Making Hay While the Moon Shines

The moon is so bright you can almost not look at it. The farmers are taking full advantage. They're out there now in their tractors at 11:30 p.m., raking and baling and loading up hay. They've been at it since 8 a.m.

It's a little strange, looking out over the silvery dark campo and seeing them creep up and over the fields, buzzing along behind two glowing headlight-eyes like big green John Deere insects. All the guys (and a lot of the girls, too) are looking pretty bushed in the morning, putting in long, long hours, praying it doesn't rain until the baling is done.

Disasters are happening out there all the time, and being dealt with on the fly: Jose Maria's baling machine went haywire yesterday and a couple of long rows of bales were only half-wrapped -- they collapsed overnight where they stood, and had to be re-done. (believe it or not, the storks get up on them and pick at them with their long orange bills, looking for bugs or trapped mice or other goodies. A stork can wreck a bale of hay that's not wrapped too tight. Good to know. You heard it here first.)

His re-baling only got started AFTER Jose Maria unwrapped about 60 yards of blue twine from the innards and outards of the entire machine, tractor, chassis, etc. -- the twine-wrapper sorta, well, came unspooled.

In the evenings I see the men hosing-down and oiling their 30-year-old tractors and the assorted strange implements attached to the fronts and backs. These people have to know when and how to plant and plow and hoe and harrow, cut and bale and load and unload. And they have to know how to fix and maintain and use all the tools and machinery that make it possible. Amazing people, farmers. And we assume they are uneducated and simple!

The harvest rush created a bit of a snafu here this morning. The builders showed up to clear out the much-lumbered insides of the house, but they couldn't find Jose (one of the Milagro boys) to bring over the remolque -- a big farm wagon used for waste hauling. Jose and the remolque were both out in the fields, loading and being loaded with monster hay bales. The construction guys were terribly annoyed at all this, and I am told Milagro (Jose's mom, and a real power around town) gave them a piece of her mind, too... something about 'we're not waiting around for people who don't know when they can be bothered to show up and do some work." Jose came in from the field to talk to them, but they'd buggered off already.

So I am assured (please God!) Jose will have a remolque here outside the gate early tomorrow morning, and the workers will be here to fill it up. If my Spanish sufficed. Vamos a ver! (we shall see.)

I am told Blog entries should be a lot shorter than I make them. I am accustomed to writing exactly to a 21-inch newspaper feature length, and I'll bet the farm that's about how long these babies go. Blog readers have teeny tiny attention spans, I guess. So maybe they'll have to go read someone else's teeny little thoughts.

Tomorrow, perhaps I'll write about the fight for the Secret Garden. And my adventures with Living Plaster!