Unloading hay bales

Morning came early, and came cold. The overnight low temperature was 15 F. It was still only 18 F when I got up. According to the thermometer it was also a bit chilly in my house... 50 F. It felt cool but not that cold. I've been so busy I haven't fired up the wood stove this week to heat the house. That changed tonight!

I am still covering the garden. I am having doubts the tomatoes all made it. Some are looking suspect at having froze. I'll find out in a day or two.

I noticed a few days ago, when it was warmer and the wind blew my tarp to one side, that the deer ate a few of my tomatoes. Argh! Now tonight I noticed the top of one of my small arborvitae bushes by the road had the top broken down. @#$& deer!!!


Part of why I felt warm this morning was that I woke up naturally without an alarm clock. I've read that a person's internal body temperature rises in the morning and that is one of the body's indicators to wake up. I've noticed that I always feel warmest when I wake up.

And I woke up earlier than usual even though I went to bed at my normal time after 1 am. Dan's truckload of hay came last night and he, I, and a couple other guys were to unload it this morning at 9 am. Actually Dan wasn't going to unload it as he is still recovering from his shoulder surgery - that's why he needed the help.

Dan was outside checking on his cattle when I arrived a few minutes after 9 am. The other guys weren't there yet but I climbed up the truck's trailer to the top of the hay bales and started tossing them down to the ground. I had half the first layer tossed down when Dave showed up. A short while later Dan's son showed up to help. The third guy never showed up. But Don, Dan's neighbor, saw us working as he drove by and he offered to help. Naturally we didn't turn him down.

Don and I tossed down the bales and the other two stacked them. It worked pretty smooth and fast.

The bales were stacked 6 layers high on the truck but we only stacked them 5 layers high on the ground.

The bales varied greatly in weight. They were suppose to be 80 lbs each but some felt to be only 50 lbs. At any rate by the end I was finding it harder to toss the bales. I think Dan was suppose to have over 6 ton of hay bales.

Hay is in such short supply in the Valley this year, and expensive, that Dan's brother brought this hay back from Idaho when he made one of his semi-truck deliveries. Dan had bought more hay elsewhere in the Valley. The Mountain Trader newspaper comes out 6:30 am Thursday morning. Dan got his paper and called for hay at 8 am - he was the second caller. The first caller took the 200 bales stored in the barn while Dan bought the rest. The seller told Dan the phone rang off the hook all day with callers to buy the hay.

After unloading the hay I chatted with Don, whom I knew a few years before I met Dan. It turns out he has a cabin up the North Fork near where Mt Thoma is located. Don said the recent mountain snow didn't get that far north and he thought Mt Thoma was snow free. He went up to his cabin today and he will call me when he returns tomorrow to let me know if any snow is on Mt Thoma. If not, I plan to suggest to my hiking buddies we hike to Mt Thoma next week. This is a hike I've wanted to do over a year now. And Don said the country ran a road grader of the North Fork road a few weeks ago so it only "washboardy" in a few spots.

I had to leave to go to an auction. I had parked my pickup on an incline, and with the heavy frost, I had to put it in four wheel drive to back up the incline.