Summer on the hills

It’s divorce time again and marriages are strained to breaking point because of one small, simple word – HAY.  Yes it’s early summer and coming up to Hay Time in Carmarthenshire. 

Silage reigns supreme around here and probably everywhere else now.  It can be cut and clamped in a day or only two days for big bales. The tractors are busy cutting and carting, from morning until night.  They zoom around the fields and backwards and forwards to the farms, like busy worker bees.  But for those of us who either cannot or don’t want to use silage then it’s time to start watching the weather forecast. 

In the modern idiom we need a ‘window’ of opportunity, preferably at least six days of sunny weather with a light wind to dry the hay.  Here in west Wales we are lucky to get this much:  It tends to last for four days, teasing us.  It’s ideal if the grass can be cut the night before and then it is already wilting but we rely on neighbours and everyone wants to make hay at the same time. 

As barometers are tapped, the television weather forecast (HTV and BBC) scrutinised and the air sniffed, stress is ready to pounce in a ‘Do we, don’t we cut?’ argument.  Good quality hay for the winter is of paramount value.  There have been years when the weather has not been kind and we know of neighbours who have taken in poor stuff, barely fit for bedding.  Our neighbour has an expression, ‘Better than snowballs.’  Yes it probably is, but it is very satisfying to stand in a hay barn that is full of light green, sweet smelling bales, brought in on a bright sunny day.  You know they are well made and will heat up a little, but not so much that they become covered in evil, whitey grey mould. 

How times have changed.  In the pre-tractor times, whole families would be out working in the fields.  Now, when there are large numbers of bales a sled or an eight bale pick-up is used to pull the bales into easy to pick up stacks.  With a grab on the front a tractor can clear a field in a fraction of the time it takes a gang of men, women and children.  The trailers are stacked up eight – ten bales high and everyone hitches lifts or walks back down to the farm. There the bales are lifted up onto an elevator, received at the top and passed along.  Two or three workers haul and lift the bales along and wedge them into place in the barn and as the bales rise to the ceiling, the air is hot and dusty.  Someone fetches out a big bottle of pop and there is two minutes rest before the next load. It’s a time for joking and comments and rueful glances at sore hands that are unused to lifting heavy bales tied up tight with polypropylene twine.

The lady of the farm gets in a supply of bread, ham, Swiss Rolls, sausage rolls and whatever else they want to feed the hungry workers with.  Piles of sugary Welsh cakes are stacked up on dinner plates.  Large pots of tea are made, cider and lemonade provided, with peaches, ice cream and choc ices to follow. It can be ten o’clock at night when a kitchen full of men, a few boys and the occasional female sits down to food.  It is a time to see neighbours and catch up on gossip.  The next fields of hay to be brought in are decided upon and those who have to be up at six the next morning to start milking rush off or organise their wife or partner to do it.  

The following day starts as the sun dries the dew off and the hay is turned again, ready for rowing up and then baling.

Summer for me means picking wisps of hay from men’s socks.  Grass seeds, prickly thistles and assorted remnants all stick into the fibre and it is a labour of love to brush and pick it out before washing them.

We have a print of a David Shepherd painting, The Last Bales showing the hay wain in a field with the men scurrying about and massed thunderclouds looming over.  I have prayed, even begged for the weather to last just long enough to get our hay in.  My soul will be in eternal damnation for the bargains I have tried to strike.  Sometimes we get it in a day early because rain is coming in and then nothing happens beyond a few drops.  Or the weather turns cloudy and the hay lies out in the field.  If it is left too long the grass starts growing through and it becomes a nasty brown mess underneath and is fit for nothing.   So what looks like a nice country scene of farmers busy in the field, pitching bales on trailers is often a frantic race against time. We hear the rumble of tractors going by at one and two in the morning.  These are usually the big bale wrappers driven by the few contractors who service the farms in their area.  The machines are expensive and with their powerful lights cutting swathes across the field they work well into the night, wrapping bales of silage and haylage.  Haylage is grass cut for hay but big bale wrapped after a few days before it is dry.  It is usually less dusty and horse owners like it.

In June we also have to think about shearing the sheep and after that fly control and dosing for worms.   We are in a queue for shearing as Irfon the shearer visits many farms.  It also depends on the weather.  He cannot shear if the sheep are damp or wet as the fleece must be rolled up dry.  They are rolled up as tight as possible and about twenty to twenty five, depending on size are pushed into a huge hessian sack called a sheet.  These are tied up, labelled and taken to a collection centre where they are piled up high onto flat bed lorries to go to the processing mill.  With the price of wool now, the value barely pays for shearing.  We live in a polyester age, wool sweaters are no longer fashionable.

We also have a noisy night afterwards, as the lambs do not recognise their mothers without their fleece and run about bleating desperately. It is silly, but true. Afterwards the flock stay down by the house in case it is a cold night. We have had summers where the weather has turned cold and damp after shearing and we’ve had to keep them in because of pneumonia. Would you like to go out into a cold night with no clothes on? 

As the fleece starts to grow again the sheep are treated for fly control.  One of the most unpleasant, but fortunately rare sights now is of a lamb or ewe with maggot infestation.  A few years ago pour on dip was brought in and now a trickle of Vetrazin or Click over their back keeps flies off for the summer.  It is so much easier and less stressful for the animal.  Before this they were dunked unceremoniously into a large, deep bath full of cloudy, organo-phosphorous filled water. They even had to be dipped twice a year for sheep scab, a chilly event in October.  Before we had our own dip we walked the flock along the road to a neighbours’ dip that was set in a small quarry, shaped like an amphitheatre.  Two miles there and back was a lot for the sheep, and sometimes the rams, heavier than the ewes would become stressed and have to ride in the van. 

With their hooves trimmed to control foot rot and their backs sprayed with Vetrazin they can all go up to the top fields until they have to come down for lambs to be taken off to go to market.  This is my least favourite time.  The lambs bawl for their mothers and siblings, and these in turn stand at the top hedges and call down.  Most of them will go to market and we hope we have given them the best life possible.  Now we only have a small flock, they wean themselves and the lambs stay until December. 

As the summer days shorten into September the holiday season is over.  We claim our green hills, the purpling moorland and the secret valleys to ourselves again and the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness beckons.