a"round" the barn

After being hounded by the Thursday morning coffee clutchers to clean the remaining hay out of our barn, I set to task this past Saturday. I summoned a couple of hired hands to make the process go a little quicker. Four hours later we had made a sizable dent in the last and final bay filled with hay. A little less than half the hay remains. 40 whole bales were removed, and about 240 broken bales were forked onto the back of a truck and hauled to a pile in the pasture.

That will be some kind of fire.

Within an hour one of the hired hands lost a leg through a few open floor boards. A short time later I lost a leg, and was fortunate to not lose my whole self through the hole I "discovered". We turned our attention to the southeast corner of the barn and began pitching hay down to the truck below. Once we had the bed filled with the first load I suggested the guys unload it and I would stay back and pitch more hay over the side beams so that it would be easier to get to. And then I said:

"Do you hear that?"

"it's a car going by"

long pause......I put my head down closer to the pile of hay

"no, it isn't fading out"

"it sounds like water running through a storm pipe" of course, there is no water out at the barn, and it was hot and dry that day

hired hand leans in for a listen

"it sounds like bees" he says calmly

"bees!" I exclaim, and back away

We quit working in that corner. The three of us loaded into the cab of the old blue pickup truck and headed into town for lunch. Covered in hay dust and sweat we sauntered into Taco Bell and ordered the XXL combo. Yep, we looked the part of Hoosier farmers.

And I'm really looking forward to having the barn cleaned out, bees and all. Though having a hive around for the orchard would probably be a good thing.

a Hoosier "crop circle"