Maria can testify that I am a maniac on the subject of firewood and hay getting to the farm before winter, I can’t really rest until it is ordered and stacked in the barn. (The barn cats love to sleep all the way up at the top.)

I was walking in Brooklyn when I saw and listened to a voicemail message from Sandy Adams, who runs Up and Over farm with her husband Brian. A week or so ago I ordered 90 bales, and the message said they were bringing it over this morning. When farmers have their hay ready, they just bring it.

If you’re home fine, if not, it comes anyway.

The message said if we weren’t home, they would put it in the barn.

When I called Sandy back, she said the hay was in the barn and stacked, all 90 bales. She had promised the hay would be in the barn “before the first snow flies,” and she and Brian are as good as her word.

I was concerned that we weren’t home to pay her – I pay bills right away, especially to hard working farmers.

I said I wasn’t home and was it okay if I paid her in a few days, and she laughed, dismissing the question. This is one of the many reasons I love living the country, you can still make deals on a handshake and your word, and Sandy knows she will be paid, and I appreciate knowing her and and Brian doing business with them.

They are what people here like to call “good people.”

As they also like to say up here, we know where you live.

I can’t say enough how good it makes me feel to have a woodshed full of wood and a barn full of hay a month or so before the first hard frost is due. These bales are big and good. It is a blessing to find such a good and honest source of hay.

When we got home from New York, I went right out to the barn and turned the lights on and smelled the hay and looked at it. I say my hay prayer over it,  I blessed it.

I said thanks hay, for coming here and being here and feeding the animals. It is, according to the farmers and the forecasters, going to be a hard winter and thanks to this good a fresh-smelling hay, the sheep and donkeys and pony will do fine. We even got 15 bales of second cut for treats and for energy in the bitter cold.

But most days, they will get first cut.

After all, said Brian, you don’t want to have Thanksgiving Dinner every day of the year. Surely not.