Another mixed bag

Local farms are in the midst of a first cutting of hay. Round bales are popping up everywhere except corn or soybean fields or where the cut hay is still drying in the field. I should have guessed that this spell of rainless weather would benefit someone doing something. Someday soon I expect to get my schedule and calendar clear enough to actually go stand in a river and wave a stick. Meanwhile, there’s decent, if overly dry, weather to enjoy and various flowers coming into bloom and a couple of dogs that provide entertaining distractions plus restorative affection. 

hay baling time

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re in an interlude between spring greens and peak summer seasons at our community supported agriculture farm. Their summer season doesn’t begin until early July. There’s a recent article in The Guardian on eating local food that begins with an assessment of food miles before it gets around to looking at the idea that local foods are an alternative to industrial farming and confined animal feed operations (CAFOs). My quick read of that article helped me remember how easy it is these days to focus on a less significant aspect of an issue and how little attention gets paid to answering the question “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” While I was putzing on a different project this morning, I did some quick research on logic models and wish we could make their use mandatory for all legislative efforts.

The Guardian has done a much better piece of journalism in its coverage today of Kate Raworth and her Doughnut Economics. I managed to get about 80% of the way through my copy of the book before I got distracted. After skimming the Guardian’s piece I dug out the abandoned book and will now recommence reading it. Doughnut Economics and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab [DEAL] got me thinking about yesterday’s posting here and has me wondering what the reaction in Minnesota’s mining regulatory agencies would be if Glencore (not currently, as far as I can tell, a member of IRMA) and the PolyMet folks proposed to develop their mine project in full compliance with all the guidance and audits and procedures the good folks at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance have created and used that effort to prototype new Minnesota laws and regulations for mining. Of course, that idea may make so much sense it would never be implemented, unlike Doughnut Economics and its Action Lab. Just sayin’.

Emergency Haying

Hayden Carruth

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,

my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 500 bales we’ve put up

this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn

by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way

my body hands from twisted shoulders, suspended
on two points of pain in the rising
monoxide, recall that greater suffering.

Well, I change grip and the image
fades. It’s been an unlucky summer. Heavy rains
brought on the grass tremendously, a monster crop,

but wet, always wet. Haying was long delayed.
Now is our last chance to bring in
the winter’s feed, and Marshall needs help.

We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales
to the barn, these late, half-green,
improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds

or more, yet must be lugged by the twine
across the field, tossed on the load, and then
at the barn unloaded on the conveyor

and distributed in the loft. I help—
I, the desk-servant, word-worker—
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,

the close of day, how I fall down then. My hands
are sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,

less able and less well prepared than I.
Rose Marie in the rye fields of Saxony,
her father in the camps of Moldavia

and the Crimea, all clerks and housekeepers
herded to the gaunt fields of torture. Hands
too bloodied cannot bear

even the touch of air, even
the touch of love. I have a friend
whose grandmother cut cane with a machete

and cut and cut, until one day
she snicked her hand off and took it
and threw it grandly at the sky. Now

in September our New England mountains
under a clear sky for which we’re thankful at last
begin to glow, maples, beeches, birches

in their first color. I look
beyond our famous hayfields to our famous hills,
to the notch where the sunset is beginning,

then in the other direction, eastward,
where a full new-risen moon like a pale
medallion hangs in a lavender cloud

beyond the barn. My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who

if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say

woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.

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