Hay, Again

In July last year I did several episodes here about haying. Check the archive over at the right for the early July entries if you’re interested to go that far back.

And here it is again: hay time. I’m sitting, exhausted and satisfied, listening to a thunder storm pass over and some rain hit the roof, and knowing that our hay is in the barn. That’s a close one: hay down in the field on Friday, bales on the trailers and in the pickups on Friday night and Saturday morning, hay in the barn Saturday night and Sunday morning, rain on Sunday afternoon.

It’s remarkable how hay season arrives in these hills. It’s been growing all spring, this grass, and we’ve all been saying how it was never going to stop raining so it could be cut. The grass is tall, the sun comes out one day and the forecast is for clear skies for 5 or 7 days, the mowers fire up their machines, the hay is down, the sun continues to shine, the hay is raked, the temperature rises (it is always F100 when hay becomes bales, always, always), the balers drive around and around the fields with their machines, the growers call their customer lists because they immediately fear that they will not sell the hay (but not enough to lower the price), the birds of prey take positions above the newly mown fields where small rodents are suddenly exposed to day, the buyers of hay make haste, haste, to converge on the fields with pickup trucks and trailers because they fear they will not get their allotted tonnage if they are not first on the field, or second anyway, and all of us watch for the rain. Rain can spoil it all. Until it’s under cover, hay is the most perishable of crops.

It all happens, in all the hay fields over the hills, all at once. The balers work long hours, from field to field, one after the other, through daylight and night, to get the grass cut and packaged. They operate the most cantankerous of machines, and they tend to be the most cantankerous of individuals, too. If you grow grass, do not cross swords with your baler. If he is happy with you, he will cut your grass early. If he isn’t, you might wait until the end of the clear spot in the weather, and there you are with grass down and a storm coming on. All week long trucks loaded with hay pass each other on the roads, caravans of them headed to some same farm down the way. Occasionally, at a bend in the road, the remnants of a spilled load are visible. Tie down. Always tie down, and tight. All week, for that 5 or 7 days, trailers are loaned and reclaimed, labor is bartered, muscles flex, neighbors help, farmers groan at the end of the day and flop into bed for the few hours before they go again to the hayfield. The sun shines, the hay dries, the barns fill.

Here is me, filling our barn.

Richard puts the bales onto the elevator and I take them off at the top, because I am the one whose head is lowest and who can stand in the loft without banging myself more than once. Don’t let anyone tell you women don’t sweat. If that was a glow I had going, it was a soppy one.

Here is Richard delivering a bale to me. Don’t see him? That’s because he’s at the bottom, also sweating as he takes the bales from the trailer and sets them on the elevator. And pauses to take pictures.

All this effort has to happen within a very few days: get the hay up and under cover because:

Then it rains.

Those who did not cut grass in this week will wait for the next forecast of clear weather for 5 or 7 days, and the engines will fire up again. As Richard said during this heroic weekend when we put our hay up in the barn, it’s a remarkably efficient network of labor that brings the hay in. Once it begins, it’s finished within days because if it isn’t, that fine hay is out there getting wet.

And ours is under cover now.

The American Way

As much as I would prefer to spend my days watching the animals, walking the woods, maybe going fishing now and then, there is a town down there in the valley, and we do have to get there now and then. Work, shopping, repairs, the library… all these things and others call us out of our highland hideout. One of the pressures that leads us into town is citizen activism.

It’s almost Independence Day, so today you get my little civics lesson: Government is not just for the big. That mantra from the 1960s and ’70s, “Think globally, act locally,” is still good.

To my surprise, we became more active and, I think, more effective in small ways, when we moved out from town. We always wrote our share of letters to Congress, and we went to Town Hall meetings to meet our Congressman, but something happened to our looking glass when we moved away from the urban clot and into a smaller community. Almost immediately we turned up at a community meeting, and then it was a watershed management meeting, a County Commission meeting, a forest management meeting, a community training meeting… and pretty soon we were on first names with the electeds, with the appointeds, and with the employeds in the County offices. Somehow, then, we got ourselves appointed (and later elected) as Precinct Committee People to the Clackamas County Democratic Party; PCP is the hat worn at the lowest rung of the Party structure. PCPs are the people who run around knocking on doors before elections, or who call you at dinner time and remind you to vote. They’re the people who observe in the polls on election night. They’re the ones who offer voter registration cards at fairs and supermarkets.

