00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast. 00:00:27 Speaker 2: The airways have to offer. 00:00:29 Speaker 1: All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. 00:00:33 Speaker 2: I think I got a thing or two to teach you. 00:00:39 Speaker 1: Hauling hay. The images that come to mind when someone mentions hauling hay they're pretty diverse from me. They go from downright angst and dread to fond memories of hot summer spent with good friends and relatives, and heartwarming instances of good times in nearly unbearable heat. I grew up hauling hay out of necessity and for summer work. I continue to work in the hay fields now, but only with the nostalgia of the mission, not the methods. We're gonna be talking about, hey this week, how farming it has changed and its impact on the landscape. Impact. It's just cutting grass for animals to eat, ain't it? What impact could it? 00:01:22 Speaker 2: Have. 00:01:23 Speaker 1: Well, if we're talking about quail, and we are big ones. But first I'm gonna tell you a story. A square bale of hay, which should really be called a rectangle, can average anywhere from forty to seventy five pounds. It's held together with two strands of tightly tied haystring, and considering you're going to have to put your hands on it about six times before it's used, it may be the singular most labor intensive item on the farm. Now people say firewood will warm you four times when you got it, when you're splitting it, stacking it, and finally when you burn it. Well, old school square bales of hay in the summer had to be loaded onto a trailer, stacked on the trailer, unloaded at the barn, stacked at the barn, loaded from the barn to a truck, and unloaded wherever you were feeding cows that winter. Now, that makes about six times. You don't see many folks using square bells anymore, and that's one of the reasons. But in the early eighties they were still very much in vogue. A friend of mine and his parents had cattle, just like most of the folks where I grew up and they needed some help hauling hay. That summer was a bad one. It was beyond hot. It was stifling, take your breath away, crazy hot. But everybody knows that if your cows are going to eat in the winter, then there's work to be done in the summer. My friend's dad was paying twenty five cents a bail, which would be split amongst the field hands, and that was more than I'd ever made per bail, and an incentive enough for me to be there as the dew finished drying in the heat of the morning to get started. My cousin, whose dad was in the military, was stay in the summer with us, and he joined me that day. My friend, who still lived at home, wasn't getting a nickel of it, so the quarter prevailed would be divided by two. That's twelve and a half cents prevailed instead of eight cents. If we'd have had to split it three ways. We were going to be rich if we lived. My cousin probably wished he'd been in the military too, rather than walking alongside that hay trailer chunking bales of hey and that humid, blistering Arkansas sun that weighed a third of what he did. Welcome to the country, cousin, we're fixing to try and kill you. He did great, though, and he worked like he'd been doing it his whole life. 00:03:46 Speaker 2: Now. 00:03:47 Speaker 1: I don't remember how many bells we get hauled by noon when my friend's mama brought our dinner to us, but it was several loads. We gathered in the shade of a huge oak that had been there longer than there had been tractors or even a farm in that area to eat or dinner. The breeze was still hot, but it didn't feel like a hair dryer blowing on you. 00:04:05 Speaker 2: While we sat in the shade. 00:04:07 Speaker 1: We were eating baking and tomato sandwiches and washing them down with sweet tea that was so cold it would make your teeth feel like they were freezing out of your mouth when you took a drink. She brought two gallons, and the four of us drank it up pretty quick. Now, we had a five gallon keg of water with us too, but it was warm as dishwater, and it couldn't cool you energy as fast as that tea could. I don't think that I've ever had a glass of tea before or since that was as good as that first one was. That day, after about thirty minutes, my dad's friends said, well y'all about ready. We were not, But it wasn't as much a question as it was an announcement that work was fixing to start again, because that hey wasn't about to put itself in the barn. Now we've been taking turns of rotating, chunking bells on the trailer and stacking. It went clockwise. You had two rounds walking on the ground beside the trailer and one on the trailer stacking. You started out on the right side of the trailer for a load, then you went to the left side of the trailer for a load, and then on the trailer stacking for a load. Being on the trailer saved you from walking, but you had to handle every beil and you couldn't just stack square bells on top of one another like legos. You had to stack and where the innerlock, which helps keeping them from falling over as you move around the field into the barn. Only job that we didn't rotate out was driving the truck that pulled the trailer. 