Zen and the Art of Making Hay

“You gotta make hay while the sun shines.”

It was our second year coming face to face with the literal words held within this encouraging little phrase.

Come the end of June / beginning of July, when that sun shines, you make that damn hay! For farmers, their livelihood depends on it. For our horses, their ability to eat for the next 12 months depended on whether or not we were successful.

We continued with the attempt to grow our own hay after some mediocre success the previous year. We made a lot of mistakes, as is to be expected, but thankfully, we only planted a few acres, which allowed us to shave a percentage off the cost of purchasing.

We promised ourselves this year we would learn from our mistakes and do all of the right things; and since we’d be doubling the amount of acres, we had better!

So we seeded down at the right time, we fertilized at the right time, we had the right farmer as our partner (not our curmudgeon of a neighbour who was difficult to deal with), we had the right calculations of how much it would take to feed 3 horses for an entire year. We’d be totally self-sufficient! It was a wonderful feeling.

However, despite all of those boxes being checked, there, at the bottom of the list, remained a box that hadn’t been checked; when would be the right time to do the actually ‘making’ of the hay. A four part process - mowing, tedding, raking and baling - completed over several days of the “right” weather conditions; a little bit of wind, a lot of sun, and no rain whatsoever! 

Despite doing all the right things, that final box sat there - on it’s own; empty; uncheckable. A symbol of our human vulnerability. Sure, you can control some stuff and you can work really hard towards a desired outcome. But ultimately, you are not in control. There is something much bigger than you at play. The final step - of haying and living - and the one we often try to evade but can never escape: you have to let go; you have to trust. 

This modern life continues to make it harder and harder to remember this truth. We run around, faster and faster, heads down, trying to do so much and get it all done, falling further prey to the illusion that we run the show, while becoming more and more disconnected from our land and our food. But farmers remain one of the shrinking groups who are immersed in this truth day in and day out. They wake up and go to bed each and every day knowing that Mother Nature always get the last word.

Her words were rather shouty this June. It rained. A lot. When the sun finally came out, it was only for a brief moment. Just to give a little tease and then disappear once again. It was a farmer’s worst nightmare. And now it was ours. 

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We stood at the edge of the field, next to our farmer, staring out over the hay that had managed to be cut, but still couldn’t be baled. And every day it lay there, getting wetter and wetter, it would continue to lose it’s nutrients and it’s value. We would continue to lose the whole point of growing our own hay and, potentially, a lot of money.

Fraught with worry, ringing our hands, we began to rapid fire our questions at him: 

So what do we do if it keeps raining this afternoon?

And then what if it doesn’t stop raining all weekend?

They’re saying it could rain all next week too, what will happen then?

Will the hay be any good?

Will the horses eat it?

If the horses can’t eat it can we sell it for the cows to eat?

What if the horses and the cows can’t eat it??

What will we do if no one can eat it and it’s worthless and we wasted all this time and money for nothing?!

What will we do? What will we do?! 

He put out his hands - whoa whoa, slow down, they said, before he paused and spoke, “You're throwing a lot of questions out!” His hands remained in front of him a while longer, almost acting as a barrier between him and our barrage. He was more concerned about being pelted with questions than pelted with rain. He seemed uncomfortable.

“Well….uh….well, I can’t really say.”

Not the helpful answer we were looking for.

We pressed him a little further - A rough idea? An educated guess? A ballpark? - trying to shake loose even the tiniest tidbits of information we could piece together to try and come up with a plan. And the longer we shook, the more uncomfortable he got.

Then it hit me. He wasn't trying to be evasive. We were asking the impossible of him. He couldn’t give an answer because he didn’t have one to give. He had 50 years of experience. He had come face to face with every possible farming scenario. Too much rain; not enough rain. Good crops gone bad; bad crops somewhat salvaged. Harvesting at the right time; harvesting at the wrong time. He had seen and lived through it all.

Except for one very important thing: Today.

His decades of experience gave him limitless knowledge about farming, but it also gave him immeasurable wisdom about life: you cannot live outside of the present moment. He couldn’t tell us what was going to happen because we weren’t there yet. It was as simple and as frustrating as that. 

“We'll know when we know.” It was his best non answer-y answer he could provide.

We watched him climb back into his pick up and prayed that he’d be returning that afternoon in a tractor. I checked the weather app repeatedly as we headed back inside. I studied the hour by hour percentages. The precipitation graphs and maps that seem like they should be really helpful but aren’t. So much information, but still, no concrete answer.

“We'll know when we know.” 

I could feel my body becoming more and more tense until I remembered  -  this is the work: to sit in the discomfort of the unknown long enough for it to shift. For the unknown to become comforting because it doesn’t need an answer. The present moment is it’s own answer. You are here, and that’s all you need to know.

In the nick of time, we managed to get it all baled before the rain came. It was a beautiful sight looking out over the field dotted with round bales. Like sleeping giants, a reminder that rest, patience, trust and surrender are such an important part of the process. A reminder that control is an illusion. 

A reminder to stop throwing out so many questions, and stay present to the one and only answer; Here; Now.