Before we could concentrate on getting ready for the Fourth last week, all the hay around our homestead had to be hauled. That’s usually the timing of things: Marlboro Man gets his hay cut, baled, and hauled before the Fourth…and his brother Tim does his after the Fourth. Sometimes weather or other unavoidable circumstances throw off the schedule, but year to year, that’s the general timing of things.
We leave to take Alex to college exactly six weeks from today.
I’m not the only one who’s gonna miss her.
Meanwhile, see that guy in the tractor?
That’s Bryce!
It was so fun to watch him load hay. This is the first summer he’s been behind the wheel of the tractor, and he seems to do it so effortlessly.
(Well…with a little help from John Deere.)
Great job, Bryce!
The thing about hauling hay is, if you have two trucks going at once, everything moves so much faster. For example, while Bryce was loading Alex’s trailer with bales, Paige was just pulling into the stackyard with the trailer of hay Bryce had just loaded.
When you pull into the stackyard, you have to pull the vehicle around so the hay is in the general vicinity it needs to be…
Then you get out and start cranking the handle of the trailer…
Until the hay tips…
Right off.
In the background, you can see Marlboro Man moving the bales of hay into neat rows so that in the wintertime, when it’s time to feed the hay to the cattle, it’s all organized and easy to retrieve.
No sooner had Paige headed back to the hay field to get more bales than Alex and Todd showed up.
They pulled into the stackyard and unloaded bales while Paige was arriving in the hayfield and receiving more bales from Bryce
And so it goes.
All the while, Stormy, our family friend, was driving the rake in the pasture nearest our house. The hay had already been cut a couple of days before, and the rake simply pushes two rows of cut hay into a single row.
That way, Cowboy Pete…
Can drive the baler right over the neat row of hay.
And then, a couple of minutes later, this happens.
I never get tired of watching hay being baled.
Meanwhile, back in the hay field, Alex has managed to get herself stuck in the draw.
Bryce assessed…and coached…but she was stuck. Really, really stuck.
Then he decided to take matters into his own hands.
So Bryce jumped on his tractor…
Drove around to the back of Alex’s trailer…
And pushed her right out.
As a parental unit type, it’s always fun to witness situations in which your various children begin to grow and thrive. This summer, Bryce has really come into his own with ranch work. Whether he’s on a horse or behind the wheel of a tractor, he’s suddenly no longer one of the little kids. It’s bittersweet, but mostly sweet, but kind of sad, but mostly neat.
Here’s Bryce in his own words!