00:05:32 Speaker 2: That was his. 00:05:32 Speaker 1: Mama's gig and his daddy only got off the tractor bailing more hay long enough for her to go home and fix our dinner. Once we got them to the barn, they had to be stacked very carefully, ensuring that air could flow and removing any moisture that was left in the hay. Damp hay that's not finished curing in the field when it's bailed, gets rained on heavy dew, anything that keeps it from dry and cause it to generate heat when it's all mashed up together, tight in a barn and spontaneously combussed. A fancy way of saying catching fire. Always thought that term was kind of funny. Reminded me of the warning label I saw on a magnesium battery for an army backpack radio and a n p RC seventy seven U old vets will remember it. The warning label on that cardboard case that contained the replaceable battery said, do not submerge battery may vent violently. I always wondering why they didn't just say blow up. That'll boost your confidence crossing the river toting the radio and spare batteries, knowing that the parts that are all working together to keep your radio man from shooting out through the woods like a Roman candle was built on a government contract by the cheapest bidder. Anyway, the same goes for hay. Water is your enemy, and in more ways than one. In the hayfield, we had returned from the barn to the field for another load. We'd hauled a lot of hay, and the end was in sight, but knowing that it couldn't boost our energy, the sun and the heat had absolutely drained us. We'd all three given up wearing shirts not longer after we ate, and while only one of us got darker, my cousin and my friend were burnt and looked like a couple of bowl crawfish. We were about a third of the way into that load when we worked by a small farm pond in that pasture. I was on the trailer stacking and I saw my friend walk past a hey bell that I thought he was fixing the load. He just kept marching, never missing a step or breaking stride as he walked down that pond levee and into that water until his head disappeared beneath that stagnant algae colored fem that sealed back up when he went under, and it was like he had never been born other than a couple of tracks he made in the mud where he walked in the water. There was no trace of him. 00:07:51 Speaker 2: He was gone. 00:07:53 Speaker 1: I was fixing the holler for his mama to stop the truck, but she'd seen him literally walk off the deep end and was already getting out of the truck before I had a chance to say anything. She was halfway around the front of the truck before he popped up on the other side of the pond, doing the backstroke and smiling like he was swimming on a beach in Hawaii. Get out of that pond. His mama was hollering at him, and it made him nearly jerk a creak in his neck. It was like he had lost all sense of where he was, and her voice had brought him back into the stark reality of floating in a festering pool of contaminated water that was the only water warmer than what we had been drinking. Out of that joke, he walked backed up the pond bank, grabbed that bel of hay he'd passed earlier, and went back to chunking hay like nothing had happened. His wet blue jeans commenced to rubbing the insides of his legs. The longer he walked, the worse it got, and he still had to finish out that load and then walk another one before it was his turn to ride and stack. Now, my cousin I both tried to swap out with him, but he wouldn't have it. He was halfway through his round on the left side of the trailer, walking like he was trying to stay straddle of an electric fence when he told his mama to stop the truck. It was his truck, and he'd ask her to hand him a necktie he'd taken off after church and stuck in the glovebox. Now we all thought that he'd had gotten to him again, so he had to ask her twice to hand it to him. She did, and he walked out of sight from her and dropped his wet breeches low enough to where my cousin and I could see how raw the inside of his legs were from walking in those wet blue jeans. His nether regions were as galled as anything I had ever seen in my life. The hide was gone from everywhere, and I don't know how he was walking. I also didn't have any idea what he was fixing. To do with that necktie, but I wasn't about to turn away and miss it. He taken his pocket knife and cut his wet drawers off, and then took his Sunday necktie and fashioned himself an athletic supporter that defied human engineering. To