Making Hay While the Sun Shines

For the first time since the summer of 2012, our pasture got a haircut.

We’re at the mercy of those few who both want our pasture hay and are willing unpredictably to bring all the related machinery down into Middle Earth to get it.

That, and the vagaries of the season–last year, perpetually wet when the hay-folks spare time would have allowed them to come get it–makes our making hay an iffy proposition. We live from summer to summer, taking what it dishes out.

Some are too wet to cut it, some are too dry to grow it.

So all last summer, and this summer up until the last week of August, our field has been working on becoming a forest again. Even so, it made about 100 square bales, and the new grass is coming up fast.

[su_vimeo url=”http://vimeo.com/104712391″]

This really short really bad video was made with Instagram’s new Hyperlapse iphone app. Maybe some day I’ll have a suitable subject to take real advantage of the incredible image stabilization.

I’m thinking to run this from the hard top to the house with the camera in the dashboard caddy. You’ll see what it’s like getting to Middle Earth.

And that will, in all likelihood, bring about World Peace. You’re welcome.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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