“Prabhupada: Yes. Farming, agriculture, that is nice. There is a proverb: agriculture is the noblest profession. Is it not said? Agriculture is noblest, and Krsna was farmer, His father.”
Room Conversation with Allen Ginsberg — May 11, 1969, Columbus, Ohio
Ray, who has worked with Ranaka for 25 years serving New Vrindaban cows, was on my upper meadow the other day putting up the hay. He had cut it two days before, the second day for curing, and the third day, the weather having been good, he raked it into windrows and was baling it.
According to the best possible protocol, he left it cure in the windrow until there was just enough light in the day to get it baled before the dew started to settle. You want to get the hay into the bale dry, which means let its own moisture evaporate out, but get it before the dew forms when the sun sets.
You have to guesstimate when to start in order to achieve this, leaving a little margin for error in case there is some repair to equipment that may be needed.
I went up to take some pics, and Ray had it timed perfectly, IMHO, as he was finishing up as the sun slid to the horizon.
The tractor straddles the windrow and the pickup head grabs up the hay. It is a lot of rake teeth that go around and around between strippers that raise the hay into the baling chamber.
The chamber rotates and winds the hay into a tight round bale. When it is full, Ray lets the twine arm move back and forth across the face of the bale and it ties it up with twine.
When that is done, he opens the rear gate and the finished bale falls out.
If you aren’t careful, either forming the bale asymmetrically (you move the pickup head back and forth across the windrow to make it square) or dropping it on a place too steep, the bale will take off down the hillside and end up in the woods.
I have made thousands of bales in my hay making career in New Vrindaban. More than a few ended up in the woods, so I know whereof I speak.
After curing in the bale for a few more days, the hay is picked up and hauled to the barn. In this case it will be hauled to Balabhadra’s, which is just over the hill from the far end of my upper meadow. Ray will haul it through Balabhadra’s pasture rather than coming back down to the road and going around. It is shorter.
Before New Vrindaban started buying a lot of land, we had a shortage of hay for our cows. I would go around and find meadows owned by others and put up the hay on the shares. I would make the hay, and give the land owner 1/3 of the bales.
So acccording to tradition 1/3 of these bales would belong to me, but in this case I simply donate them to the cow program.
Near the end when I was still share cropping for New Vrindaban’s benefit, I ended up making some deals with land developers. I would take all the hay in exchange for keeping their warehoused land cleaned up. These arrangements would be temporary as they would eventaully be broken up into pieces so small it wasn’t worth doing anymore as the land was gobbled up by Suburbanasura.
