Pete in Dunster, puts out a daily email, which lists the things that various people in the Robson Valley, are selling, trying to buy, along with scheduled community happenings. The other day I read that the Wildeman family, who had just opened up a new restaurant in McBride, were a bit overwhelmed by all the additional work that was required, and as a result were starting to fall behind in some of their farm duties. They were just about to run out of hay for the horses and goats, and asked for volunteers to help move some more hay to their place.
Since I am an experienced hay mover, having had a herd of angora goats, and my activity schedule was pretty empty during the day, I gave them a call and left my name. I was later contacted by John, a visiting father, and asked if I could show up at 8:00 A.M. over at Trask’s farm.
“Okay,” I replied, “I’ll be there.”
For me, being retired has eliminated a lot of stress, but I still experience some, now over insignificant things, that really don’t matter: What should a wear? What footwear, what clothing, what gloves? (I have never had to move hay in the winter) Will there be deep snow? Who else will be there? How long will we work? Can I be ready at 8 in the morning?--stupid stuff.
Of course, I was there and adequately dressed in the morning, and it started out like most McBride activities--with a problem. One of the other guys, who was bringing a trailer for hauling, was stuck in the snow, and although he had a heavy machine to pull himself out, he couldn’t drive both the stuck truck and machine at the same time, so I had to drive back into McBride to help. By the time I got there, he had managed to get himself out of the snow and was ready to go.
So I drove back to Trask’s farm following the guy and his trailer. Once there, we were joined by the oldest Roth boy who had the family flat bed truck, and one by one, we backed the trucks and trailers into the huge hay barn and began to load the bales. We loaded 200 bales of hay. Trasks put up 10,000 bales of hay every year.
We got all trucks all loaded then all headed back to Wildemans with all of the bales. Then we reversed the procedure and took all of the bales from the vehicles and stacked them into Wildeman’s hay barn. The whole job took us just two hours, which was a lot quicker than everyone expected. We were told to go down to the Trading Company restaurant and we would be treated with lunch.
I guess Paul Wildeman, who is doing all the cooking and spending so much time at the new enterprise, wasn’t even told about the hay moving, until it was over; Tammy organized the whole thing behind his back, so he wouldn’t be concerned about it.
The meal we had was much fancier than the fare I usually fix myself for lunch--and very tasty. Below is a photo of my fellow hay movers, sitting down for our lunch.
See my paintings at www.davidmarchant.ca
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