Cultivating a Maker’s Life is a column that explores creative living expressed in a whole life. Generous, creative living is not something that is confined to a studio or workspace. It is conceived in the garden, gestates on hiking trails, nurtured in cinnamon-scented ovens, and matures at family dinner conversations. Come with me while we explore all the stages of making and living.
And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.
—Matthew 10:42, ESV
It was haying season. Haying season on our farm was met with a heady mixture of dread and playfulness. We didn’t have a rake or baler for our tractor, so 30 acres of hay was stored by hand. It would be cut with the Massey Ferguson, then we would turn it over with leaf rakes so that it would dry. A few days later, we would all assemble under the hot sun, again with leaf rakes and pitchforks added to the mix, and pile it into the back of the Ford F-150. Someone (lucky) would be assigned the job of stomping down the hay so that we could haul the maximum amount in each trip. Someone else (even luckier) would drive the truck slowly down the windrows as the remaining participants threw forkfuls of hay into the back.
Once the truck was deemed full-beyond-the-lot-of-vehicles, it would be driven to the barn, whereupon each child would be allowed one flying leap out of the loft door into the truckload of hay. Forkfuls of hay would then be thrown into the barn loft and piled for the winter. All the doors to the barn would be open, and with any degree of God’s grace, a breeze would cool the sweat on our skin. Everyone would go to bed that night sunburned and exhausted, after watching the Braves game.
I was about 12 years old—I don’t remember exactly, but I know I was old enough to comfortably throw a bale of hay. My brother Geoffery would have been 14, and Jeremy, 11. Daddy has always seemed to know every person in the state of Georgia and a goodly number outside that radius. But this summer, he met a stranger. The man had recently purchased a large number of acres down the road from my family’s farm, and he had not yet found farmhands to work it.
Somehow, this tall, broody stranger contacted Daddy and asked if my brothers and I would be willing to earn a day’s wage in exchange for helping store his hay. He was of a different class of farmer, obviously, because his hay was baled and he owned a flat trailer to transport it! These were things we had never experienced! And payment? For picking up haybales? It seemed too good to be true.
The morning of our summer job arrived, and the three of us piled into the truck to go to work with stern warnings from Daddy to work hard.
It didn’t take long for our illusions of a pleasant half-day of picking up haybales and coming home with our pockets brimming with cash to be destroyed. We were split up; Geoffery was to ride the trailer behind the tractor and pile the bales onto it. He and the other field workers would bring the trailer to the barn, where Jeremy and I would stack the load of bales in the barn, and the tractor would collect another load on a second trailer.
The barn was a metal building with one door, which meant it was an oven with absolutely no ventilation. The hay had been rained upon at some point, making it musty and mildewy, not sweet, clean, and grassy smelling. When the trailer pulled up to the barn, the men threw the bales as quickly as possible into a disastrous pile, raising a tornado of dust that would not clear all that day.
We breathed in that dust, choking on it and wiping it from our eyes. Our hands blistered long before noon, and the trailers full of haybales kept coming and coming. By the time we broke for lunch—a peanut butter and jelly brought from home—our small water bottles were long-since empty. Our employer offered no means to refill them.
We stacked hay from 7 o’clock that morning until sunset, which in a Georgia summer is around 9 p.m.—thousands of bales. I remember scrambling to try to get each trailer load stacked with a few minutes to spare so that we could step outside of that infernal barn for a few seconds and breathe the free, clean air. We usually didn’t succeed. The only thing that kept us going was the scope of the work and what it certainly must mean for our wages.
Finally—finally—the last bale of the day was stacked. The tractor was parked. Daddy pulled up in the Ford, and our hearts rejoiced to see it.
The old farmer handed Daddy an envelope and told him that it was for all of us.
“If they want to come back tomorrow, I’ve got another field that needs picked up, too,” he said.
I think the drive home was only 5 minutes or so, but I’m pretty sure we were all asleep before the ignition to the truck was even turned on.
When we arrived home, Daddy opened the envelope and found that it contained one single $20 bill. I remember how angry he was, and how he kissed my blistered hands.
“I am so sorry. I never would have sent you three over there if I had any idea—”
We mourned our imaginary paychecks for a moment, but drank deeply of cool water, the tight-knit joy of our family, the Braves game, and the kindness of our home. I don’t think we ever viewed haying season at home quite the same again.
The featured image, “Hoarfrost on Winter Grass” is courtesy of Steve Moon and is used with his kind permission for Cultivating.
Second-generation homeschooling mom of five wee snickbuzzards, Jordan Durbin is a maker of humble pottery, fine artist, calligrapher, gardener, pickle maker, baker of all things gluten-inclusive and butter-laden, violinist, vocalist, rabbit raiser, wife of one good man, lover of her blessed Redeemer. She has a Bachelor’s degree in fine art from Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. She is an avid coffee drinker, reader, and published children’s book author and illustrator. She aspires to proclaim the resurrection with every moment of her life.
A Field Guide to Cultivating ~ Essentials to Cultivating a Whole Life, Rooted in Christ, and Flourishing in Fellowship
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I could picture all of this, Jordan! I love your father’s sweet response to you when he realized what a hard day you and your brothers had. The heart of it reminds me of Aslan saying to Shasta, “Tell me your sorrows.”