Hauling Hay and Wrecks

Hay is expensive to harvest, expensive to haul and expensive to feed.

It is also just as critical as my coffee in the morning.

I wish I fed less hay and more grass to my cattle and sheep, but I’ve been through a few winters when seven layers of snow crusted between six layers of ice across the entire ranch made grazing impossible for every ungulate who didn’t carry a long pick axe.

So hauling hay to my stackyards is a major fall job.

My brother, Roger, drives the truck and stacks it while I gather bales in the field and load the truck.

My daughter and I pick up the small square bales.

Last year, we paused from picking up small bales on Thanksgiving to call my son.

Roger and I finished stacking big bales on New Year’s Eve.

Then I celebrated when I spotted someone else’s bales still in the field.

At least I beat one person – which probably isn’t the best attitude, but I’m slightly competitive.

This year, Roger and I hauled the last big bale from my alfalfa field before Halloween, three holidays earlier.

Admittedly, my hay crop was only 80 percent of normal because of the drought and a late freeze, but we ignored that detail and whooped it up.

We had only one more field of hay to stack -- eleven miles from home, up on a big hill.

Most of the hay I cut in that field blew away in a July windstorm, but we had six loads to bring home.

Those trailer tires looked tiny under that deck of big round bales that hung way out over both edges of the trailer.

Roger played obstacle course, weaving to avoid the teeth-rattling, spring-busting washboards whenever he could.

The worst part of the trip was the steep gravel hill with a deep ditch on one side and a cliff on the other.

Roger geared down and took the middle of the road. Any oncoming traffic waited at the bottom.

By mid-afternoon of the second day of hauling, I finished gathering and hooked up another pickup to my second trailer.

Now we had a lot more trailer tires to worry about.

And that steep hill.

As I was taking my half from the middle down that steep hill, my phone rang.

This was not the time for distracted driving, but my daughter was calling.

Fifteen-year-old Abby never calls, only texts.

“Mom, I just took care of a guy who rolled his truck on our hill. He ran through the fence. I showed the tow truck where to go through the gate,” she said.

Apparently, the hill I was driving down wasn’t the only dangerous gravel in the neighborhood.

The loose gravel and washboards had pulled the hunter off the edge.

Abby had spotted the pickup in our pasture as she rode the bus home.

She walked the half mile to the house, jumped in the only operable pickup left and drove the mile to see how she could help.

“I was so afraid I would see a dead body,” Abby said.

The driver walked away from his wreck.

As Roger and I pulled our wide loads up to the driveway gate, the tow truck passed us with a wrecked truck, hunters came from both directions and the Montana Highway Patrol officer slipped into the driveway ahead of us. I watched one truck come perilously close to Roger’s last bale.

I hadn’t seen this much traffic since Glacier National Park reopened.

When the dust settled from all of the wrecks – potential and real – I realized we could have faced much worse than a blown tire.

And we finished hauling hay.

I call both of these a win.