more pen/ink/cp pieces

pen/ink/coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper, 4" x 6"
copyright Teresa Mallen

I have finished off seven more of my 4 inch x 6 inch pen/ink/cp drawings. Of course they will look much better when they are presented with a mat so the ragged paper edges don't show. They are enjoyable to do and I like that I can have a finished work quite quickly. Sometimes my larger pieces can seem to drag on a bit... :-)

Harvest season is upon us as veggies ripen in the garden. We are also storing up food for winter of a different sort - hay for the goats. A year's worth of hay was delivered Saturday morning.

 Looks like a lot but it is only 200 bales.

I grew up on a dairy farm and the conveyor is actually a smaller one that we used on that farm. I am delighted to inform you that I shifted that entire stack of hay myself last Saturday! My husband was stacking the hay in the mow.

Two hundred bales by real farming standards is nothing, just two wagon loads. If there is one thing I learned on the farm while growing up, it was how to handle hay. During my teen years, my mother and I unloaded tens of thousands of bales (from a wagon, not spread all over a lawn - took a lot of walking on Saturday). I had no brothers and there was no hired help. So, yup, this wee pile was a piece of cake and I loved every minute of it.

To this farm girl, the smell of hay is divine and it is very satisfying to know that your animals are set for the winter, no matter how deep the snow nor how severe the cold may get. Did I mention that it was 29 degrees (84F) with 100% humidity the day we put up the hay? And that these bales weigh between 50 - 60 pounds each? I have no idea the amount of water I lost in sweat and my face was the colour of a very ripe tomato but I got the last bale sent up to the loft about 10 minutes before a rain storm blew in. Wet hay is ruined hay.

As a added bonus, I find all of these farming activities provide great therapy for wrists that suffer from too much typing on the computer. A session of planting garden seedlings or pulling weeds, mucking out stalls or shifting bales seems to exercise my hands in a very thorough way. We truly weren't meant to be sedentary creatures and our bodies often remind us!  So yeah for farm work. :-)