Alfalfa and Accidental Death

Hiromi and I keep an eagle eye on the alfalfa field just 25 yards away from the double patio doors on the east side of our house.  That field was struggling when we moved here in June.  The first time Doug Harner's son Colby pulled into it with his swather (with his dad on board for the first round or two), he left behind pathetic windrows.  The cut-hay rows inched along--thin, flat ribbons even before drying had shrunken them further.  Raking two rows into one several days later bulked up the rows only slightly, and baling resulted in only a bale wagon or so full of bales--from 40 acres of alfalfa. The only good thing about that hay crop was that it didn't get rained on.  Or maybe that really was the bad thing about that hay crop.  It had too long a history of no rain.

Then came lavish rains.  The alfalfa leaped up in glad surprise.  Weed seeds sprouted too and raced ahead of the alfalfa.  "It'll be a wonderful cutting this time," I told Hiromi.

"Except for the weeds," he said.

"No problem," I asserted confidently.  "Cows love Amaranth.  It'll just get baled up right along with the alfalfa and help feed the cows."

But that's not what happened.  A few days before the swather returned to wrestle the growth into plump windrows, a Coop sprayer swept up and down and across the field, anointing everything with a fog of something.  Hiromi was outside and got a little worried, so he called the farm's headquarters.  "It's Roundup," he was told, and, as expected, that tall Amaranth bowed its head and died.

"I can't figure it out," I fretted.  "It's obviously Roundup-ready alfalfa, since it didn't die when it was sprayed, but if it's GMO alfalfa, they can't harvest a seed crop because of infringing on patent laws.  I can't think of any other reason for spraying that field now, so near to when it's tall enough to cut."  But cut it they did, dead Amaranth and all.

I inquired surreptitiously of one of my students about the plan for the alfalfa.  He sought some inside information and soon reported back.  The spraying had caused accidental death.  It had been ordered long before, but the steady rains had made it impossible to do the job because the field was muddy.  When it finally dried off enough to do the spraying, the field was also dry enough to cut the alfalfa, so both happened in rapid succession--only the spraying order would have been canceled if the farmer had thought soon enough of how this timing was working out all wrong.  Too bad.  Wasted money and effort.  I was already skeptical of the GMO alfalfa.  Even more so with its spray load.  The green field looked a trifle jaded now.

Nevertheless, we hovered anxiously over that field while the hay dried ever-so-slowly because the windrows were so incredibly heavy.  "Was that you that pulled into the field this morning?" I asked Joe at the Labor Day picnic.  It was.  He couldn't bale yet though because it still wasn't dry enough.

The next morning, however, many tight, fat, side-perched green-jellyroll rounds of hay rested serenely on the smooth green carpet, dark green everywhere except for the pale green lines where the windrows had bleached the growth underneath. Before Hiromi got up, I went to the patio and  counted all the bales I could see from there, and, by extrapolating from my count, calculated how many there might be in the whole field.  Later, Hiromi one-upped me and actually walked around the edge of our property till he could see the whole field and get a count of all the bales.  Seventy-five"," he announced at breakfast.  Getting that hay to this point had been a heavy responsibility, but we felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment for having done so.

Before long someone showed up with a tractor and began to pluck the bales off the field and line them up along our east property line.  I went off to school and Hiromi went off to work in town, and when we got home, lo, a tidy row of bales edged almost all of our east property line.  The jellyroll had been reassembled, and, lined up like that, those bales formed a formidable wall.  I sat on my patio and stared and was not the slightest bit amused.  I had rejoiced over that hay, but now it was cutting me off from the expansive view I exulted in every time I looked out from my kitchen window or my patio doors.  The alfalfa beyond the wall would have to grow without my oversight.  That much was certain.

Tristan couldn't even see the trains now when he heard them at our house and ran to the patio doors to look.  They would be visible only a car or two at a time when they crossed near the end of the driveway.  If I had wanted a six-foot tall fence, I could have found a way to get one without this.  Or maybe not.  I could never afford it.  And this hay fence will probably stay for a long time, till the hay price is high during the winter.  Then, if I was lucky, I'd get my view back.

What to do?  Pout? Protest? Plead?  Pray?  I didn't have any trouble remembering to pray, silently of course, when I was on the patio.  Those bales were in my face.  I did all the other things too, mostly silently.  Then, about a week ago, I came home from school, and the hay was gone.  GONE.  Disappeared without a trace.  Such relief!  Should I call up the farmer and thank him?

No.  That would never do.  If I did that, he'd know for sure how peeved I'd been earlier.  I did really like the farmer and his family, and didn't want to make them feel bad.  So I limited my audible thanks to Hiromi's hearing only.  And I thanked God silently.

A day later I arrived home from school, stunned and wiping tears.  The farmer's daughter had been killed in an accident.  I'd take those bales back in a heartbeat and they could stay till March--if it could bring her back.  It was a pathetic short-lived bargaining effort.

Seventy-five bales along the property line.   Such a nothing.