On Day 2 of haying, farmers fluff up the hay with a machine known as a “tedder”. Nobody knows why it’s called this. The tedder looks a little like a mower, but it has sets of long prongs mounted on revolving circular heads that twist the hay around and toss it like a giant salad. This helps it dry in the sun. Tedding takes place once in the morning and again, at least once, in the afternoon because the ground and the unmowed part of the hay is still damp.

Only ten acres were mowed because after the risk assessment of the weather, comes the hedging: if it rains, then only ten acres were lost.

To be a farmer is to engage in continual risk assessment. To live on a farm is to accept a high level of risk, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, watching the weather forecast like a skittish doe with her new fawn in Spring. Small-scale farming is dependent on something more unpredictable than the economy and that’s the weather. It’s the boss here and it’s flighty, but the farmer needs at least three days of sunshine to make hay and here on June 13th, was our first window of opportunity. After a rainy Sunday and a colder June than 2021, the forecast predicted a low chance of rain, and on Monday Jake mowed under ominous clouds, some of them as dark as slate and I held my breath as they sailed overhead.

On Day 1 of haying at Lazy Crazy Acres, ten acres of lush, bushy, thickly fertile grasses were mowed.