This was our first spring at the farm here in Virginia. Where the fields had been used for corn before we moved here, there was no telling how good of a hay cutting there would be our first year here. But the guys got heaps and heaps of pretty grass mowed and raked, tedded then raked again.
It was pretty hay and perfect haying weather too- a sky as blue and sharp as any sky in Eastern Montana ever was; sloped fields across from the house dotted with big wheels of grass, pretty and fat, and yellow as the sun.
But we work in town in order to farm out here, and so a work week rolled in about the time that the fog did. The guys worked until dark but perhaps the fields were *too* productive this year. They would have to leave some in the fields for a few days.
Then, it rained.
For so long that the dogs thought they were going to die.
For so long that the cozy got washed right down to the creek and the sun rinsed clean out of those bales, too.
Sometimes there’s sunshine in the bales, and sometimes it turns gray and you get the truck stuck and you’re late getting supper on the table yet again.
No amount of hustle saves us from being human, from waiting under rain.
But no amount of being human keeps us from grace, no matter what color the load we have to bring happens to be in the end.