By Justin Isherwood – Special to the Gazette

The expedition, this as our father called it, the timing of which was precise, between hay crops. To my memory, everything we did was between hay crops. First cutting, second, third, sometimes a fourth. A fifth if September ran easy.

Our lives were governed by a diffuse protestant God and hay, if hay had more prominence. Hay was the one element to interfere with our Sabbath observance, if fence mending could get us a pass on the morning church service as well. Mostly it was hay as adjourned God, hay to bale with weather forming over the Minnesota prairies. If marsh hay could get rained on, alfalfa was too good to waste.

Summers were variable, allied to haying or not, too wet, too dry, sometimes haying ended after the first cutting. What was left was marsh hay and clover. Clover was God’s own punishment, clover was hard to tame to a decent bale unless it’s dry enough for spit to stick to a barn board. To confess the original noun wasn’t spit.

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