Salting The Hay

by Scott Paulsen

Before becoming a personal slave to a herd of ungrateful horses, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you the meaning of the term "Salting the Hay."

Was it the title of a blues record from the 1930s?

Was it a jitterbug dance move from the 1940s?

Was it a coded message, used by hip-hop music mogul drug dealers just last week?

Turns out that "Salting the Hay," like many terms used in farming, means exactly what it says (like most farmers). It refers to tossing salt onto stacked bales of hay.

It's my exciting life.

Welcome to it. The question of whether or not to salt that hay was tabled at a late summer meeting of the Saturday Stable Drinking Society. After much discussion and spillage, it was decided that it probably doesn't make one bit of difference whether or not one salts. "But," added the Under Secretary of Snacks and Mixers, "if it makes you feel better, salt away."

Great advice is yours for free in each issue of TABLE.

For those of you joining my world late (all the way down here in paragraph 10), some explanation is in order. A little more than five years ago, we bought a farm. Twice a year (three times if we're lucky), our hay fields are given a military-style haircut and the square bales of orchard grass, timothy and hundred-dollar bills are neatly stacked in our barn by tiny elves while we sleep.

Or so the brochure stated.

Months later, their pastures covered in snow, the horses will eat the hay. Everyone will remain happy and fat all winter long.

That's what we hope for, winter after winter. The truth, however, is sometimes quite different. Not only are horses picky eaters, but they also are a wholly ungrateful lot. They have no admiration for the amount of work that goes into putting food on the table (or stable floor, in this case).

Oh, the joy of putting up hay!

There's nothing quite like gathering together in a dusty dairy barn to test if your allergy medication will do as it promises on the box cover. Pollen? Kid stuff. Pet dander? Child's play. The real test is to spend a sweaty afternoon or two with your honker buried face-deep in freshly cut nature's best and see if those nineteen SinuStop tablets you chased with Jack Daniel's hold up.

It's a team sport.

The Tosser climbs into the wagon and aims bales towards the floor. His job requires precision. Armed with only gravity, the Tosser must somehow manage to land each bale, thrown from the hay wagon, a height of 20 feet or so, onto the floor, a 6,000-square-foot target.

That's when the Stacker takes over. Following a complicated and largely meaningless pattern invented by a man who was kicked in the head by a mule in 1743, the Stacker piles the hay bales cut side down, two in, two out, until each row looks like the parquet floor of the Boston Garden.

The Salter then tosses some salt onto the stacked hay, pausing every 14 minutes to take a lick of salt, suck a wedge of lime and down a shot of Jose Cuervo, the official tequila of hay season (sanctioned by the S.S.D.S.).

My job.

Sometime after the Designated Counter admits she lost track "somewhere in the fourteen-hundreds," we call it a day with a barn full of hay. Red eyes aglow, wheezing and hacking, we admire our row after row of neatly stacked, salted hay, cut-side down.

Or was it supposed to be cut-side up?

Uh-oh.

Sorry, boys. It's going to be a long, hungry winter.

Salt?