I’ve seen the signs all around this week.

Dry. No rain. But the humidity has made the heat index soar to unsafe levels. 

Three donkeys stand in a sliver of shade from an old chicken house, their only solace from the rays of the noonday sun.

A few cows soak in a lukewarm pond while the rest of the herd stands idly by, their stillness an indication of the instinctual need to preserve energy. 

Yet the tractors roll: cutting, raking, baling.

It’s hay season.

And I wonder how the farmers do it. They’re working against the clock, you know, for the chances of rain are increasing this weekend.

Then again, I know exactly how the farmers do it. My family once owned a dairy farm. The silos are still standing, as is the hay barn. I used to climb and jump across the hay bales, an obstacle course of sorts, until either I got reprimanded or started itching too badly to continue.

I’ve never cut, raked, baled, or hauled hay.

But I’ve smelled the diesel fumes and felt the vibrations from the tractor engines and the farm implements. My sinuses have been clogged with the dust and debris that floated in clouds behind the running machinery, while I, along with my mother, sister, and grandmother, carried plates of food and fresh jugs of cold water to the men working in the fields.

They couldn’t take much more than a few minutes to eat, for the rain was coming.

I once saw a barn burn down because wet hay had been put up. Bacteria thrive in damp conditions, creating enough heat to spontaneously combust when exposed to oxygen. There was no saving the neighbors’ barn that day, and there was barely enough time to remove some equipment. My dad helped get a tractor or two out, the heat from the flames sucking the moisture from his skin. 

Half of farming is battling the elements. Farmers are not God, but most have some innate sense of meteorology to predict what might happen. Still, they can’t tell if the rising clouds are going to do more than just provide a respite from the hot sun or else create a pop shower that will drop an inch of rain, requiring more time and fuel and cussing to tedder the harvest, fluffing it and drying it after the soaking.

But there has been no rain for the better part of this week, and the heat dries the straw rapidly. 

So the tractors go round and round the fields, working from the outside in. I’ve seen them as I’ve traveled this week. I drove past a field Tuesday in full raking and baling mode, but that same field on Thursday was completely cleared, fresh bales stored in a barn somewhere. That hay will feed cattle or horses this winter, and it will still smell just as warm and summer-sweet then as it does now.

Some of us will long for the heat of these summer days, when the ground is frozen solid and the sky is dark by 5:00 pm, when feet and fingers and the tips of our noses struggle to hold heat. Even now, the too-air-conditioned feel of the indoors isn’t natural, so I escape to the porch. 

I am happy when I leave the freezing office where you could hang meat, and I walk into the welcome arms of summer’s warm embrace.

I am more myself when I take a break from the volleyball playdate in the climate-controlled sports complex, my back stiff from sitting long on hard bleachers, and I walk around the building, my skin quickly growing dewy from the afternoon heat.

In the distance, I see a field. The bales are being loaded onto a flatbed trailer, stacked neatly and evenly. 

Those farmers’ stiff backs are worse than mine, for they have craned around in their seats, making evenly cut rows, watching for mechanical problems, feeling every jolt as they travel over uneven ground. Their skin will smell of Safeguard and liniment tonight. They might snore a little more loudly for all the tiny particles and engine exhaust they’ve inhaled this week. They might not sleep so soundly, for all their aches and pains.

But maybe they will rest easy, especially while listening to the thunder and smelling the rain this weekend.

The job is done, for now.

They might be able to get another cutting in before the end of the growing season, if the weather cooperates.

No, farmers are not God, but as Paul Harvey said, “God made a farmer.”

God also made hay season.

And I thank Him for both.