Hay, Marketing and a Little Light Housekeeping

            The housekeeping part will come first: you may recall how every half-year to year I do a “Still want to be on my list?” plea?  I don’t like to think I’m sending to anybody who’d rather not feel guilty, obligated, harassed, annoyed, confused by getting my self-centered little outpourings of cognitive dissonance.  And so, once again, I am doing this.  But this time, I am asking you to please append a comment onto this particular article – just a “Hi.  Thanks a lot – I hate doing comments” without any other substance to it all would be nice.  And then I will know who wants to continue to get these emails and who does not.

            I am sad about comments.  I told a friend of mine that I try to leave comments whenever I read something somebody has worked hard to present for my perusal – for one, because I want them to feel that I am interested in their lives – because I am.  And also because I do think things or feel things when I see pictures of my loved ones, or read something that makes me laugh, and since my feeling is that we spend way too much time assuming that people know we love them, and not enough expressing delight in one another (which goes a long way to relieving chemical anxiety), I try hard to jot down what I am thinking as I read (well, okay – not EVERYTHING I think).  That way, the writer will not feel like they are shouting fruitlessly and pathetically into a dark, acoustically dead universe.  This is my philosophy, of course.  It doesn’t have to be anybody else’s.

            I can see these comments blossoming into a conversation, actually – people asking questions, other people commenting on comments.  But maybe we don’t have time in the world for all the possible conversations.  I just enjoy my little Facebook groups and the relationships I’ve discovered there so much, it seems sad that comments are just comments and not miniature tea parties.

            Oh, well.  So anyway, there you are – LIST PRUNING WEEK.

G – actually not pruning.  Cutting down a windfall.  With a chainsaw.  From a ladder – which is leaning against the tree.  My hair is turning gray for a reason.  No, really – he knows what he’s doing.  I hope.

No worries.  Guy and the Great Swinging Rope.

And the tree from which it hangs –

The yard.  All this counts as housekeeping, doesn’t it?

            Oh – also.  I have included two more pages for those who might be interested.  One is a posting of Murphy’s emails (you can see them on the menu to the right, under the blogroll and stuff).  One is a posting of notes I’ve taken as I study for my Sunday School lesson.  I tell  you, reading this stuff, such thoughts come – ideas, connections – I get very excited studying this stuff.

G, laying the new floor in the studio addition (don’t breath while looking at this – and where the heck is his mask?)

Feeding babies, conversing with dogs

 

THE POST:

            When you live in the middle class buffer, as I always have, there’s a lot of stuff you miss.  I think I told you once about the teacher who said, “I don’t understand these stupid farmers – don’t they get it that we buy our food from grocery stores now?  Why go to all that work when you don’t have to?”  This said to local class, in which was the child of a friend of mine, the child of a farmer.

 

            I’m not sure that I ever really understood the breathtaking significance of weather before I needed hay.  But hay is a great teacher.  This very afternoon, I heaved a sigh of terrific relief when, as rain started to fall for the first time since spring, I realized that John our horse neighbor, long time farm man, had finally bailed the hay that had been lying for five days under heavy and threatening skies – and that he was quickly throwing those bales (not throwing – you should see the complicated and scary machines they use for these things) up onto a flat bed stack.

            He should have been in church.  But church sometimes falls in the worst of times – and hay has a lot in common with small babies: when it’s ready, you jump.

            I had been praying over that hay, trying to keep the rain off it.  With alfalfa, you cut the hay after it shows just so many purple flowers in the spring.  That’s your first cut – the one with the weeds in it.  Great for cows and okay for horses – lots of sugar in it, I think.  Maybe I’m wrong. 

          Then, about the end of June, maybe? Maybe first week in July.  You cut the second cutting – the full and gorgeous green cut with leaves and purple flowers pressed all the way through it. This is the horse cut, for those who are lucky enough to get it.  Come August, you will get a third cut, good also for horses, but not as good.  More expensive, because the people who have put off buying are now anxious to buy.  And finally, maybe a fourth cut in September – all stems and fiber.

 

            But this year, spring took its time.  My horses were out on the pasture two to three weeks late – which means my hay stack was down to green dust.  And the hay was later, too.  Which means there will be less of it this year.

 

           The hay I wanted, John’s beautiful hay – no weeds, no mold, just right – I will not get.  He will need it for himself.  So I am cut loose in the market, and I’m seeing hay that makes me cringe, for sale at horrible inflated prices.  What choice do I have?  People are selling horses – but who will buy?  And I never would do that.  The horses are family.  Fortunately, I have a friend who had first cutting.  We won’t starve.  But we have to haul it in the trailer, fifty bales at a time.

            Funny.  I am connected by all this to all kinds of people I don’t know personally – hay people who need my prayers, even if I don’t know their names.

 

            We now have almost half of the hay we’ll need to live through the next year.  It’s a whole new way of looking at life.  And what with the lifting and the hauling and the breathing hard, a hardy way of living it.

 

 

 

            We went to the Farmer’s Market again, this time just to get pictures so we could share the love.  Well, you know – ostensibly, that’s the reason why we were there.  But going to a live market is a little like “visiting” puppies: we go, thinking in our infinite naiveté that we can look and leave empty handed.  Ha.  We came away from the market poor in bucks, but with plenty of bootie: fresh, plump, firm and juicy peaches, more felt delights, semi-precious stones bought from the people who’d cut and polished and wire wrapped them, mango ice pops. 

Chaz, in a lovely pose, sampling the gourmet breads and dips.  The really lively dips.

 

 

A random child, looking for mithril armor.  The craftsman, in the blue shirt, swears that this is the real deal.

Dru, setting up her booth.  She and her husband have a business: Rocks – we dig ’em.  They dig, cut, polish (also buy from exotic locales) then drill, set, wrap.  We spent an hour just here.

I will give my daughter to the first man who brings us a load of opals – daughter’s fave

 

Wire wrapped cabochons

The necklace I did NOT sneak back an buy for Chaz (plastic was already too hot)

I bought those peaches, there, just under the guy’s hand.  Rachel says that these guys have the best produce at the best prices.  Note the mangos.  Before you go, call and we’ll tell you where to find them.

Chaz, perusing Old Man’s Books –

The band.  Like an idiot, I cut out the drummer, who is great.  No look on his face.  Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.  The guy on the stool there sounds just exactly the way you think he’s gonna.  Last week, he did Sittin’ on the Dock of a Bay and pretty much forgot all the words.  But it was mellow.  The rest of these guys are just eye candy.

The lovely Noah (really, I’d have to write it in Chinese), with her stunning smile and her fabulous felted confections.  She is SOOOOO cute.  Chaz and I are fangirls for her.

Look at this stuff – all felt.  I need to take closer pictures.  This stuff is truly elegant.

She does Chinese food and pastry.  Honestly, I want to eat it all.  I wish the pictures did it justice.

And these little bamboo slips.  Oy.

Last week, these guys had a raft of herbs.  I just touched their lavender, and the scent stayed with me all day.  Nice for me, not so good for Chaz, who is allergic –

The local wood carvers’ guild

Chaz helpfully points out her favorite one

Buying real things from real people

           My gosh – it’s just a little place, just one sidewalk along the south side of Pioneer Park.  But going there – I don’t know.  You just feel like you’ve been to a real – market.

        Okay. I have to put a THE END here somewhere.  But the place will be there again next Saturday.  If you wanna go.  Try a mango pop.  Buy a felt napoleon, or a plate full of felt shrimp and soy beans.  And if you do that last thing?  Tell Noah we sent you.