First Cut is Significant…

Walking with a friend on local trails, delightful. We pass through newly cut hay fields while we fill in the blanks of the many pandemic months. The hay catches our shoes, snaps under the weight while its aroma fills the Friday afternoon air. Detours to see the river as we steal a moment or two to take it all in. Our conversation quiets like the river below us. Mallards in flight. Vermonting.

My drive to and from passes a number of fields. One after the other. Round hay bales wrapped in white plastic while rectangular bales also dot the landscape. Mile after mile of painting inspiration. The first cut of the season is underway with fields interrupted only by mountains and houses. The first cut is significant, but the second is where the best nutrition lies…

Nearly home and to my left a reddish-brown tractor bounces along a field. Experience carves the way. A farmer familiar to me. The haying effort is not solo as his wife of always stands alongside sharing the space made for one. Their routine choreographed with as much ease as Swan Lake. Equally as beautiful. Does she suggest the optimum path? Warn of hazards? Their shared vision supports and compliments one another. They work together in the moment, as a team, partners with a unified direction. Both in the fields and in life I suspect. Hair pure and white. Vermont trim and strong. Farming life gracefully exhibited…

“The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows.” Henry David Thoreau