For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been gazing longingly at the huge, empty fields I drive by each day. Some of the fields I see have cattle grazing. One field had ducks grazing (…and may still have ducks grazing, but the grass has grown into an ocean that would engulf teeny duck bodies). A lot of the fields, though, are empty.

As I drive by these empty fields day after day, I think to myself: “If one of those huge, empty fields were mine, I would fill it with furry sheep, milky goats, and guarding llamas! It’s not fair that someone else should own these fields and not use them!” I then pout a bit and start to scheme on how we can convince our neighbors to sell us a bit of their unused land.

The thing is…those fields _aren’t_ empty.

They are (or were until recently) extremely full.

About a week ago, I noticed that the grasses in many of these empty fields had been cut and turned into long, drying windrows of sunny green*.

Those fields are hay fields.

My drives past these fields during the last week have been like watching slow-motion animated flip cards. One day I’d drive by the fields full of tall, dark green grass…the next day the grass was cut and drying….a couple of days later the grass was hay–rolled or stacked into bales…then finally the bales were gone and the fields bare. I never see any farmers, and the strange multi-pronged machinery is always silent when I pass, so it seems to me that this change happens on its own.

Now when I pass these fields, my lust for the seemingly empty fields is replaced by drooling over the luscious, fresh hay. “Oh, how I wish I had some of that hay! Why, if that hay was mine, I’d stack it up in my barn to feed furry sheep, milky goats, and guarding llamas when winter comes!” Mmmmmm…hay.

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*Slightly poetic aside: I love drying-hay green. There are tons of greens around here, but drying-hay green is my favorite. In reality, the sun is sucking up the moisture from the grass, but it seems to me, instead, that the grass sucks up the sun.