"Hay!" Inquiring Minds Want to Know

 

Inquiring minds want to know: Does Randy really want to be the poster child for my blogging efforts? Admittedly, he ends up being the "face" of Kim's County Line. Once in awhile, he's relieved from his duties by our cute granddaughters or an adorable baby calf. But he definitely is my most consistent model. Once in awhile, my Facebook friends ask me, "Is he really OK with that?"

I've had more than one person say:

• "My husband wouldn't be that patient."
• "Mine wouldn't cooperate like that!"
• "It would be a cold day in July to get my hubby to stand there and take pictures when he has other things to do."

And, yes, Randy is patient ... as long as we're not talking about broken-down equipment, uncooperative cattle or not getting his cell phone to work in the never-never-land we call home.

I think he kind of likes having the farm featured in my blog and on my Facebook page (which, by the way, he reads Facebook on his tablet faithfully). In fact, he often suggests blog topics or photo ideas. For one, he sees it as a way to keep landlords in the loop about what's going on at the farm. Plus, it makes me more attentive to the whys and wherefores of this operation.

One of those things he really wanted a photo of was the long row of big, round hay bales generated from the oats he planted in an old alfalfa field.

As we rounded the corner from taking pictures in a corn field, I saw the long row of bales and remembered his request.

Randy was happy to get 176 bales of hay off the 47-acre field. And I'll tell you something else: It's not easy to get all those bales in one frame.

Sometimes, he doesn't get a choice in whether a photo is taken or not. I doubt he even knows I took this one yesterday morning as it appeared he was getting eaten alive while working on the combine straw chopper.

I paid him his "modeling fees" by serving as his assistant. As I told my family, if I am the assistant for any mechanical project, you know he's desperate. Mechanical ability is not one of my attributes.

But we got it done!

Randy started swathing the second cutting of alfalfa on Monday. Case has had our baling/loading tractor and has been working on it for awhile now, so Randy has been hesitant to put a lot of hay down.

We still have wheat to cut, but it's on ground really impacted by underflow. So we'll give it some more time this week when we have four days of projected 100 degree days. Oh, and did I mention it's county fair week? That's pretty much a guarantee for hot weather.