this day, I have yet to see a more. We were thoroughly thought out and functional, fielled expedient answer to anything. When he finished, he buttoned his breeches back up, and we hauled two more trailer loads before we quit for the day. I know with every step he was in continuous burning pain, because he said, every step I take burns and hurts. He also knew he couldn't quit because there was no one to take his place. He didn't have anywhere to quit to anyway. That was his family's farm, and unlike me and my cousin, he was working for room and board. He also knew that he had to do something to be able to continue. We finished and was settling up with his dad when he came out of the barn without tie in his hand, working on loosening up a knot he'd tied in it. I said, why are you working on that? Not just throw it away? He looked at me like I was crazy. Throw it away. That's one of my good ties, and that's just how that happened. The advances in hauling hay in the past forty years have turned a multiple man operation into that of only a few and theoretically just one. I still work in the hay field helping my good friend Jacob Wood put up hay for his cow cafe operation. But instead of walking and chunking square bells on a trailer to be stacked, we do it all with a tractor and implements big round bails of all but taking the place of the square ones, and one round bell that we produce will average fifteen square bells. Also, you don't have to leave the air conditioned cab of the tractor until it's time to refuel or go home. Regardless of whether it's square bales or round bells. The order in bailing hay is this, You cut it, you let it cure in the field for up to three days, You rake it into rows, and then bail it up. One man with one tractor and three attachment pieces of equipment can do that. Now we'll have three tractors going when we're cutting hay. And halage is different from hay and that it's not allowed to cure. It's fresh cut green grass that soon after its cut, is baled and completely wrapped in plastic, preserving the moisture content while keeping it airtight. Halas that we bail up in June will be just as green and fresh as the day we bail that when we unwrap it and feed it in February, with virtually no loss of nutrients. Keeping the air out is key. If air is allowed to get in, it can mold. It's a pretty cool system. Once it's cut, there's a narrow window of moisture content that we have to get it bailed and wrapped. One tractors raking it into rows. The next tractor is coming behind it bailing it, and then the last one is picking up the round bells and completely wrapping them in that plastic. The halage has grown separate from the rest of what we culd. It's looked after, like it with soer beans. That's not just grass growing in the field. That's meat, loaf, steaks, and chili, among other places. 00:12:57 Speaker 2: We cut hay. 00:12:57 Speaker 1: On a portion of the White River Levee, nearly nine miles of green grass that cows turn into groceries. It makes an interesting ride with a sixteen degree angle in the cab of a tractor that's eight feet off the ground, stayed in a straight line while watching behind you to make sure the equipment is operating correctly while trying to stay upright in the seat. Man just a rough estimate in my head that comes out to about a pucker factor of ten out of ten. Cutting hay effects the landscape and the wildlife it lives there, and according to the US Department of Agriculture, Arkansas cuts over a million acres per year with fertilizer and regular rain, which usually never happens. Anything over three and a half round bails per acre is a good average. That's about thirty five hundred pounds of grass. The effects it has on wildlife can be immediate. I can't count the times that I've sat on a tractor cutting hay and washed hawks and coyoats have an absolute field day with rabbits and mice. Jacob told me that when he was a kid, he was sent to do some busch hogging along the edge of a creek on the back side of their farm. Now, my friend Isaac Neil who hails from Missouri would call that brush hogging, and there's no telling what it's called in the rest of the country. But regardless of the terminology or the number of ours found in the description, the end result is the same. We're cutting bushes and brushed with a tractor powered more stout enough to turn an inattentive armadilla into an abstract work of farm art. Anyway, Jacob said he was going about his business bush hogging and was coming around for his second cut when he started seeing those big old wood rats hopping around back and forth through that fresh cutting. He said, the tractor must have been like ringing the dinner bell, because all at once hawks came from every direction and. 00:14:44 Speaker 2: Were wrecking that rat population. 