Some Observations from the Hill
by H H "Hub" Brown

 When I first awoke this morning and looked out the bathroom window which by the way is a great vantage point for observing all the country between our house and the northern edge of Pa. Today was the date for the Strawberry Festival in Owego and I wondered what the weather was going to be like. We'd had so much rainy weather, I hoped they'd luck out and get a fair day. It wasn't going to be a real bright day, but no rain showed in the immediate future. 

 While standing there, I got to thinking about the hay field across the road from Gerry Shirely's. Billy used to say there was always sweet grass in that field. Said he could always smell it but never had the time to really sort it out. That has always been an unpredictable field. One year it will come up almost solid clover and maybe the next year it will be strong with Birdsfoot Trefoil. I remember a year or two when Billy planted Mammoth Clover. Why he did this more than one year I don't know for this was so coarse and if it matured and went to seed, no cow or horse would even touch it.

 Sometimes Billy would have a hired man and a lot of the time he'd be here all alone. He'd mow with his team and a six-foot mowing machine. Then he'd rake with a dump rake and then with his favorite hay fork, he'd put the hay in small haycocks. Just enough hay in each one for a comfortable fork load. Then he'd get his team, Dan and Nell. She lived to be 36 years old. She was part Morgan, and a wise old mare.

 Ag, who always felt sorry for horses, asked Billy one time why he didn't ever let his horses out to pasture. Billy said that when he had to churn butter, which by the way, was his only income, he didn't want to chase all over to get his team to go haying. He never stored any ice like most dairymen did in those days, and as he only used cold well water in his butter making sometimes in hot weather it would take a long time. He didn't want any metal in his well so he always dipped it up with a pail and to be sure it was the coldest, from the north side of the well. 

 His horses minded well and he could put on quite a respectable load of hay all alone. He'd start at a corner and go all around the rigging except ship one over each hind wheel then twice down the middle and then put in the ones he had skipped, those were the locks, then start all over again. When he'd put on a decent load, he'd drive to the barn and unload. He'd remember where each forkfull was and just reverse the process and unload. There was a little narrow mow right alongside the wagon which he could fill alone and then he would have to have another man.

 As I've been writing this, hummingbirds have been feeding on their sugar and water within three feet of where I'm sitting. When Monica went back to Meadowlands to work, she asked her brother Tom to come and stay here while she was gone. His girlfriend brought me over a glass feeder filled with just plain sugar and water and boy have they been busy today. These midgets resemble insects more than they do birds.