There’s no time off on a farm; each season is about preparing for the next. I start preparing for winter in May.

That’s when I order the hay, firewood, and fresh gravel for the Pole Barn. The irony of celebrating our readiness for winter on a day expected to be over 100 degrees is not lost on me.

But if I don’t do it now, there will be panic and scrambling in October. I love being ready for winter, even if no one is sure what winter is. I appreciate farmers, but I am happy not to be one.

David Weeks has had a tricky Spring.  He is impressive; great hay is his lifelong passion; he is one of the most exciting and intelligent people I know here. And he is the cream of the crop when it comes to getting nutritious and beautiful hay for our animals.

He said there was more rain this Spring than he ever remembers in any Spring.

He says he needs three full days of sunshine to harvest his special hay, and he’s only had one or two stainless days for weeks. David is a soil biologist who loves plant life and microbes and makes the best and most nutritious hay I’ve ever seen.

He’s a Christian and says only God could have created the symbiosis that makes the sun, plants, soil, insects, and worms work together to make our hay. Maria stacked the grass for as long as possible, and David did the rest.

I’m pushing David to start a blog about his 40-year work to make the best hay anywhere. The word of Davids’s great work – he distributes for John Rieger of Country Power Products. People with animals are freaking out over the scarcity of freshly cut hay.

David is a committed Luddite but I’m wearing him down.

I trust John and David completely; one way or another, we will get hay. So today, we have enough hay in the barn to get us through winter and Spring. There’s enough firewood on the ground and in the shed to get us through winter. And today, Vince Vechio dropped a truckload of gravel in the pasture.

We’ll need some help from our Amish neighbors on the road, but we’ll get to work getting the wood in the shed and gravel in the Pole Barn. The animals and donkeys deserve a dry and soft place to lie down.

I love listening to David talk about how he spends two or three years preparing the soil for the hay we get. He plants special crop cover and turns it into the soil just before the seeds grow. He says the plants hold the secret to life on the planet.

He’s going to come over and have dinner. He explains his theories, but I can’t quite understand them.

When I do, I’ll share what I have learned. David is the real deal. The hay speaks for itself.

Maria loves to stack things. The bales are heavy; she had to rest a bit in between loads.

The donkeys never forget anything and they know when David comes he always throws a pile of loose hay from his truck over the fence, a preview for them. They are  right at the state waiting and happy to get first crack at the hay they will be eating all winter.