It has to be said, I am not much of a joiner of groups. I’m shy of bunches of people, and I don’t really like speaking in public. So for me to decide to offer myself as a PCP was a big indication of what I thought was important. In time, as so often happens when you join something, we found our own little projects to attend to. And, typically, they were not the ones that led us into giant committee meetings.

Once a month the Clackamas Democrats air a live TV broadcast through the local cable access channels. It’s taped at a wonderful little studio facility in Oregon City called Willamette Falls Television (WFTV). It doesn’t get much more local than this. WFTV is available for use by anyone who lives or works in the County. Any of us can go in and create a television program. The equipment is available to us at no charge, and training in its use goes with the loan. The studio comes with staff to help in live broadcasts, or in editing programs to be aired later. It’s the neatest thing. And the show was chronically short of “techies,” people to operate the cameras or to field phone calls or to type names into the character generator.

So, for about the last 2 years, Richard and I meet in town once a month on a Tuesday evening, have dinner, and then go off to the WFTV production studio. Here’s Richard, just before air time last week.

That’s the control booth below, with Marv inside. Marv is the director.

The program, a sort of no-budget version of the Charlie Rose show, hosts local officials, candidates and activists in interviews about local concerns, programs, issues, choices, and people. Since it’s live, and most of the staff is volunteer, sometimes the show has warts. That goes with the effort. We’re doing the best we can. Here’s me reading the Oregon Party Platform into a microphone with program host Larry Skidmore in the background:

It turns out there are lots of opportunities for rural, suburban, and urban people to come together for common efforts. We helped build a house for Habitat for Humanity a couple of years ago. We’ve helped clean up river banks with Tualatin Riverkeepers. We’ve picked up the litter along our own piece of road for several years now (in exchange for that we get a road sign with our name on it: Shambles Workshops, which is our marketing name).

I’m comfortable doing behind the scenes things like this. Behind the camera. Behind the hammer and the screwdriver. Behind the trash bags.

But, last year there came a cause I had to stand in front of. Our County needs a service district to fund the public libraries. Because of the recent loss of Federal timber revenue dollars in Oregon, money that had supported the General Funds of rural counties across the United States but is no longer authorized by Congress, services like public libraries are threatened with extinction here. I mean it. Really. Can you imagine a place without public libraries? Our own state legislature couldn’t, and in 1901 enacted the bill that permitted public funding of libraries that were to be “free to the public forever.” They authorized communities to assess up to $.35 per $1,000 of property value to support those libraries. What happened then? The libraries went to the voters for finance levies, looking for that 35 cents per thousand dollars. And for a time, they got it, or enough of it.

But the 21st Century has rolled around and there still is no stable means of funding those libraries. They are still grasping at shrinking General Fund dollars, and still attempting, every few years, to get the voters to pass a levy. It’s a disaster just about now, what with Oregon’s “double-majority” requirement to pass funding levies (+50% of the ballot, and +50% of registered voters voting) and the current mood of voters not to pay for anything, though they might want to continue to use it, and will complain when it’s gone (ever notice how the loudest anti-public-services voices still expect the fire department to show up?). So we, some of us Citizen Activists, are going to make a Library District. We are building the campaign, we’re raising money, we’re meeting after work, and testifying during stolen work hours, phoning and polling and printing, and speaking to groups. Good grief. I am speaking to groups. I’m going to business executives and begging money. I am compiling telephone numbers and email addresses. I’m acting just like someone with a cause.

Because, honest to goodness, I cannot imagine a County without a public lending library.

And that, my friends, is what I mean when I speak of The American Way. If you want to see something happen, you go to work to make it so. You make a phone call. You wear a button. You stand up in front of people and talk to them about it. You “speak your mind, even if your voice shakes,” as Grey Panther Maggie Kuhn said. Because, when it comes down to it, the issue isn’t whether your presentation has warts. It’s live, after all, and it’s life. It’s what we do here.

If you live in Clackamas County, Oregon, please vote for the Library District in November. It’s only $.39/$1,000. That’s less than a nickel more than than the legislature thought was appropriate 107 years ago.

New Voices in the Flock

Yesterday my friend Barbara and I drove off across the valley on a sheep shopping spree.

