The Goldenrod Chronicles, Hay Day

It's like the forest fire in Bambi

Hi from the front porch with a cup of mystery tea (let’s hope it’s not caffeinated), sugared strawberries with sour cream, and the first night of lightning bug admiration. And also the dog, her loop lead loosely around her neck and under my foot. (She’s had quite a day, more on that below.)

Today is hay day. The day when the neighbor with the dairy farm down the road comes to cut the ~10 acre hayfield. We have a mutually beneficial relationship and pay/trade situation. He does all the work to cut and bale and haul the hay to his farm, and he does a round of mowing in the toughest spots for us. In turn he gets a very discounted rate for hay. Plus, a hay field is a lower-maintenance perennial system, and it’s diverse (grasses, clovers, alfalfa) and somewhat beneficial for pollinators. It’s a win-win-win.

I mean, it’s a win-win-win for him and me and pollinators when we look at things like money and effort and reducing tillage and nectar sources.

It is not, however, a win-win for wildlife habitat and anthropomorphic broken hearts.

Hay fields grow tall. Like, thigh-tall, hip tall. The ten acres is a haven for red winged blackbirds to build their elaborate basket nests in the grass, a safe haven and cover for turkeys to lay eggs and protect them, and for deer to bed down their babies under the cover of safety. Even some rare or threatened species, like the bobolink nest in hayfields - more on that below.

The goal for cutting hay, from the farmers perspective is to cut it at the ‘right time’ to maximize the nutrients in the hay. Depending on the crop and the livestock (ie, grass or alfalfa or clover - and dairy cows which are basically nursing moms with higher nutrient needs versus beef cattle) the ‘right’ time to harvest varies. But, that said, not of the right times or the best times align with protecting wildlife.

Because all these birds and fowl (I don’t know what you call turkey) and large and small mammals (chipmunks, voles, deer, etc) start looking for homes and safe places to raise their eggs and young in April and May as they build nests and lay eggs. “Look at this amazing grass, protected hayfield!” they think, what a great and safe place to nest. And so they build their nests and lay their immovable eggs and feel content and safe and/or whatever an animal things or doesn’t think about being in the world.

And then they lay their eggs and maybe even their eggs hatch - but have not yet fledged and then ALL OF A SUDDEN A HUGE, HORRIBLE, NOISY, VIOLENT MONSTER TRACTOR roles through a cuts everything down at ground level and chops it up and spits it out into big, mulchy rows.

Ack. Truly just imagine the forest fire scene in Bambi. It’s that, much mechanized warfare and not a fire. The panic. The horror. The shock.

The red winged blackbirds, notorious for flying over their nests and squawking to alert and scare off any one in the area, fly circles over where their nest just was - panicked and looking for a fight and looking for eggs and what might be left. The turkey hens flutter and fly off (if you have not ever seen a turkey fly it’s a sight to be seen) and then return when all is quiet talking and crying out painfully in search of their eggs which are now either run over and crushed by tractor tires, chopped up through the mower blades, or covered with a foot or two of windrowed cut hay. And then there is the doe, walking bravely out into the fully exposed hay field, just standing their looking around for her young. (Or vice versa, which is even more heart braking).

I highly suspected we had a turkey laying eggs and nesting about ten feet in from the hay field closest to the house. I saw her take off, frantic flapping at one point and it took me a while to figure out what it might be. And earlier this week I saw her broad wings swoop down from the tree into the field. I am truly shocked Roux did not discover this nest, as this is where we usually throw her ball into the field - but turkeys are also good at holding very, very still - so maybe it was a fakeout situation.

The deer live their happy nocturnal lives in the hayfield, and I feel better about them munching on that salad bar rather than the roses or anything closer to the house. They can have it. The pass through, and maybe hang out in, the hedgerow that runs east west - but it doesn’t matter as we tend to leave each other be - as long as Roux doesn’t catch sight or sound and take off. A few years back I even found a flattened, desiccated baby deer carcass in the south west corner of the field - just not time enough to escape the fast moving tractor with it’s dangerous blades. (In all honestly, I think the dogs found it, but that’s beside the point).

