At what point in time did mammals start to prioritize? It was an integral part of evolution. Plants, they don’t prioritize. Most animals, they don’t prioritize. I wish Darwin was still around – he would be able to explain this to me, and how prioritization came to be.

Eating – this is the priority of most animals. Here, dogs, horses, goats, chickens even – eat first, negotiate later. It is my job to keep them all fed because they have been domesticated, and thus they’ve been rendered dependent on me as a food source.

Full hay shed

It’s a huge job with a lot of responsibility. And the pay is non-existent. It is also time consuming, and quite costly. I also have to keep me fed – so the same variables come into play in most instances.

Yesterday, we went and got a second load of hay for the horses and the goats. Yesterday’s off the field load cost $11.00 a bale. If we’d gotten it off the wagon up at the barn, it would have been $12.00 a bale. Hay out of the barn goes for $13.00 a bale. So, we saved $100.00 or $200.00.

Getting the hay off the field requires a greater expenditure of energy on our part. We also have to drop what we’re doing when John DePriest calls and says he’s baling. It looked like it was going to rain, so I figured that we would not be heading into town to pick up a load. I instead figured that I’d do some agility with my now very bored horses. And Pete figured that he’d continue with his wood working project. We both figured wrong. John called. I heard him say “we’ll be right over,” ran and got my gloves, and headed in the direction of the red truck. He didn’t have to hook the trailer to it because it was already in place. A few days before we’d first moved the recycling barrels into place at the fair, and then went and got our first load of hay. This load was on wagons, in the barn.

Fortunately, we had previously taken the time to clean out the hay shed where the hay was to go. I had not yet cleaned out the adjacent shed – no matter, we just needed one to be clean.

Most boarding facilities provide hay to horses on site. This means that boarders can act on other priorities when hay season rolls around. I’m not sure what they do, but they don’t charge out the door at a moment’s notice, checkbook in hand.

This year, we loaded up the trailer in record time. John has this device on the rear of his baler – it catches the bales then sets them in large square grouping of ten bales. I ran to the first, second, third, fourth piles, picked up the individual bales, then handed them to Pete, who stacked 90 bales on the flatbed trailer. We then put an additional ten bales in the bed of the red truck. After, we tied the load in place with ropes that are kept in the truck and specifically used for this purpose.

Once back at home, we put the hay up, in the hayshed. One more load and we’ll be set. This will then provide us with the time needed to focus on other, equally important projects.

Next: 237. 8/27/19: No Sense Crying Over Spilt Milk