Cotton Dancing in the Moonlight or Haying with Horses

Not three days ago from the moment I am writing this we started to make hay with the horses. The first step with to cut the hay. This was something we apprentices were rather excited about. The mowers are old International Harvester #9 High Gears and we had two working ones and one in restoration. The mowers were all made up until World War II when horses and tractors were being used at the same time. Several million #9's were made meaning that today there are literally hundreds of thousands that are in good enough condition to be restored and put to work. The #9 is a purely horse drawn tool, no fossil fuel required. As the team was hitched to the mower we all wait in anticipation. Deborah drove it out towards the field and we all followed. She finally got to the hay crop and let down the sickle bar and engaged the gears. With a series of clicks the horses began to pull and the sickle bar began to thwact and the hay fell with a silent swoosh and the horses tugs jingled metallically. All one could do was to stare wide eyed and follow quickly behind the mower. And so we all did admiring the simply novelty and practicality of this 60 or 70 year old machine as it preformed its tasks just as it had been engineered to do. After about two rounds of the of the 20 or so acres Deborah switch with David and went in with Willa to work on training a horse. Lisa and I continued to follow David around in circles. Haying is a hypnotic thing, when you are doing it consumes your attention. David made another 4 or 5 rounds and then Lisa got her first chance at driving. We did another 3 rounds and suddenly we realized that we were working more by moonlight then sunlight. A beautiful thing happened on one of the rounds. As Lisa drove the mower cut through a patch of hay that cottonwood cotton trapped within it. The cotton sprang up and on the slight breeze of the evening danced in the moonlight over the yet uncut hay. It was a magical thing to see. I got my first chance to drive the mower that night too and it is simply the most fun and demanding tool to drive on the farm. Over the next two days we had four 5 to 6 hour sessions of hay mowing and now the first portion of the flat flied is drying in the sun. There is more to come and I am looking forward towards it.