Living in the country is like living with death and life and the consequences of your choices every day. There’s a joke that if you raise (or have) livestock you will inevitably also have deadstock. Not just when animals go off for slaughter - but because something goes wrong (illness, death when delivering offspring, freak accidents, and on and on). And, in some ways, it’s just the same with wildlife. Right now, with this current situation and the choices I’ve made - I know death and destruction will happen with each hay day, and I hate it. (This is one reason why I want to convert all the hayfields and fallow fields to prairie, one day. Word on the street is I have to finish the trim first.)

The tractor came by this morning, around 10. It’s speedy, and the teenager driving the rig now knows the place and works quickly. Maybe an hour, maybe less - driving laps around the field and methodically knocking down the grasses and clover and chopping it up and spitting it out in tidy rows - along with everything else IN that hay.

The tractor finished its laps and left the field and drove noisily down the road. And I just sat and watched for a while.

The red winged blackbirds darted and chirped through the air. Dive bombing at times. But mostly just (dare I pretend to know) looking for where their nests might be. Who and what might have survived. Trying to make sense of what the fuck just happened. Angry. Blaming.

A smaller adult doe popped out in the south west corner of the field, just standing their stoic and completely, vulnerably exposed. We locked eyes, and both held still. Then her head looked back and forth, back and forth for (I am guessing) a little one (or two) she can’t find.

The flutter of a large bird caught my eye, and it was the turkey hen fleeing toward the road. Then walking along the road. I went back inside, but watched her walk up and down the road, distressed, while I folded laundry. It yelped (that is the actual technical term for it) the most distressed yelp I have ever heard. Worry and mourning. Up and down the road. It was, as an understatement, heartbreaking. (Because of the sound, and because I knew I made the decisions that created this scenario.)

Soon I took Roux outside to walk the field and collect all the balls she’d lost in the tall grass. She found one right away. Ignored a mole popping its head out of the hay, and rolled in something poopy. I came across a single, unharmed turkey egg and foraged around in the hay for more. Would she come back? And if she did, what would she do? (and it didn’t matter because she and the egg would not be safe there.)

I found a large basket and filled it with cut hay and the single egg and put it in the grass outside the range of the tractor. She was in the hedgerow, crooning a deep worried call for her babes. I got too close accidentally, and scared her off - flying into the neighbors blue spruce. She came back third minutes later to nest into the hay where her nest was - a kinetic memory of sorts - and not reunited with her egg.

Meanwhile, Roux’s ears perked in the direction of the southwest corner of the field. First she daintily walked in that direction (as if going to fetch a ball) and then she took of full speed. It took me a while to realize she spotted a small baby fawn, spots and all. Roux chases it in a large oval, then again (and not in a playful way) with me yelling and running after her frantically, then chases it all the way across the hayfield, the neighbor’s crop field, the road, and into the other neighbor’s woods. I am sad and scared and worried as I call for M (who hops on the ATV and zips down the field) as I get in the car to fly down the road toward the neighbors'. Roux, her tongue hanging out further than I have ever seen, greeted me in the road with a huge smile. I opened the door and she hopped in and we went home.

All I can think since then is the panicked bleating of the fawn. The worry. How far Roux drove her into the woods. If she would find her family. If she was okay. If she had someone to care for her. I sat on the back deck and soaked it all in and felt all my feelings. My feelings of my life right now watching distressed turkeys and separated deer and crushed and eggs and crushed Red Wing Blackbird souls. Of these helpless and beautiful natural creatures right here who deserve to be safe and safe and safe.

And also I soak in all the feelings of the world. The families separated by war and political strife and genocide. What it must be like to wake up in the middle of the night to your home, your neighborhood, your community being destroyed by something so much bigger than you. The panic. The fear. The mourning. The exhaustion of persistence. The not knowing. That these too, these inhumane consequences - stem from choices of leaders too.

I feel the ache in my heart of the turkey looking for her clutch of eggs. Calling so loud, so painfully, so constantly. As if she has lost a part of herself. And knowing that mothers across the globe, human mothers, are doing this same thing right now - is heart breaking (a wolloping understatement). That parents are standing in a clearing, vulnerable to the world, looking for a lost family member. That people are circling and circling and circling, just one more time, in hopes that what is lost can be found.

As of dusk, when I could no longer fully see out into the field, the basket with the turkey egg was empty, but the turkey was walking the field. I hope she finds her egg. I hope she settled in for the night.

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.

In peace,
vanessa