Making Hay

From September, 2009


Making Hay
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There is no finer perfume than fresh-cut hay. When I reached the age of seven, my dad introduced me to work in the hay field. “Come out to the field with me and help me drive the tractor.” I thought he meant for me to sit in his lap, his arms around me, his hands on the wheel, me nestled safely against his warm body, smelling his salty sweat and the sack of cigarette tobacco tucked into the left pocket of his chambray shirt, the tag hanging out.

We walked out to the field where the flatbed trailer sat hitched to our scarred Farmall tractor. Dad hefted me up onto the wide metal seat and placed my hands on the wheel. My eyes must have been ready to pop off my face. My heart began to pound in my ears. He shoved the lever into the lowest gear and told me to hang on to the steering wheel and keep the tractor pointed between the rows of bales. Although I was tall for my age, my feet didn’t reach the pedals. As we rode one length of the field, he gave me pointers on steering. When we reached the end of the row Dad grabbed the wheel and turned the corner for me. Then he jumped off the back of the tractor. I was on my own. I nearly peed my pants. As we chugged down the next row, Dad walked alongside and lifted bales onto the trailer. Now and then he climbed onto the bed and neatly stacked the bales. When I reached the end of every row I’d hold my breath, terrified that I’d run us into the ditch and through the fence. Dad always leaped onto the hitching bar in time to turn the wheel and point me on my way, back and forth across the field.

In time, once I could reach all the pedals, Dad promoted me to drive our old I-H farm truck, with a contraption for lifting bales that hooked to the side of the truck bed. But first I tromped the entire field straightening the bales into long lines. Then I walked back to the truck, picked up my Dad from the shop where he was repairing the baler, and drove along the rows, scooping the bales onto the elevator. I liked to watch through the rear-view mirror as each bale pitched off the top of the incline onto the truck bed. Dad sank his bale hooks into the hay and stacked a neat pattern which tied the load so the bales wouldn’t shift.

When I had finished my first year of high school, Dad hired my cousin Jim and his buddy Larry to harvest the hay. Jim and Larry were two years older than me and about twenty years smarter. They told me that if I would drag the bales in line and be their water-girl, they would pay me a generous ten percent of their earnings.

Whoopee! I would actually get paid for work I had been doing for years as a family chore. In my mind I spent that money over and over. New boots, school clothes, ice cream sundaes, the movies. Every day I dreamed up a new list. Early each morning I doused myself with 6-12 mosquito dope, pulled on my leather gloves and hurried out to the field. I always had the first rows of bales in line before the boys arrived with the truck.

Once the truck bed was loaded high with hay, I rode in the cab with Jim and Larry back to the stack. I liked this because I got to listen to their dirty jokes. I felt like one of the boys. I laughed, even when I didn’t understand. Jim always knew when I didn’t “get it” and called me on it. When we arrived at the stack, I scurried to the house for jars of iced tea and platters of cookies. Then I’d sit on the truck, swing my legs, and wait for the boys to finish unloading the hay.

When we were just a couple days into the first cutting, the boys suggested that the job would go faster if I could pull the bales over to the edge of the truck so both of them could throw bales onto the stack. That made sense to me. I quickly agreed. So now I not only lined out bales in the field, performed the chores of water-girl, but I dragged the hundred pound bales across the truck bed so the boys could easily snag them with their hooks. Three days into our new routine, a summer shower ended work for the day. I stood in the rain and watched the boys drive off toward town. Something about our arrangement had been bothering me. I mulled it over while I walked out to the river-bend field where Dad was irrigating sugar beets.

I told Dad, “It isn’t fair. I’m working really hard. I work just as many hours as the boys do and I’m only making ten percent. I’m not asking for the same wages. I know I can’t throw the bales up onto the big stack like they can. They have more muscles than I do. But for all I’m doing for them, I think they should pay me twice as much.”

