On the farm since Thursday we have been playing a Russian Roulette-style game called ‘Making Hay’. In a normal year this is stupid, in a year like this where the weather is so wet, it is beyond lunacy…

Make hay while sun shine,
Chinese proverb or nursery rhyme?
Easy to say, easy to think,
Making fresh hay turns you to drink!

First cut your grass when it is long,
Let it lie cut, you can’t go wrong?
Then from the nettles at the back of the shed,
Fetch out the Hay-Bob (it was once red!).
Then to your dealer, their store-man’s named Shaun,
To replace all the tines that are broken or worn.
Turn over the hay and pray for no rain,
When you’ve done that, turn it again!
If by three days the crop seems quite fit,
It will now rain and you’re in the sh*t!
Go fetch the baler from the back of the shed,
And grease it and oil it, bring it back from the dead.
With one eye on black clouds and bad knees from praying,
Get to the field, pretend you are playing!
Pretend you don’t care what the weather must,
The rarest thing now is a large cloud of dust.
The safety-bolt snaps, the knotters are bad,
The pick-up is screeching and driving you mad.
But your luck holds out and after a while,
You’ve baled all the bales and are wearing a smile.
Now take the loader and long four-wheeled trailer,
The sun now beats down, should have been for the baler!
You sweat and you groan that the bales weigh such a lot,
You call the man on the baler a twit or a clot!
With the bales in the shed it starts to rain,
You reach for the whisky and say “NEVER AGAIN!”
© Baldock Bard 2012
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