TOWNER, N.D. -- It's a good thing we don't live on too good a road. Our haying is getting a later than usual start this year, and if the whole county was driving down a highway by my unmown fields, I'd be overwhelmed with guilt.
As it is, the road by our place isn't too well graveled or traveled, so the only witnesses to my unharvested hayland are the neighbors, and most of them haven't been in the hay field very long themselves.
There are some benefits to a boondock ranch location. The scrutiny of running a ranch on a major highway would stress me out.
Fences not only would have to be tight but straight and pretty, too. You'd have to keep your barn painted, your cows fat and your mailbox decorated for each appropriate season.
Crops would have to be seeded, sprayed and harvested on time, or better yet, early, like being the first one done.
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Hay never should get rained on, and the bales should look as good as the ones in the glossy brochures where they sold the baler.
Thanks to living far from the beaten path in our area, we can pretty much let things slide as much as we dare.
But even though our main thoroughfare is just a remote township road, I still make hay a little differently near it than I do when I'm a mile or two further inland.
Tied up tidy
I do my best to make the bales along the road tall and firm, with a good, square shoulder. If the twine tie malfunctions and I kick out a fluffy bale with little or no twine on it, I unroll it, bale it up and try again to get the twine to take.
I use a little extra twine on my road bales, too. Nothing makes a poor bale look better than a lot of twine. If you use enough, it's kind of like net wrap without the expensive attachment, just a lot of expensive string.
I guess Dad's the one who taught me my road haying skills. He'd make his stacks a little taller and straighter where people might see them. We'd rake up every stick of hay that was scattered and we'd park our machinery perpendicular to the road at night fall like a well-managed parking lot.
Haying along the road requires good machinery operation. Straight windrows, no skips when you're cutting and clean up your corners. It means steering a little straighter and looking back a little more often, all the time being ready to take one hand off the wheel to wave if someone drives by.
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Waving is a requirement if you hay next to the road. No one likes an arrogant hayer, so if you see a cloud of dust coming down the road, you get ready to wave.
As I work further in on the field, I'll still wave just in case the traveler in the car is looking my way. Sometimes I hardly can see the vehicle or even tell if it's a person or a dog doing the driving, but I still wave.
This year, there's plenty of time to wave. The drought really has knocked the hay back, so I only need to trip my rake every 100 feet of so. The hay's so sparse and thin, most observers wouldn't know if I left a skip or a streak while I was mowing, or if I even cleaned up the corners when I finished.
It's been a forgiving year for haying, but a terrible year for hay. The bales I've made look good, but there aren't nearly enough of them.
If I end up buying some hay this year, I'll be sure to look for bales close to a road. They are tied a little better, you know.
Editor's Note: Ryan Taylor welcomes comments about his column. He can be reached at 1363 54th St. N.E., Towner, N.D. 58788; e-mail: cowlogic@ndak.net . Taylor, who ranches near Towner, is a columnist for Agweek.
