Not too many people cut and rake hay like they did in the old days.
Shane Wagner, Bruce Coleman, and Dale Klassen still do it when they can, treating passersby this week to a scene of pioneering farm heritage as they worked a small field along the Alaska Highway in Taylor.
“There’s no bosses out here, no presidents, no leaders, no nothing. We’re just all the same people just getting together and having fun,” says Wagner.
Working with his Belgian horses Gypsy and Candy, Coleman was using a side delivery rake his dad used on the farm when he was growing up in Cremona.
“Just enjoyable, a nice pace,” Coleman says, the sound of alfalfa softly tossing into swaths behind him. “Isn’t that a beautiful sound? Not even loud.”
About six acres north of the Taylor ball diamonds were cut this week, about three hours of work on Tuesday.
Coleman figured it would take him and Klassen, with his horses Winchester and Remington, about two hours to rake Thursday afternoon.
Baling is planned Friday, the field expecting to yield about 30 bales.
Wagner says the district benefits by having its grass cut without the carbon impacts of heavier machinery, the horses get fed, and the public has a chance to witness a lost art of farm history.
“We do what we can along the highway so people get a glimpse of it, if they can,” he says.
Email your letters to editor@ahnfsj.ca
