Time to Make the Hay
Trusting the process as the process trusts you
Hello friends,
We’ve blown past the Summer Solstice and I find myself in disbelief that July is sweeping by too. We’re really rolling with momentum now. The world writ large feels incredible right now, and not in a good way way at all. Measles. Gaza. Torrential floods. Decimation of the rights and justice and care we thought we had as scaffolding in this country. Yet we still move forward.
I was just up in rural Washington visiting family on a large farm. Just as we were leaving, the weather was turning hot and sunny and it was time to make the hay! The world is on fire, yet once again it’s hay season.
I’ve been there several times over there years at various points in hay season-- during both the process of making hay and just after, when the bales get loaded up into the barn before a barn dance (very cute). But to leave just before kind of ate me up and obviously left me obsessing over the process about to unfold.
“Trust the universe” or perhaps “trust the process” is a common trope that can be rather annoying to hear, especially when you’re in the thick of something thick and complex, when things feel stuck and stalled, or you feel out of control. People love to say it!
There is some weight to it, but it’s also not the full picture. As life unfolds around us we are asked to trust the process, but the process must also trust us. Trust us to show up and put in the work. To get up on time and drive the tractor to mow the hay with precision and care; to get it all going. To participate in and help drive some of the process, though not all of it.
I’m the kind of person who prescribes to the idea that “you can’t rush it” whatever “it” is, and believes deeply in the importance (magic??) of allowing things to just…unfold. It’s a toxic trait! Just kidding. Yet I am actually a bias-to-action kind of cat and fundamentally a person who thinks four, maybe five hundred steps ahead in all directions. Call it anxiety, call it prescience, call it being anywhere-but-in-the-moment. (That’s what I’m working with, OK?)
I have decided to prescribe to the idea that processes unfold and I am part of them, otherwise I’d be consumed with a hubristic belief that I can drive and manage every experience and outcome, which would both totally burn me out and leave me feeling like a colossal failure as things inevitably go awry. Give it to god or give it to grace. However you want to think about it, just give it up (at least a little).
I very often and consistently find myself rushing things, pushing hard for them to unfold just so and in a particular order - layers of tasks being expertly accomplished in perfect harmony like a great symphony where I am the most productive composer who ever lived. Feels good. Also drains the battery.
Some things that cannot be rushed, nudged, or “managed”: 1) grief; 2) any and all uncomfortable in-betweens; 3) infertility; 4) making hay; and so on.
My entire life I’ve been working with the tendency to do the most, multi-task the most, fit the most in, and optimize. Sometimes slowing down requires all my effort. I have gotten better at this over time, and life circumstances help you there, but it can be an exhausting endeavor.
My past six months have been brought arduous processes upon me. I have also walked intentionally toward some of these very grueling processes. They brought me many in-betweens characterized by stuckness, un-clarity, waiting, suspension, isolation, and also physical discomfort. Not that nice, but very rich. And I made it this far.
I make an effort to remember that everything I think and do is part of a much larger multi-multi-part process, of which I am only partially aware or in control of (at best). I make an effort to trust the process and in doing so, to show up fully so the process can trust me.
This is how making hay goes, too. Maybe with less angst but more chaff.
Haying is a process and there is no other way it can be. You need warmth and soft open skies. You can’t just do it and get it over with in the dark of night. Haying requires nice weather — some say hot, sunny with 80-degrees and above — in at least three to four consecutive days because it’s a vulnerable and tedious process.
You are at once at the mercy of the weather gods, aka the human-created climate crisis plus some of the beautiful uncertainty of weather that thankfully still remains, and your own effort to show up when the time is right.
I love that. You are just assuming, trusting that you will get that stretch of hot sunny blue at the right time of year. Like birth or death, you trust that it will happen — and it always does — you just don’t know exactly when.
On one day, when the weather is right, you mow the hay. You drive slowly, mindfully in circles or rows, allowing mice and snakes to “ah!” jump out of the way as their thick covert is hewed.
Then it needs the time it needs to dry. You can’t rush this. It needs the time to release the moisture from its little xylem and phloem and to turn from grass to hay. I’m not sure if this takes another day or so, it probably does. But I know you have to leave it be after it’s cut. There is a required settling period. And don’t even try to rush this! If you bale hay that’s not sufficiently dry, you’re looking at things like mold or…spontaneous combustion (!!). No pressure.
On the day after that, you rake it together. You gather the dried grasses into new though still loose fraternities of hay, called windrows, introducing them to each other because soon they’ll be pressed tightly together in a bale for all eternity. Nice to know ya! You give them at least a day or a night to get comfy with each other.
The day after that is the baling. It is time. You can have round bales or square bales, as you will have likely seen both. Maybe one has carried you through a haunted hay ride, or served as a festive backdrop for an autumnal picture. Maybe, if you’re lucky, hauled one into a barn or fed some of one to a sweet, grateful animal. Baling is a powerful gathering process involving order and compression.
The bales are dropped where they lay to be picked back up another time. Finally when you gather your bales, these heavy beasts, they need to go somewhere. Maybe in a big pile at first, covered with a tarp. Eventually maybe onto a truck or into the loft of a barn. Now I’m thinking, what’s the point of making hay?
Well, you kind of make hay because you just have to. It’s just a thing. You need to mow the grass so it’ll grow again. You also use it for feed for livestock in the winters when pastures are less green. You make hay because the sun shines.
The world is on fire but it’s hay season.
It’s HEY! season. It’s “Hey! I told myself this was going to be a time of slowness, ease, and grace — what the hell am I doing grinding myself down to a nub” season. It’s “Hey, this isn’t easy but you can keep going. You’re needed and you’re doing it” season. It’s “Hey! Remember that trust is double-sided tape” season. It’s “Hey! What is it time to do / leave / cut / or reap that you have been delaying?” season.
Hay season is a time to remember that everything is a multi-part process which is part of more multi-part processes and you ever only play the role you play. You don’t play them all. But your role is important and you need to show up to it. It’s as simple as just showing up. Trusting the process because it’s trusting you.