00:14:47 Speaker 1: He told me he looked forward to that first bush hogging of the season every year, and it was always the same. Unfortunately, the occasional wayvered battle possum isn't the only victim of modern hay farming or mowing. The first cutting of the season usually coincides with the arrival of whitetail fawns on the property, and knowing something about where they like to hide while mama's out doing her chores is essential in avoiding fawn tractor accidents that will one hundred percent of the time be a worse outcome for the deer. 00:15:25 Speaker 2: Here's how we avoid it. 00:15:26 Speaker 1: Since those like to leave their fawns on field edges, we'll cut inside those edges a full width of the hay mower, watching for movement and looking for bedded fawns. Nine times out of ten they're gonna boat out the safety of the woods and we never see them anyway. The other time we're gonna see them and either go around them on the next pass or shoe them off into the woods if they don't lieve on their own. Now, Brent, don't you feel bad about ruining their hiding place. No, I don't. I would if that was the only place to hide in the woods, but it ain't. On the other hand, cutting hay exposes and stirs up the insects, and just like raptors and coyotes will work on the mice, anything and everything that each bugs would be out having a picnic. Hen, turkeys with pots, salcoons with kittens, bats, you name it. They're all out there reaping the rewards. And don't forget the deer. They'll be out in strengthen a day or two to eat the tender regrowth of grass that was covered up before the hay got cut. It also allows them to be able to see other predators that would have been slipping around trying to make a meal out of them. Now down here where I grew up or up here, depending on where you're listening from. The Bob white quail was king. Quail hunting was something nearly every hunter did, and if they didn't have a good bird dog, they knew someone who did. I remember a portrait of a black and white setter that hung in our living room for the majority. 00:16:51 Speaker 2: Of my childhood. 00:16:53 Speaker 1: It was a Christmas gift from us to my dad, and he loved it like dad's do, even though he was a one hundred percent dyed in the wool pointer man. For you that don't know, the setters have long hair and pointers have short hair. Cockle birds and briars here would wreck a setter's coat in the native grass understory of where birds like to be. And while the setters were good dogs, the aggravation of common or are cutting birds and broken knotted links and briars and brown alot of dogs area it ain't fun for either one of us. It was a culmination of time and the changes in farmland utilization that sent the bob White quail into a downward spiral. Here in the southeast, in an area known as the fescue Belt that covers a large portion of the eastern half of the United States, the propagation of fescue type grass was beneficial to hay producers and detrimental to the ground nest in bob white. Fescue grows like sod in your yard. It grows evenly across the landscape. That produces more grass parakre, which is good. But if you picture in your mind your yard if it had a small bare runs that were almost void of grass that criss crossed over their property like a diagram of the veins in your body, well that's what the pastures look like when they just had native grass growing in them. The native grass grow in clumps, and they're separated by a few inches between each clump, leaving little avenues of travel for the quail to get around in. I know that don't sound like much, but considering a fresh hatched baby quail is about the size of your thumbnail. The difference in that gap being there or not is the difference between life and death. We're talking about a fragile creature that when they get up and start moving around, if they can't stay dry or avoid getting wet from the morning dew, they could get hypothermia and die. The native grasses also provided an overstory that hid the quail as they fed around and hit them from their predators. There's given take in farming. Thankfully, there are some folks who recognize these issues and are working hard to provide a suitable habitat solution for a resurgence of. 00:19:01 Speaker 2: Arkansas's quail population. 00:19:03 Speaker 1: Clint Johnson is a wildlife biologist and the quail program coordinator for the Arkansas Game. 00:19:08 Speaker 2: And Fish Commission. 00:19:09 Speaker 1: He says habitat and its diversity are the critical factors in the healthy regrowth of quail. When I ask him about fire ants and described to him how I'd seen a turkey nest get overrun by him one time as soon as the eggs started hatching, he slapped me in the face with the dead squirrel of reality and explained it to me like I was five, which is my. 00:19:30 Speaker 2: Preferred method of learning. 