It doesn’t matter if you live ‘in’ town or ‘out’ of town, if you live in Ellensburg, you know about hay. I’ve learned more than I ever thought I could know about hay and believe me, I really don’t know very much. Some of it is ‘normal’ hay and some of it is ‘special’ hay. The special hay is called “Timothy”. It is the major export of Ellensburg, going to Japan to feed the Kobe beef. Now you know why a Kobe beef burger cost so much!
We also, talk about hay and by ‘we’ I mean everybody. We talk about whether it is being cut, fluffed or baled. You can’t bale wet hay. If it rains after the hay is cut, this is bad, so we also talk about the weather. I finally understand the saying ‘make hay while the sun shines’. Fluffing hay is exactly what it sounds like and you can’t fluff hay when it is windy or the hay will end up in the next state.
There are a lot of cool driving machines to cut, fluff and bale hay. Apparently, you can get teenagers to drive the ‘fluffing’ tractors, because they go fast. The baler has to be driven slowly and teens can’t pay attention at that rate, so the more ‘mature’ workers bale hay. My Loving Spouse has been working on the nearby farm driving the… baler tractor, of course, hence the back of the baler view. The baler is a bit like a scooping-pooping machine for hay. Scoops up the loose hay and then it pretty much poops out the bales of hay. The bale wagon is an amazing vehicle, it is very big and picks up the bales of hay in the field and then is driven in to deposit the load of hay. The bale wagons I’ve seen all go very fast, and seem to be driven by the men who are the father’s of the teens in the fluffing tractors and the son’s of men in the baling tractors. When I asked My Loving Spouse why they drive so fast, he explain in technical terms, that ‘they are the last in the field and just want to get the hell home, also because they can…”.
Prior to moving here, all I really new about hay was not to say “Hey” to my mother and if I did, she’d say, “Hay is for horses”. Except, now I’ve learned that it depends on what kind of hay you are talking about, so really my mother didn’t actually know her ‘hay’ or even though she was pretty clear on her thoughts about ‘hey’.
