I\u2019m the first to admit that I have a love\/hate relationship with hay.<\/p>\n
I love the fact that it smells so good, and the sound of my horses munching on it, particularly on a cold winter\u2019s night.<\/p>\n
I hate the fact that I\u2019m allergic to the stuff, and that when I handle it, I get welts on my arms which itch and swell, and that if I forget to medicate myself, being around it means I\u2019ll have difficulty breathing, something I richly enjoy doing. I hate that when a piece of hay blew into my eye one blustery New Year\u2019s Day that my eye watered and itched and burned for days, despite the fact that the docs at the ER didn\u2019t believe I\u2019d gotten a piece of hay in my eye and treated me for various other things before discovering, that, um yeah, I did have a piece of hay imbedded in my eye.<\/p>\n
I love that when the mow is full of hay all seems right with the world, and knowing that no matter what happens, our horses will have plenty of forage for the coming year.<\/p>\n
I hate unloading wagons of hay, sweating and itching and swearing and worrying that Rich will die of heat stroke in the loft while I am doing the relatively cool and pleasant job of loading bales onto the elevator.<\/p>\n
I love the fact that Wayne, our hay farmer, grows and bales the loveliest hay on the planet, and that we don\u2019t have to grow and bale it ourselves. Several years ago, when Richard threatened to get equipment to \u201cbale our own hay\u201d I quickly and steadfastly refused to participate, knowing what back-breaking, forecast-fretting, capital-intensive work it is. Like raising young horses and septic tank cleaning and mortuary science, I\u2019m just plain grateful to pay someone else to do hay.<\/p>\n
I hate that I cannot stack hay like my husband can. Like most women, I suppose, my strength is in my lower body and legs, and the notion of heaving hay on to the fifth level in the mow, straight and even, and then repeat the task a couple of hundred times leaves me weary. There are not enough bench presses in the world to get me to that level of upper body strength and I know it.<\/p>\n
I love the notion that unloading a wagon (or several) of hay is not unlike riding a 100-mile ride. You\u2019re anxious to start, knowing it\u2019s going to leave you frustrated and sore and wishing you could quit at times, but when it\u2019s done you can enjoy the fact that you did it.<\/p>\n
I hate the fact that haying season has begun in earnest and that we\u2019ve only unloaded the first of a half a dozen or so wagons. And that they are likely to need unloading on the hottest, most miserable days of the summer.<\/p>\n
I love that I am blessed with a life where one of the joys and curses involves the (wo)manhandling of dried, cured grasses so we can feed farm animals that we own simply for the pleasure of having them. And that every year, as it always does, haying season will end with my loft smelling of rich and plentiful greenness.<\/p>\n
Achoo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m the first to admit that I have a love\/hate relationship with hay. I love the fact that it smells so good, and the sound of my horses munching on it, particularly on a cold winter\u2019s night. I hate the fact that I\u2019m allergic to the stuff, and that when I handle it, I get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pattis-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/enduranceintrospection.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}