00:19:32 Speaker 1: Clint had me picture a bucket of water with the water being quail in the bottom of the bucket. Being habitat y'all with me, of course you are. I'm the only five year old here anyway. Now Here comes the fire ants, the wild hogs, nest predators, and every other possible bad actor in this scenario in the form of a drill bit poking holes in the side of the bucket. Clint said, we can tape up the holes and stop him from leaking, but when the bottom falls out of the bucket, it's game over. I get it. No habitat, no quail. He also told me if he had a large farm with catle on it, that he'd have fescue grass growing on it too. Diversity of habitat, that's the key if you want. 00:20:12 Speaker 2: Cows and quail now. 00:20:15 Speaker 1: I came along towards the end of the Arkansas Quail at least in Southeast Arkansas, and when it ended, man, it was like somebody walked out of the room and turned out the light. But before that happened, I remember going with my dad and a neighbor who had a good dog. I went with Tim, my older brother, and we always did pretty good. We'd be at the pond fishing in the spring of the year, and Tim would say, you hear that quail, He didn't whistle him up, And he taught me how to do it too. He just repeated the same sound you heard. The real quail was whistling, and every time he answered you, he'd get a little closer. They whistled to defend their territory and a tract to mate. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Now. 00:20:52 Speaker 1: I don't know how many times high witnessed Tim doing it, or myself after he taught me how to do it, but we'd be standing there and all of a sudden, the flutter of wings and you could see a Bob White come sailing in close to where we were standing, ready to duke it out over who was running that part of the farm. We're going to talk a lot more about quail when it gets closer to fall, when maybe we can see a break coming in this sweaty wool sock of the summer we find ourselves in. But I told Clinton Johnson that same story about how there were quail when I was younger, and then they seemed like they started going downhill pretty fast. He quoted a lot of reference material on how folks had been saying that starting after the Civil War pretty well coinciding with the advent of mechanized farm machinery, a steady decline over the past one hundred and sixty years ago. Well, I remember there being what I thought were a lot that gum how many were here in the heyday. Here's an example Clint shared with me. During the winter of eighteen eighteen, a man by the name of Henry's Schoolcraft was kicking around in North Arkansas, seeing the sights, making friends with Native Americans, and living off the fat of the land. He wrote a journal and talked about there being so many quail crawling around that they didn't even shoot at him because there wasn't no sport in it. I think my conscience could stand a couple of days of that, seeing as how my favorite breakfast of all breakfasts is a fried quail, eggs, Tater's biscuits and gravy. Man, it don't get no better than that. I hope the quail come back. But old Clinton folks like him, they can't do it by themselves. It's like anything else, it takes a group of folks working toward a common goal to accomplish anything big. There's lots of good stuff in the Arkansas game and Fish Commission website about quail and how to manage habitat for him. It's free and it's available to everyone. No kidding, it's really really good. There's a whole team private land biologist at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission that will come to your land and help draw up a plan to enhance the wildlife, hunting and viewing opportunities on your property. 00:22:55 Speaker 2: I bet where you live, either through the. 00:22:57 Speaker 1: County Extension Service or your state's Ring and Natural Resources that there's a similar group of people to help landowners too. They can't help it if you don't ask, and the squeaky wheel will always get the grease. Now, I definitely prefer the style of hay hauling I do now as compared to what it was like when I was a kid. But I have no doubt that there's a farm boy somewhere riding around and his daddy's tractor wishing he was somewhere else while listening to the satellite radio and controlling the temperature inside the tractor like he was sitting at home. It could always be worse, Junior. You could be out there hauling hay without a tie. Thank you so much for listening I appreciate it. If you have the opportunity share this with someone that you think might like you. Folks be good to one another, and that's about as country as it gets. 00:23:51 Speaker 2: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful The K

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