Hay in afternoon light

I've been waiting all summer to get our hay cut.  It finally happened this week.  I'm not sure why this has been so important to me. But it has.  Now I can ride my horse and not wonder if I'm stepping in a hole.

Hay and horses. It's hard to beat the smell of good, fresh hay. My pre-teen memories with hay emerged tonight as I looked at the late afternoon sun setting behind the hay rolls.

I spent my weekends and most of my summers with my daddy on this farm. He knew he didn't have to do much to keep me happy and out of his way—just put me on a horse.  I would wait patiently on old Tobie for the baler to spit out a row of square bales, not big round ones like the photos here.

Tobie and I would trot around the bales.  That was fun, but the most fun was jumping them. We jumped and jumped until daddy would tell me to go put her up.

I love living here in my farmhouse on our family land.  It is my hope that I can pass it down to someone who will love it as much as I do, as Daddy did, as Cathey Dandridge did, as his mother Mary Eliza Cathey Dandridge did, as her father Mathew Lafon Cathey did.

Here's to hay and horses.

My farmhouse in Barr