Some of you may remember we lost our sweet, handsome ram last fall (November 4, 2007 entry of this blog), so I’ve been looking around for a likely replacement. We came up lambless this year as a result of the loss of Morgan. In a flock that supported a family, this would be reckoned a disaster. In our case, it was a sore disappointment, but we don’t depend on the year’s production to fill our plates.

After an exchange of messages and photographs, and receipt of a fleece sample by mail, I decided to go have a look at Bide A Wee Eldon, a yearling 4-horn Jacob ram who has been waiting to join someone’s breeding line-up. It was handy that Eldon was at Bide A Wee Farm, because I had already decided to buy a pretty ewe from Karen and Doug. With 3 days of dry weather behind us, I was able to extract the stock trailer from the soft pasture. I can carry one sheep in the car, but two would be a puzzle. Especially, as you will see, a ram with horns spreading two feet from his head.

It was a spectacular day for a drive across farm country. We headed west through the hills into the lowlands, passed through the old colony of Aurora where the cemetery is full of Amish family names, traversed the bottom of the Willamette Valley near St. Paul, promising ourselves to come back this way when we are not hauling a trailer and can visit the Heirloom Roses Nursery and the Fragrant Flowers Nursery, and, perhaps, the 2 or 3 vineyards on the way, crossed the Willamette River near Newberg, and headed again into the hills on the west flank of the valley to arrive at Karen Lobb and Doug Montgomery’s wonderful farm full of rare breed sheep.

Here is the ewe flock coming, with impeccable timing, through the gate to the barn where we intended to catch them.

You can get an idea of the beautiful open farm country on the west side of the valley. It differs from our east-side fir forests, though if you continue west into the Coast Range, you will find dense forest again. Keep your eye on the ewe on the left side of this photo. That’s Courtney.

But first, you have to see this wonderful yard full of ladies. Click the picture to make it a little bigger.

The ones with spots are Jacob sheep. The ones without spots are Navajo-Churro sheep. Note that these women have horns, just like the rams.

Well, not just like. The horns of the rams are a larger than those of the ewes. It befits their role as masters of the flocks. Here’s an image of testosterone in action:

This is Bide A Wee Eldon, the yearling ram we came to see (this photo by Karen Lobb).

Now, there are things to look at here. I realize that might sound ridiculous to those of you who have not seen a Jacob ram before. He looks like — what does he look like? Like something from Hagrid’s back yard maybe. But once you know what he should look like, you come to choosing attributes. Though a person goes out seeking the perfect ram to sire their flock, the person always makes compromises. I suppose he is out there somewhere, the perfect ram. But do you imagine anyone would sell him? In the case of Eldon, let’s look, and keep in mind that you buy the whole sheep, not just the legs, or his butt, or the tilt of his  nose… I like to see little black patches on the knees and hocks of Jacob sheep. I think they’re pleasing. Eldon has none. It’s not essential. Interestingly (maybe not to everyone), the British breed standard for Jacob sheep excludes color on the legs. American Jacobs can have leg patches. There are other differences across the Pond, too, but we don’t have to consider those. Eldon has nice face color, but he’s lacking as much pigment on his nose as I like to see. Oh, well. I like his lipstick lips. Eldon seems to have a good temperament. This is important to me. Though I am always wary around a ram, I want to be able to handle him alone if I have to. He needs to be respectful but not timid. He needs to be assertive but not aggressive. We’ve been lucky in the past with our rams. I think Eldon will be OK, too. His horns are pretty good. There is good spacing between them, which is something you want to look for. It’s a lot of stuff to put on one head, and you like to see a skull sufficient to support it all. His side horns sweep clear of his face, which is very good. The asymmetry of the horns is not really a defect, though we don’t want them shooting out in all directions. These horns are strong and good. Eldon has nice straight legs in the back and a good gait. He has two nice jewels in his pocketbook (Barbara was shocked when I reached down and felt of them!). It’s an important aspect of ram-choosing. He was a triplet; the tendency to multiple lambs, twins or triplets, is genetically passed, so it’s good to have stock from animals that are known to come from lines that give multiples. His fleece is what’s called “Down type.” It doesn’t mean like fabric softener. It means a fleece typical of certain breeds from the Downs of Britain. A Downy fleece tends to be tightly springy, not as long as some, but not coarse. In general, I find I choose ewes with longer, lockier fleeces. It’s not always the case that the lamb fleeces will emulate either of the parents, but will sometimes fall somewhere in between. You can’t really predict the result of any pairing. It’s good, I think, to have some variation in the characteristics of the members of the flock.

