Behind Infinity

Here’s a three-horse team that drove in the Grandville Fourth of July parade.

(we went to the Grandville parade because the Dorr parade was cancelled this year on account of the entire road being torn up downtown for a sewer project. It was a nice parade but it had too many political candidates and not enough tractors and horses and people riding on scooters made from barstools and beer kegs.)

Every time I see a team like this, I want one badly. They have such sweet, steady faces and lovely large haunches.
They also eat a lot. So keeping a pair around just for kicks would be prohibitively expensive.

Speaking of eating a lot, all of the farmers in the area were haying this weekend and my hay lady Connie dropped off an entire wagon for me on Saturday.

The full wagon had 173 bales in it. My herd will eat their way through it in about 5 months. They eat 1 50-lb bale every day.
That comes out to over 9 tons of hay a year. Crazy, no?
(If I had known the truth about hay, and how much of it horses eat, I probably never would have gotten into horses.)
(So I guess it’s just a good thing I didn’t actually know what I was getting into.)

The very nature of hay–the fact that it’s basically sun-dried grass–necessitates that Hay Day happen on the hottest day possible. You make hay while the sun shines, and you stack it while the sun beats down and the hay dust sticks to your sweat-sticky skin.

Everybody helped. In spite of the scratchy and the sticky sweat. Hay is a lot better when there’s somebody to throw and somebody to catch and somebody to stack.

stacking is an art form that i have yet to fully master. a good stack is nice and tight and stable and maximizes the available space. (you can fit an extra 10-20 bales in a given space, depending on which way you point them.)

empty wagon….

…full barn.

Booger sneaks a taste.

I loves him.