Bale by Bale

My husband and I have been moving hay this week. We’re moving it from the front field of Smith Farm to our house. Since each round bale weighs approximately 500 hundred pounds, this isn’t easy.

We’re moving the bales two at a time. We don’t have an available big flatbed truck to move more at a time. And we’re senior citizens. Moving hay is tiring on a hot day. But we have to do it if I want to feed my mares.


Together we roll the bale onto the little trailer. Doing so, I think of Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to an eternity of futile labor. Every morning, Sisyphus had to roll a large stone up a steep hill, but—when he reached the top in the evening—the stone rolled back down. The next day, he started again.

Fortunately, once we get the bale onto the trailer, it usually stays, and we do know the bales won’t last. Once in the pasture, each bale will feed my two mares for a week or more. Then we’ll put in another. And another the following week. Etc.

Moving the hay bale by bale reminds me of my favorite writing book, Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. The full title is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Lamott advises writers to start small. The title comes from advice her father once gave her 10-year-old brother, who'd put off writing a report on birds and wondered how he could do the seemingly impossible job: "Just take it bird by bird." So, we're taking our difficult job bale by bale.

Everyday, when we see the number of bales accumulating at home, we can see the results of our small progress. Daily small progress leads to big progress, whether it's writing a book or moving hay.


Bird by bird or bale by bale, do what works for you.

The Grass is Always Greener

I’ve been complaining about how dry my property is. Actually, part of the lawn is lush:

The back yard this morning. Note the cloudy sky. Yippee!

Do you know why part of it is greener than the rest? Here’s a hint: Remember when Irma Bombeck said that the grass is always greener over the septic tank? Well, she wasn’t quite right. The grass is really greener over the septic tank’s drainfield.

If you live in rural America, you most likely have a septic tank (unless you have an outhouse). Eventually, it’ll need cleaning. We had ours cleaned about five years ago, but the septic cleaner guy said it could have gone another decade. Better safe than sorry, though. I’ve heard horror stories from people who woke up one morning to discover brown ooze seeping up through their grass. Soon they found that oil hadn’t been discovered on their property.

You’d think cleaning the tank would be one of the more odious—or is that odiferous?—jobs a person could have. In reality, it isn’t bad at all: open the cover, drop in a hose, suck up the crud, collect a check. Granted, I don’t know what happens after the truck leaves, but that’s another story.

Looking into our tank was fascinating. A lot of itsy bitsy insects live down there. A good thing, the guy said. The bugs are supposed to indicate a healthy septic tank. What the bugs do, I have no clue. How they reproduce is even more of a mystery. Do they grope around blindly until they get lucky?

The inside of the septic tank—at least what I could see of it—looked exactly the way I’d always pictured the underworld. Well, I never pictured the underworld with millions of little bugs, but if you ever studied mythology, you know what I mean. The liquid in the bottom looked like the River Styx. Where was Cerberus? Was Orpheus on his way out? Was Eurydice behind him, or had she looked back already? Was Persephone lurking around the corner?

Anyone who ever majored in English should find a septic tank’s interior a thing of beauty and a joy forever.