January and February—something to stay my land lust. If they write with good news, I'll be forced to start browsing the real estate listings.)

I bought a hundred and ten bales of grass hay from a local farmer this weekend, too. It's wonderful stuff, this hay, and it comes at a wonderful price. I love getting a call, hitching up the trailer, and driving out to the hay field. Pulling forward twenty feet at a time, rolling bales up onto my knee and then onto my chest and then finally up above my head, rocking and shoving and showering myself with chaff until it's firmly seated in it's appropriate slot. On my second and third runs, I had help from the farmer and his wife, who drove the truck for us.  The work took two evenings, as I got a late start. My porch is stuffed. It's a very, very, very good thing, this phenomenon of having been here long enough that I'm on the short list of people who get calls when the hay's been baled. It takes time to nurture this friend-of-a-friend sort of business.

I have itching forearms, stinging hands, and a shirt full of hay stems. I'll leave you with that, and go shower and sleep. Tomorrow, pictures from Tonasket.

Your friend,
M