Hay, Didya Happen to See?

 

It's hay season, and it looks like Mother Nature has dealt the local farmers a great situation for harvesting in the fields and hauling to the barns. 

I think it's been a banner year for quantity and a perfect year for harvest.  

Pretty much anywhere one looks around the Selle Valley, there's hay equipment in the fields or on the roads. 

The top photo shows the stack in my sisters' driveway after Harvey and his crew cut their two fields.  Laurie thinks that stack represents about 30 tons of hay for their horses. 

A crew will put their hay in the barn.

I've ordered a bale loader full of hay and will also have a crew put it in the barn.  

I don't need as much as usual because I'm boarding the horses again this year.  Having hay available before and after boarding is essential. 

I've also liked having extra for summer days when we may be gone and it's easier to leave the horses in the barnyard eating hay instead of leading them to pasture. 

Haying season for farmers means long hours and for those bucking bales more than enough sweat.  When that last bale appears, it's celebration time. 

I think this year farm folks will be celebrating more than ever with the bountiful winter supply of feed. 

Youngest to oldest and all over 80.  Pat, Dick and Bob Gooby. 

Speaking of haying season, that Gooby brother in the above photo on the right has been cutting and raking and baling his fields the past couple of weeks.  

He's 88, but that hasn't stopped Bob from getting out there in the fields with his equipment. 

The day this photo was taken he had spent several hours working in the hay. 

Bob called me about a week ago, telling me that the three Gooby brothers would be together and asked could I take a picture. 

Dick, in the middle, lives on a ranch in Montana. He worked for Montana's soil and water conservation districts.   Also, if you are a regular reader, you know that I occasionally include the Gooby Ranch Report in this blog.  

I asked Dick if Maryann, his wife, had come to Sandpoint, and, true to form, he told me that he left Maryann home to do the work. 

In Dick's tongue-in-cheek dispatches from Twin Bridges, Mont., Maryann does all the heavy lifting and hard work on the ranch while Dick sits in the house enjoying his football or watching out the window, sipping on coffee while Maryann is rounding up strays or breaking ice on the water tanks. 

It's a good situation for Dick, and it was really nice of Maryann to stay home in Montana and put up the hay while Dick came over to Sandpoint to the old Gooby farm to see his brothers and to go fishing. 

Brother Pat lets middle brother Dick take on the verbosity role.  Pat often writes one liners filled with sage observations for the Daily Bee letters column.  

He also dabbled in dandYlions for a few years but sticks to sending out yellow Christmas letters these days. 

In short, I've known the Gooby brothers all my life because we grew up in their general neighborhood and later lived just down the road from Gooby's Meats. 

Twas always a big treat for Willie and Annie when they could take their nickels and dimes down to Gooby's and give their coins to Carol in exchange for some  tasty beef sticks. 

We have lots of memories we could share about the Gooby's, but most important is that they are each salt-of-the-earth, beloved treasures in their own right. 

I feel honored to be asked to record this reunion of the three brothers this past weekend. And, I'm sure others are happy to see them and think of their own Gooby Bros. stories.