Treasures Found

It was the place I liked to explore most as a young girl: the hay stacks in our big silver barn on Guthrie Rd. Hay bales, fresh from the fields in tidy locked rows - a repeating pattern that was pleasing and yet curious to those who couldn’t see the puritan practicality in it all. I don’t know where my dad learned to "tie in" bales on the sides of the stack to create stability, but he did it better than anyone else and the arrangement was delightful perfection to someone with an analytical brain like mine.

At harvest time, creating this stack was a focal point of our lives as a family and community. My father would drop the grass hay in the fields and let it stand for a day or two to dry out. Then my mother would rake the grass into cleaner rows, fluffing and turning the stack over so the other side could dry thoroughly. It would sit for another day or two to dry completely.

This whole time, my father would study the farm papers, fixate on the weather news, and watch the skies for any sign of rain. Even the slightest rain shower, a common occurrence in the Willamette Valley, would damage the hay, leaving it to rot and mildew right on the field. An entire season of winter cattle feed gone in a storm.

When the loose hay was declared dry, we sprang into action. My father would hook up the old red bailer to the John Deere and head out – crossing his fingers that the repairs he made during the winter would hold for another season on that dusty machine…chomping up the hay and belching out rectangular bales tied with neat twine knots. We would follow in trucks with hay trailers to pick up the bales and take them securely to the barn.

Rain here was an even bigger danger: Rain on a hay bale could mean disaster for not only the crop but also the barn it’s housed in. Mildew inside of an improperly dried bale generates heat as it grows. As the heat increases, the dry hay around it is like a matchstick and fast-moving fires can destroy everything and everyone around it.

The sense of urgency around bringing in the hay was felt by all. Farmers from around would descend to “buck the bales” up onto the trucks and haul them to safety. If rain was expected, it was a full community affair. No calls were placed to ask for help in this instance. Hands just showed up at the field and got in a line to bring it all in. Extra trucks, manpower, and lots of sweat and dirt. Once our fields were clear, we would turn our attention to helping the neighbors do the same. We only stopped to rest when we were certain all were safe.

At harvest, the bales were stacked all the way to the rafters. The beautiful geometric pattern of the stacks of bales also served to hold the towering stack steady. The bales would sometimes reach twenty or more feet into the air. To reach the upper levels, my dad created a pyramid like stepping pattern so one could easily climb up and reach the top. It was a thing of art and beauty – this bounty of fresh hay and the cows all knew it too. They would cram their huge heads through slots the sides of the wooden pens and reach their freakishly long tongues out to grasp a few tendrils of a bale placed too close to the edge. Sometimes they would get their heads stuck and we’d need to free them…only to return and find them back through the fence again – their eyes bulging as they struggled to reach just one more bite.

The smells of dirt and cut hay were intoxicating to me. Most of our grass hay grew natively, although my father sometimes spread additional seed and manure on the fields to make the crop more robust. That distinct smell of fresh native hay stuck firmly in my mind, and year after year walking into the barn to breath it in was like coming home to an old friend. Beyond the pure delight of the fragrance, breathing it in was also an homage to the months of tending that went into each blade of grass. My father tended our fields with care and attention. One year we had an outbreak of Lupine in our fields. Lupine is also called Blue Bonnet – a testament to the lovely purple-blue flowers that protrude from the tops of the mature stalks, although the colors range from white to pink and brilliant yellows. The green leaves fan out in a circular pattern from the stalks underneath the flowers and cattle love to eat them. The problem is that lupine causes lupine poisoning and lupinosis in livestock. Lupine poisoning affects the nervous system and livers of cattle and can lead to hideous deformities in calves and eventual death. Lupine must be removed from all your fields as soon as you see the plant stalks. If you wait until the plants flower and the seeds spread in the wind, it’s a disaster to control. Worse, you can’t just cut lupine down as it is hearty and will regrow, you have to grab it by the base and get the whole plant out by the roots. It’s time-consuming, back-breaking work that leaves your hands raw, and we had it bad that year. We spent nearly a week going through our 20 acres and the 20 acres we had leased from the neighbor to get it all out. I’ve never disliked a plant more.

One of the coolest features of this stack of hay for a little tomboy like me was all the forts and castles I could build into the cascading tiers. With a little effort to reposition some of the central bales, I could clear away a section a couple of bales wide and a couple of bales deep – sometimes with a cavernous overhang if I was lucky. The sides were tall enough that I could almost stand inside and not be seen from below. It was a protected fortress all my own. I would drag old woolen navy blankets, sheets, and kitchen items from the house and set up shop for days of adventures with my toys and often a compatriot or two.

By far the best part of all was the rarest find in the stack. We had a ton of barn cats on the farm. Their numbers swelled and contracted, but the smartest and most crafty were with us for many years. Egged on by the field mice that darted between the bales, the cats loved tunneling in the hay. When we had a pregnant momma cat, she would have her babies in the soft crevasses of the hay. I would enter the barn one day and hear the tiny cries of new kittens, which would lead us on a detective-like search – a Marco Polo-like game of tracking the new litter. A mew here would send me to one side of the stack; another mew would lead me up, under; another sent me around corners, through tunnels. I would wait with anticipation between their small cries - the sound at first muffled, but clearer and stronger as I closed in.

And then there they would be, sometimes six or eight of them. Tiny bulbous heads way too large for their little frames – ears so tiny and triangular atop their heads you could only giggle when you saw them. Their eyes were just opening to make your acquaintance, but they couldn’t quite focus on you. They rooted around the hay for their momma dozing lazily on her side, too exhausted to be bothered as the pile of kittens nursed and tumbled all around.

That was the ultimate treasure – new play friends, fellow adventurers in training. I’d set up special blankets on the hay to make momma and her babies more comfortable. My brother and I would give them English royal names, linked to their esteemed lineage. We’d watch them for hours until the sun would set on the quiet hay barn, turned nursery. Cows chewing their cud with contentment in the pens nearby, somehow understood the tenderness of the hour. Delicious caramel light filtered in through the cracks in the tin roof and we felt nothing but promise ahead.