the first day of August, formerly observed in Britain as a harvest festival, during which bread baked from the first crop of wheat was blessed.
In thinking about just where to begin this month of grace, I thought I might share with you our journey with bringing grain from the land. Our loaded bales just pulled out of here yesterday and so our tale is ready to tell.
Let me back up a bit.
We took over the stewardship of these few acres 10 years ago this month with no real preconceived plans for the land itself. Yes, gardens. How could I live without them? Chickens? A dream that could now come true.
But the rest?
There are a few acres of what at some time was used for grazing, growing tobacco and more now just fallow ground. Bees and butterflies, to be sure. Weeds and grapevine and more invasives every year especially the horrific wild parsnip. We mowed walking paths which grew to become tractor rides paths as the tractors began showing up in our newly built poll barn. But couldn't we do something better?
Last summer a neighbor asked if he could cut and bale what was growing there and if he donated his time and equipment, would we donate the bales. We readily agreed. The yield was about 75 bales of rather poor straw that would end up mostly as bedding.
Then...
he suggested we consider renovating the pastureland, which we had been calling a meadow because of the wildflowers. What would it involve?
Work, new experiences with old equipment, a learning curve whose arc and aches we never could have estimated.
1. sweeten the soil with lime.
This required hiring a professional.
2. bust the sod.
With a borrowed quack digger and our trusty John Deere 1947B, we began. What we couldn't have foreseen was the nightmare of wild grapevine roots that would snarl and snag the digger every 50 feet or so, requiring us to manually untangle the digger. I began thinking of it as Devil's Snare.
Grapevine roots couldn't be left on the field to settle back into the ground. Ugh, ok. We can do that. Pulled, dug, collected, carted off the field and added to our mounting burn pile, the process took days and the enlisting of a few hearty souls who gave us a few hours each and who went running in haste once sated with drink. And another borrowed bit of equipment, a wagon. My memory of that particular job may have been sent to the deep files, but I do think we filled it at least 3 times.
3. discing
borrowed from yet another neighbor, this giant multiple pizza cutter breaks down the clods and many roots remaining near the surface.
Truth be told, both tractor and farmer were enjoying themselves at this point.
4. planting
Once again our neighbor Alan came to our aid. His ancient planter is the most interesting piece of machinery we'd used so far. And since he has a lifetime of planting experience, he calculated the amounts and types of seed we should use and the rate at which his planter dispersed them. Jerome road along to be sure the hoppers didn't clog or run out in the field.
The pasture mix included many munchie desirables with important addition. Annual oats. The oats germinate and grow quickly to act as protection for the slower growing perennial seed.
5. dragging
Once the seed is broadcast it needs to be helped to make contact with the soil. And so there is another old piece of equipment called a drag.
We were blessed with good deep rains just as we needed them. The field went from dusty brown to green in just a few days. The oats were up!
a little bit
then a lot!
if you look very closely you can see the tiny seedlings near the ground between and below the oats.
6. cutting
With each old piece of equipment, totally new to us, we learn. People used to do this work by hand! with hand tools! even with the help of horses or oxen and then eventually with must have felt like wealth, machinery! And then there were no guarantees of the outcome. Faith. Courage. Strength of spirit. Heartbreak. Joy.
When our oats were cut they lay upon the field looking trampled, diminished. Sad. Here they would dry until the next step of the process.
Seeing the oats laying there turning brown on top of the lush green of the pasture mix they had been shielding since early May, they didn't look like much. And each day of drying they shrank a bit more. Will they amount to anything?
7. raking into windrows
I think Jerome enjoyed this bit too, especially since he was able to use our John Deere 1949B. The rake required no hydraulics, operating by the action of being pulled across the field. He'd been using the '47 up til now because hydraulics were needed to raise and lower those pieces of equipment. Adjustments are made to the rakes in terms of width of rows and depth of grab. Hydraulics are not required. Our '49 was now again a working tractor.!! Up til now it had mostly been used as my tractor of choice for "recreational" use (aka joy riding!) or for hauling.
Having the cut oat straw in rows will help in the baling process and exposes the cut oats to the sun and the air for drying. Windrows need to be turned to expose the underside so the fields need to be raked a second time. If Mother Nature cooperates, that will be enough raking before baling.
8. baling
This is what requires real experience. If the oats are baled too soon they will be hot bales which lead to decomposition and possible spontaneous combustion in storage. And even if they don't get hot enough to burn, the interior will be spoiled. Too dry and they lose their nutritional value.
All the other equipment was fascinating, but the baler has to be the most amazing piece of all. Collecting the row of straw, chopping it a bit for easier compaction, packing the straw into uniform blocks, wrapping them with twine, knotting and cutting the twine, dropping them as from a pez dispenser onto the field.
If the air is humid, or the straw a bit too dry or a bit too moist the baler will balk or stop altogether. The twine might snap or refuse to knot, The bales might not pass through blocking the chute. Old equipment can be quirky on the best of days. And this piece of equipment, like all the others that have been doing this job, is over a half century old. Many much older than that. (like their operators!)
Not to worry.
9. stacking the bales
It takes some skill to stack bales on a flat bed wagon. The load must be able to move over uneven ground and on the road up and down hills to where it will be stored without tipping or spilling. For this job Jerome got the long straw, if you can forgive my pun, and got the easy job, driving the tractor. Alan did the stacking and two local Amish boys did the gathering and throwing onto the wagon. I took this video from a distance to be respectful of the boys' identity and age. But can you imagine many 9 and 12 year old English kids doing this job without a pause, doing it well and no complaints??
And here is the prize. Our first harvest. Oat straw. Horses will love this as bedding since they can find nuzzle for the oats in the mix. If we can cut the field again later this season when the pasture mix is up, the result will be bales of hay, not straw. Hay is feed, and ours should be good feed indeed.
Oat straw. Not exactly wheat for man's bread as I began this tale in honor of the day. The process of oat straw harvesting and wheat harvesting is similar in many respects. In fact, with wheat the hay still needs to be threshed which requires even more amazing machinery.
If you've read this tale through to the finish, I ask you this... buttering your toast tomorrow, pause just a wee while and contemplate what went into bringing that bread to your table.
Today's post, a tale of two 70 something city kids on our ridge meadow farm enjoying a good life.