One of the things about breeding rare or heritage breed livestock is that we are taking care of a diminishing gene pool. The object is not so much to reproduce all the characteristics of a perfect specimen, but to perpetuate the genetic resource that is present in these animals. In my flock, I look for variety. I want them to differ from one another. I want them to be a healthy, robust, various group of sheep. So, let’s see what we can get here. I bought Eldon.

But wait! There’s more!

I had already committed to buy Courtney as well.

This, my friends, is my opinion of a beautiful ewe. Look at that stance. Look at that head and her long-leggedy build. She has a nice ratio of black to white, good face markings, sound horns, and a nice little udder under there (I shocked the audience again by feeling her up). The only thing is, no leg color again. She seems steady and self-composed, too. It’s always nice if they have poise instead of fear. You don’t expect them to know you in the beginning, but it’s really encouraging if they don’t fly from you.

Oh, the voices: sheep do have distinctive voices, just as people do. In a flock they can all sound like so much baa-ing and bellowing but as individuals, they’re clearly different. And, it seems, the rams have the softer, thicker voices. Eldon has a deep, terry-cloth towel kind of voice. The ewes tend to have harsher, brassier calls. Maybe they need that voice to holler up the lambs from the field.

So there is the result of my outing across the farms of the valley. Barbara and I required a cup of coffee on the way home, but were clear on our side of the rift before we found a Starbucks. It was a near thing, whether we’d make it that far.

I love sheep shopping.

Green

This is what happens when it rains all spring without cease:

Not, as it might appear, that the earth tilts under the weight of the grass (the camera was propped on a fence post for this shot), but that the grass gets very tall and seedy before it can be mowed. This is in the orchard where I can’t put the sheep or llamas to graze because they do not stop with the grass. It would be nice if they would distinguish between what I want them to eat and what I want for us.

I can scythe this down and feed it loose and fresh to the animals, but that has meant working in the rain. This weekend we may get some of it swept down. The sheep and llamas will make short work of the offering, and William the mule will positively croon and mutter over it. He makes little grunty noises when he’s given a treat. “Oh, boy. Haven’t had long fresh grass since this time last year!” Seems he feels about grass like I do asparagus.

Rites of Spring

We had a rare sunny afternoon yesterday. This May and June have been soggy wet and clammy cold, with the exception of the one radical day when the thermometer topped at F104 in our backyard. We didn’t like that much, but are tiring of the F55-60 and cloudy routine, too. It’s made garden preparation into an absurd exercise.

Last year, because we thought the new septic field might go through the vegetable garden, we didn’t plant. Even though I considered risking it, I knew it would break my heart to see the young vegetable patch ripped up for pipe laying. In the event, the field went through the sheep yard and not through the garden, but by then it was too late. So the garden spent last year laying in a nice sod of weed grass. When, in a split-second break in the clouds, I went at it with the tiller a few weeks ago, I wished I had broken it all up in the fall. I wished we had a nice friable soil instead of clay loam. I wished it would stop raining so I could do a proper job if it. I wished a number of things, indeed, that I will not share with you.

Since then it has rained. It has rained. It. Has. Rained.

Yesterday, in that unexpected Sun Break as we call them here, I went out and busted up clods and the stumps of grass clumps, and worked myself into a sweat trying to wrestle enough submission out of the ground to permit seeds to fall into likely places. Places likely to let them survive germination.

So, though it looks like a miserable start to me, and these plants will have to bring all their determination to the fore, the garden is on its way.

It’s supposed to rain again tonight.

Meanwhile, I see signs of the progressing season elsewhere on the place. We noted activity in a nest box sited on a fence post that’s going to be gone in a few weeks. “Uh-oh,” said Richard. The fence will have to make way for big equipment, and it didn’t look like a nest-builder at work now was going to have time to pull off a brood before demolition begins. We decided we’d feel less bad about interrupting an afternoon’s housekeeping than we would about taking down a box full of nestlings. It was not 20 minutes later we spotted work underway at the new site on the carport post.

This little tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) gave things serious consideration before committing:

Hmm. Looks vacant. Notice how she pushes with her tail to give leverage for the look inside.

I think this is a female, with the male having more color on the wing tips. We like to have these seasonal visitors on the place. They take large numbers of mosquitoes from the air in the evenings.

It may not seem like it in the rain gauge, but summer is on its way.