Writing on Water - 100 bales of hay later

Kids can be amazing workers given the right circumstances and motivation. Mine moved 100 forty to fifty pound bales of hay from a field two miles away to our barn in a little over an hour. They threw them onto a rented trailer, stacked them so they wouldn't spill on the ride home, then unloaded them and restacked them at our barn. We did two loads. My daughter spent some of the time fighting off the curious and greedy horses, which her older brothers didn't want to do, and I excused my youngest son when he couldn't lift anymore bales, but at the field they were awesome. I kept thinking of spiders or maybe swarms as they rushed at the piles of bales and tried to load them as fast as they could. They were on a mission! Did I mention it was 95 degrees? They're great.

This might seem totally off my usual writing topics, but I can connect this to writing. How often have you heard something like, "Kids don't do things like haying or a multitude of other old-fashioned things anymore?" from some well meaning critic. I didn't pay my kids. I did say we had to do it, and we'll do it again later this summer. The kids, however, did the work with only one minor fight before we began. Could I make an editor believe they worked so happily, though? Hmmmmm. Probably not a majority of NYC editors. I've been told, "Most kids don't know what a barn smells like," or "Homecoming isn't a big thing anymore." I want to say, "Come visit the rest of the country. Please." Because a lot of our readers live in the vast space between our coasts, and a lot of them do know what barns smell like. Sure, maybe only a few know it's better to be sweating in long sleeves when stacking hay bales than have your arms riddled with scratches from needle sharp hay, but some do. As for the rest? They might like to learn about it, given the right story.

As for our horses? They gobbled the loose hay until we arrived with the second load and I released the herd's lead mare. She didn't want to stand in the sun chewing drying grass. She wanted the fresh grass under the trees in the pasture. She led, the rest followed. The grass is always greener . . .