The Race Against Summer – Haying Season

By Bennett Owen

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

“No matter what happens anywhere else the hay gets put up in the summer and fed out in the winter.”   

- R.D. Marchesseault                   

I grew up in southwest Montana, in the land of 10-thousand haystacks. OK, we weren’t actually in the Big Hole valley but my Grandfather’s ranch was so picturesque that it was featured on the post card anyway.

Beaverslide. Credit: Tripping with MikenJudy

Look at those mighty haystacks, spreading down the valley … 30 to 60 tons per stack … Grandma said they looked like fresh-baked loaves of bread, an unforgettable image…

Credit: Altameadow

Fleeting monuments, so vital in the yearly circle of ranch life… things of beauty and yet the production was anything but…an orchestrated mayhem of grease and grief and men and machinery, locked in an eight-week race against summer. 

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

A grueling, back-breaking struggle against time, the elements and the fickleness of lady luck. And yet, as a young boy, my loftiest goal in life was to be a hay digger, there simply was no alternative. Forget the rodeo riding, the only bull I wanted to be on the back of was a monster bullrake, pushing hay by the ton to the beaverslide, on and on through endless meadows. 

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

When I was a kid the bullrake was the equivalent of flying fighter jets off aircraft carriers…the ultimate achievement, a dream that many had but few would attain. 

Credit: My-West ©

There was a certain cocky glamour to it, the way my uncles did it … a brash and showman-like quality to their expertise for they were very good at what they did.  And watching them, riding with them, all the young lads dreamed of someday guiding the monster through fields of green.

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

Yes, there was a pecking order in the hayfield, an unwritten code of rank and privilege. So we started out…with a pitchfork, cleaning hay around the stack. But that didn’t even merit a seat at the dinner table with the hay hands.

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

Eventually we graduated to the scatter rake, servants of a sort, cleaning up the leftovers the God-like bull rakers carelessly left behind.

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

After a small eternity, the promotion to the side delivery rake or the hoist…and perhaps the mowing team, also a rare honor.  Stacking was by far the worst chore, a summer sentence of sweat and swirling hay dust and the sense of constantly climbing up out of quicksand.  The one reward at season’s end was a slightly heavier paycheck and a body that was way beyond buff.

Credit: My-West, Gordon Berry Archive ©

I started out in the hayfield with a pitchfork at age eight. I was 17 when I first mounted a bull rake.  And a lot of strange and humorous things happened in that span of time. But that is the stuff of tomorrow’s post.  In the meantime, here’s a primer on haying in the land of 10,000 haystacks.

Josh, thanks so much for submitting this painting to My-West - it really captures haying time in Montana:

Hay Season, by Josh Elliot © - near the Little Blackfoot River, near Avon, Montana

Thanks to Jim Brown for submitting these great photos of haying in Beaverhead County, Montana:

Shadows in the West, Part II

By Donna Poulton

"[For] the painter … color has very few thrills.  Almost anyone can see color.  It is in the bright light or in the deep shadows, and the transitions between these, that the painter finds interest."

-- John Carlson         

Albuquerque, New Mexico, Credit: sburke2478

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep."

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe         

Over the Flathead River, Montana, Credit: Sam Beebe/Ecotrust

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small."

-- Ruth Gendler       

White Sands, New Mexico, Credit: elimnmsu

Bryce National Park, Utah, Credit: wuji9981

Bridges and the Big Sky, Montana, Credit: ggolan

Slants #1, Credit: stillthedudeabides

Shadow of Delicate Arch, Credit: Aquistbe

Taos Church 4, Taos New Mexico, Credit: Vilseskogen

Light & Shadow, Montana, Credit: Roger Lynn

Mittens Shadow, Credit: Rose Robinson

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

-- Crowfoot      

Shadows

I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.

-- David Hockney, Artist        

By Donna Poulton

My earliest memory of shadows is from a time when I was three or four-years-old lying on my grandmother’s couch for an afternoon nap. I would watch the shadows of the Aspen leaves skipping and playing across the living room walls.  Even at that age I appreciated the ambiguity;  they were small good-natured shadows, but they were shadows.

