Back in the Swing

After spending Sunday resting, I cut some more of the pasture tonight. This time my muscles didn't complain at all, and I got a lot done. It's so satisfying to watch the stalks fall with every swing of the blade. I could have kept going, but the sun had gone down and I needed to rake the cut grass out to dry before leaving. Orchard grass is quite lovely in twilight, with luminescent blue-green leaves. I love mowing season.

First Mowing

This May has been very rainy, so for the last several weeks I've been watching the pasture grass getting higher, and higher, and higher. There haven't been enough dry days in a row to get it cut and dried before the next storm rolled in. It's not so bad for the big farmers, since they use tractors to cut the entire field at once, and they bale it in a day as well. I guess the downside for them is if a surprise rainstorm comes up, it can ruin an entire field's worth of hay.

Here at Foxtail Farm, it's just me and a scythe, so I can only cut a small portion each day. I really needed to get a start on cutting, regardless of the weather, so today I set up a shade gazebo type thing that we got from Paul's aunt. I figured I could pile the cut grass under it to keep it out of the rain, and then spread it out to dry when it's not raining.

I didn't cut much grass today because the necessary muscles had gotten rather weak after some eight months since the last time I did this. I had thought I was in decent shape, what with hauling water buckets all over the farm, but today I discovered that scything uses very different muscles than water hauling. Ouch. I'm taking some ibuprofen and going to bed.