My Dad leaned on his irrigating shovel, studied the ground and gave my tale of woe his full attention. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “You agreed to the deal.” He turned back to his work.

I finished out the haying season, first, second and third cuttings. I did my job. I pocketed my ten percent. I never forgot.

Sondra Ashton

Havre Daily News: Home Again

September 17, 2009
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Five Dollars

It was a five dollar day with five dollars being good value.
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Five Dollars


We drove south out of Dodson, up onto the plateau and out toward the mountains. We passed the turn off at the long dirt road to the place where I used to live, a life-time ago. I recognized the same barbed-wire gate. Sun dappled the hills. A slight breeze teased the grasses. A perfect day.

Signs marked “Auction” pointed us in the right direction. Oak pallets, each heaped with an assortment of goods, snaked across the field. Beyond the pallets, lined out like an old-soldiers honor guard at a funeral, slumped dozens of derelict cars and pick-ups, trucks, tractors and machinery. Stacks of lumber, tools, wire, boxes and bins of parts and nails and bolts flanked scattered outbuildings.

I signed in and received the number 100. A good omen. I wandered over to the row of pallets where the auctioneer hawked trash and treasures. I didn’t spot anything I wanted, but, feeling mischievous, I started a bid at two and a half. I was certain somebody else would pick it up from there. Three. Then four. The bid went to five. Why not? Okay. Seven-fifty? Going once. Twice. Sold for five dollars. Gulp! I had just bought a pallet. I had not intended to buy it. I had no idea what was on the pallet other than a large brown boxy thing and an old pressure cooker minus the petcock and handles.

While the auctioneer proceeded along the row, I stopped to paw through my acquisitions. Within moments, I sold a box of dishes and a box of assorted car parts. That paid for my pallet. Soon I had sold or gifted everything but the cooker and a box of canning jars.

An hour passed before I bought another pallet; again, for five dollars. It was heaped with odd dresser drawers, minus the dressers. Some old wood. A mix of cabinet doors. A sturdy box with dividers for storing all manner of things. It could have lived in a tool shed, a kitchen or an office. But what did I really buy? The dresser drawers will be raw material for art projects. Wait till you see what I can do with a dresser drawer.

I set a limit to my bids based on what I could spot in the jumble on the pallet. And no matter how much I desired a particular treasure, I recognized when someone else wanted it more.

An auction is a bitter-sweet place to spend the day. It is a book of somebody’s life, easily deciphered but just as easily misunderstood. This ranch was probably homesteaded, in the last wave of homesteaders, if I read the pages right.

I looked out over the hills. Something within me yearns for this life, isolated as it is, out here on the flat with the snow-covered Little Rockies directly south and the Bear Paws a notch over to the west. I lived out here during the sixties, snowed in every winter. We farmed with horses and an obsolete tractor. We had no running water though we had a good deep well. We had no bathroom facilities. We had no money but we were rich in living.

My friends dragged me away to take a break from my heavy spending. We sauntered over to the cook wagon. Replenished with a generous bowl of hearty beef stew, we marched back into the fray.

We watched buyers haggle over the old car bodies. Much as I might covet an antique auto to restore, if I hauled a junker home I could do no more than watch it continue to rust. The auctioneer, like a mother hen with chicks, herded his brood around some large sheds. We ended up by the ruins where a fire had burned down the main house.

Oh. That answered a lot of questions. A woman I had noticed before, hanging on the fringes of the auction, told me that her uncle had died in the house fire. He was ninety-three. She grew up on this farm. The pain of her loss was reflected in her eyes.

Around the edges of the debris surrounding the burn stood several old stools. Some had three legs. Some had four. Some had legs each a different length. Some legs faced different directions on the same stool. This was not the work of a craftsman. But I recognize treasure when I see it. I piled up six of the stools and bid on them. I’ll paint them each a different color and plant them in my back yard. I’ll surround them with pots of petunias. Five dollars well spent.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Home Again
April 22, 2010
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