Remembering hay

A road trip to Alberta took me through the Rockies, farm lands and badlands, leaving persistent pictures in my head. The prairie sky, with its constantly changing cloud formations moving across the wide horizon. The whisper of blowing grass. Magpies on the road pick tidbits fallen from grain trucks, saucily waiting till the last minute to raise lazy wings above the oncoming car.

Out on the land, shadows steal across the golden ripe wheat that waves beneath alternating bands of blue sky and thick gray cloud. And hay. Each bale is as tall as a man, and weighs seventeen hundred pounds. Farmers need plenty of winter fodder for animals when the prairie is covered by blowing snow.

It's 6:30 AM in the coffee shop, and several men in caps and plaid shirts are discussing a neighbour who is haying.

"I see just the one swather," says one farmer.

"Yeah, they're only using the one," says another. Long pause.

"We never talked to him last night, so I don't know if he baled on Saturday or not. It was too wet on Friday.

“Wonder if it's gonna rain."

"It's raining down in Medicine Hat." Another long pause.

"We're lucky it ain't froze yet. If it clears off..."

These leisurely voices, discussing the weather and the crops, were the soundtrack of my early childhood. The memories are stored deep in my bones.