Cañón shadows—Navaho, Credit: Edward S. Curtis, Library of Congress

Into the shadow—Clayoquot,  Credit: Edward S. Curtis, Library of Congress

Shadows, Crow Agency, Montana c. 1905, Credit: Library of Congress

Ranch in Montana, Credit: Library of Congress

Texas, Shadow of Oil Derrick on Sand Hills, Credit: Library of Congress

There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job. 

-- Conrad Hall, Cinematographer         

Fence at Four Corners, Credit: Wenzday01

Cedar Shadows on Snow Covered Slopes, Credit: Library of Congress

Lookout Tower, Montana Credit: mattspinner

Shadow of the Cross, Credit: Bryan Davidson

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. 

-- Walt Whitman          

Visual Patterns in the West - We're Seeing Double

 By Donna Poulton

Cedar City, Utah: Credit: My-West.com. ©

Once you start to look for patterns in your environment you’ll see them everywhere: pencils in a cup on the desk, books slanting on a shelf, glasses lined up in the cupboard. Don’t think about it too much, though—it could drive you crazy.  In the sparse regions of the West, even larger patterns emerge in the landscape. Repetition can be subtle or glaringly obvious. 

We've driven around the west for many years. For a long time we just took pictures of things that seemed to be interesting in and of themselves - an old grand stand, wagon wheels, windmills, fences to block drifting snow and horses standing in line against the wind.  Alone these images seemed like a slice of life in the west, but taken together, all the varied patterns began to appear. Here are some images we thought you'd like. 

If you have a photo you’re proud of, send it to info@mywest.com.  We’d love to add it to the line up.

Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Credit: My-West.com. ©

Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Credit: My-West.com. ©

Near Lander, Wyoming. Credit: My-West.com. ©

Near Panguitch, Utah. Credit: My-West.com. ©

Near Red Lodge, Montana. Credit: My-West.com ©

Near Livingston, Montana. Credit: My-West.com. ©

Cedar City, Utah: Credit: My-West.com. ©

Near Dillon, Montana. Credit: Christopher Owen ©

Salt Lake City, Utah. Credit: Christopher Owen ©

Kanab, Utah. Credit. My-West.com ©

Silver Star, Montana. My-West.com ©

Dillon, Montana. My-West.com ©

Photography Challenge: We Open With Clotheslines

Update (6/6/11):

My-West posted "We Open with Clotheslines" as our inaugural post last January. Since then, readers have sent us a number of great images of clotheslines and we thought it was time to share them. If you have a favorite image send it to info@my-west.com, or upload it to the My-West Photography Challenge Pool on Flickr.

Slipping between sheets that have been blown dry by a sage filled breeze ranks up there with tomatoes fresh off the vine and hand knitted socks.  Sure the dryer is available and less work, but why would you deny yourself the pleasure? Post your memories of clothes drying on the line or send us your favorite picture.

Eyepopping Clothesline and Poppies, Tuscarora, Nevada c. 2005. Thanks to Merritt Stites.

Claire playing house in the Grasshopper Valley, Montana c. 1937.

 The next three pictures were taken by Cora Marchesseault in the early 1960s. She was interested in the work women do around the ranch.

Birch Creek, Montana, circa 1961. Hope the grass holds out! 

Grasshopper Valley, Montana, circa 1959. A blustery day.

Polaris, Montana, circa 1965. The day after Christmas!

This colorful photo is from Merritt Stites. From the artist's colony, Tuscarora, Nevada, circa 2005.

Salt Lake City, 1918 (2001 Utah State Historical Society. All rights reserved.)

Lee Greene Richards, Utah, c. 1936. Image courtesy of Diane and Sam Stewart.

Waldo Midgely, Utah, 1930s. Image courtesy of Diane and Sam Stewart.

Library of Congress image, Houston, Texas.

Library of Congress.

Hard Winter by George Handrahan. Image courtesy of the artist.

Monday's Wash by Howard Kearns. Image courtesy of Williams Fine Art.

Painting by Heidi Darley. Sent to us by Susan Horne

Washing Line. Courtesy of Gary Ernest Smith

Painting by Stephanie Deer. Sent to us by Stephanie Deer.

Taos County, NM. Credit: Library of Congress