Hay

 The leafhoppers were blowing in the west wind and hitting me in the shirt, neck and face as I walked back to the tractor and mower in the west hay field after the noon dinnertime.  I had started work this morning on cutting the nurse crop of oats, mustard and various other weeds off the new hay seeding.  We seed hay every year and also take a like amount out of the older hay stands to plant corn in the following year.  

Lately we have had trouble getting a good stand because of the dry conditions.  This spring I rigged the old grain drill to route the legume and grass seeds down into the openers rather than just scattering the seeds on the surface ahead of the drill and hoping for the best.  I was gratified to see, as the mower cleared a bit of each swath, that the new hay sprouts seemed satisfactorily thick.  We seem to have beaten the dry conditions, at least for this job this year. 

I like mowing.  I like it for the smells of new cut hay and then toward the end of the day, the smell of wet plants beginning to cure.  But most of all, I like it for the abundance of bird and insect life on display.  Soon after the first trip around the field, the swallows-barn swallows and tree swallows and purple martins-show up to work at harvesting the insects kicked up by the activity in the grass.  Swooping in graceful arcs, they no sooner swallow one insect and they are aiming for the next.  They will work at this all day. 

They are soon followed by the hawks and eagles, patrolling the cut over parts of the field, ever alert for the exposed mouse, mole or gopher.  This day I saw no mature bald eagles, but several juveniles, which lack the white head showed up.  The red tail hawks, formerly known as chicken hawks when farmers kept chickens on the yard, dominated the show.  Most of them were well fed by evening.

Butterflies were everywhere, sometimes the target of the swallows.  There were Monarchs and Viceroys and several dark and also white ones I do not have names for. 

 When I was taking a break from driving and walked a short distance from the idling tractor I heard and saw meadowlarks.  It was a pair, but these were Eastern Meadowlarks, not the Western version so common here when I grew up.  The Eastern is a beautiful bird and welcome, but its song cannot compare with the nine or ten note multi fluted call of the Western. Maps show the Eastern territory as far west as Wisconsin while the Western shows up throughout southern Minnesota and points west.

The call of the Western Meadowlark was the sound track of my youth here on the western Minnesota prairie.  I last heard it two years ago in our pastures, and if it is gone from us for good, I will miss it and mourn its passing.  And I hope my farming operations do not have anything to do with its leaving.

As I lifted the bar for the last time in the evening, and headed for home, I saw a turkey buzzard feasting on something in the middle of the field.  An unlovely but necessary bird.

The next day, walking out to inspect my work, I spotted the first dragonfly of the year.  We have arrived at midsummer.